Going from zero to 99 a year is excessive, expensive. for an infrequent user like me, 30 or 40 would be acceptable. I may upgrade for one year but I will now be shopping for alternatives less costly. I hope you don’t price yourself out of business. And I was looking for a Christmas discount on upgrades like you have on everything else, but no such luck. I’ve been a long time happy user, recommending your products to other. I won’t recommend Topaz any longer without adding “It’s expensive”. Not happy.
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I think at this point, with the oddities that have been happening on my system since around Denoise AI 2.3.3, if I ever do get a version that works well and doesn’t stop updating at some random point, I’m not sure I’d ever update it again…
I’m starting to look at all these sort of things like a hammer. You go to the store and buy a hammer. It has a head, it has a handle, it pounds nails. As long as the head and handle stay together and it pounds nails, I don’t need an “upgrade” or to pay a yearly fee for new handles.
One thing this model HAS done is make me look closely at what else I might consider adding. I tried Sharpen AI, and it was OK. Didn’t work very well on some things, better on others. But once I looked at the price tag, compared the likelihood of similar problems to what I’ve seen with Denoise AI, and the ongoing collection model I decided to pass.
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Well the only reason I was willing to buy so expensive single purchase software was that updates were supposed to be included. Now I will not automatically look for Topaz products buy compare offering to all other monthly fee type of deals. Might also update every three years or so but not really interested to pay and update because no idea how much better it would be or worse.
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Free 1.9 update for all Affinity applications just released! See Topaz this is how you treat your valuable customers, you need to take some lessons!
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Topaz gives free updates for 1 year from payment of the update fee. You need to check each companies update strategy to make an informed decision.
And … Affinity Photo is NOT DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI or GigaPixel AI and certainly doesn’t provide the quality of those 3.
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Well I’ve gotten free updates for 5 years without paying an additional penny! And I will definitely purchase a payed update from them when they do offer one. As far as competing in denoise, sharpen or resizing I beg to differ, I find Affinity hangs with anything Topaz has to offer (along with soooo much more!). As a former loyal Topaz customer I am saddened by the path that Topaz has taken and I’m only pointing out what a company can do to maintain a loyal happy following.
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Until Topaz changed their policy, I didn’t pay as much attention to the quality of other products’ denoise functionality because I knew I had a fallback option. In the past months I have spent more time experimenting with how well others do and have found that there are several that do a VERY good job denoising and are also full-blown RAW editors.
So my options are:
1 - I can get a free update for Affinity
2 - I can pay to upgrade one of several RAW editors (or keep using the versions that I have without upgrading) that also do a good job at denoising
3 - I can pay a company that many feel has betrayed them and upgrade a few one-trick ponies and still have to have a RAW editor
Option 3 just doesn’t feel good to me.
Luckily, you are correct - Affinity Photo is NOT Denoise AI, Sharpen AI or Gigapixel AI - Affinity upgrades are still free. In my opinion, Affinity 1.9 provides comparable quality in the denoise function, which is all I have looked at. I use Sharpen and Gigapixel so seldom that they have now been retired for me.
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Topazlabs may well lose a lot of goodwill over changes to their free-upgrade policy, yet their products are mostly superlative, and such loss of goodwill will not really amount to much! 
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You may very well be right. There is no doubt that they have lost a certain amount of goodwill. But whether that will actually amount to anything substantial - only time will tell.
Speaking for myself, they have lost me as a customer. If I felt like the products I use were irreplaceable I would probably grudgingly relent eventually. But I can get results that are plenty good for my needs (and which I believe are comparable to Denoise AI) from several other products I have - with much more functionality - so I don’t feel the need to pay for something else.
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Not so, unless you don’t meet technical requirements, just use these instructions …
I think you misunderstood his statement. He isn’t saying that Affinity hangs/freezes with Topaz products. He is saying Affinity “hangs in there” with anything Topaz has to offer.
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I am aware that this may only be a user to user forum and no one from Topaz looks in here (stupid as that is) so I have sent this as an email to Topaz but I also wanted to share my thoughts with other users as I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.
So Topaz are in danger of losing me as a customer if they don’t stop this.
