Today I’d like to talk about the image editor Affinity Photo by Serif. It is a budget friendly but powerful alternative to Photoshop by Adobe. Let me tell you why Affinity is currently my favorite…
Image editing is still the realm of Adobe Photoshop and if you are in the market for “the best” no matter what it costs you haven’t really got any alternatives to a Adobe CC subscription. But since I’m willing the experiment and I’m not comfortable with Adobe’s business model I looked for alternatives. I found them in Corel’s PaintShop Pro X9, GIMP and recently in Affinity Photo by Serif. And while PaintShop Pro and GIMP are still recommendable and powerful image editors that remain on my hard drive as backups I have now switched to Affinity.
The reason for this is simple: Affinity is an aspiring newcomer that does a lot of things differently and is still under heavy development meaning you can expect new features and improvement with any new version. It is also priced competitively at 49 USD (classical license, no subscription model) and it comes with a lot of advanced features like focus stacking, HDR, panorama stitching… But what I like most about it is it’s extensive use of non destructive editing options. It does not only come with tons of adjustment layers known from Photoshop but it also offers so called Live Filters which are basically adjustment layers for filters. Affinity also comes with a very large selection of blend modes for layers, adjustment layers and Live Filters. Since I really like the concept of non destructive editing this is a huge advantage to me. And while it’s true that you can manually do non destructive adjustments in any photo editor by simply duplicating the original layer and applying the changes to that duplicate it’s far more convenient to simply select the desired adjustment layer or Live Filter and tweak it until the result is satisfying.
What I also like about Affinity is the fact that it’s still actively developed. Contrary to alternatives like GIMP or PaintShop Pro there is a real chance that a missing feature will actually be added within a reasonable time frame. But it’s not only the active development that I like. It’s also the way the interact with their customers. While I’m writing this post they offer no less than 210 very well made tutorial videos on Vimeo and Youtube plus they’ve got a very active forum where they also participate in discussion and respond to feature requests and suggestions for improvements. This adds to the feeling that Serif actually cares for their customer’s needs.
Here is a quick non exhaustive list of features in Affinity that make it so powerful:
- You can work in various color modes (LAB, RGB, CMYK, HSL), all with 16 bit support of course
- A lot of non destructive editing options (adjustment layers, Live Filters)
- Lot’s of blend modes for layers, brushes, filters…
- Many specialized features like panorama stitching, focus stacking, HDR…
- Very clever selection tools like quick masks and masks that are built into adjustment layers/ Live Filters
- Compatible with many Photoshop Plug-ins like the google Nik Collection
- …
All in all Serif offers with Affinity Photo a comprehensive image editor with lot’s of potential. If they keep up their current development pace there is actually a real chance that Affinity will one day catch up with the industry standard Photoshop and maybe even surpass it. But today’s feature list is already so impressive that I immediately bought the program after I had played with the trial version for a few hours.
Now it’s your turn: What do you think about Affinity Photo? Have you tried it yet? Are you interested in Photoshop alternatives or is the Adobe image editor the only way for you? Do you know other image editors besides Affinity Photo, PaintShop Pro and GIMP? What do you like about them? Please leave a comment or head over to the forums to express your opinion.