THE WORLD OF professional image-editing
applications is not a wide one. There’s
Adobe Photoshop, and then there’s
everything else: Maybe PaintShop Pro
or PhotoPaint from Corel, or the open-
source GIMP, or Paint.net if your needs
aren’t very great. Then Serif, maker
of the also-ran app Serif PhotoPlus,
decided to play Adobe at its own game
with the Affinity suite. First came Affinity
Designer, then Affinity Photo, then
Affinity Publisher, rivalling Illustrator,
Photoshop, and InDesign in terms of
features and usability.
Serif is quick to retweet stories on
social media of professionals abandoning
Photoshop for Affinity Photo, often
underlining the difference in payment
schemes adopted by the two software
developers. But just how similar are
the two programs? And can someone
who’s been using Photoshop for 20 years
navigate a new app?
Perhaps the biggest difference
between the two apps is the way youIn the battle of the image-editing apps,
there’s only one winner: the users
pay for them. Photoshop is part of
Adobe’s notorious Creative Cloud suite
of subscription-only apps, but differs
slightly in that it can be obtained (along
with RAW-processing and image-
organization app Lightroom) as part of
the bargain-priced Photography Plan,
which at $9.99 a month is half the price
of a subscription to any other single app.
Alternatively, you can splash out $52.99
a month for the entire software suite,
which numbers more than 20 apps.
Affinity does things the old-fashioned
way. For $50 you get the desktop app,
and another $20 on top nets you the iPad
app. You’re free to add the other two
apps in the suite too for the same price,
except that Publisher doesn’t have an
iPad app yet. All updates are then free.
Some people prefer this, as they don’t
like the idea of renting software, while
others prefer the subscription model. It’s
a matter of personal taste, but whichever
app suite you choose, you’re stuck with
its pricing.A NEW CHALLENGER
The two apps are both layer-based raster
image editors with vector capabilities,
and Affinity Photo has clearly been made
with Photoshop users squarely in mind.
From the gray background (adjustable,
and there are light and dark modes) to
the interoperability with Photoshop’s
PSD files and plugins, to the positions
and names of tools and palettes, this is
the sincerest form of flattery.
Possibly the best thing Affinity ever did,
however, was to sting Adobe into action.
Just as Intel’s CPU lineup had stagnated
until Ryzen came along, so Adobe’s
updates were decidedly pedestrian
before the release of a serious rival.
Since then, however, it’s gone nuts. New
content-aware features, some of which
make use of Adobe’s Sensei AI cloud tech,
make selecting difficult features, such as
curly hair, much easier. Content-aware
selection is now able to detect whether
the object being selected is a person, and
changes to a different set of algorithms ifAdobe Photoshop CC 2020
vs Affinity Photo 2020
Adobe’s Photoshop has reigned
as the editing king thanks to
its unmatched range of tools.in the lab
76 MAXIMUMPC SEP 2020 maximumpc.com