Windows
In the battle of the image-editing apps, there’s only one winner: the users.
The world of professional image-editing applications is not a wide one. There’s Adobe Photoshop, and then there’s everything else: Maybe PaintShop Pro or PhotoPaint from Corel, or the open-source GIMP, or Paint. net if your needs aren’t very great. Then Serif, maker of the also-ran app Serif PhotoPlus, decided to play Adobe at its own game with the Affinity suite. First came Affinity Designer, then Affinity Photo, then Affinity Publisher, rivalling Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign in terms of features and usability.
Serif is quick to retweet stories on social media of professionals abandoning Photoshop for Affinity Photo, often underlining the difference in payment schemes adopted by the two software developers. But just how similar are the two programs? And can someone who’s been using Photoshop for 20 years navigate a new app?
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two apps is the way you pay for them. Photoshop is part of Adobe’s notorious Creative Cloud suite of subscription-only apps, but differs slightly in that it can be obtained (along with RAW-processing and imageorganisation app Lightroom) as part of the bargain-priced Photography Plan, which at $171 for a year is half the price of a subscription to any other single app. Alternatively, you can splash out $875 a year for the entire software suite, which numbers more than 20 apps.
Affinity does things the old-fashioned way. For US$79.99 you get the desktop app, and another US$30.99 on top nets you the iPad app. You’re free to add the other two apps in the suite too for the same price, except that Publisher doesn’t have an iPad app yet. All updates are then free. Some people prefer this, as they don’t like the idea of renting software, while others prefer the subscription model. It’s a matter of personal taste, but whichever app suite you choose, you’re stuck with its pricing.
A new challenger
The two apps are both layer-based raster image editors with vector capabilities, and Affinity Photo has clearly been made with Photoshop users squarely in mind. From the gray background (adjustable, and there are light and dark modes) to the interoperability with Photoshop’s PSD files and plugins, to the positions and names of tools and palettes, this is the sincerest form of flattery.
Possibly the best thing Affinity ever did, however, was to sting Adobe into action. Just as Intel’s CPU lineup had stagnated until Ryzen came along, so Adobe’s updates were decidedly pedestrian before the release of a serious rival. Since then, however, it’s gone nuts. New content-aware
features, some of which make use of Adobe’s Sensei AI cloud tech, make selecting difficult features, such as curly hair, much easier. Content-aware selection is now able to detect whether the object being selected is a person, and changes to a different set of algorithms if it is. Affinity has updated its own selection tools with a “Selection Brush” and “Refine” window that works like “Select & Mask” – but Adobe’s ahead here.
Sensei also comes into play with the new “Match Font” feature, which will identify fonts used in signs or shopfronts you’ve photographed, and match them to something similar on Adobe Fonts. It works across multiple lines, and even with vertical text.
Meanwhile, Serif has been concentrating on catching up to Adobe in other areas. Affinity Photo now supports “smart” objects (layers are smart in Affinity Photo by default, without needing to be converted, so can be resized non-destructively), and has full compatibility with DXO’s Nik Collection of plugins, which apply their own algorithms to things like noise reduction, sharpening, geometric corrections, and film simulations in ways that are popular with many photographers and image editors. With more than 200 presets, you’re never short of a place to start.
And while Affinity Photo may seem to lag behind, it’s an app that’s still in active development. For example, while the Mac version works with multiple GPUs, that feature hasn’t come to the PC at the time of writing, but is promised in a future update. Affinity’s major advantage over Photoshop comes in its usability: the Affinity interface is split into different workspaces, which it calls “personas,” each of which has a specific task. So there’s the “Develop” persona for dealing with RAW image files, the “Photo” persona where the bulk of the editing takes place, the “Liquify” persona for warping effects, the “Tone Mapping” persona for HDR, and the “Export” persona for, well, exporting.
In addition, the three Affinity apps support StudioLink, which allows Affinity Designer users to edit an image right there in the layout app but invoking the photo-editing app’s tools. Flicking from InDesign to Photoshop and back if you want to correct something in an image file doesn’t take long, but with StudioLink it’s pretty much instant. The apps are also built around a common file format, so you can open a Publisher document in Affinity Photo and edit it as if it were an image file.
Serif has lavished attention on Affinity Photo’s “Move” tool, which works with the “smart” nature of layers to make resizing an object easy, rather than Adobe’s habit of making you jump through a couple of hoops first. Then there are Affinity’s live previews, which show exactly how your chosen combination of brush, colour, and opacity settings will paint before you do it – something Photoshop doesn’t have. Otherwise the two apps are both excellent layer-based raster image editors, and you can’t go wrong with either.
Choosing between these apps is like choosing a racehorse. Do you go for the established champ, or the up-and-comer who might stand a chance of leading the field one day? A lot will come down to your views on subscription pricing – and if your clients demand an Adobe workflow, then there’s no substitute. But don’t rule Affinity out: It does a lot right, and if the improvements keep coming the way they have been, it really does stand a chance of coming at the king, and not missing.
IAN EVENDEN