Affinity Photo

· 2 min read
Affinity Photo

Most Digital Illustrators and Designers are using the Adobe stack for their work. I used Photoshop already in version 5 (I guess). Later I was not really amused that it was necessary to pay on a regular basis for what I could purchase before with one payment. So that was my reason to become absent of Photoshop. One day Affinity raised my attention. It made a good impression based on the feature list and it was possible to purchase it like in the old days, by only paying once. So I tried Affinity Photo (and the rest of the Affinity stack, which inludes Affinity Publisher & Designer as well for working on print or vector).

Because of some other tools of the Adobe stack I also have a full Creative Cloud abo, but I must say, that my daily photo editing tool has become Affinity Photo.

Even that I can choose between Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo, I prefer Affinity Photo in many cases. One reason is, that I got used to the tool and feel comfortable with it. For instance when using shortcuts or connected to the individual workflow. The other reason is, that I purchased some add-ons like brushes which I really like to use for specific tasks. Currently I paint on an old and absolutely basic Wacom tablet. Which to my surprise is sufficient in most cases. The combination of this tablet and Affinity works absolutely fine. Affinity Photo has a solid performance in photo editing and digital painting. I would say, that the pure performance is even better than the one of Photoshop, but I have no facts to proof it.

Some Takeaways

  • Affinity comes along with a very solid and useful feature set
  • The performance is really good
  • There are add-ons (besides own ways of configuration) and even in some market places you will find some premium templates for commercial purposes (with license etc.)
  • The whole stack let’s you work on most common tasks, like photo editing, illustration in vector or pixel and designing your new e-book, but it’s not as bloated and mature as the Adobe stack.
  • The price is absolutely fair and you only have to purchase it once.
  • There are new releases on a regular basis, so the team behind is improving and in touch with the community
UI of Affinity Photo – More infos: https://affinity.serif.com/

Recommendation

Affinity is a clear recommendation, especially if you don’t want to pay monthly fees. Adobe is the all-you-can-eat one-stop-shop, but I don’t think that this is a reason to ignore Affinity.

Check out https://affinity.serif.com/ for more information.

Short Update

Bad news for those who are waiting for an Affinity animation solution. Via Twitter the Affinity team said: ‘Sorry, there are no current plans for an animation program’ (see here).