sudamar Loc: Southern Indiana

Faststone is free and I have been using it lately, but I like what I hear about Affinty. I seem to be able to do everything with Faststone but wondering what Affintiy has over Faststone. Both have a RAW converter, right? Affinity is on sale now for half price and I'm thinking of getting it. Please let me know if you think it is better than Faststone as a photo editor. Thanks.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Faststone does not convert raw files as far as I know. Given the current sale price you can't go wrong purchasing Affinity Photo.

If you do get serious about raw processing you can supplement what AP provides with either the software that comes with your camera or one of the open source raw converters or another raw converter.

dsnoke Loc: North Georgia, USA

Affinity does a great deal more than Faststone. Among the differences are panorama stitching, layers, masking in a variety of ways, selective saturation, and the ability to create your own aspect ratios for cropping. These are all features I often use, but there are many more. I have used both, but Affinity is far more powerful.

My only rap on Affinity is that it is a bit of a memory hog.

Soul Dr. Loc: Beautiful Shenandoah Valley

Faststone does do raw files.

supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, PSD, EPS, TIFF, WMF, ICO, CUR and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, PEF, RAF, RWL, MRW, ORF, SRW, X3F, ARW, SR2, SRF, RW2 and DNG).

will

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

No. I just checked and it views them but it doesn't convert and/or edit them.

Soul Dr. Loc: Beautiful Shenandoah Valley

I have to disagree.

This tutorial shows you how to use FastStone Image viewer 3.5 for Windows to edit RAW photos. Learn how to use the free software FastStone Image Viewer 3.5 to view, handle and sort RAW images, and convert RAW images. FastStone Image Viewer 3.5 is a great free alternative to Adobe's Camera RAW.

will

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Faststone does not convert and/or edit raw files. I checked and I'm sure. It will view them and it will extract the embedded JPEG and let you edit that (dear lord knows why anyone would want to do that) and that's it. You didn't post a tutorial.

David Martin Loc: Cary, NC

You can always download Affinity Photo and try it free for 90 days, and during that time decide if you wish to purchase it.

Soul Dr. Loc: Beautiful Shenandoah Valley

Here is a tutorial for raw files on an older version of Faststone Image Viewer.

This tutorial shows you how to use FastStone Image viewer 3.5 for Windows to edit RAW photos. Learn how to use the free software FastStone Image Viewer 3.5 to view, handle and sort RAW images, and convert RAW images. FastStone Image Viewer 3.5 is a great free alternative to Adobe's Camera RAW.

https://software-tips.wonderhowto.com/how-to/use-faststone-image-viewer-3-5-with-raw-images-249059/

will

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

I use both. Or simple and easy, faststone. MOe sophisticated I use Affinity

sudamar Loc: Southern Indiana

Thanks, Soul Dr.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

I looked at the tutorial. Faststone does have an option to convert a raw file to an RGB image file. My mistake. HOWEVER -- no editing is possible in the process. So Faststone cannot be used to edit raw files. If you select a raw file in Faststone's viewer and use any of it's editing tools it will edit the embedded JPEG from that raw file and NOT the raw data.

You can use FastStone to call an external editor but raw file editing is not an option. Raw file conversion without any editing defeats the purpose of having a raw file. Converting the raw file and then editing the result is ass backwards. You should never want to do that.

To sum up Faststone cannot edit raw files. It can convert them but why? By the way I ran a raw file through Faststone's raw conversion process to see what it looked like and ugh!

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

I love Faststone but it is not competitive with Affinity or On1 or any other true RAW image processor. It's a great image viewer and nice for simple jpeg adjustments, though.

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

I love Faststone but it is not competitive with Affinity or On1 or any other true RAW image processor. It's a great image viewer and nice for simple jpeg adjustments, though.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

I've been looking at Faststone and I want to retract my acknowledgement that it converts raw files. It does have a utility under it's Tools menu to do that, but the result is so bad and so wrong that it shouldn't be acknowledged as serviceable.

Now, I've never used Faststone before. I've heard about it many times but have no need for it. Seems to be a very handy file viewer and it will view raw files which is especially handy and I can see it's useful. For people that need a file viewer it looks like it does a fine job.

Back to raw file conversion. It does it wrong -- not just badly but wrong. It delivers an RGB image with the colors in the converted file undefined. You can't do that! It is a primary function of a raw converter to assign a color space to the output RGB image. YIKES! Up above I said I put a raw file through Faststone's conversion and reacted with ugh. I have since put a few more raw files through Faststone's raw conversion and I take back ugh. I'm going with major sucks/crash and burn. I went ahead and included a side by side below of a section of a raw file for comparison. The free raw converter RawTherapee is on your left and Faststone is on your right.

Faststone can't edit raw files but it will mangle them for you.

(Download)