Affinity Photo (is getting there)

I've seen posts about pricing and license questions for Affinity Photo. But I haven't seen posts about using it or how well it works for people. I thought I'd share my recent thoughts and experience.

There will probably be some people that offer On1 or C1 as alternatives that can do it all, and I respect that. To each his/her own for the tools that work best.

I'm an Adobe "CC Photography Bundle" user. So far, I'm not looking to ditch the subscription yet. And it's not even the cost, but more about the "hooked-for-life" philosophy.

Considering LR vs. PS, I'm not considering switching away from LR at this time. I consider myself to be pretty proficient with it, after having used it since version 3. Therefore, by keeping LR, I'll continue to have PS for the foreseeable future as well.

PS is a slightly different animal though. I'm "okay" enough for my needs, meaning that I'm able to accomplish many of the things that I need. Other times, I just run into a dead end within the endless maze of tools and features in PS and give up.

Over the past week, I needed to go back to some 360 photos and make some edits for some real estate work. I found the PS "3D menu" and "Spherical Pano" features no problem. But working within that just hasn't been working for me or maybe it's a "clicking in my head" issue. One Google search said that the answer was to use Affinity Photo instead.

Now US$25 later, I own Affinity Photo. I made the 360 edits I needed with very little pain. Heck, at a one-time cost of $25, I could mostly ignore Affinity Photo and not have any heartburn if I never used it again. But I decided to check it out a bit more.

The bottom line? I'm pretty impressed. But not totally there yet.

PS definitely performs better on my MacBook Pro than AP. There may be some tuning options that I need to apply to AP, but haven't found those yet. I get the spinning beach-ball cursor more often with AP than with PS. (It's pretty rare for me with PS, and I've grown accustomed to that or just expect that.)

And I'm not totally thrilled with some of the basic selection behaviors. Things like being able to move a selection while drawing it (using the spacebar) is so automatic for me that I really miss that feature. And that's a basic one...

Being able to right-click on a tool (in PS) and remind myself of the alternate choices is helpful and something that I do a lot. With AP, I have to use the keyboard shortcuts to select between the variants. For example, with PS, I can type M to cycle between rectangular and ellipse marquee tools, or I can right click and see a context menu of those and the less-used column and row selection tools. AP doesn't recognize the right click; you have to use the keyboard shortcuts.

Anyway, I'm impressed and commend the work by the Serif team to create this product to the level that it's at so far. I feel comfortable in recommending it to others as a PS alternative, as opposed to Gimp (which I used for years when I was only Linux for a while). PS will remain my go-to tool for now for pixel level work or anything that requires layers or masking.

I'll certainly keep it around and have no regrets. After some time and updates, I'm sure that Serif will have some new tricks up their collective sleeves.

I purchased it for $25 because that was a no brainer but I have yet to open it. Not sure I will until I no longer have PS, which may be never or along way off into the future.

I am getting more and more convinced that I can abandon Adobe altogether, but have not made the concerted effort to assess the pros and cons for my workflow and make the decision. I currently subscribe to the Adobe plan (all apps) but rarely use more than PS, sometimes LR, Illustrator, AE and Premiere. I do not do much video work, so I could very plausibly use Affinity products for everything - I purchased each of them (Photo, Designer, Publisher) and I just need to commit to learning them. They play very nicely together and are becoming more and more integrated.

Over the COVID lockdown, Affinity have been producing a series of really engaging sessions with various artists producing diverse work and sharing their approach and workflow using Affinity products. Here is the YouTube link to the playlist:

https://www.youtube.co​m …2a5a0yyIPZcPZ-Kkh5qSTvROe

I very much appreciate Affinity Photo's 32bit workflow compared to the crippled PS tools. I have used PS for close to 25 years, so muscle memory needs to be undone, but the Affinity products are really impressive given that they really did not exist in the current form until 4 years or so ago.

I have hoped for years and stated repeatedly in marketing surveys and "we need you feedback!" forms that Photoshop needs to be redesigned to be a modern, node-based image editing tool with a modern code base and an interface and toolset that acknowledges that things have changed since the 90s. Affinity Photo has the advantage of being designed and coded with decades of user experience with Photoshop, along with a modern approach to solving the same problems, and it shows.

Kirk

Thanks for the YT link Kirk.

For now I have no desire to abandon Adobe. A personal website basic plan can start at $10 and go up to over $30 a month. Portfolio comes with the plan so it’s like getting LR/PS for free. Portfolio via SmugMug is $180 a year.

dasmith232 wrote in post #19061415
I've seen posts about pricing and license questions for Affinity Photo. But I haven't seen posts about using it or how well it works for people. I thought I'd share my recent thoughts and experience.

