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05-27-2020, 07:05 AM   #1
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Has anybody tried Affinity Photo?

So I was looking around the other day for affordable page layout software—MS Publisher isn't available for MacOS and InDesign just isn't in my budget—and I came across a software suite called Affinity, which consists of equivalents for InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator called Affinity Publisher (I don't know how they get away with that name), Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. The three are available for a free 90-day trial and are on sale for $24.95 each (normally $49.95 each), so I decided to give them a try. I've played with Affinity Publisher a little and find it acceptable for my modest needs and I'll definitely play with the other two before trial period expires. Just curious if anybody has tried Affinity Photo and if so, what do you think of it?

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05-27-2020, 07:27 AM   #2
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I have been using it since July 2018. I did not grow up with the technology but found the basics easy to learn. There are gobs of tutorials from Affinity and third party on YouTube. Udemy has inexpensive courses. I am very satisfied. I have not figured out the the NIK plug ins but that may have to do with using free downloads. Recently Adobe Bridge became compatible and it simplified my life. I believe the sale and 90 day trial is approaching an end. Even if that happens it goes on sale periodically and a free trial is available.
05-27-2020, 07:38 AM   #3
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all three are a real alternative to Adobes products. Since I got Affinity Publisher and the other both apps, I didnt use Indesign, Illustrator or Photoshop any more. I sure will quit my CC Cloud membership soon.
05-27-2020, 08:34 AM   #4
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I primarily use Luminar 4. However, if I want to crop using the Golden Ration template, I use Afinity Photo. Also, Afinity is my go to software is I want to put a watermark on a photo.

05-27-2020, 09:55 AM   #5
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Use Affinity Photo exclusively.
05-27-2020, 10:15 AM   #6
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I have affinity and luminar 3 on my lappy but they are both painfully slow compared to adobe. Mind you, my laptop is painfully slow to start off with. The nice thing about luminar and affinity is they have lots of support and tutorials. Of the two I preferred luminar but that was mainly because I found it quite intuitive and affinity just wouldn't run at more than a crawl
05-27-2020, 11:22 AM   #7
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I have Affinity Photo and like it a lot. I have a 4 year old Dell business class laptop (aka no speed demon and no fancy graphics card), and it works OK until I get about 10 layers deep and then it'll bog down. Usually what I'll do is flatten the layers I'm happy with and continue working if the slowness irritates me too much.

I got the free Google version of the Nik plugins to work fine. There were some bugs with some of them until the latest version of Affinity was released; now they're all good.

I use it post-Raw-conversion for layered editing (especially dodging and burning by hand), those plugins, perspective correction, panorama stitching, focus stacking (sometimes), adding mattes/borders, watermarks, text, etc. I don't really like the raw developer "persona" compared to other tools I've used, but they are still improving the product and hopefully someday that will get some attention. In particular, if you want to use it for the raw development step and shoot high ISO, you might want to find a good noise reduction plugin to go with it. Maybe start with the free NIK one and see if that works for you.

It is a really good tool for the price they're offering it at right now. Highly recommend.

05-27-2020, 11:25 AM   #8
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Thanks for the feedback. At $25, I'm certainly not expecting an Adobe killer, but certainly don't think I can go too far wrong. All in all, it seems usable for my modest needs. After all, I've been getting by with GIMP for the past couple of years. I do like the level of integration between the Affinity apps, such that you can use the features of one app inside of another (e.g., bring up Affinity Photo inside of Affinity Publisher to do a quick edit of a photo). The only one of the triad that's somewhat outside my graphics workflow is Affinity Designer as I've never done much with vector graphics in the past. When I was doing publications work in past job roles, where I had access to Adobe Creative Suite, Illustrator was the app that saw the least use. But for just $25, it's probably worth having anyway.
05-27-2020, 11:28 AM   #9
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I used Gimp before Affinity (and I never used Photoshop). I don't miss Gimp at all. The live filter layers alone were worth the move.
05-27-2020, 12:13 PM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by dlh Quote
The very best product is one that was bought out and destroyed by Corel, "Photoshop".
Photoshop is Adobe... maybe you're thinking of Paint Shop Pro?
05-27-2020, 12:15 PM   #11
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Does Affinity allow you to brush away purple fringing?
I hate having to adjust the colour in the whole image to get rid of a bit of purple fringing. Any kind of spot colour adjustment would do.
05-27-2020, 12:58 PM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by E-man Quote
Just curious if anybody has tried Affinity Photo and if so, what do you think of it?
I use Affinity Photo as a raster editor in lieu of Adobe Photoshop. For that purpose, it works nicely. I would add that most Photoshop conventions, plugins, and tutorials work nicely in Affinity Photo. I don't use its RAW processor (sucks) nor do I use its gee whiz features (no need) or print facilities (sucks). Those negatives aside, Affinity Photo is a mature product and definitely the value queen for competent photocentric raster editors. Highly recommended.


Steve

Last edited by stevebrot; 05-27-2020 at 01:03 PM.
05-27-2020, 01:01 PM - 1 Like   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by ChristianRock Quote
Photoshop is Adobe... maybe you're thinking of Paint Shop Pro?
The old Paint Shop Pro was a gem of a product and amazingly easy to use with few surprises. The current Corel product, much less so and not recommended.


Steve

(...went from Corel PSP to Affinity Photo...)
05-27-2020, 01:01 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
Does Affinity allow you to brush away purple fringing?
I hate having to adjust the colour in the whole image to get rid of a bit of purple fringing. Any kind of spot colour adjustment would do.
You can apply a defringe filter with a black mask and then brush in the correction by painting white in the mask.
05-27-2020, 01:30 PM - 1 Like   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by stevebrot Quote
The old Paint Shop Pro was a gem of a product and amazingly easy to use with few surprises. The current Corel product, much less so and not recommended.


Steve

(...went from Corel PSP to Affinity Photo...)
A couple of months ago I got a bundle in a box that someone was selling, they received a Corel bundle with a product but didn't want it. I got it basically because of Aftershot Pro 3 which I wanted to give another try (cheapest way to get Perfectly Clear...). It also came with Paint Shop Pro. I only used it for a couple of hours but haven't really been all that impressed. Since I have it anyway, I might as well watch a video or two sometime and see if there's anything I can do with it.

Corel in general has gone quite downhill it seems. I wonder who long they will stay around. I guess only cheap hobbists like me still use their products - they're still having some advantage over free software, but not that much
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