Affinity Photo - well worth a look

[james_de_h]

<p>Any of you Mac users on here giving Affinity Photo a try? I subscribe to Adobe CC and think it offers great value for money but find I only use LR these days so do not need to really invest in the heavy lifting offered by PS. But I would miss the latter if I stopped with CC. Hence the trial with Affinity. It plays very nicely with LR and I think a purchased licence to LR plus Affinity could make sense for a lot of us. Affinity does have a lot more oomph than I expected too and it really flies on both my 2009 iMac 27in and newer 27in Retina model. The latter is not much faster in PS than its aged brother but in Affinity the newer Mac is so fast adjustments are made almost too quickly for me to notice them. Well worth a try and the learning curve will not be too steep if you know your way around PS. Affinity has some neat little features too but I do not need them. But try Stacks. Great fun!</p>

[Richard Williams]

I really wish Affinity would stop 'focusing on completing the full suite for the Mac', release that version you know they must already have built for Windows, and TAKE MY MONEY!

[digitaldog]

<p>I purchased it since it's a screaming deal considering what it can provide. Full support of PSD layers from Photoshop (soon TIFF) with blending modes etc. I'll stick with Photoshop for the time being, but it's a pretty good backup plan should you bail out. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>I really wish Affinity would stop 'focusing on completing the full suite for the Mac'</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Like Adobe did way back when I purchased Photoshop for Mac (1.0.7) in 1990. Give them time.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Interesting, by all means. If I weren't still trying to learn the software I have, I might consider Affinity.</p>

[richsimmons]

<p>I bought both Affinity Photo and Designer. Caught the sale, $80 for both. Very well worth it. Learning curve is not bad if you use PS, but they have a ton of tutorials on the web. IMO, Designer is the killer app. If you're an Illustrator person, you'll really like Designer. AND, both programs can swap files natively, so you can begin in one and jump to the other with all layers intact. Designer has a great way of masking. Really simple, literally, dragging one layer under another and pushing right. They're making an page layout program to compete against InDesign as well. I'm glad, competition is good for business. Serif, the company that makes it, began and still is a Windows software company, but when they created these, they started from scratch and it shows. The programs really don't bog down your machine and they work really fast. Like really fast.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>I agree Rich, Affinity Photo is very, very fast compared to Photoshop. </p>

[brian_mchattie]

<p>Just downloaded the trial version. I have been a photoshop man since CS2 and am a subscriber to cc.<br>

First impressions after playing with Affinity for 15 minutes are promising although I am loathe to begin the learning process all over again. Chances are though that I will buy this in the next day or two</p>

 

[Richard Williams]

<blockquote>

<p>Like Adobe did way back when I purchased Photoshop for Mac (1.0.7) in 1990. Give them time.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'll probably have to give them over a year. Their roadmap has a 2017 release for the third Mac app, Publisher, and they've said not to expect anything on other platforms before then.</p>

[2d]

<p>I like Affinity and will need to be making buckets of money before I agree to a $70 per month subscription plan. (The irony is if I was making that kind of money I would not want to be editing anyways.) But until Affinity has contact sheet software like Bridge it really is going to be hard to let go of CS 6 </p>

<p>I do remember in the 90's when most of the alternative photo editing software was only made for Windows, <em>Picture Perfect </em>wasn't that one of the names.</p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>I like Affinity and will need to be making buckets of money before I agree to a $70 per month subscription plan.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What are you talking about? There's no subscription plan, the software (Affinity Photo) costs about $49 for a perpetual license.</p>

[2d]

<p>yes I know I purchased it, I was referring to the Adobe's subscription. </p>

<p>I really really want to use Affinity more but I'm so use to jumping around via Bridge that I can't seem too. And I honestly don't see Lightroom having ten more years of life. It just doesn't seem to be a <em>Great</em> cataloging program for the long haul, especially if you start factoring in motion clips.</p>

<p> </p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>yes I know I purchased it, I was referring to the Adobe's subscription.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well you can subscribe to Photoshop and LR for as little as $10 a month....</p>

<blockquote>

<p>And I honestly don't see Lightroom having ten more years of life.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You might be right, the last release was a mess. No one is driving the ship. Very, very sad. </p>

[richsimmons]

<p>If Affinity keeps going the way it is, I'm pretty sure they'll have some kind of bridge component. Soon, I hope. Meantime, there's ACDSee, which has been around for years if there's a need besides Bridge.</p>

[Glenn McCreery]

<p>I looked into buying Affinity last year and was initially quite enthusiastic about it. However, I learned that using plug-ins is still hit or miss. Since I rely on Topaz and Nik Photoshop plug-ins quite a bit (in CS5), I will hold off purchasing Affinity until I am assured that I can use my plug-ins. If anyone knows if this situation has changed, please post a reply.</p>

[jnanian]

<p>i tried it ( free trial ) it wasnt' as useful as i had hoped. 10$/month for PS is a deal.</p>

[Carl Stone]

<p>Any new opinions? </p>

[james_de_h]

<p>Hi Carl,<br>

I have stopped my sub to CC now and am using Bridge and LR5 with Affinity. I am not the right person to comment in depth upon Affinity as I just scratch its surface. But clone and in filling with Affinity seems to work better for me than it did with PS CC and certainly better than CS6 for which I have a perpetual licence. I forgot how useful Adobe Bridge can be too, the latter coming as a free download in CC form at preset. Affinity 1.5, with a few updates, is due soon and Serif have also reduced the price for a while too. To good a deal to overlook in my view.</p>

[jnanian]

<p>as long as you aren't doing things like "save for the web" or using "color channels"<br>

and some of the other things that PS/CC make so simple, and as long as you have simple<br>

questions that might be answered through their crowd-supported help forum, or by looking at a <br>

2 minute video on vimeo on how to masterfully do a complicated process you might like affinity.<br>

they do not have customer support and while they do have a 800# the people there have no idea how to use <br>

the program. some of the things that might take 1-click and are intuitive in PS are 10 tedius steps in this other program. </p>

<p>maybe it is a work in progress and it is always getting better ?<br>

at the very least, they could do is have customer support or have the <br>

"expert" from the video library monitor and answer questions in the support forum. </p>

<p>they might still have the "free 10 day trial" but be advised<br>

that if you post to their forum, sometimes it is glitchy and might<br>

not appear until a portion of your free trial is over ...</p>

[Richard Williams]

<p>I've now had an opportunity to try out the Windows beta of Designer, and so far it's easily living up to expectations. At work we (sporadically) use a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator to prepare artwork for technical illustrations, currently using the CS6 Design Standard bundle. New copies of CS6 DS are no longer available to us, and under the terms of our site licence Adobe now wants to charge for an annual CC rental about what we used to pay for a CS6 DS perpetual licence. Affinity Photo is supposed to be in Windows beta by the end of the year, and if it's as good as Designer I think Affinity will become our default choice. If we were on Macs, we would already have switched.</p>