Mac Affinity Photo – Hmmm Nice!

A little while ago, well last month in fact! We conducted a review on MacAffinity Designer – a vector software design program, which quite honestly, is the first real contender for Adobes crown. We love Designer, even though there are one or two things still to work out (i.e full press ready output functionality) – we have complete faith in the Affinity developers to get these done quick.

So, now I guess you’re probably thinking “how can this be an unbiased review, if the writer has a bit of a ‘thing’ for Affinity Designer?” To help ease any concerns with this take a read of the review for designer and you’ll see. Whilst things are great there, we have no issue in pointing out where the holes are… and there are some!

As I pointed out in my previous review- Serif has produced some great bits of kit in the past, but in all fairness, the plus suite has always sat in Adobes Shadow. Affinity – in my humble opinion – is their first real attempt at the adobe crown, and the signs so far are good… very good!

In keeping with how we prefer to do things, lets get the nastiness out of the way first.

The not so great.

1. Whilst you can directly import and open PSD files (you can even export as PSD), Affinity cannot handle mock-ups. This is due to the lack of understanding of SMART OBJECTS. This to be fair is a bit of a kicker as one of the more general uses of Photoshop is for agencies to mock-up designs and ideas for their clients to better see how the graphics will be displayed. There are more than enough tools, filters and effects to create your own, but this is not what we would call a beginner friendly solution.
2. Rendered filters are also not currently available. These are effects that the program generates itself that have many uses – most notably, Lens Flare.
3. Obviously as this is a relatively new bit of kit Add-ons aren’t available yet. This is something that will change over time, but worth a mention if you generally tweak the hell out or your programs.
4. One of the great things with Photoshop is the fact that it allows you to create and use Actions. These effectively record what you have done to create a composition, effect etc. You can then save that ‘action’ and apply it to blank documents, images etc, to your hearts content. Whilst AffinityPhoto has without doubt the best history navigator ever, you cannot yet record it in the same way and create an action from it. If Affinity get this sorted out and make it so it can accept PSD actions that would be great. However, the likely hood of that happening is remote, so they need to be able to develop their own solution for this.
5. Only on MAC. No PC version.

And that really is it… Sure there may well be one or two other slight misses that we have not yet picked up on ourselves. However, we have been using it only for a month so if there’s anything that you feel is worth a mention – particularly if we have missed it! – do let us know in the comments below.

Now on to the good stuff!

The great bits!

1. Anyone who has played with AffinityPhoto would be gutted if this wasn’t top of the list on the good bits…the INPAINTING TOOL! This function is without doubt worth the £39 ($50USD approx.) alone. This tool incredibly makes stuff just disappear, much faster & better than Photoshop ever has. We have used this function a lot over the last month, in order to remove unwanted debris and artefacts in images, and to say that we were stunned with the results would be an understatement. Even if the initial paint doesn’t quite get it all, you just go over the areas again, and they just seem to become part of the background. This is a truly awesome tool and easily is one of the biggest slaps to the face for Photoshop.
2. 4 Different personas are available: 1. Photo Persona – Your main work stage 2. Liquify Persona – a dedicated area where you can adjust, reshape, fix and deform images to your hearts content 3. Develop Persona – a pre processing workspace and finally 4. Export Persona – Export @1x @2x or @3x… you choose.
3. The preview operates at 60fps, regardless as to how many layers, effects etc you have going… without eating all your resources!
4. 28 different blend modes, which thanks to the live preview can be scrolled through live!
5. Beautiful UI – As they have done with Designer so they have done with Photo. The UI, whilst taking some inspiration from Adobe, is a pleasure to work in and is also completely customisable. Icons are clearly defined by colour, which makes finding your tools easy.
6. 8000+ steps of history. Now with that many undo’s available you could think that this is more of a gimmick as opposed to being anything useful, as how on earth could you utilise that effectively? Well, the guys at Affinity have thought about this… a history slider! This allows you to slide backwards and forward through your editing history so that you can pick exactly what you need to change and where. This has been used a great deal by us and we love completing a comp then sliding to the start and scrolling through it again – it’s like time-lapse! Worth mentioning here is also Photo’s ability to save the history with the file, so if you are sharing a project with other photo users – they too can scroll through your history.

As with any review that is ever written, there will be bits that have been overlooked and that’s where your comments are invaluable. If you have tried any of the Affinity suite let us know your thoughts. If you haven’t download the trial or buy it outright and it give it whirl. The biggest thing to remember with Affinity is that it is a buy once and own outright piece of software. All future updates are free and there are no monthly subscriptions.

Adobe really need to stand up and pay attention here, as if one company can offer a platform on this type of payment structure, why can’t they?

Look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.

The post Mac Affinity Photo by Serif – Depixion Review appeared first on Depixion Agency.