Affinity Photo App Reviews

Seriously… Just get it! It’s better than Photoshop and at 1 tenth the price it’s a no brainer! Trust me… it has everything you need and it’s a very intuitive to use. Love it… don’t miss Photoshop at all!

why? just why? and, why does the setting not have a memory? over and over again, think i’m getting work done, then i zoom in and everything looks crusty. ugh… resample nearest neighbor strikes again. come on. and, when i open an image with no color profile, why am i forced to accept one being assigned to it? now, i can’t mix unedited and edited screenshots, because their colors no longer match. i *want* to love your product (because i’m tired of that other company’s), but first time out using this for work, and i’m frustrated.

Ive been a Photoshop user for more than two decades, and have owned (and paid for) full versions of PS3, PS5, PS7, CS1, CS3, and CS 6. I have always enjjoyed Photoshop, but in recent years have been dismayed with Adobe. I was let down last year the one time I really needed customer support, and it took having personal relationships inside Adobe to get the sort of basic support any loyal customer should expect. The rental model was the last straw. But what was the alternative? As background, Ive worked as an video editor in broadcast television for over 30 years. While image editing is not the mainstay of my work, when I work in an image editor the results must be outstanding. Needs can include preparing images for both motion graphics and for print. I enjoy image editing and have high standards for professional software. Last year I tried Pixelmator. Not a bad little program, friendly for non-power users, but not the fully feautured program I’d throw Photoshop over to use. Then this summer the Affinity Photo beta release came out. I was immediately impressed. There was a learning curve (shortened by outstanding tutorial videos produced by the company) and some moments where I felt “this isn’t exactly the way Photoshop does things." But very quickly I’ve come to like the differences. Virtually everthing I do in Affinity Photo is non-destructive though the use of what Affinity calls “Adjustment Layers,” which allow modification of such things as Levels or Filters at anytime in the process. I also find myself using mask layers much more than I did in Photoshop. Honesly, while I’ve always liked Photoshop (and still do) I am coming to love working in Affinity Photo. Photoshop now sits largely unopened. The code for Affinity Photo is streamlined and the program is very responsive. In the past six months updates keep making the program better and better. No sottware reaches full maturity in a 1.4 release (which went public today) but boy is this an impressive image editing program for people who require professional level tools. I am looking forward to seeing the aplication grow and develop in the future. it has been a great pleasure to use thus far. I am a fan! Congratulations to the team at Affinity for the award. Well deserved! Bill Update: I’d like to correct the claims of a reviewer who “used” the app fo over an hour before dinging it with a one star rating, and then trashed the program. Despite his claims one can open Photoshop files using Affinity Photo, do work, and then “export” Affinity Photo projects as Photoshop files (and a myriad of other file types (like TIFF, TARGA, PDF, JPEG). This is done via the “Export” option in the File menu (not the Save or Save As options), but the feature are definitely there. Affinity Photo is a professional level image editing program. No one masters programs such as this one in an hour. As mentioned earlier, the Affinity team has produced excellent tutorial videos that help ease the transition , and there are very good user generated video tutorials as well. Anyone contemplating a AP purchase should expect to put some time into mastering an image editing program that is as feature rich as this one. This is not a “lite” program. This is what makes it so valuable for those of us looking for a true competitor to Adobe products. I’d also like to comment on speed and hardware. I’ve been running AP (and Designer) on a new (trash-can style) Mac Pro maxed out with 64 Gigs of RAM. As one would expect, the program is smoking fast on the system. But I’ve also been running AP on a long-in-the-tooth iMac from 2007 with 4 Gigs of RAM (under both Yosemite and El Capitan) and AP is smoking fast on this machine too. I’m very impressed with the coding, and never feel the need to jump to Mac Pro to do a project when the iMac is more convenient. This iMac is literally the oldest one supported by Apple that runs Yosemite and El Capitan. Not slow. Additional Update: The 77th Doctor should look at the Affinity website again. While they have many tutorials for the complimentary Affinity Designer program, there are also about 65 very excellent tutorials produced by the Affinity team. In addition, there are user-made tutorials with link on the Affinity forum. Watching these will help one master this very deep and powerful application.

I love this and the fact i dont have to pay a monthly fee, I have found lots of videos going over the program but what I would love is just a manual and a quick start guid with all of the useful hot keys and short cuts.

I was hoping this app would do all I need PS for so that I could stop that monthly cost. It has done it with flying colors. It does everything I did with PS and in most cases does it better and easier. As a previous PS user the learning curve was very small, just little twaeks here and there. Do yourself a favor if your a PS users, not a power user, and try this out. You may find it does all you need at a much lowr price. Also try out Affinity Designer, the two apps work great together. Way to go Serif.

