Paolo Limoncelli

The artist and brush designer on his time with Affinity Photo so far

What’s Affinity Photo appeal?

Affinity Photo is solid enough for professional work, so I gradually started moving some projects there. I still need Photoshop because it’s the standard. But honestly, licence costs are becoming barely tolerable.

How does the software fit into your workflow?

I use Adobe, Affinity and Celsys apps. Learning new tools and seeking new design strategies help you to stay ahead of the game.

What do you like best about Affinity Photo?

Flexibility. No matter whether your project is for digital media or print, vector or pixels, you can work directly in 16-bit per channel or CMYK flawlessly, even exporting vectors natively if needed.

And what do you like least?

Not all of its tools are top-notch yet. Some of them are still young in terms of options. Right now, Affinity Photo is rough and rugged.

What’s exciting in version 1.4?

Custom ramps for brush dynamics: a very specific feature, but one that’s useful for illustrators. The response of jitters available in dynamics is driven by a customisable curve and this helps to produce more usable and expressive brush strokes. You can shape your brush behaviour, cut-off pressure levels, invert or linearise. A great control over pressure/dynamics sensitive devices that Photoshop doesn’t offer yet.

Would you recommend artists buy Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, or just one of them?

It depends on your working habits. If you’re doing vector illustration, Affinity Designer is the best choice. But the raster tools in Affinity Photo are far more complete. I’d say get both: no subscription, shared file format and seamless user experience. And Serif’s developers listen to their customers.

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