Do You Know Affinity Photo?

[Ed Rooney]

A few months ago I bought the newish digital editing system: Affinity Photo. I did this because I saw their demo and found a couple of tools that I thought might be an improvement in my workflow. For $50 I took the plunge. So far this has been a bad decision on my part. 

 

Understand that I already have and have been working with Photoshop CS5, LightRoom 5.7, and NX2. I was not planning  to use Affinity Photo instead of these other very useful programs; I wanted to use a few of AP's tools from time to time. 

 

This is the first problem I encountered and find very strange: when I work with a RAW file (Sony), a tiff and produce a jpeg in AP . . . I cannot open either the tiff or the jpeg in PhotoShop. Until I tried to do this, I was under the impression that a jpeg was the most common file form and could be used interchangeably most anywhere.

 

The Affinity Photo jpeg reads: jpeg.com.afphoto

 

The message I get from Adobe PS is: "Could not complete your request because PS does not recognize this type of file." 

 

Do any of you work with Affinity? Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? 

 

Thank you, Edo

[Phil Crean]

Have you tried deleting the ".com.afphoto" from the file name and see if it will open then

 

Phil

[Jill Morgan]

I did the Affinity trial but didn't like it very much.  Was hoping to find some software I didn't have to subscribe to.  Still haven't found anything better than CC. I cannot survive without the Adjustment too.

 

Jill

[Niels Quist]

Export as a PSD file.

 

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4092162

Edited April 6, 2017 by Niels Quist

[Ed Rooney]

Thanks for getting back to me, People. 

 

I have tried that, Phil. It does help. 

 

I don't think I have an Adjustment tool, Jill. Hmm.

 

I'll try your suggestion after I fix some lunch on this rainy New York day, Niels. 

[Jill Morgan]

 

 

I don't think I have an Adjustment tool, Jill. Hmm.

 

 

 

It's only with CC.  I use it on almost every image.

 

Jill

[Reimar]

Jill, CC has quite a few "Tools", none with this name.  I think you mean you use an adjustment layer, or you go directly to the Image Adjustment menu, yes?

[Jill Morgan]

Jill, CC has quite a few "Tools", none with this name.  I think you mean you use an adjustment layer, or you go directly to the Image Adjustment menu, yes?

 

It's actually called the adjustment brush, so not a tool. It is with ACR (and I assume LR).  It allows me to work on individual areas of an image.  Adjust the exposure in just one spot, or just a couple of the shadow areas, etc. 

 

Jill

Edited April 6, 2017 by Jill Morgan

[Reimar]

OK, got it.  I don't use either of those.  (Nikon NX-D/ PS CC / Nik Vivesa for me)

Edited April 6, 2017 by Reimar

[Ed Rooney]

That's what I do in NX2, usually with an interim tiff file.

 

Anyone want to buy an almost new Affinity Photo system? In the interest of full exposure, I did spill a little pasta sauce on it. 

[Graham Morley]

Hi Edo,

 

I mainly use Lightroom, and I bought Afinity Photo a while back, although I haven't used it much.  I found the learning curve steep, but when I have got the hang of particular features it works well. 

 

I have at times had files that ended  tiff.afphoto, and I couldn't find out how it happened.  Such files will only open in Affinity Photo.   I found that using Shift-Option-Command-S keys (or go to File/Export) brought up a dialogue where I can select from a range of file types such as tiff psd etc.  Since doing that I have avoided accidentally ending up with a .afphoto file that wouldn't import to LR. 

 

Graham

[Ed Rooney]

Thanks, Graham. I'll try poking around with that, if I can. I'm on a Mac. 

[Ed Rooney]

Problem solved! Thanks to Niels and Graham for pointing the way.

 

As Niels suggested, I exported the image from Affinity Photo to my desktop as a PSD, then dragged that into PS CS5 and it opened. On the next rainy day in the city I will see if any of this is worthwhile. If AP just does the same things I can do with LR, PS and NX2, I won't be working with it much.

 

Thanks so much, people. 

 

Edo

[Matt Limb]

Interesting you should bring up this topic about Affinity Photo, which I had not heard of before - but must confess I use PS and LR and have never found the need for any more facilities

 

But haveing a quick look over the website it does look a capable application.

