Who has tried out or is using Affinity Photo?

[Guest]

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Just throwing the question out there about Affinity and would like to know what others think of the application.

I've been using Lightroom for years, since I got a free copy with one of the Leica M's I bought and after Aperture was abandoned by Apple the move to Lightroom was an obvious step and in general I've been happy with it, however I do detest a "subscription" deal whatever the application might be and mainly that includes all Adobe products.

With my new M10-D I got the Lightroom 3 month "trial" and of course I will try it out and see what the newest version of Lightroom is going to offer me as compared to the older version I am currently working with but cannot be updated, it's version 6 I think (?).

But I will be looking around to see what else I could consider, and Affinity is one application, although I have yet to try it out. I know Capture One is well liked on this forum, but again I am not conversant with it because up to now Lightroom v6 has done just fine for me, but I know sooner or later I will be pushed into considering a replacement for LR6 and an Adobe subscription will not be a choice, hence this post.

 

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[jaapv]

I tried out Affinity, ON1 and Luminar. I liked all three - and preferred all three to Lightroom, in the order 1. Affinity, 2. Luminar, 3.ON1. However this last is more due to personal preference than to quality of the programs. I would urge you to give all three a good try-out.

All three have good support and instructional videos.

[wda]

Why not stick with Lightroom 6? It has served you well and presumably compiled an easily searchable catalogue for you.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, wda said:

Why not stick with Lightroom 6? It has served you well and presumably compiled an easily searchable catalogue for you.

True....That's part of my ongoing struggle with software though. For instance I still use Final Cut Pro 7 Studio because for much of my video editing / scratch track work it's still excellent and I am very familiar with the programme, BUT to run FCP7 now I have had to create another partition on my Mac Pro that runs under OSX Mavericks because beyond that OS FCP7's operation becomes problematical. I could do the same with LR6 of course, and yes you're right it's still perfectly good for me right now, but who knows what will happen with newer Mac OS's and obviously Adobe is not going to help then either with LR V6......

So what I am doing is trying to see what other's are using and what their experiences are with choices other than Adobe.

And thanks too jaapv, I didn't know of Luminar, I'm going to look at it.

[Lynx]

I was in the same situation as you and tried ON1, C1 and DxO Photolab. Affinity id for me more of a substitute for PS, since it does not catalogue anything. 

After a period of testing, I stayed with Capture One as my mainstay raw-converter. The catalogue works good enough, but the sessions are wonderful for culling and working with projects. The rawconverter is very good and the ability to use layers makes this a one-stop-shop for most of my pictures. 

I also continued to use DxO Photolab for certain situations. The newest version now also have some sort of a catalogue (as far as I know, havent tried it yet).

//Johan

[jaapv]

I agree about Affinity. It is not surprising, as the program is meant to be a mini-Photoshop replacement. The other two are more aimed at Lightroom users.

[Jeff S]

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Jeff

[PeterGA]

The software listed above is interesting but  after testing I find that LR is difficult to ignore because all alternatives (including Capture One) don't have the Digital Asset Management capabilities of LR.

Capture One right now is at the margin a better raw processor and much better tethered shooting capabilities - but it all depends on how much a person cares or needs this functionality - at the margin. I only have a relatively small database of 20 odd thousand files - but only LR provides an easy reference  for all these - for this reason many photographers I know use Capture One for raw editing and then export  tiff to Photoshop - then export to LR for storage and retrieval workflow.

None of this solves the problem of subscription business models unfortunately.

The alternatives listed above - I find to offer less capability in terms of PP work than the subscription based model of Adobe - which is why I suppose Adobe can do what it does. Even Capture One has recently dropped their DAM software Media Pro - hopefully they are planning a DAM solution inbuilt to Capture One - which is their missing link - but even then Capture One lacks the power of Photoshop for all sorts of work - layer tools for example are restricted to only 7 adjustment type tool sets - one cant even layer a B&W layer over the original colour background - as one example of shortcomings.

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2018 by PeterGA
spelling

[gbealnz]

19 hours ago, wda said:

Why not stick with Lightroom 6? It has served you well and presumably compiled an easily searchable catalogue for you.

My main beef with this David is LR6, the stand-alone, paid up version, doesn't recognize my X-Pro2 files, as it reached the end of it's updates.

I'm sufficiently annoyed that I will eventually change. What/when I don't know but like Peter the subscription model isn't for me.

Gary

[wda]

Gary, I'm sure there must be a workaround. For a start, required optical corrections are made in-camera with updated Fuji firmware. You should not need to worry about those. That just leaves fine tuning colour in LR. I do that by producing a bespoke colour profile using a Pantone ColorChecker. When my fine tuning is complete, I save it as a named LR preset which I apply when importing new files into my LR catalogue. You should be able to continue using LR6 regardless of future camera development. That is my belief. It works for me. (I am talking about capturing in RAW format).

Edited November 29, 2018 by wda
Added caveat

[Mark II]

I use Capture One and Affinity. As others have noted, CO is a reasonable Lightroom alternative, while Affinity is almost a clone of Photoshop. In practice, I only use Affinity for dust removal in film scans or for peculiar workflows (for example, swapping colour channels for infrared).

FWIW, I just wrote up a blog review of CO12, which was released today. The scary thing is that CO’s annual upgrade pricing now costs more than an annual subscription for both Lightroom and Photoshop. If you were used to using Adobe tools it would be very difficult to justify both the cost and learning curve to change.

[gbealnz]

14 hours ago, wda said:

Gary, I'm sure there must be a workaround. For a start, required optical corrections are made in-camera with updated Fuji firmware. You should not need to worry about those. That just leaves fine tuning colour in LR. I do that by producing a bespoke colour profile using a Pantone ColorChecker. When my fine tuning is complete, I save it as a named LR preset which I apply when importing new files into my LR catalogue. You should be able to continue using LR6 regardless of future camera development. That is my belief. It works for me. (I am talking about capturing in RAW format).

Not too hard, I was just being grouchy.

LR as I have it won't open my Fuji RAW's. Sure I can convert them with Adobe DNG Converter, but that's just another step.

The root of the problem is that because it is not CC, it doesn't keep up with the newer file formats, even though the X-Pro2 is 3 or more years old.

I see it as Adobe forcing me to go to the Cloud based subscription, something I will not do.

I'll return (full time) to my X-Vario before I do that.

Gary

[budjames]

I started using Affinity Photo to replace Photoshop after switching from Lightroom to Capture One Pro about 3 years ago. I only use it occasionally as I can do most of my image processing in C1P.

It works great and allowed my me to cancel my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription 2 years ago. The iPad version works great and is very powerful. I use the iPad version for RAW file image manipulation while traveling. Highly recommended.

Regards,

Bud James

 

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.

[wda]

10 hours ago, gbealnz said:

Not too hard, I was just being grouchy.

LR as I have it won't open my Fuji RAW's. Sure I can convert them with Adobe DNG Converter, but that's just another step.

The root of the problem is that because it is not CC, it doesn't keep up with the newer file formats, even though the X-Pro2 is 3 or more years old.

I see it as Adobe forcing me to go to the Cloud based subscription, something I will not do.

I'll return (full time) to my X-Vario before I do that.

Gary

I was trying to be positive Gary. I have read that it is possible to download Adobe camera profiles. Perhaps that is another avenue to explore? 

Or have you considered getting a CL body and use your TL lenses? Another Investment,  I know, but it would be a good path to consider. LR reads DNG files easily.