Affinity Photo A Low-Cost Photo Editor

Perhaps your first reaction on seeing the title would be – “I am already using Photoshop (or some other editing package) and I am happy. Why should I learn and use another one?”

- Ashok Kandimalla

I will not respond to this question now, but hope that you will find the right answer by reading this article. First, let me share some background about this. Affinity Photo is an image processing software package from Serif Ltd., a UK based software company. It is a sibling of Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher. All three are standalone packages and can be purchased independently. Since our concern is photo processing, we will only look at Affinity Photo.

So, what is Affinity Photo? It is an amalgamation of several image processing modules or applications all integrated to work seamlessly. Thus, it includes –

A raw converter and developer

A general photo (image) editor

A print module

Extended processing applications like Focus stacking, Panorama creation, and HDR (high dynamic range) processing. All these work with standard file formats as well as raw files.

Another important point is that every package has a learning curve. Hence, it will take time and effort to learn it. In that context, there are three important points that you need to consider.

First, Affinity Photo is a close clone of the popular software, Photoshop. The screen layouts, menus, tools, the concept of layers, etc., are nearly identical. Nomenclature is the same too and so are many of the keyboard short cuts. Even the raw converter of Affinity Photo looks similar to ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). So, if you are a Photoshop user it will not take more than a few hours to understand and start using Affinity Photo.