Affinity Photo App Reviews

After studying with and using Photoshop for most of my life, I got tired of using their software on OS X. Photoshop used to be the gold standard of OSX Photomanipulation software, a must-have if you owned a Mac and did any professional image work. Not anymore, Photoshop hasn’t worked great on OS X in a long time. Now this is a review about Affinity Photo, not Photoshop. Affinity Photo is crazy fast. The trackpad gestures for moving/zooming around a document feel buttery smooth. Everything about Affinity Photo feels familiar if you’ve used Photoshop, but you will definitely need to have experience in software similar to this if you want to learn how to edit photos. Thankfully, the Affinity Photo website has some fantastic tutorials to getting started. There are only a few things that Affinity Photo cannot do, like full 3D support and video editing which Photoshop can. However, both 3D and Video were never “fun” experiences in Photoshop and I generally didn’t use them anyway. My complaints are very few. My most-used shortcut from my Photoshop days was holding down Spacebar while making a selection with the selection tool so I could reposition it without increasing/decreasing the selection. This is not in Affinity Photo (currently as of March 9, 2016). If you are a Professional and need Photo Manipulation software similar to Photoshop then go try out their free trial and inevitably come back to buy it. I don’t think I’ll ever return to Adobe’s products again.

I’m no photoshop expert by any means but I still do appreciate everything this program has to offer.

Impossible for me to say how excited I am to finally have this caliber of photo design tool without having to rent Adobe’s bloatware. The more I use it, the more it impresses me. Both Photo and Designer are top notch, top value. And the video tutorials will have you up and running in no time. Powerful, good interface, and stable!

I have had errors when doing more than a few picture adjustments using the retouch tool throug photos. I get "error occured when saving" and the retouch tool will leave wierd color boxes on your photos as you dodge and burn. Not because of picture but random magenta, cyan or yellow boxes randomly appear, You are then forced to revert and in case you made edits in Photos before hand you have to start over. I love the haze removal feature the most

Finally, a pro grade photography application that allows me to ditch my monthly photoshop cc subscription. This app will handle pretty much any task a pro photographer will throw at it (unlike other photography apps in this app store). In renders extremly fast (much faster than photoshop), and gives you all of the gee whiz tools you’ve come to love photoshop for. In short, it will be the best $50 you spend this year. If you hate Adobe’s monthly subscription model, this is your ticket out. I suspect it’s not always going to stay this cheap. The Windows version is in beta, and when it’s released the popularity of this app will skyrocket, as will it’s price. I see this easily selling for $299 in a couple of years.

I was getting really annoyed by Adobes business model, the subscription thing just was not vibing with me and I was so unmotivated by the ancient/ clumsy feel of Illustrator…. I had always loved photoshop, but illustrator was just straight wonky to me. When I found Affinity, I was hesitant because I want to produce the best work possible and have access to high quality tools and UI. Once i tried the free trial, I was Immediately convinced- within the first ten minutes of using the program, I already was intuitively creating better work than I had ever done with Illustrator. When I hit road blocks with this program, their online tutorials, forums, and customer support is SO VALUABLE. I absolutely love the gradient controls, intuitive masking, quick workflow, amazing zoom, grid controls, boolean geometry, exporting ease, and so much more make this program my favorite and most exciting sofware adventure in a long time. There is so much on the horizon for Affinity photo and Design I am really excited to journey with them! BYE ADOBE!

once you start adding more than 4 or 5 layers of editing the processing speed becomes almost unusable. I regularly have to restart this program for basic functions to start working.

Sure it’s going to take a while getting used to where everything is and what everything does. But I tell you one thing: You will not regret switching to this app. The Inpainting feature alone is worth it. It is fantastic. I beleive you can try before you buy from Serif’s website.

Nothing is a photoshop killer, but Affinity is pretty close to being as good. Not quite, but it is much better than a lot of the alternatives, and its inexpenive. Ignore all the other options, including freeware like Gimp. Worth every penny.

