philz Loc: Rockaway Township NJ

I purchased Affinity Photo for $39.95 on sale hoping to be able to save money by stopping my Adobe CC subscription. (I can use On1 Raw 2018, which I also have purchased, to replace Lightroom Classic.} I have now used Affinity for a month and found it to be similar functionally to Photoshop CC. Plus the tutorials are excellent and other than sometimes different placement of the functions, applicable to Photoshop as well. At least it seems to me, as a non-expert PS user.

My question is what am I missing with Affinity Photo that is available in Photoshop CC THAT I WOULD ACTUALLY USE IN MY PHOTO EDITING? So far I have found Content Aware Move, which I can do in Affinity with an extra step, and now Select Subject, which is a shortcut for the Quick Selection Brush, not a new tool. In other words, I am asking if, for a one-time charge of $40, is Affinity Photo too good to be true?

SqBear Loc: Kansas, (South Central)

philz,
I don't know the answer to your question but I have seen lots of posts in UHH that would indicate so.
I'm certainly going to "watch" this question to see the answer.

One thing that you mention is in Affinity, there are some extra step or steps to achieve the same as in PS. This could be a handicap to lots of folks.

Thanks for the question and I'm watching!
Dave

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

The same questions were asked yesterday.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Phil, hard to answer that one, as no one on here is familiar with your editing requirements, steps, vision, etc. If you like Affinity, then by all means use it.
--Bob

Bill_de Loc: US

If Affinity handles everything that you need/want to do, the only thing you are missing is the hype.

If you hit a roadblock and can't finish something you started than you may need to take a second look at PhotoShop or something else.

--

Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

This may help. https://youtu.be/-6enHgcDEXI

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

It is a good program that almost mirrors PS so just keep using and enjoy; you don't need both programs.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Well, Philz, you will be able to tell us that is a short time. Adobe is very much a myth/hype/customer-inflicted mental disease state, a photographers' addiction... a big boy badge. To some a religion. An antiquated money hole.

Good photography depends on telling or generating a feeling-tone story. Does it tell a direct story or trigger a memory. Is the composition in tune with our society norms ... universals as discussed in reference below.
Sharp or blurred the message gets across. The most important tool is crop... crop to the story... rid the photo trash that which does not support the story [too much foreground... too much sky... forward is more important than behind.

[b]IN SHORT, YES AFFINITY HAS ALL ONE NEEDS TO DO GREAT EDITING.... ADD TOPAZ AND YOU ARE KING. [/B]
COMPOSITION http://truecenterpublishing.com/photopsy/article_index.htm

jacklewis014

Affinity is the real deal

philz Loc: Rockaway Township NJ

During this dialog I have been playing with Affinity and Photoshop and concluded that as most of you have said, Affinity is a more than adequate replacement for Photoshop with one MAJOR exception. There is no Camera Raw filter in Affinity as there is in Photoshop that permits adjustment brush and gradient edits quickly and easily, as in Lightroom. In other words, the Affinity Develop Persona is behind On1 Raw and Lightroom by a lot.

Now I can do those kind of edits with adjustment brushes in Lightroom (if I keep it) or On1 Raw or ACDsee Ultimate 2018 before sending an image to Affinity, which I would normally do from these DAM capable programs. A problem, though, is that any Affinity edits with or without layers intact do not round trip to Lightroom or On1 Raw. Exported JPEGs and PSD files do show up in LR and On1 Raw but one cannot reopen with layers intact and one can with Photoshop. They do show up in ACDsee Ultimate 2018, however, and can be sent to Affinity with layers intact. Complicated.

Now I can go into Windows Explorer and reopen an Affinity Photo file in Affinity with layers and history intact, but if I am using On1 Raw as my Lightroom replacement it is an extra step I'd rather not have to take. I have asked On1 to fix this and who knows, they may. The result is that replacing Adobe CC with another DAM for Lightroom and Affinity Photo for Photoshop is not as seamless and I hoped it would be. But it is doable, with $100 for ACDsee Ultimate Studio 2018 at least.

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

Affinity Photo has promised a DAM in their next version release this year. Affinity Photo is more akin to Photoshop than Lightroom and I can go between Photoshop and Affinity Photo with only a few exceptions. The Develop Persona is meant for raw files (more like a limited Bridge in Photoshop) after which you use the Photo Persona, they stress more adjustments in the Photo Persona than they do in the Develop Persona. I personally don't like Lightroom so I never use it, I use Bridge and manage my own file cataloging, so I am not sure if I will like an Affinity DAM. I use ON1 as a plug-in to Photoshop CC as well as Topaz and Nik, Topaz and Nik work well in Affinity Photo. I can see that Lightroom would not accept keeping multi-layer files from either Affinity or Photoshop CC as it is not built to handle layers.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Just my 2 cents as an adobe subscriber. Are you ready????
If it works for you, then use it. We're all different, and have different needs, wants and styles.

It's kind of like the "Nikon or Canon (or Sony, or Pentax, or....)
Once you get to the point, where Affinity doesn't have the horsepower to do what YOU want, then I would switch.

philz Loc: Rockaway Township NJ

I have been using Lightroom for many years and find it good enough to do 95% of my editing because of its capabilities, including targeted adjustments. I go to Photoshop primarily for compositing and moving parts of images, which is not often. I can access NIK, Topaz, On1 Effects, even Affinity from Lightroom, which creates either a TIFF or PSD file for editing by these filters. Same with On1 Raw and ACDsee.

By the way, a PSD file sent to Photoshop from Lightroom edited with layers will round trip back to Lightroom and can be opened again from Lightroom in PS with layers intact in Photoshop.

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

Lightroom does not support layers what you are getting is the saved file from Photoshop, think about it.

Dennis833 Loc: Australia

Affinity Photo is a great program. It will do most things a photographer can do with Photoshop and some tools are better eg: Inpainting Brush Tool.