There will probably be some people that offer On1 or C1 as alternatives that can do it all, and I respect that. To each his/her own for the tools that work best.

I'm an Adobe "CC Photography Bundle" user. So far, I'm not looking to ditch the subscription yet. And it's not even the cost, but more about the "hooked-for-life" philosophy.

Considering LR vs. PS, I'm not considering switching away from LR at this time. I consider myself to be pretty proficient with it, after having used it since version 3. Therefore, by keeping LR, I'll continue to have PS for the foreseeable future as well.

PS is a slightly different animal though. I'm "okay" enough for my needs, meaning that I'm able to accomplish many of the things that I need. Other times, I just run into a dead end within the endless maze of tools and features in PS and give up.

Over the past week, I needed to go back to some 360 photos and make some edits for some real estate work. I found the PS "3D menu" and "Spherical Pano" features no problem. But working within that just hasn't been working for me or maybe it's a "clicking in my head" issue. One Google search said that the answer was to use Affinity Photo instead.

Now US$25 later, I own Affinity Photo. I made the 360 edits I needed with very little pain. Heck, at a one-time cost of $25, I could mostly ignore Affinity Photo and not have any heartburn if I never used it again. But I decided to check it out a bit more.

The bottom line? I'm pretty impressed. But not totally there yet.

PS definitely performs better on my MacBook Pro than AP. There may be some tuning options that I need to apply to AP, but haven't found those yet. I get the spinning beach-ball cursor more often with AP than with PS. (It's pretty rare for me with PS, and I've grown accustomed to that or just expect that.)

And I'm not totally thrilled with some of the basic selection behaviors. Things like being able to move a selection while drawing it (using the spacebar) is so automatic for me that I really miss that feature. And that's a basic one...

Being able to right-click on a tool (in PS) and remind myself of the alternate choices is helpful and something that I do a lot. With AP, I have to use the keyboard shortcuts to select between the variants. For example, with PS, I can type M to cycle between rectangular and ellipse marquee tools, or I can right click and see a context menu of those and the less-used column and row selection tools. AP doesn't recognize the right click; you have to use the keyboard shortcuts.

Anyway, I'm impressed and commend the work by the Serif team to create this product to the level that it's at so far. I feel comfortable in recommending it to others as a PS alternative, as opposed to Gimp (which I used for years when I was only Linux for a while). PS will remain my go-to tool for now for pixel level work or anything that requires layers or masking.

I'll certainly keep it around and have no regrets. After some time and updates, I'm sure that Serif will have some new tricks up their collective sleeves.

Affinity is a terrific alternative to PS for many people, and at a great price. From my point of view, the weak link is the raw processing module. the Develop persona. It lacks a significant number of features that experienced raw shooters have come to expect from the better raw processors like Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, Capture One, PhotoLab, ON1 and others. The most egregious of the features left out is the inability to go back into the Develop persona to add or update adjustments after the image is sent to the Photo persona. Its a one way street. Raw edits are baked into the file sent to Photo and are then discarded. Develop is also missing a number of other important and very desirable raw features like virtual copies. New and relatively light users of raw processing software may not miss what's been left out, but those of us who take full advantage of the great features the best raw programs have to offer will likely be disappointed with the Develop persona.

mwsilver wrote in post #19063770
... The most egregious of the features left out is the inability to go back into the Develop persona to add or update adjustments after the image is sent to the Photo persona. Its a one way street. Raw edits are baked into the file sent to Photo and are then discarded. ...

Thank you for this specific example. I haven't worked with AP enough to have discovered this, but agree that this should be supported.

mwsilver wrote in post #19063770
... Develop is also missing a number of other important and very desirable raw features like virtual copies. ...

Another good example. Thank you. I use virtual copies a lot in LR and realize its benefits. Personally, I would attribute this feature to LR and not PS. I wasn't thinking that AP was missing this feature because PS doesn't have this feature.

For me, the line between LR and PS is pretty clear and distinct. (It wasn't when I first heard about LR, but became clear once I started using it.) But that line could be in different places for different manufacturers. For example, I'm thinking about On1 supporting layers. Do layers belong in PS or LR? And yeah, they're in both because the adjustment brush in LR is effectively a layer.

Anyway, my point is that the line between features of LR and PS also defines the expectations of what a program should support.

Thank you for your comments and opening my eyes to that perspective.

mwsilver wrote in post #19063770
Affinity is a terrific alternative to PS for many people, and at a great price. From my point of view, the weak link is the raw processing module. the Develop persona. ....

