mwsilvers wrote:
Infinity is a great program, but its primarily a replacement for PhotoShop, not Lightroom. Yes, Infinity does include the raw processing Develop persona, but that module is a lightweight compared to Lightroom or any of the other higher end raw converters/processors.
Did you mean Affinity instead of Infinity? Since you refer to the Develop Persona, terminology that Affinity uses, and mispelled the word twice, I assume so. And the full name is Affinity Photo, Affinity producing several other programs.
If so, is Affinity Photo a "lightweight" compared to Lightroom?!! Looking at the features of the two programs it would not seem so, at least for my uses. LR doesn't even do layers or focus stacking (AKA merging) on it's own, both done very well in Affinity Photo which is a full featured photo editing program but without a file organizing feature. Elements can only focus stack two images at a time - if more than two files are to be stacked two must be done, then the process repeated with the stacked file and the next file, and so until all the desired stacks are done, a very laborious and time consuming process. In contrast, Affinity can stack multiple files at once, using about four mouse clicks, and the files are all up loaded, aligned, and being stacked in a few seconds. A review of the best programs used for focus stacking ranked Affinity 5th of 6, the first 4 all being programs that specialize in focus stacking, with Photoshop being 6th (
https://windowsreport.com/focus-stacking-software/).
I use focus stacking/merge for this example because this is a much used and valued feature to me for landscape photography. I don't believe Lightroom does layers for composites either, also an Affinity feature, and so on.
The Persona terminology Affinity uses is different than that used in other programs and this seems to have created confusion as to how Affinity designed the program. They make it clear in the description of the program that the Develop Persona is used to prepare the files for developing in the other "Personas" which seem to me to simply be other groupings of tools in the program. It doesn't matter to me where the program does a function but rather that it does it and how well. Thus, the Develop Persona is not meant to be a full fledged editing program in itself, as it seems Adobe users expect.
Obviously I strongly disagree that Affinity Photo is a lightweight, especially as compared to Lightroom which has many editing limitations by comparison with programs that focus entirely or mostly on editing and not file organization and storage. Btw, I've personally used both LR and Elements in the past and very occasionally still use Elements. I do use a lot of editing tools but not all of them and do not consider myself an expert in the field. That does not stop me from having opinions, of course.
And in my opinion referring to Affinity Program as a lightweight is an injustice and might prevent persons looking for a very useful editing program from trying it, which might be unfortunate.