If you don’t like the Adobe licensing model, or if you are just craving for an alternative, Affinity Photo just went live today. Affinity photo is a complete photo editing software similar to photoshop in features but redesigned completely. If you recall, we took Affinity Photo for a test drive and while the overall impressions were pretty good, it still needed some polishing. Hopefully, now that it’s out of beta (still mac only), all the small issues have been ironed out.
As far as costs go, Affinity really sticks it to Adobe with a $49.99 price tag ($39.99 for the next two weeks) and one of the most prominent bullets on their launch video is No Subscription (but you still get free updates). Hit the jump for the full feature list and kick off video.
Here is the list of features in case you want to compare them with Adobe’s Photoshop CC:
Engineered for Professionals
- Open, edit and save Photoshop® PSD files
- RGB, CMYK, Greyscale and LAB colour spaces
- End-to-end CMYK workflow with ICC colour management
- Full 16-bit per channel editing
- Open system colour palettes, .ASE Adobe® swatches, and import Adobe® ABR brush files
- Work with all standard formats like PNG, TIFF, JPG, GIF, SVG, EPS and PDF
- Panning and zooming is always live at 60fps with live previews, live tools and real-time editing
- Open and edit massive images without compromising performance or running out of memory
Unsurpassed productivity
- Full support for unlimited layers, layer groups, adjustment layers, filter layers and masks
- Resize layers without any loss of quality. Lock, hide, duplicate and merge layers easily
- Edit live filters, adjustments, effects, blend modes and masks non-destructively
- Undo history can be saved with the document so you can always undo your changes
- Task-focused workspaces for developing, post-processing, liquify and export
- Work in windowed, full screen, or separated modes with fully customisable toolbars and drag and drop panels
- Comprehensive vector drawing and text editing tools
- Advanced snapping system with pixel perfect alignment when required
- Export @1x, @2x, @3x from layers, slices or whole documents—continuously as you work!
Professional image processing
- Open RAW and other images in a dedicated workspace
- Adjust exposure, blackpoint, clarity, vibrance, white balance, shadows, highlights and much more
- Recover detail thought to be lost by editing in an unbounded linear color space
- Advanced lens corrections including chromatic aberration, defringe, vignette and best-in-class noise reduction
- Paint areas or use fully customisable gradients to mask adjustments
- View histograms, blown highlights, shadows and tones as well as detailed EXIF information
Quality retouching and correction tools
- Intuitive selection brush and refinement makes selections simple, even down to strands of hair
- Instantly remove unwanted objects with an incredibly advanced Inpainting brush
- Dodge, burn, clone, patch, blemish and red eye tools
- Smooth and retouch skin with built-in frequency separation
- Apply high quality single-plane and dual-plane perspective correction as well as fully customisable mesh warps—all in real time
- Dedicated Liquify persona gives freehand control over warps, twirls, pinch, punch and turbulence
Advanced brush engine
- Huge library of painting, drawing, textures and professional DAUB brushes included
- Create custom brushes and nozzles with full control over advanced dynamics
- Full support for Wacom and other graphics tablets, including pressure, tilt and shortcut buttons
- Real-time preview of your nozzle—see what you are about to paint or erase before you do it
Fast, customisable effects
- Massive collection of effects available, including blurs, distortions, tilt-shift, shadows, glows, lighting and many more
- Customise all aspects with precise controls, seeing a real-time preview of the end result before you apply
- Swipeable split or mirrored screen always available for before and after views
- Choose to apply effects non-destructively with live effect layers, enabling you to erase away or mask effects after they have been applied
Built for Mac
- Takes full advantage of the latest OS X technologies including OpenGL, Grand Central Dispatch and Core Graphics
- Use the Force Touch trackpad to paint with pressure sensitivity
- Fully optimised for 64-bit and multi-core processors
- Supports regular, retina and multi-monitor set ups—including the latest 5k iMac
- iCloud Drive support
We plan to follow up with a review soon, if you downloaded Affinity photo, share your impressions in the comments.
