After using a Serif’s program for a month, I decided that this program was good enough to write Affinity Photo vs Photoshop comparison.
While Photoshop allows adjusting virtually every tool, Affinity Photo has an interface adapted for beginners, with separate convenient modules.
What Is Affinity Photo?
Affinity Photo is a qualitative desktop image editor that definitely deserves users’ attention. Serif aimed to create a line of professional graphics editing tools and Affinity Photo is their first step to the goal.It offers a modular interface consisting of 5 sections. Photo Persona gives you access to basic image editing tools, Liquify Persona corrects distorted photos by applying warp effects, Tone Mapping Persona has a number of instruments to control and manipulate the tone and color in a photo. Develop Persona is designed for advanced users and contains all the above-mentioned tools. Export Persona allows you to export photos in RAW, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and other formats.
Speaking about the Affinity Photo functionality, users get enough professional tools for image retouching and artistic photo correction, graphics design and drawing. The most popular tools are also available: Healing Brush, Layer Mix, Filter Library, Dynamic Lighting Effects, and more. In general, when it comes to Affinity Photo vs Photoshop competition, it is quite difficult to name the absolute leader.
Affinity Photo: Strengths and Weaknesses
Adjustable workspace. If you are not satisfied with the standard theme and feel like changing it, you may easily customize the interface according to your taste. Users can also adjust the toolbars. Moreover, Affinity Photo offers quite a lot of shortcuts. Go to the View > Customize Tools to create your own toolbar.
PSD support. You may also import or edit PSD files and export anything you need. All the effects, layers, and adjustments are thoroughly controlled so you shouldn’t worry about the integrity of the image.
The design and edits are not disrupted if the picture is opened in various applications.
One-time payment. You pay once and forget about monthly fees like with Adobe programs. The price is also attractive being equal to 5 months of the cheapest Ps subscription.
Local adjustment tool is more user-friendly. The overlays tab is very similar to the local adjustment tool in Adobe software. However, if you want to adjust some areas in the image, you don’t paint this particular part ‒ you create a new layer and apply adjustments.
Easy switch from Desktop to iPad. This feature will be particularly interesting for those, who work on several devices. If you prefer using Affinity Photo on iPad, you may work with native formats.
In case you switch from iPad to Desktop regularly, this feature will please you a lot. If we compare Affinity vs Photoshop, we clearly see that a mobile Photoshop version is weaker in functionality than an Affinity one.
Poor speed when working with RAW files. Affinity Photo vs Photoshop leaves much to be desired in terms of responsiveness. When editing RAW files, Photoshop was faster. For example, in Affinity, it took longer to apply an effect.
Besides, export speed wasn’t the best one. Frankly speaking, it drove me crazy. Perhaps, I did something wrong or there were too many programs working simultaneously ‒ I don’t know what the reason was. You may still visit Affinity forums and see whether it is a common problem.
No file management system. Although Affinity Photo offers faster performance when it comes to a large number of images, it doesn’t have a convenient image cataloging like the one Photoshop offers. I described this feature more detailed in the Affinity Photo vs Lightroom overview.
What Is Photoshop?
Photoshop is a popular photo editing software for beginners and professional photographers, designers, graphic artists, creative specialists, developers, etc.Despite a rather complicated interface and an excessive number of tools that can scare off beginners, Photoshop offers a number of handy plug-ins: actions, overlays, textures, fonts and automatic brushes, using which you can edit photos or create illustrations with one mouse click.
More advanced users can take advantage of customizable layers and masks that allow performing complex operations such as Frequency Separation, Dodge and Burn, and others. You will also find the Camera RAW module, which helps make deep color correction in RAW photos.
Over the years of improvement, Adobe, indeed, has the right to name Photoshop the best photo editing software for PC of all time.
Photoshop: Strengths and Weaknesses
Layers. Images are created and changed with multiple overlays that support a layer-based editing system. You can also treat layers as masks or filters to tweak underlying colors. It is possible to add shadow and other effects to the layers.
A great number of tutorials and plug-ins. Over 30 years of Photoshop existence, the program has millions of fans sharing their knowledge and experience. They created a great amount of training content. Now, you may find a tutorial on anything you like to do in Photoshop.
The integrated stock library. Forget about long hours trying to find some free stock images! Photoshop provides a fully integrated Adobe stock library that will come in handy while creating images or videos.
Perfect for photo correction and image manipulation. If you have some problems with exposure or want to overlay one image on top of another, of course, you may do it with Photoshop and there are no limits to your imagination. You may even remove some colors and create original visual effects in several mouse clicks if you have such creative thoughts.
Lots of tutorials. Being the most popular and highly-demanded photo editor for 15 years, Photoshop boasts 100,000+ video lessons, useful forums created by photographers and retouchers, books and even full-fledged courses which help people master this program faster.
Released updates require a bit of improvement. Adobe developers don’t release a new Photoshop version every year but constantly introduce new updates. That is why unexpected bugs and lags may spoil the photo editing process sometimes.
Although they are not crucial ones and Adobe Support Team easily solves any problems, you may get into trouble if you are currently trying to meet the strict deadline.
Confusing interface. Due to constant updates and introduction of Creative Cloud, even experienced Ps users sometimes face difficulties mastering new features. So, if you are serious about using Photoshop and ready to make some efforts to hone your skills and experiment with new effects, you will achieve fantastic results with this software.
Affinity Photo vs Photoshop: Price
Affinity Photo is an absolute favorite in terms of the price. As a rule, Adobe Photography plan costs approximately $10 a month, which includes Lightroom, Photoshop and 100 GB of cloud storage. In addition, you can buy either Photoshop or 20+ Creative Cloud apps package.
- Photography Plan - $9.99/month
- Photoshop Plan - $20.99/month
- All Apps – $52.99/month
- Affinity Photo - $49.99
Affinity Photo requires a singular payment ‒ $49.99. So, don’t worry about regular fees, hidden costs and yearly subscriptions. And this is a great advantage over Adobe.
Affinity Photo vs Photoshop – Who Wins?
So, is Affinity Photo better than Photoshop? Actually, everything depends on your needs and requirements.
Speaking about Photoshop, the price corresponds to the quality. But mind that if you want to use its potential to the fullest extent possible, you should improve your design and image editing skills. If you don’t plan to get engaged in professional photo processing, this tool is not for you.
If you are interested in fancy editing features and mobility, Affinity Photo is your variant. In general, I believe that Affinity Photo is great software and may be easily called the best Photoshop alternative.
Freebies for Affinity Photo and Photoshop
For today Affinity Photo has alternatives to ready-made actions ‒ macros, but users don’t feel like sharing them while free ones are not available at all. At this time, Photoshop action base is updated every minute by amateurs and professionals. Our editing specialists have gathered several actions that you may download for free.
