Affinity Photo vs Adobe Photoshop

[Ian]

I've got occasional need to use some photo editing software and a lot of the files I need to open are Photoshop based. However, it's so expensive to buy or subscribe to the software, that I've just stuck to an old version that I bought years ago (along with Fireworks CS5 for occasional design work).

I've had a look at alternatives, and the best one that I've found is Affinity Photo (from a UK company called Serif). I'm on day 1 of the trial install so far .

Has anyone used both Affinity Photo and a modern version of Photoshop? If so, how did you find they compare? I've had a read of some review online and Affinity Photo seems to have a good reputation.

Considering that the price is far, far cheaper - it looks like a very good deal!

The trial version I've got at the moment is far easier to use than the old version of Photoshop I have, but I'm so new to it that I don't know what I might miss if I had Photoshop CC.

 

[Peru Bob]

Photoshop Elements is an alternative to Photoshop CC.
I don't know about your side of the pond, but here in the US it is on sale for Christmas at many retailers.

 

[Abarbarian]

https://howtogimp.com/how-to-install-gimp/

GIMP runs well on W 7 and is said to run well on W 10. It will open and allow work on Photoshop files. It is free.

Seems there are alternative forks of the project that have been specifically developed for Windows. Looks like they include loads of the tools and some tweaks like, edge snapping.



Oh and it runs great on a linux box

 

[Ian]

Photoshop Elements is an alternative to Photoshop CC.
I don't know about your side of the pond, but here in the US it is on sale for Christmas at many retailers.

Yep, it is often on sale around here too and I've considered it, although it looks like it's still more basic than Affinity Photo and more expensive, so I think I'm going to pull the trigger and buy the former. I'll see if there's a trial download though, just to be sure.

https://howtogimp.com/how-to-install-gimp/

GIMP runs well on W 7 and is said to run well on W 10. It will open and allow work on Photoshop files. It is free.

Seems there are alternative forks of the project that have been specifically developed for Windows. Looks like they include loads of the tools and some tweaks like, edge snapping.



Oh and it runs great on a linux box

I do use GIMP occasionally, but I find it a little flaky in comparison - perhaps as I'm running it on Windows? It is very good for a free tool, but I just haven't clicked with it. I do use InkScape (another open source app) quite a bit, but that's more for vector work - it's a little slow, but fully featured.

 

[Abarbarian]

Yep, it is often on sale around here too and I've considered it, although it looks like it's still more basic than Affinity Photo and more expensive, so I think I'm going to pull the trigger and buy the former. I'll see if there's a trial download though, just to be sure.



I do use GIMP occasionally, but I find it a little flaky in comparison - perhaps as I'm running it on Windows? It is very good for a free tool, but I just haven't clicked with it. I do use InkScape (another open source app) quite a bit, but that's more for vector work - it's a little slow, but fully featured.

https://www.gimpshop.com/

http://www.gimphoto.com/

These two windows specific offshoots may be better than the stock GIMP for window use. I have never tried them but they may save you big bucks.

 

[Ian]

There was a sale on a few days ago, so I ended up buying Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer - really pleased with the purchase now that I've had a chance to use them more. It's going to take a long time to get used to them, as I'm so unfamiliar with how to access tools and features that I know the app has - but it's reasonably intuitive for the basics.

I hope these apps gain traction, as they're such good value compared to the likes of Photoshop/Illustrator (which are great tools, but expensive for most home users).

 

[floppybootstomp]

Just checked out the price of Affinity Photo and my goodness it is considerably cheaper than Photoshop isn't it. I had to convert Romanian currency to GBP to get the price but I was impressed.

I use an old copy of Adobe CS5 Photoshop but it doesn't recognise the RAW files from my Sony camera, which Sony like to give an ARW file extension, I don't know why.

If this Affinity software can deal with the files I might very well be tempted, would have to try the trial version I suppose.

And FWIW I've never got on with GIMP, never found it very intuitive, I did try to cos you can't beat free but it just didn't click with me.

 

[Becky]

I'm currently getting to grips with Affinity Designer, and once I feel like I know what I'm doing I'm going to have a go with Affinity Photo. I'm certainly liking Affinity Designer so far

 

[Abarbarian]

Just checked out the price of Affinity Photo and my goodness it is considerably cheaper than Photoshop isn't it. I had to convert Romanian currency to GBP to get the price but I was impressed.

I use an old copy of Adobe CS5 Photoshop but it doesn't recognise the RAW files from my Sony camera, which Sony like to give an ARW file extension, I don't know why.

If this Affinity software can deal with the files I might very well be tempted, would have to try the trial version I suppose.

And FWIW I've never got on with GIMP, never found it very intuitive, I did try to cos you can't beat free but it just didn't click with me.

These free linux friendly programs may help, some are cross platform too.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=45380

http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Main_Page

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nufraw/

https://www.darktable.org/

https://rawstudio.org/screenshots.php

 

[muckshifter]

it doesn't recognise the RAW files from my Sony camera, which Sony like to give an ARW file extension

Can you change it in camera? Win10 is getting RAW file format recognition, sometime soon!

 

[Abarbarian]

UFRaw

If you only plan to use UFRaw's stand-alone tool, there is no need to install Gimp, but the Gimp Tool Kit (GTK+2) is still needed. There is no need to install DCRaw itself since its code is incorporated into UFRaw.

MS-Windows for dummies
UFRaw is now a stand-alone application (it used to depend on Gimp). You just need to download and run this.

The upside of UFRaw being a stand-alnoe installation is that it should work more reliably, without the DLL issues that many users had.

EXIF
Here you cannot make any setting, you can only view some very basic EXIF information. UFRaw can save the EXIF data to JPEG output for a few supported formats. These formats include Canon (CRW, CR2), Nikon (NEF), Pentax (PEF), Samsung (PEF), Sony (SR2, ARW), Minolta (MRW), Fuji (RAF) and Adobe's DNG.

I also found this which may be of help.

https://photo.stackexchange.com/que...e-available-for-raw-image-processing-in-linux

"Geeqie is a great viewer of RAW (and all other) file types.

It can thumb through your images at lightning speed, allowing you to delete the blurry ones quickly. While many RAW viewers take 2 to 5 seconds to display each RAW image, Geeqie is basically instant (probably around 0.15 seconds). Another neat feature of Geeqie is you can set it to retain the same zoom level and position as you go forward and back (PgDn/PgUp) through the images, which is great for checking focus of a bunch of shots of the same thing.

The reason it's so fast is that for RAW files, it displays the embedded JPEG instead of developing the RAW data. All RAW files from a camera contain a high-resolution embedded JPEG which is what allows your camera to display and zoom into the image on its LCD while it's in play mode. Geeqie is basically doing the same.

Of course you need separate software for actually editing/processing of RAW files, and I use Rawtherapee for that as I think it's the best quality available, but it's necessary to have a fast viewer, and fast is NOT Rawtherapee."

I have only used Darktable for playing with raw files from my K-30.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Can you change it in camera? Win10 is getting RAW file format recognition, sometime soon!

No, if I choose to shoot in RAW format the camera gives each pic the ARW file extension, no choice.

So I just use the highest res regular shooting mode. Likewise for video I use mp4, Sony's own file format for video is the other option but none of my software recognises it, I forget what it's called.

Newer versions of Photoshop see the ARW pictures I know and I haven't tried the Affinity demo yet.

I recently upgraded the memory card for my Sony camera to 64Gb high speed, I think the speed is 150mbs so I have room for RAW shots.