proprietary software eats other proprietary software (canva acquires affinity)

Did you see there is now a book about enshittification that you can buy?

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… as I like to say when stepping out of the shower :smiley:

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Ah, sorry. Force of habit. Most forums forbid swearwords, but shirts are allowed.

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My English teacher often said: ā€˜Oh, shhhhhh… sugar!’

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Canva talks big about no auto opt-in for this but it happens by default and you have to explicitly undo it. Big surprise…

I just downloaded a copy of the Affinity Photo 2.0 installer while its still available, so I know I can rebuild it if necessary. I only use it occasionally and mostly for photo stitching and focus stacking (and that may change as Shine Stacker gains its legs), so I’m glad I don’t have to worry about any shenanigans from Canva.

Right now I’m feeling like Darktable and Rawtherapee are becoming a safe harbor for photo editing.

The latest 2.x version was 2.6.5, IIRC so you might want to grab a copy of that.

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Same with me! I bought it at a 50% discount one day specifically for the stitching and stacking features. But it turns out that I rarely use it because my enthusiasm for panoramas and focus stacking died down. The only other thing I use it for is printing because Darktable doesn’t print with Windows.

I’m feeling an urge to try macro again with my new M4/3 camera, but I’d much rather use Shine Stacker than Canva if I can.

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insert ā€œalways has beenā€ meme here. :wink:

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RMS, the FSF and many others have been preaching this for decades but people don’t listen. As corporations go back to increasingly proprietary solutions maybe the movement will have a revival. I am guilty of this too of course, trading some convenience where I can as it’s really hard to go the full free software route

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I use Affinity for HDR, as LuminanceHDR doesn’t handle CR3 format and sometimes produces errors and it seems it isn’t being developed any more (I would if I could - but I can’t). Haven’t tried it for focus stacking - I’m using DPP from Canon (shame on me), it is slow as hell (you can really have a big pot of coffee meanwhile), but reads CR3, is easy to use, gives good results and you get it for free (if you use a camera from Canon).

Thanks for the heads-up, I just bought the book.

You will not regret it. but you might come out a bit more angry. :slight_smile:

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If I get angry because the book uncovered a new fact or phenomenon I feel angry about, that is fine.

What I dislike being agry about is if reading a book was a waste of time. Which happened recently. (Yes, Booker Prize 2025, I am looking at you.)

I have read a lot of books from Doctorow (including his novels) and they were all interesting.

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I’m just reading this from the local library. I knew some of it already, having followed a bit in real time the weird transformation of Effective Altruism into Long-Termism. (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that a bunch of self-defined rationalists and utilitarians happened to skew their beliefs more oligarch-friendly after getting millions of dollars in funding thrown at them.)

Decent read so far.

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