New Year Revolutions

October seems like a long time ago, especially as we move towards a new year, but a couple of things happened late in the month too close to our deadline to fully explore in this column so now is the time to review them and consider their implications in the longer term.

Something that went a little under the radar earlier in the month was Microsoft's removal of support for Windows 10.

Barely noted perhaps because it had been heralded a long time ahead, and also because we have been here before with the updating of previous versions without it causing a major revolution. Things did not instantly fall apart, nor did they in the fall out from previous transformations.

It’s estimated that nearly half of the Windows users out there are still using no 10 and aren’t rushing to invest in expensive new hardware, which was the initial fear of obsolescence contained in the upgrade. Most computers under ten years old are quite capable of running the operating system, it’s just that the official install won’t accept one of the codes it encounters as it’s beyond its sell by date.

You will be familiar with this from Adobe updates for example where older graphic cards, or minimum ram won’t be suitable to run current versions. In order to stay up to date, you will have to move to a model with higher performance at some stage, and this is the case with Windows 10. As long as your on line security is up to date, and you are backing up your data - which you should be doing anyway - there is no drama.

Microsoft offers a twelve month security patch for a small fee, but there are also a number of helpful tips on line on how to ‘go up to eleven’ avoiding the company’s eligibility checks to install a fully functional and legitimate version.

Those of us old enough to have worked with computers in the days of XP will know that many devices continued to run quite happily for many years before they were eventually consigned to the bin - mainly because they were no longer supported by other apps like printer drivers. XP had a shelf life of more than a decade, and longer with additional service packs, but that was in the days before processing power had to deal with the demands of AI which has been a massive game changer in recent years. Given that 11 is already four years old you have to wonder how long it will take before we are recommended to move up to Windows 12.

October also saw the annual Adobe jamboree in Los Angeles with all of the glitz and glamour of a pop concert merged with a presidential rally. The yearly MAX conference has grown into more of a celebration of influence rather than an exploration of product but the balloon must have suffered at least some deflation with the simultaneous launch of the new editing software from Affinity.

This is the first serious attack on Adobe’s dominance of the professional market in some time and it comes directed by Affinity’s parent company, Canva, which acquired the UK IT minnow last year. Much to everyone’s surprise a V3 update to the already popular Affinity suite was not a subscription clone of the Creative Cloud, but a complete free giveaway, and a combined package of tools virtually unequalled.

Affinity previously had three complimentary programmes to provide photo, design and publish options although Design 2 already had an integrated pixel editor that could be switched seamlessly with its vector one. In the new version, all three are bonded into a full trilogy, so it’s a one stop solution for all your digital editing needs.

So what’s the catch? Well you have to sign in to Canva but there’s no obligation of purchase unless you want to take advantage of all the AI tools that are hidden behind a pay wall. The company is literally banking on the plan that enough users will want to pay extra for those functions after having been tempted by the free offer. 

Whether this will prove the case, or whether at some point the bean counters will decide it hasn’t paid off, will determine whether the free for life Affinity offer of 2025 lasts the test of time. There’s no doubt that despite the hype, not everyone is as excited about AI as the marketing departments, especially when customers are compelled to have it as part of software and devices without the option to decline or avoid it. In that context, Canva’s ploy may prove to be the smartest or the dumbest move yet.

The delicate balance between hero and zero in the modern age was further highlighted by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alpabet, parent company of the Google empire, who effectively announced that AI was not entirely to be trusted - something I think anyone over thirty already knew. A decade ago Bill Gates (yes the Microsoft founder) suggested that despite all this clever stuff in the cloud it was probably a good idea to print out anything you really needed to keep safe for the future.

Those of us even older will remember that before the ‘cloud’ there was the ‘dot com’ revolution, and everyone seemed to be throwing everything at anything that happened to be on line, even if it didn’t really exist, on the basis that it would be the future. No one wants to miss the next big thing, the real question is what it actually is, something that too few really query.

The ‘cloud’, for example, doesn’t actually exist as an entity, it’s still mostly a collection of cables and very real acres of overheating servers passing and storing fragile data, and using up lots of precious resources with a limited lifespan. But nobody stops to ask whether we need all of it, nor will they, while the top seven wealthiest companies in the world are the ones who make the hardware and develop the software. 

I know I’ve rambled a long way from the original intention of this column but then we have also come a long way from the original task of exploring why a digital image differed from a hard copy. As printers we are no longer just a simple copy shop, but everything that comes in has connections we can’t always see or often trace. We are, however, expected to translate it perfectly into an exact replica print.

Unfortunately, for all of its amazing technical abilities, there is no evidence that AI is going to make that challenge any easier, and may in fact make it more complicated. With digital creation now at almost everyone’s fingertips, it will be harder to explain why the colour and clarity of the image shown on a mobile device isn’t actually real, especially as the creators of the software are doing everything possible to imitate reality.

It will be more difficult to prove why you can’t just press the right button and make it right.

In some areas it is a case of pressing the right button, but you still have to know which one to press and when, and also know when it won’t work - not without your help, which still involves time and experience. A world where people can only press buttons and not solve problems is the real nightmare of AI.

The fundamental problem for print on demand as always is the quality of input more than the possibilities of the output. Most of the issues have already been created long before they arrive at the production stage, which is why from early days I learned that the first thing was to interrogate the information embedded in the source file to understand the problems before they were apparent. 

As a photographer, knowing not only the device and its settings, but even the time of day can be valuable clues into secrets otherwise only revealed in print.

A machine may be able to read the number of pixels, even the contrast between one and another to gauge sharpness, but it can’t automatically fix all the variables of colour and exposure to produce an appropriate print. A photo taken at dawn or dusk is supposed to look like that, any human eye will know that, and in some cases even subjects a little out of focus can have a dreamy, pleasing look.

I was bemused that one of the new features in Lightroom is an automated ‘culling’ system which will quickly analyse an entire selection of photos and decide which are acceptable based on certain limited criteria and concluded how few customer images would make the production line based on this process.

Almost all of the much vaunted AI features post Adobe MAX need to be treated with the same caveat. It’s all very well working with perfectly sculptured visions but we rarely have that advantage. More often it’s a rescue operation rather than a work of art.

A few things are of real use, like the harmonisation of colours which is intended to blend in subjects pasted into composite images so they match the overall exposure and hue. This can equally be useful in cases where the photo is just simply badly exposed. In this example AI is used to do what it does best, and is intended to do - take some of the subjective and tedious tasks off the editor to improve the speed of workflow and allow concentration on the main task of perfecting a print overall - rather than creating a fanciful alternative.

On balance there is something to be said for Affinity’s streamlined, non AI approach. I’m not going to call it basic as it’s a very good editing suite indeed and well worth recommending to anyone not entirely ingrained with Adobe. And it does promise more updates in the pipeline, as I suspect the release was timed as much to steal the headlines as anything else.

One significant new feature for our use is an Image Trace, to create vector files from bitmaps and the like. Previously this was Illustrator territory, but now by coincidence a simple version has also appeared in Photoshop called Content Aware trace It’s not obvious you have to add it via Preferences, and then into the toolbox but it’s another of those little bits of gold hidden beneath the overwhelming surface glitter.

The biggest thing missing from Affinity is still the most underused and underrated app in the Adobe suite - a decent browser. Bridge has had very little attention in years and yet it can be an essential part of workflow checking and organising customer files. It is desperately overdue an update or it will be vulnerable to someone smart enough to come up with an alternative which doesn’t just involve automatic decimation.

We shall see if anyone is taking any notice of practical solutions rather than novelties.