Affinity Photo Reviews

As a long-time (20+ years) user of Adobe products, I was looking for something less expensive that I could use, as my day-to-day usage has lessened over the years. Affinity Photo is a fantastic alternative to PhotoShop, with intuitive controls and most features I regularly use in PS.

The biggest benefit I have seen is the interplay between Affinity Design (their Vector program) and Affinity Photo. I have seen a huge amount of productivity gains (mostly in the CPU and memory overhead associated with the Adobe products versus the Affinity products) when utilizing vector assets in tandem with my raster image customizations.

Other specific tools that I find extremely useful are:

- Their cropping tool allows you to control the environment and adjust the crop visually before applying, and then revert it with the same tool if needed.

- There is a suite of tools at the top of the application, like alignment tools, which contain the alignment and placement functions in the same area.

- The left toolbar arrangement and options are very robust and allow for easy use of features like background removal and masking options.

- I also appreciate the community and customer support for the product. While there is not the same level of community-built plugins as the Adobe suite, I have found that the users are passionate and willing to engage with you to solve your issues.

- The integration with not only other Affinity products but also Adobe files is seamless.

After using this product for a while, realistically, the only issue I have is with the color picker. I do not think it is very intuitive. If you use a hex value, press enter to apply it rather than just adjusting the focus. This seems small, but it can be arduous at times. I also don't like the color picker option in this tool as it is not intuitive to what it does.

This is the one tool that I find I have to labor with the most.

The biggest is the cost savings of using Affinity Photo over Adobe Photoshop. In addition, I have noticed that the load on my computer is less due to the passive processes that Creative Cloud runs in addition to the applications themselves. Affinity Photo is also able to work with Photoshop files and other proprietary formats, allowing me the freedom to edit PSDs as well as other native graphic file types.

The other problem it solves for me is the ability to use the iOS application so that I can adjust photos and files on my tablet easily. This allows me to make event-day corrections on-site rather than just on my desktop.

Affinity Photo is the best perpetual license photo editor on the market right now. For most use cases it surpasses competing subscription based apps.

Would like better integration of desktop and mobile apps.

Editing images on the go with my iPad.

Great price for such a powerful software that can easily be used in place of much more expensive solutions.

Perofrmance wise it is very stable and not that HW demanding.

Some features from PSD files are not supported. For example you can open a PSD file with Smart Layers are problematic.

Price/performance ration for a photo editor that can do anything we need it to do for a reasonable price.

I'm actually seriously considering switching completely to Affinity Suite and never looking back! A very good collection of graphic design software. I look forward to using Publisher Suite 2 for iPad too!

I have some concerns about updates and technical support for the program

It's worth noting that the specific features and capabilities of Affinity software may evolve with updates

I love that it's simple to use with an affordable price

I can't think of any downside to affinity photo, it does everything I need it to do.

I mostly use it to edit pictures of my art work, to then put onto my website, since my photography ability isn't great, it helps with sales,

If you come from Adobe you should feel comfortable and at home. Obviously some workflows are different, but still easy to learn. The support in the forum is great and the updates are frequent. When one use Affinity Publisher, the tool acts as the so called Affinity Link, where you can use all the tools from within Publisher, so Photo becomes a very frequent workflow-tool.

There are some limitations for expanding the tool. One can add plugins even from Photoshop or other 3rd party tools. But there is not the feature / access point for developers to design software-add-ons for Affinity that extend the app itself.

From photoediting to manipulation and retouch. We use Affinity Photo for all kind of composing and editing of photos.

It covers the vast majority of our phot editing needs at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives

Affinity is missing a few higher end features of its more expensive competitors, and isn't 100% compatible from a prepress standpoint, but it's SO close that barely matters.

I have a large number of users who occasionally need to edit photos, and the investment, installation weight and license restrictions that competitors have vs Affinity's near 1:1 replacement of those at an easier to install and much more affordable per user license make it a no-brainer from the admin side. While users have had some initial reticense to change software, nearly all have found that it was an easy transition and many have bought individual licenses for their personal use because they have found it so useful in the office.

I think that the biggest advantage of Affinity Photo is that their cost is so low compared to Adobe's product line. If you need to do some quick graphical work, its hard to beat the price for the value. It's easy to navigate, and their customer suport has been friendly and helpful when I've needed them. Resource wise, it seems to be very efficienct compared to Adobe's products as well.

Affinity doesn't have as many of the really top end features that Adobe has. It lacks some of the more robust options, but it has room for growth. The workflow can take some getting used to as well, moving between different profiles for different types of editing.

Affinity lets me quickly and easily make simple corrections to photos and image assets. I use it for when we take employee profile photos, product photos for our online store, and for making small edits and color corrections to existing images for our online spaces.

Affinity contains many options. It is also extremely user friendly when incorporating the other apps from the company. Overall you can do everything in Affinity that you would in other, more expensive software, and in some cases you can do even more.

The only issue with Affinity products is not an issue at all. It is a learning curve. They use different modes for working with graphics, which is the most significant learning curve. This issue exists only because of years of work with other software.

I use Affinity in my organization for prepping images for web distribution and classroom projects. It has saved me countless hours of editing with its easy to use tools.

I love how powerful Affinity photo is. It is comparable almost 1 to 1 with other photo editing softwares. There hasn't been anything I've thrown at this that hasn't been able to be done. The price point is fantastic and extremely affordable. A lifetime license is cheaper than 3 months of a subscription to Adobe.

Although it was nice to have an update to the UI after V1, the new interface design has too much of a cartoony feel. The designs of each tool can be a little confusing as to what they are initially.

Adobe Photoshop doesn't run well on "simpler" computers, but Affinity Photo runs great on a wider range of specs. It is also extremely affordable and still allows the opportunity to import projects from other formats, so it has excellent integration.