It works great. Certainly different than PhotoShop but once I got the hang of it, I preferred it by leaps and bounds. The only thing I can’t do are automated/scripted batch jobs.

After using another, very popular app for photo editing and processing, I decided not to be chained to paying monthly fees and began searching for a replacement app. Along cames Serif, a company whose excellent products I used on the PC side for web development, with Affinity Photo. This app has everything you need to process and edit photos as comprehensively and professionally as the one I used to use. I like it better than Photoshop because it is versatile, flexible and packed with features. At it’s current price of $49.00, you cannot do better. This app has some killer features, layers is really well done, and producing a finished photo is very easy. Yes, the feature set does make for a bit of a learning curve and that should not be problematic if you’ve used one of the other high end apps in this category. If you’re a newbie to this type of app, it will take a while to get your arms around everything the app offers and it will be work it. Serif’s site has a very complete set of well produced video tutorials for Affinity Photo. They do not have to be watched in any particular sequence and this means users can view one that’s relevant to a particular task without any problem. The length of the tutorials is properly timed between 5 and 10 minutes—the optimum for learning and retention. In conclusion this is a well done application with all the features you’d expect in a high-end photo app plus some additional ones that are really very nice. I haven’t had it crash once no matter how much stress I put it under. It plays very nicely with the current version of El Capitan and did so as well running on Yosemite. If you’re looking for a quality photo processing and editing app, this is one you should really consider.

The vast majority of negative reviews are people who are looking for simplistic programs like MS Paint. Don’t listen to the negatives. For those looking for a low-cost alternative to Adobe Photoshop, this is THE program to get. With a familiar interface and the same features [plus more] Affinity is a no-brainer purchase. Honestly, if I could rate this program 10 stars, I would - it is THAT great! $50 is a steal of a deal for this program. Probably the best app ever made. Those familiar with Photoshop, buy this and you won’t be sorry!

PLEASE ADD ARABIC!!! i love it! my only problem is that it doesnt support Arabic language which i really wish you can add.

This has been what I have been looking for since I started getting into photography. The ability to remove unwanted objets from your photos is priceless. The different layers and filters you can add are all wonderful. Again, don’t listen to the people that say it is difficult to use. It is a very complex program that can do a lot, it is going to take some learning. Dont be scared!! There help website is great and unlike what other people have said, there are totorials on the Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Just becasue there is a learning curve does not make it bad. I have never used photoshop so I can not compare it to that but it does what I need it to do as a hobbiest photographer and for the price it was well worth it. Go over to the companies website and watch some of the tutorials before purchasing like I did. That way you can see how powerful the program is and if its right for you. Get the Free Trial also!!

GREAT app!!! I am a high school student in a photoclass that uses photoshop. I follow along with the class while they all use photoshop and I use affinity. I also use this outside of calss as well and it works perfectly. LOVE THIS APP WORTH EVERY PENNY!!!

I think this is a great application. I consider myself to be a hobbyist in the graphics world so for my needs, it gets everything that I’d need to get done without have to pay subscription fees like the Adobe product lines (I’ve also purchased Designer and looking forward to their page layour application). I also really enjoy the fact that it’s relatively intuitive so I was able to get a lot done in a fairly short amount of time when I first purchased the program. The only issue I have is that the tutorials are only in video format. I’d like them to create a manual which I can go through in detail to learn all of the features of the program

As a professional photographer, I’ve been using PS since its first versions hit the market and have literally purchased almost every photo app released since then, including OnOne Perfect Photo Suite, and numberous others that were supposed to replace Photoshop. I have been editing images in this program for the past several days and am so impressed with the ease of the workflow that I haven’t touched my other apps. It isn’t that I don’t think I will ever use some of my prior software investments again, as each has a place in my arsenal of tools, it’s that this program does what I need it to do when I am prepping images for clients and when I am editing images for my own use. I’ve worked in digital imaging labs (conservation and conversation of historic photos) for many years, and spent untold hours in Photoshop laboring over adjustments, color corrections and dust-busting, etc. This app allows me to do most of that work in a fraction of the time, and at a fraction of the cost of keeping up with new releases of PS. I dreaded editing my images from a shoot, and now I seem able to breeze right through them without the computer freezing (had more than enough RAM for PS). I also prefer that image editing take place on my machine and not in the cloud, and to get my updates directly from Apple’s app store. This app is meeting those needs, too. I can’t say enough about how pleased I am with this product, and how cost-effective it is. I have been waiting for a true PS replacement for some time, as I feel that the company no longer feels loyatly to its earliest customers and has found many reasons to charge for updates that should have been standard and free. Developers: Take a lesson from long-time PS users and keep this app current and reasonably priced, and you’ll have a loyal following!! And keep up with the plugins, and migration issues!! Update 2/19/16: The program wouldn’t update on my 27” iMac and kept giving a download error. I registered at the support and user forum and within minutes a developer responsed to my question about how to get the update to load correctly. I am very impressed with the support, and the active user forums with much information on how to get the most out of this app. It was an Apple Store problem and not a developer problem, however they didn’t mind stepping up to assist! Thanks, Team Affinity!!