 

Then I found that Affinity Photo is from Serif in Nottingham UK; many years ago - and I mean over twenty - I purchased a design software package they developed called Corel Draw, which at the time was very capable, but that has also now been replaced by Adobe!

 

Small world!!

[Gareth Sewell]

I've not started using Lightroom, Affinity was suggested to me as a cheaper and capable alternative so I took the plunge.

Loving the results so far, noise reduction, corrections, can do HDR stuff, merges, landscape combines, I've been able to correct images that failed QC originally (chromatic aberration and fringing). The only problem I'm currently having is with batch jobs not running all my macros so all I get are plain unadjusted JPEGS from my RAW files  but it's a but they are working on.

Plenty of free video tutorials to explain how to do things.

No doubt at some point I'll need to update to Lightroom CC but for now, Affinity is serving me well.

[Harry Harrison]

51 minutes ago, Gareth Sewell said:

I've not started using Lightroom, Affinity was suggested to me as a cheaper and capable alternative so I took the plunge.

 

Affinity Photo is aimed more at current or potential Photoshop users rather than Lightroom though there is a crossover between those two anyway of course. As you say it is much, much cheaper and very capable, an admirable achievement for a smallish, albeit longstanding British company (Serif), tiny compared with Adobe in fact. 

 

Lightroom adds the ability to catalogue and keyword easily, and also to create 'virtual' copies of any image for different looks or different purposes (and much more besides of course). It is also very capable when it comes to image processing, eliminating sensor spots etc. so I don't think you would be disappointed and you probably would rarely need Photoshop. The downside is that now you have to have a subscription that includes both Lightroom and Photoshop so then eliminating the need for Affinity Photo.

 

It's possible that Affinity might try to incorporate cataloguing also but this has proven very difficult for other companies so far, Lightroom is still out there more or less on its own as a program that incorporates both image processing and cataloguing.

 

 

 

[Vincent Lowe]

This may be of interest....

 

https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=6841.msg47262#msg47262

Edited April 26, 2019 by Vincent Lowe

[M.Chapman]

I've also got a copy of Affinity photo, but I find it too slow. The sliders are far from "interactive" on my MacBook Pro with quite a lag, and the processor fan often comes on, even when it's not doing much. I also couldn't recover the same level of fine detail that LR and PS do.

 

If you're interested in other alternatives (that run on Mac and IOS), try Raw Power from https://gentlemencoders.com. It uses the RAW processing functions that are built into MacOS (High Sierra onwards) and is really fast and slick. The most interactive sliders I've ever come across. It needs some more functionality yet, but it's certainly one to watch. If I recall correctly "Gentlemen Coders" are some of those that worked on Aperture previously.

 

Picktorial from https://www.picktorial.com is also worth a look.

 

Mark

Edited April 27, 2019 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

On 27/04/2019 at 10:34, M.Chapman said:

I've also got a copy of Affinity photo, but I find it too slow. The sliders are far from "interactive" on my MacBook Pro with quite a lag, and the processor fan often comes on, even when it's not doing much. I also couldn't recover the same level of fine detail that LR and PS do.

 

If you're interested in other alternatives (that run on Mac and IOS), try Raw Power from https://gentlemencoders.com. It uses the RAW processing functions that are built into MacOS (High Sierra onwards) and is really fast and slick. The most interactive sliders I've ever come across. It needs some more functionality yet, but it's certainly one to watch. If I recall correctly "Gentlemen Coders" are some of those that worked on Aperture previously.

 

Picktorial from https://www.picktorial.com is also worth a look.

 

Mark

 

Update : A new version of Affinity Photo (V1.7) has just been released and includes major increases in performance. It now runs very smoothly on my old 2012 MacBook Pro. The sliders have become very responsive and the fans don't come on. It's still not as good as LR & PS CC, but it's starting (for me) to get closer to being a viable alternative. RAW conversion and "Photoshop like" editing tools in one application without subscription. Currently available at 20% off (=£38.99) perpetual licence including updates.  More details here https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

 

Mark