I agree with this assessment. But, considering all of the other priorities that users are requesting, and given that there are numerous raw converters that have features to suit almost every user, the develop persona is rightfully a low priority on the list.

If I could have one wish granted for the evolution of AP, it would be to have them produce a node-based editing environment like that in Blender or Davinci Resolve. It would be so so good.

Kirk

dasmith232 wrote in post #19063942
Thank you for this specific example. I haven't worked with AP enough to have discovered this, but agree that this should be supported.

Another good example. Thank you. I use virtual copies a lot in LR and realize its benefits. Personally, I would attribute this feature to LR and not PS. I wasn't thinking that AP was missing this feature because PS doesn't have this feature.

For me, the line between LR and PS is pretty clear and distinct. (It wasn't when I first heard about LR, but became clear once I started using it.) But that line could be in different places for different manufacturers. For example, I'm thinking about On1 supporting layers. Do layers belong in PS or LR? And yeah, they're in both because the adjustment brush in LR is effectively a layer.

Anyway, my point is that the line between features of LR and PS also defines the expectations of what a program should support.

Thank you for your comments and opening my eyes to that perspective.

" I use virtual copies a lot in LR and realize its benefits. Personally, I would attribute this feature to LR and not PS. "

Keep in mind that with the inclusion of the Develop persona, Affinity seems to be positioning itself as a low cost alternative for both Lightroom and Photoshop. For many people it will fill that role admirably.

dasmith232 wrote in post #19061415
I get the spinning beach-ball cursor more often with AP than with PS.

Hi Dave, interested in this comment. I'm just in the process of buying a new laptop and looking at editing programmes.

How much RAM are you using in your laptop/pc to be getting the spinning ball? I haven't seen that on my MacBook Pro with 8gb RAM and looking to hopefully move to something with 16gb RAM?

Thanks

tuttifrutti wrote in post #19064532
... How much RAM are you using in your laptop/pc to be getting the spinning ball? I haven't seen that on my MacBook Pro with 8gb RAM and looking to hopefully move to something with 16gb RAM?

Hi Ian,

It's far from a controlled test as it was just my anecdotal observation. I have a recent (5 months old) MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, running 10.15.2 (Catalina) on a 2.3 GHz i9. So... it's a reasonably powerful laptop. And I haven't had the same observations with PS. I'm very quick to acknowledge that there could be some configuration or tuning that I haven't taken advantage of yet.

I'm certainly not going to start casting aspersions about AP performance. I can certainly recall times when I was experiencing PS slowness (but the hardware was older back then), and I've definitely experienced slowness with LR that was pretty annoying. But Adobe has had years to get performance figured out.

dasmith232 wrote in post #19064645
Hi Ian,

It's far from a controlled test as it was just my anecdotal observation. I have a recent (5 months old) MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, running 10.15.2 (Catalina) on a 2.3 GHz i9. So... it's a reasonably powerful laptop. And I haven't had the same observations with PS. I'm very quick to acknowledge that there could be some configuration or tuning that I haven't taken advantage of yet.

I'm certainly not going to start casting aspersions about AP performance. I can certainly recall times when I was experiencing PS slowness (but the hardware was older back then), and I've definitely experienced slowness with LR that was pretty annoying. But Adobe has had years to get performance figured out.

Thanks very much for the reply Dave. To be fair, I think we've all experiences the dreaded spinning wheel at some point

Done with AP with plugin NIK collection, my Adobe CC is due for renewal and i ask myself...Do i really need more or less than Photoshop/Lightroom? It's only $9.99usd just keep it...that is The Hobbyist replying. If you're an established working pro you've probably already invested in Adobe and be done with it.
Only those now entering the profession will most likely be choosing between Adobe and Capture One because those are "industry standards"...i don't think i've ever met a working photographer who doesn't have Lightroom/Photoshop and now either /or/ and Capture One... i bought DxO, ON1 RAW and Affinity Suite but you know i default back to Adobe/Capture One duo as they are what i currently know better...ON1RAW i use for really quick edits what i call "plug and play edits" but when i make prints with my better images it's all Adobe cc/Capture One...yeah i think i'll just renew (A pro i doubt will have that thought process lol)

I did the trial of Affinity and subsequently bought it at the regular price. It still seemed like a bargain. My current editing protocol is a combination of LR and Elements, both my own copies. AF is a bit more complicated to use than the others, but I attribute that to unfamiliarity with program, especially the layers. I am going to use it along side my LR and Elements until I become more proficient with it then may morph over to AF permanently. You can't go wrong at the regular price.