Advertisements If you don’t wish to read any further I’ll sort you right here: If you’re not a high end retoucher. Affinity will likely do what you need it to at a fraction of the price of Photoshop. Also, this is a beta, so I guess lots of the stuff will get fixed till this becomes a full availability paid version. But for now, it is what it is.
OK here’s the big list of likes and dislikes:
Dislikes
Dislikes
They only move by 50% of what Photoshop does but they are WAY stronger, so it really makes fine tuning difficult on things like black point, contrast etc. 11. When in the develop panel you have these layers on the right hand side called exposure, enhance etc. When you click them they slide open and closed moving the click point to turn them on and off for layers below. This means if you wanted to quickly turn off 3 of the develop sections to compare you have to “chase” the panels to turn them on and off. Wasting my time is a serious downfall. 12. The inpainting tool is limited to current and below but not all layers cutting the functionality of the tool down heavily. This tool is the “auto” heal. Think of the spot heal on PS. 13. I also think it does a pretty bad job in things that should be a simple context area. 14. Operating system wise, when you snap Affinity with the Windows key + arrow to force it to half of the monitor etc the image doesn’t centre in the program. This means you have to recenter it yourself. Ballache. PS auto re-centers. 15. I also noticed a serious issue with colours being overly saturated on the output when saving a JPEG on some RAWS. It wasn’t common, happened once. Not sure if this is a colour profile glitch (even though they are the same in text, they aren’t actually saving and converting correctly). Or if it’s something else. I’m betting on colour profile clashing.
Recap
Recap
So I counted 15, pretty brutal cut down up front right? But I know that these things are the first problems a lot of people higher up the chain are going to notice. Is that the market Affinity want to get? Or are they aiming at amateurs / beginners who may not have the experience to know better? Also, as I mentioned, this is a beta, so things may improve until the first release . (and it not like photoshop is bug free) With that said, time to move on to the positives and show you where Affinity REALLY impressed me!
Like
Like
You can see what’s left behind based on the selection brush (quick select).
RIGHT. So down to the nitty gritty
RIGHT. So down to the nitty gritty
Should you buy Affinity? Is it a Photoshop killer? Does it do anything better than Photoshop? Succinct thoughts: If you’re a high end retoucher, you’re going to skip this because it just feels like a slower, clunkier version of PS. Couple that with your ingrained muscle memory, it’s simply not worth investing the time into the program for similar results. If you’re a photographer, the healing and sharpening tools in Affinity ROCK! If you’re on a budget it just may be worth your while investing that one off £40 for a program that does everything a Photographer would need only for a fraction of the price! Another point is the workflow, if you are using the entire Adobe CC suite, Photoshop integrates quite nicely into it. Affinity Photo, for obvious reasons, is not a complete solution (yet?). Is it a Photoshop killer? No (or at least not yet). But it may well dominate the lower end of the market! Does it do anything better? Small scale healing (blemishes etc) and the Sharpening are really nice!