This app is so good it can’t last. For 1/10 the cost of Adobe PS it does all the image editing you will ever need. Adobe is bound to buy this company.

I cannot express how happy I am that this software exists. It is similar to but BETTER than Photoshop, but at an actually reasonable, one-time price, as opposed to the exorbitant monthly rip-off service that Adobe recently instituted (I’m not even going to get into Adobe’s terrible customer service). Affinity Photo is amazing!!! You won’t regret your purchase!

Coming from years of photoshop, the first thing I execute is downsizing and image from 6k px to 1k px. If you know anything, like 1+1=2, you know that this is the most basic of tasks for an imge editor. NO>>> NOT AFFINITY! it actually made the image so pixelated I could not believe my freaking eyes!!!! IF this POS program cannot even get a basic resize correct, what else will it screw up?

I’ll just leave it at this: it’s intuitive to the degree that I’ve already accidently done a couple really amazing things that I never quite figured out in Photoshop (like turning text into a mask for an image). I’m not a pro by any stretch as any seasoned PS user will discern from my previous discovery, but it feels good to be done fighting with PS. Especially for what I paid for it. Big fan of Affinity.

This app is fantastic! Has all the features as in Photoshop. I use Photoshop on the mac computers at my school and this is a great way to be able to work on my photos at home. The export option is great to easily convert the photo file to any extension. Some of the short cuts and hot keys are different in Affinity than Photoshop but thats okay. Can’t get a better software for the price. If the makers decide to out the app on discount again, it is a great deal. Photos are easy to edit, with all the main features easily able to get to.

Lightroom’s problem is it now requires a 120 dollar per year subscription to keep an Adobe program up to date; thus, an opportunity has arisen for other programs to take its place. Affinity Photo wants us to think they are the one to replace Lightroom. They are not. I am not a dedicated Lightroom user and I am using Lightroom 5 because I can’t afford to update the thing. Plus, I am not impressed with several Lightroom concepts or its inate complexity. I was hoping Affinity Photo would be less complex and avoid concepts built into Lightroom that make it hard to use, but Affinity failed. Cropping should be the easist process of all. This is so basic, yet Affinity failed in its execution. When I crop photos and press “apply” the result is NOT what I choose. The program moves the crop to another location. If I go into Edit and remove the crop then the correct crop shows up. Also, after a crop the user should be able to adjust the position of the crop right away. In this program the user must delete the crop just made and redo the entire thing. Very poor. The choices of tools and whatnot on the left side of the photo should not include a fill tool or pen tools or items not immediately associated with photo editing. This makes the tool icons extremely small as a large number of icon are there that will not be used often in photo editing. This is true of the entire editing area. It is extremely cluttered and the icons are terribly small. Affinity needs to clean this up. While Lightroom has too many layers of editing tools all separated from one another, Affinity needs to add at least one layer to clean out the drawing and painting tools and keep them away from the photo editing tools. For some odd reason, on my iMac machine (about 5 years old) the interface moves around. The reviewing and editing area, plus the picture, all kind of ripple now and again. A built in problem for Lightroom and Affinity Photo is they both try and do too much outside of photo editing. Yet, in the photo editing area, they come up short. I can’t really edit batches of photos without examining each of them closely, and to do this I have to zoom in on various parts of each picture. After that I can move on; however, the both programs make it hard to change to the next picture if the zoom is in play. Not a big deal until you are trying to go through 200 photos and all of the sudden each additional move becomes a major pain. Why can’t I just hit the arrow key? So… to keep this review short enough to read, I don’t like it. AD2

I purchased this app in hopes I would find a good replacement for PhotoImpact when I had a Windows computer. No such luck. Even after looking through the help section, this app is too complex for even the easiest of tasks. Same applies for Affinity Designer. I am sure it is a good app if you really know how to use it. Too much for this girl!