Serif Affinity Photo review

The only programme I tried that works on iPads is Affinity Photo, which is also the least expensive of the five we tested. Because of the wide range of capabilities it provides to allow users to carry out more extensive alterations.

Over ten years have passed since the British business Serif entered the media creation software market. The company’s Affinity line, which debuted in 2015 with Mac-only applications, was also honoured with the Apple Mac App of the Year title. Additionally offered for Windows, Affinity apps aim to challenge Adobe’s steadfast hold on the media and design software market. There’s no doubt that some users favour Serif because of its affordable, subscription-free prices.

This photo editing program’s most recent update brings hardware acceleration for better Windows performance, linked layers, astrophotography stacking, and personalised interface presets. Although it has many features and is strong, some actions are still slow, and the user interface is still not as straightforward as that of rivals. Many of the program’s tools are inferior to Adobe’s state-of-the-art tools.

Affinity Photo can be purchased once for $ 49.99 (discounted to $ 24.99 at the time of writing) via the Mac App Store, the Microsoft Store in Windows 10, and as a download from the website. There are no upgrading fees, but you can install the programme on as many computers as you own. Adobe only allows two PCs to run its Creative Cloud software, which includes Lightroom and Photoshop. With the generous 90-day free trial from Serif Photo, you only need to confirm your email address.

Interface

Affinity The interface of Photo is intended to be very simple, yet it still has all the functionality you would require at any given time. Use the toolbar as an illustration. It can be seen on the left as a collection of little icons. Like many other apps of this kind, when you hover your mouse over a tool, a tooltip displaying its name appears. Additionally, any tool with a little triangle in the bottom right corner shows that there are other yet related tools that are only a click away.

At the top are additional tools and details about your current image file, and Studio, a thorough inspector, is to the right, leaving the majority of the interface to your canvas. All of this actually reminds me a lot of Adobe Photoshop, so if you’re familiar with that behemoth you’ll quickly feel at home using Affinity Photo.

However, it isn’t flawless (what kind of software is it?). The toolbar’s excessive colour is a minor flaw. Since monochrome style limits distractions to the image you’re working on and its colour spectrum, several rivals have long since adopted it. Returning to software that still has attractive, vibrant icons looked strange to us. We nevertheless continued to work despite this.

Photo Workflow

Affinity is not a workflow solution like ACDSee Ultimate, Skylum Luminar, Lightroom, CyberLink PhotoDirector, or Zoner Photo Studio. This means there are no importing or organizing tools. It is more along the lines of Photoshop, Corel PaintShop Pro and Topaz Studio, that is, it is intended for photo retouching; merging of images for panoramas, HDR and focus stacking; and drawing.

Topaz Studio also doesn’t offer tools for organizing photos. There isn’t even a panel showing the locations of drives like DxO PhotoLab, Exposure, and PaintShop Pro. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements offer complementary apps, Bridge and Organizer, to manage these functions.

Affinity Photo, like Topaz Studio and Photoshop, is only non-destructive in the sense that it doesn’t save over the original image; you need to export to a different file format to save your work. In the case of Affinity, the files have a .afphoto extension. You can also export to Photoshop’s .PSD file type and open documents of that type as well. Lightroom and other real-world workflow solutions save changes without requiring specific saving in a new format – changes are saved regardless of export.

Tools

You’ll find Affinity Photo is chock full of features you need to manipulate and otherwise enhance a photo or project. The tool list is incredibly long and rivals bigger and more expensive competitors, yes, even Photoshop itself, and for the price, that’s no small feat. There are too many to list in this short review, such as PSD file support, RAW support, masking, layering, retouching, blemish removal, warp, a full set of 16-bit filters, just to name a few.

Rather than turning this article into a bulleted list, we decided to focus on what it feels like to use them to work on a photograph. To be honest, we have good experience working with such applications and as a result Affinity Photo felt very familiar to us, so it’s a good thing if you have experience with its competitors.

If you are a newcomer, however, it is entirely possible that you will find yourself a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of options available to you. Where to start? Thankfully, the launchpad offers a link to a large number of video tutorials and even a support forum.

