The last time we tested it, it was for a program called Mylio, and Pratik was pretty disgusted with how it treated raw files. But it’s pretty impressive how much better Affinity was compared to PS in that aspect.” This is huge news, since Pratik and I have been talking for a long time now about a possible third independent contender for raw processing. Capture One still did the best render of the raw images in regard to apparent color accuracy. It seemed like Affinity did a lot better with how the colors looked in the raw converter than in Photoshop’s Camera Raw. Jumping back into raw performance, Pratik was very impressed with how the program handled raw files: “I used an assortment of images from the Pentax 645z, Canon 5DIII, Nikon D810, Hasselblad, and Phase one camera systems. So, I was slightly slowed down in my process. Affinity does not do this, but instead remembers whatever the last dimensions typed into it were. In Photoshop, to get this halfway done, simply selecting, copying and then going to make a new document auto-fills the new document pixel dimensions with whatever I had just copied. In order to determine the size of that blank canvas, I took the height of my screen shots (average, since they all had a slightly different height) and then multiplied the width (average width) by three and then added 100 pixels to account for the white spacing between each. In the image above, you can see three screenshots that were placed beside each other on a wide blank canvas. Affinity does show those in the upper left hand corner, but if I select all, copy and then go to make a new document, it doesn’t auto-fill the new document with the copied document’s exact pixel dimensions. When I am creating documents, sometimes I like to know exactly the pixel dimensions of a particular file quickly and make new, blank documents based on those dimensions. You can make any adjustments you want manually, but there weren’t any that automatically showed.Ĭreating that graphic above brought to light a couple other little details I noticed about Affinity that graphic designers might be curious about. The raw photo adjustments are very similar to what you would expect out of Photoshop as well, though it doesn’t appear Affinity has any library of lens profile corrections the way Photoshop does. At first it’s a bit jarring of a difference, but once you get used to it, it’s a really nice way to handle files. You can work on the raw for a few moments, switch back to a jpeg or tiff you were working on in a different tab, and then resume work on the raw at any point. If you had a photo, or set of photos, open before opening a raw file, Affinity simply opens the raw in a new tab and continues to give you uninterrupted access to whatever you were working on previously. In Affinity, there is no smaller window, but rather their “Develop” panel takes the place of the entire Affinity panel like so: If you’re a Photoshop user, you’re used to seeing a smaller window appear in front of your main Photoshop window that contains all of the Adobe Camera Raw adjustment settings. Firstly, as we mentioned in our Beta review, the way Affinity handles raw files is different. What we did do is give you some highlights of what we noticed in how we both use Photoshop on a day to day basis, myself from a graphic artist perspective, and Pratik from a retouching perspective.īefore we get into the performance of the platform, let’s go over what Affinity Photo looks like, how it functions and how you can expect to use it.Īffinity Photo is set up similarly to what you have come to expect, but it has some key differences. Special thanks to Pratik’s Facebook friends who supplied many of the questions he focused on when testing out the platform.Īs you can imagine, this program is massive, just like Photoshop, and we of course did not cover absolutely everything the program can do. His credentials are top notch, and he has been kind enough to give us a bit of his very busy time to share his thoughts on how the platform competes in this space. He had a hand in basically any insight below on to how a particular tool works in certain situations, and how they compare to the competition. In this review, I have been assisted by high-end retoucher Pratik Naik, who will be providing the bulk of the “should you buy it” information. Through the whole process of their development of the platform, we’ve been really impressed by the Affinity developer’s desire to “get it right.” At every turn, it appears that they are really listening to customers and making changes to the platform. We’ve been talking about it for months and today we’re happy to finally have our review of the Adobe Photoshop Competitor, Serif Affinity Photo.