When I buy a car, after the first year, every time I get in the car it does not pop a message up on the dashboard when I start the ignition, asking me if I would like to upgrade my car to the newest version. I drive the car until I’m interested in changing my car. (most importantly if I’m interested I have no problem with the car manufacturer sending me an email every so often to tell me about new models that have been released) But I sure as hell do not want a message popping up on the dashboard every time I start the car forcing me to have to waste time trying to dismiss the thing and interrupting my drive (aka workflow (which might be time critical))
When I buy a TV, after the first year, every time I switch the tv on I do not want a message popping up on the tv screen asking me if I would like to upgrade to the latest tv model… and then I have to find the button to dismiss the message… all the while when I was trying to catch a news broadcast on the channel but now I’ve missed it because I was spending time trying to get rid of the nag message on the screen. I have not problem with the manufacturer sending me emails every so often telling me about new models I may be interested in.
Likewise when I buy a microwave…
Likewise when I buy a laptop…
Likewise when I buy a camera…
Likewise when I buy a phone…
Likewise when I buy any other product at all that I can think of, no other manufacturer, product supplier, that I can think of, is so arrogant as to think it is reasonable to interrupt my workflow to the extent that actually have to stop and take some other action, not of my doing, in order that I can carry on doing my work!
Please stop with the nag messages on your software. It is so incredibly arrogant and intrusive on you to display this message and instead of making me want to upgrade it is making me want to stop using your software and use a competitor instead.
By all means send me emails every so often letting me know about updates/improvements but stopping intruding on my workflow or I will go elsewhere.
I’ll bet I’m not alone in thinking this.
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You are most certainly not alone. While there are ways around it, it is ridiculous that we should have to do anything. I’m even fine with a one-time pop-up whenever a new version comes out. But give me a check box that says “do not show this message again for this version”. not just something that lets me put it off for 2 weeks.
Just another example of a poorly thought out policy by Topaz.
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I received a reply from Topaz and unfortunately they are not planning to remove the upgrade nag screen ‘feature’, so looks like we are stuck with it. Of course we are not stuck with Topaz, I think this is a real shame, I like the Topaz products but I really dislike this feature and it has been bugging me more and more. Luminar do the same thing, perhaps that is why is seems annoying, because they are all it… it actually makes Adobe look good for once. I need to find a good denoise plugin that doesn’t have these nag screens if anyone has any suggestions.
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There are work-rounds to remove it. There is an app called Radio Silence for Mac users, which with one click disconnects a selected app from the internet. I have used this successfully. I believe someone above has posted a Windows script: look through this thread for it.
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thanks, I’m on windows, I’ll have a look and see if I can find it.
Eric, having read your post I am happy to support this new deep focus direction but it is unfair of you to say you are happy that people don’t upgrade as there in ‘no point in paying for an upgrade every year if you only use the products infrequently’ but then you place a nag screen on the software to try and force people to upgrade. I am going to upgrade to try and support you even although the current software meets my needs perfectly but if that nag screen is still there in a years time then I will reconsider whether to continue to support you. Please get rid of that nag screen.
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With all these workarounds remember that the applications need to verify your ownership at regular intervals so if you block the internet they cannot.
Very interesting to read some of the earlier posts in this thread, so I have just read the post at the start of this thread from the Topaz CEO, and I like it. I like the refocusing of philosophy onto deep focusing on products rather than constantly trying to bring out new products. This makes a lot of sense to me and in fact I moved away from using some Topaz products a while back because I was sick of the way things kept on changing. (In fact luminar are doing that very same thing just now and I’m stopping using Luminar because of that. Topaz)
I strongly believe you need consistent product direction and improvement. There is nothing worse than continually being conned into buying some new product that promises the world, and that you have to spend time learning but that doesn’t deliver that promised new world.
I hadn’t read this message before, because I barely come into this forum because I find the layout and usability so poor.
But now that I’ve read it, I am happy to support this new direction so I will pay the upgrade price even though I am entirely happy with my current product and don’t feel I need the new features but I still don’t like the nag screen and it might well become enough for me to leave Topaz in a years time when they restart. It is dishonest of Topaz to say that they are happy for you not to upgrade if you are happy with the current product but then continually showing you a nag screen to try and force you to upgrade.
That’s easy with Radio Silence. You just turn it off and then turn it on again!
