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 the reason I don't bleed money on overly expensive programs that I only use a tiny portion of. It is inexpensive, reliable, and has all the features I ever needed!

I would really want more customization options for key bindings. My drawing tablet does not support the current hotkeys well, but that's not only on Affinity but on the tablet manufacturer as well.

Affinity Photo offers a complete and professional toolset on photo editing and has competitive pricing that makes it the best choice when it comes to benefit-cost analysis. The software is available to all platforms and devices, including Windows Store (even though it was first made to Mac platforms.). After a single purchase, you own the software and can use it until it is discontinued by Affinity, which is a fair model of pricing to users that's not done by major competitors. Instead, other companies charge users monthly to get a license to use their product, which makes their product far more expansive than Affinity Photo. The choice of charging only once for their product is a very good reason people are migrating to Affinity, especially new users and students who can't afford a never-ending monthly payment.

Getting used to Affinity Photo's interface was a confusing process, it could be more intuitively friendly to beginners and users who changed from another product. Maybe adding a tutorial or some sort of guide would help with that problem.