The only reasonable replacement I have found for photoshop on OSX. It works well and is a great alternative. I hope they come out with a Lightroom replacment soon.

I am happy with the application both in my laptop and desktop however lately, it’s always crashing. I cannot finish any project since it will hang then no respon I was simply editing a simple image relatively small in size. Can someone take a look if theres any on going issue. Thank you.

I’ve only just grazed the surface on this programs functionality, however just from basic use it is very similar to photoshop and the only issue person might have is figuring out the tools and how the program operates. Nothing that isn’t any different from any other new program a person tries. It has a majority of the tools and photoshop and far as I notice operates the same. I was using Adobe on a PC, and just converted to Mac, and so I cannot attest to how this software compares to the Mac version of Adobe. I can say it is well worth the price. Definite recommend. Will update more with additional use, and any issues that may arise.

When CS6 stopped working in El Capitan, I was suddenly in emergency mode. Apps like Pixelmator were good, but always missed some critical piece of my workflow, or critical element of compatibility with my huge pile of legacy psd files. So I tried the free trial of Affinity Photo. In most ways, honestly, the UI is VASTLY BETTER than Photoshop ever was! Photoshop’s UI still seems modeled after the 1980s when nothing could be done in real time. In Affiniy photo, any layer can be transformed at full speed , in place, by simply touching it. And IMO, doing the basic everyday things better is much more important that how many esoteric features you offer. WARNINGS: There are some differences in the way Affinity Photo works that REQUIRE help from the Forums to do very basic things and can be initially frustrating - however, I received Forum help in about 24 hours along with great videos, and once you know how something works, it’s seldom more than a couple clicks away. Affinity Photo curently can’t do EVERYTHING in my work flow - but the 10 day trial was JUST ENOUGH to figure out to do the CRITICAL things I needed (including backwards compatiblity psd features) to determine that I could switch to it. Other missing features (like 3-D text extrusion) are more luxury items for me. Bearing in mind that I had no choice whatsoever - CS6 just hangs in the splash screen - I believe that Affinity Photo is THE PHOTOSHOP OF THE FUTURE. It does the minimal things I need now, it has a solid base of support, and I think it’s worth investing an education in it for the future. This is what Photoshop might have been had Adobe started over from scratch. I can easily see Affinity Photo claiming 80% of the market in the next year. And I might never have really tried it had Adobe not cleverly kicked me out of their system, leaving me hanigng with psds I couldn’t edit. MY ADVICE TO AFFINITY: You really should make the free trial last 30 days, owing to the steeper learning curve for Photoshop users. Like me, there are many users that need to test features for backwards compatiblitiy, and It is very hard to tell if a key feature doesn’t exist at all, or if I just don’t know how to do it.

Much more intuitive than Photoshop. Smart selection is actually better than Photoshop’s. Runs seamlessly without a glitch and does not consume your computer. Photoshop seems to occupy as much of a computer as is available. I have it installed on several Macs and no matter the model, it just consumes as much memory as is available. This cause it to glitch and freeze occassionally when it is processing a command. Most importantly is the smart selection. Selection and masking take up most of a projects time. Affinity is far better at it. It often produces adequate results without having to refine the mask or selection (not for professional use as any professional job will require refinement, but with Affinity you need much less).

I never thought I’d actually say that. Obviously there are things missing that I wish would be added but to be honest, Adobe has had 20+ years to improve their product and I can’t say that I think they’ve used that time wisely. Affinity photo surpassed my expectations and is worth every penny. The things I can’t do in Affinity, I know only because I know that they are possible in Photoshop. Had I never worked with Photoshop I would have never missed those features. So I’d say, if you are looking to work professionally with photo editing and haven’t gotten used to Photoshop, this is a great tool and will do more than enough. If you are looking for a photoshop replacement, It’s definitely a question of taste and preference. I “decided to” prefer Affinity because the price tag on Adobes software doesn’t even come close to making up for the gained functionality. I have worked with photoshop professionally since 1998 so the switch has been difficult and straining but I’m now satisfied with it. Great job! And I’m looking forward to coming updates.