Effects and Art

Affinity Photo is more aimed at Photoshop-style editing with layers, filters, and the like than direct photography. New to the layers in Affinity Photo since the latest review update is the ability to link layers and add pattern layers. Photoshop itself only recently got a Template Preview tool, which works similarly to the last one mentioned. With Affinity, it’s a real kind of Pattern layer, which is useful and it’s fun to see the pattern play across the entire image as you draw.

If you are creating a graphic, you can specify the target device (web, iPad, and so on), the color format (RGB, CMYK, LAB) and the dimensions of the canvas. Serif now allows you to create templates that you can base projects on, but you won’t find any included with the software, like you do in Adobe Photoshop and PaintShop Pro. The preset sizes are a little dated. iPhone 8 is the newest option for that type of phone, and the Nexus 7 is included, but no Pixel phone. Surface Pro 2 is the newest version of that tablet on the list – we’re now at the Surface Pro 7.

Updates

The most recent version of the picture editor is called Affinity Photo V2, and it includes a number of brand-new functionalities. It’s been a while. Six months had passed since the last upgrade to the software before it was made public. Additionally, the majority of the earlier adjustments focused on increasing stability and performance.

The most recent announcement of the enormous flagpole was the aforementioned Panorama Stitching, but even if that feature may be excellent, that was a year ago. We also received optimization for Apple’s M1 CPU. Affinity Photo is wonderful software with tremendous functionality at an incredible price, despite some interface flaws, but we were a little worried that it would start to fall behind its ever improving competitors. At least V2’s release maintains

Text and Typography

I was able to open a PSD file from Photoshop using Affinity Photo, and we quickly and easily selected, resized, and moved a text box without actually editing the content. The software includes tools for text, artistic text, and frame text. The first is for the entry type for displays, and the second is for longer text entries. With thousands of OpenType fonts available to you, extremely intricate formatting is conceivable.

The ability to align characters along a route is new to text. Although ligature styles are available, Illustrator’s level of glyph customization is not available. However, the kerning and tracking are as precise as you might need.

Performance

Serif claims improved performance in the latest update, with graphics processor acceleration. We noticed that zooming was faster and the program was mostly responsive when testing on my reasonably powerful test PC, a 3.4 GHz Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics processor. But some adjustments and even uploading photos took much longer than other software. Correction of chromatic aberration and transition to tone mapping mode was noticeably slow.

To his credit, Serif Affinity Photo never crashed in testing, which can’t be said for a surprising number of multimedia software titles, even the big names. We appreciate that Affinity includes a proper help window detailing all of the program’s features – many vendors have followed Adobe’s unwanted practice of forcing you to seek help online. Adobe also has the annoying habit of posting you to user forums, rather than official and relevant help resources.

Final Words

Although Affinity Photo is a capable, affordable image editing application, Adobe products still lead in terms of usability and cutting-edge features. If it has the features you require, like as layers and colour manipulation, it could be a significant cost-saving alternative if Adobe’s products are out of your price range. Since it doesn’t come with any tools to organise your digital assets and there isn’t a complementary organisation tool like Adobe Bridge, we don’t recommend it as a raw photo workflow tool. Another benefit, though again with limited tools, is the ability to edit both vector and raster images in the same program.

Dian Erwin
Dian Erwin
Dian Erwin is a review writer for Bollyinside, covering topics related to computing, such as laptops, tablets, phones, and other hardware. Dian spends much too much of his free time on Twitter, reading speculative fiction novels, playing video games, and reading comic books. He also enjoys reading video game manuals.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Related Articles

Hubspot Service Hub review 2024: a comprehensive platform

When it comes to customer support operations, HubSpot Service Hub is an all-encompassing customer service platform that is meant to...
Read more
When players on Windows 11 or 10 try to log in to Steam, they may get the error code E87....
Users of Windows 11 or 10 may find it frustrating to deal with the error number 147-0 in Microsoft Office....
The Microsoft Store is an important part of the Windows operating system because it gives users a single place to...
It can be hard to find the right balance between usefulness, durability, and cost when it comes to kitchen storage....
Both AirDroid and Vysor are well-known tools that help Android users control their devices and mirror them. One of the...
While Affinity Photo is an efficient and affordable image editing application, Adobe products continue to lead the way in terms of usability and cutting edge functionality.Serif Affinity Photo review