cspear42 wrote:
I've searched this discussion and I could not find anything recent on a comparison of Affinity Photo vs. Classic Lightroom. I have used Classic LR in the past and I have a trial version of Affinity and was curious if there are opinions out there concerning pros and cons and which one you would recommend. I am a novice to photography and pp. Thank you.
As others indicate here, they are completely different concepts. One major consideration is that Affinity is a cheap, one time purchase of a powerful RGB bitmap editing program. Adobe Lightroom CLASSIC is available ONLY as a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud or the Adobe Photography Plan.
The Photography Plan is, IMHO, a bargain at $9.99/month. You get both Lightroom CLASSIC and Lightroom (the newer, different, cloud-sharing version that allows you to work on your files on any computer or smartphone). BUT, the best part is that you get the full version of Adobe Photoshop 2021, which is also available ONLY as part of Creative Cloud or the Photography Plan. Besides those, you also get Adobe Bridge and a bunch of other tools and goodies.
I use Lightroom Classic as the HUB of my workflow, which is:
Raw file capture at the camera when appropriate*
JPEG file capture at the camera when appropriate*
*Yes, these are COMPLETELY different workflows with ENTIRELY different purposes and circumstances.
Import into Lightroom Classic for:
Initial conversion from raw files (when using raw)
Cull editing
File "star" rating (* to *****)
Developing adjustments (The Develop Module in Lightroom Classic is really just the same ACR/Adobe Camera Raw code used by Lightroom, Photoshop, and Bridge, with different interfaces for each.)
From there, I can:
> Edit in Photoshop or Graphic Converter or another application such as Affinity Photo*
> Create print layouts and print to a local (attached) printer
> Export files for screens or print-ready files for labs
> Add metadata (data about data, or information about the subject of the photo)
> Create a photo book for a client and upload it to a printer
> Do a quick-and-dirty slide show
> Send files to a website
* When editing files in other applications, I set LrC to send them as 16-bit TIFF files in ProPhoto RGB color space.
They come back to Lightroom in that same format. This preserves MAXIMUM potential of files until the final conversion for use. The exception to this is Graphic Converter, which I use to do file format conversions that Adobe products don't do.