Affinity Photo

To echo what I wrote in the pros section of my review for Affinity Designer, the main reason I bought this was for its integration with Affinity Publisher. I’m a writer, and I develop my own books, and I wanted a tool that could help me make them without a costly subscription. In my search for an alternative to Adobe InDesign, I found Affinity Publisher, and that search also led me to its two siblings, Photo and Designer. Having the ability to use Photo’s tools within an app for designing publishing interiors seemed like a no-brainer for me. But that only mattered if I’d actually bought Photo. So I did. And now I use it more than any other tool in my development library. It’s so easy to use, yet has so many tutorials available that even those who find it difficult at first can figure it out soon enough. It has also effectively replaced Corel’s PaintShop Pro as my go-to for inexpensive photo compositing. It’s become the primary reason my book covers look any good now. And the website I’ve been working on since November of last year: all page images come from composites made with Affinity Photo, and my site couldn’t look any better. Affinity Photo makes me look good, and I have no hair. If that’s not enough reason to get it, then the low one-time cost should seal the deal.

Again, to reiterate my cons from Affinity Designer (and this is fair because they both use the same architecture and share many of the same interface tools), I’m not experienced enough with even higher-end products (like Adobe Photoshop, for example) to make claims about the features they offer that Affinity Photo doesn’t. That said, I do know what I want Photo to do that it can’t do, and what I want it to do is to import Photoshop “actions,” which I think are just macros, so that I can buy the good ones off Design Cuts or some other online design resource and use them in my photos. In other words, I want it to do what Adobe Photoshop can do, but so far it can only do about 80%. That’s plenty, but it’s not everything. I want everything. I also want a pizza. We can’t have everything. (But I can have a pizza.)

Affinity photo is an affordable photoshop alternative with much of the same feature set. Although given the choice between both I would still pick Photoshop, Affinity photo is much easier on the wallet for a freelance artist, and can do most of the same work.

Affinity Photo also aims to make migration from photoshop easy, using a similar interface and workflow.

There are some features of photoshop that are missing from Affinity Photo. Overall, it's not as good for painting, and the UI and Shortcuts aren't always a 1:1 comparison. Sometimes I find a common feature in PS is missing from AP, or have trouble finding a particular feature.

Ease of use and ability to import Photoshop plugins.

Minor things like AI background removal not being available