Serif's Image Editing App 'Affinity Photo' Launches for Mac

Hello guys,

I'm Andy Somerfield - Affinity Photo project lead.

Thought I'd say hello and offer to answer any questions you guys have:

- Yes - we can import .abr brushes :)
- Yes - we let you pan the document nearly-totally-out-of-view :)
- Yes - we do all the pressure stuff including barrel rotation and Wacom hotkeys :)

Hope this helps - anything else you need answered, fire away..

Andy.

So, I've downloaded it and had a play.

The first launch took a while, but the second time the app opened almost instantly on my 2012 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM.

As a Photoshop user obviously there's a bit of a relearning curve, but most of the shortcuts are the same, and the tools in general work in the same way, so I was up and running very quickly. There's an optional Assistant which is very useful. The interface it is very clean and modern, although I couldn't find a way of saving a workspace.

Performance seems as advertised; real-time effects, smooth zooming and panning. (I downloaded the 395MB RGB layered model image that's presented on the opening screen for testing).

CMYK support is a massive plus. This and the user interface alone will make this a better choice than Pixelmator for many people.

I'm sure that if I started using this as my daily Image processor, I would find many things missing that I use in Photoshop, but it's a solid start, and at the current price (£29.99 in the UK), it's a no-brainer for anyone that doesn't want the commitment of Creative Cloud.

I'm a Creative Cloud subscriber but I might buy this just to have a play with it and support the developer. Adobe could really do with some real competition.

Hi Tom,

Of course - but I'm not sure Photo is the sort of thing you need - at least for part of your workflow.

Photo is not a DAM - like Aperture, or Lightroom - it does not maintain a catalog of your images. It's an editor with RAW import capability - perhaps more like Photoshop + ACR.

So, unfortunately, you would need a separate DAM product to go along side it. We're planning to make one one day :) - but for now I'd happily recommend the (perpetual licensed) Capture One - a lot of our beta users on our forum have had success using that to catalog their images, and using Affinity Photo to edit them (the "exporting to Photoshop to do further corrections" stage in your workflow).

When we started making Photo 5 years ago, we expected Aperture to be the DAM of choice - it was a good product! Since it's gone, things have changed!

Sorry I can't be more help with this one - but I'd rather give you a straight answer than tell you to buy the app - because it probably doesn't do what you want.

Andy.

Instant purchase after I've already come to love Affinity Designer.

I've been using the beta on and off for a short while. Have always found myself going back to Photoshop, simply because I know how to do things in PS (been a PS user for over 20 years ever since version 2.5). However, I don't like Adobe's subscription pricing model. I cancelled my CC membership after the first year and went back to my last boxed version of PS (which, for me, is CS5). PS CS5 has a few problems on my system, such as not supporting my retina screen and for some reason it won't save to my NAS drive (I have to work off the local machine and then copy across).

At £29.99 (UK) Affinity Photo is an absolute no brainer, so I'm going to purchase it and then try very hard to switch from CS5. After so many years it'll take some time, however the benefits are there to be seen, there's no doubt.

I wanted to switch when Pixelmator came out. I bought that too, but never got on with it (largely due to the interface). Affinity Photo's interface looks much better so I'm more hopeful this time.

If all goes well, I'll only have Adobe InDesign to replace and then I'll be very close to being Adobe free (apart from very occasional use of Acrobat Pro 9). Go back just a few years and I was using a whole load of their apps which are now consigned to history (Illustrator, Premiere, Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign). Dreamweaver got worse and worse with each update so I had to find an alternative for that, but the others were working fine for me until Adobe made me start renting their software and then the search for alternatives began...

It's a great time to be an OS X user.

Thank you so much Andy for your response. I'll look at capture one and I also use aperture anyways. I'll buy affinity photo because I believe strongly in supporting a real photo-editing alternative. And please keep adding features. :)

Hi Tom,

Of course - but I'm not sure Photo is the sort of thing you need - at least for part of your workflow.

Photo is not a DAM - like Aperture, or Lightroom - it does not maintain a catalog of your images. It's an editor with RAW import capability - perhaps more like Photoshop + ACR.

So, unfortunately, you would need a separate DAM product to go along side it. We're planning to make one one day :) - but for now I'd happily recommend the (perpetual licensed) Capture One - a lot of our beta users on our forum have had success using that to catalog their images, and using Affinity Photo to edit them (the "exporting to Photoshop to do further corrections" stage in your workflow).

When we started making Photo 5 years ago, we expected Aperture to be the DAM of choice - it was a good product! Since it's gone, things have changed!

Sorry I can't be more help with this one - but I'd rather give you a straight answer than tell you to buy the app - because it probably doesn't do what you want.

Andy.

Does it support layer effects?

Yes. I've been one of the beta testers as well. I'm really impressed with it, especially the warp tool. The only thing that seems to be missing (unless I haven't figured it out yet) is a decent lasso tool. Their implementation is strange and I've never gotten it to work correctly. But outside of that, it could easily replace Photoshop for most people.

This is awesome. I have spent 10 years getting used to and learning every tiny last thing about Photoshop to the point of being sick of it, and starting again will be a pain, but more than ever, it's time to abandon Photoshop and its endless bugs, performance problems and its strange legacy things (Reliance on apply image, Liquify as a plug-in, no live filter layers, etc...).

Thing is Illustrator never used to be like this. Version 8 and previous was very accurate and did what it was supposed to do. It was a decent technical illustration tool, but then I suppose it had Freehand to keep it on it's toes back then. Sadly not anymore. Since then it has gradually gotten worse and worse with each release. The snapping just cannot be trusted. It will tell you it has snapped to a point, yet as I'm sure you know, when you zoom in it has not snapped and is sitting slightly away from the intended location. I noticed this issue with the snapping when they started incorporating web capabilities and pixel snapping. Added a new feature to an already existing area and ruined something along the way...

It's the same situation with PS. Personally I found that most things worked great in 5.5/6/previous and then CC comes along and the developers seem to meddle with the workings of certain areas and break them so they do not work as well as they did. I just find the constant attempts to transform the already existing features into being able to do more and more with each version ruins what worked great before. For example they meddled with the paths palette to create the "Live Shapes" feature. In the process they really buggered up the existing capabilities of the paths palette. When you use paths in PS quite a lot in your workflow and this meddling causes you serious problems you start to get a bit annoyed. Why keep trying to make PS handle things that can be easily handled by Illustrator... Then when you actually tell Adobe what the problem is, it's as if they just don't care. They completely ignore you and you just have to put up with the new bugs... Not good enough imo. I keep getting told by the fan boys "well perhaps they have more important things deal with", well I'm sorry, but if you use these programs to make a living you expect them to do what the are supposed to and not be broken and it really is important to me and my specific workflow. You just have to like it or lump it which from a customer satisfaction and relations point of view is a disgrace...

Well, without turning this topic into "the middle aged grumpy graphic artists moan about Adobe topic" I really do wish serif all the best in their venture. It's a breath of fresh air to see a company trying it's best to communicate with the customer and WANT to help. It's something that I appreciate and therefore will support even if for the near future I am not specifically using your software. I'll be buying it though and as soon as it can handle my specific requirements I will ditch Adobe and it's BS. :)