Affinity Photo 2020
ALL THE GEAR Single
purchase; solid foundations;
Affinity StudioLink.
NO IDEA Can’t match Adobe’s special
effects and AI tools.
RECOMMENDED SPECS Processor with x64
Support (Core 2 Duo onwards), 4GB RAM,
702MB of storage.
Single purchase $50, http://www.affinity.serif.com.Adobe Photoshop CC 2020
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ Industry
standard; interesting Sensei
tools; ties into the CC suite.
PARIS HILTON Complex; Some may balk at
the pricing structure.
RECOMMENDED SPECS 1.6GHz CPU or
better, 8GB RAM, 7.6GB of storage.
Photography bundle $10/Mo, http://www.adobe.com8
9
VERDICTVERDICTAffinity Photo offers a powerful
suite of tools and a more
conventional pricing structure.it is. Affinity has updated its own selection
tools with a “Selection Brush” and “Refine”
window that works like “Select & Mask”—
but Adobe’s ahead here.
Sensei also comes into play with the
new “Match Font” feature, which will
identify fonts used in signs or shopfronts
you’ve photographed, and match them
to something similar on Adobe Fonts. It
works across multiple lines, and even
with vertical text.
Meanwhile, Serif has been
concentrating on catching up to Adobe in
other areas. Affinity Photo now supports
“smart” objects (layers are smart in
Affinity Photo by default, without needing
to be converted, so can be resized non-
destructively), and has full compatibility
with DXO’s Nik Collection of plugins,
which apply their own algorithms to
things like noise reduction, sharpening,
geometric corrections, and film
simulations in ways that are popular with
many photographers and image editors.
With more than 200 presets, you’re never
short of a place to start.
And while Affinity Photo may seem
to lag behind, it’s an app that’s still in
active development. For example, while
the Mac version works with multiple
GPUs, that feature hasn’t come to the
PC at the time of writing, but is promised
in a future update. Affinity’s major
advantage over Photoshop comes in its
usability: the Affinity interface is split
into different workspaces, which it calls
“personas,” each of which has a specific
task. So there’s the “Develop” persona
for dealing with RAW image files, the
“Photo” persona where the bulk of the
editing takes place, the “Liquify” persona
for warping effects, the “Tone Mapping”
persona for HDR, and the “Export”
persona for, well, exporting.
In addition, the three Affinity apps
support StudioLink, which allows Affinity
Designer users to edit an image right
there in the layout app but invoking the
photo-editing app’s tools. Flicking from
InDesign to Photoshop and back if you
want to correct something in an image
file doesn’t take long, but with StudioLink
it’s pretty much instant. The apps are
also built around a common file format,
so you can open a Publisher document in
Affinity Photo and edit it as if it were an
image file.
Serif has lavished attention on Affinity
Photo’s “Move” tool, which works with the
“smart” nature of layers to make resizing
an object easy, rather than Adobe’s habit
of making you jump through a couple of
hoops first. Then there are Affinity’s live
previews, which show exactly how your
chosen combination of brush, color, and
opacity settings will paint before you do
it—something Photoshop doesn’t have.
Otherwise the two apps are both excellent
layer-based raster image editors, and
you can’t go wrong with either.
Choosing between these apps is like
choosing a racehorse. Do you go for theestablished champ, or the up-and-comer
who might stand a chance of leading
the field one day? A lot will come down
to your views on subscription pricing—
and if your clients demand an Adobe
workflow, then there’s no substitute. But
don’t rule Affinity out: It does a lot right,
and if the improvements keep coming the
way they have been, it really does stand
a chance of coming at the king, and not
missing. –IAN EVENDENmaximumpc.com SEP 2020 MAXIMUMPC 77