These are the five top tools and features Photoshop needs that Affinity Photo has
Jun 11, 2021
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Until just a few short years ago, pretty much the only serious player in the game when it photo editing was Photoshop. Sure, there was always GIMP, but it hasn’t ever really been a serious contender (sorry, but it’s true). But in those last few years, we’ve seen quite a few potential hopefuls come up and really eat a chunk of Adobe’s share.
One of the biggest names amongst them has been Affinity Photo, which offers many similar features to Photoshop, but also has a few unique tricks up its sleeve. Tricks that some people wish Adobe would pay attention to and add to Photoshop – at least according to this wish list from the Abbey Esparza at Photo Manipulation.
I have both Photoshop and Affinity Photo, and while I admit that I still go into Photoshop the majority of the time, Affinity Photo definitely has a few advantages. The biggest of which being its real-time previews for almost all of its filters and effects. As in, they literally update as you’re sliding the sliders. You don’t slide the slider, let go and then wait for the preview to be generated as you often do with Photoshop (for things that even have a preview option).
And that’s sort of the first one in Abbey’s list. She wants real-time previews when making things like gradients – which have no preview option whatsoever in Photoshop. But that’s not the only thing on her list.
- A better gradient tool with real-time previews
- Built-in frequency separation features
- A better brushes system with colour image brushes
- Saving history states out to the PSD file so you can shut down, come back the next day and undo if you want to
- A fully-featured iPad app that offers everything it does on the desktop
These are all features that Affinity Photo has and Photoshop doesn’t. And some of them, in particular the way the gradient tool works, as well as the option to use full-colour images as brush stamps, seem like features that should have existed in Photoshop years ago.
But they’re not.
I’d never suggest Adobe flat out “steal” features from other applications, even if Abbey admits that that’s exactly what she’s suggesting, but some of these features really are things that Photoshop should have had a long time ago. They’re features that I saw people asking for even before Affinity Photo existed.
What features have you seen in other applications that you wish Photoshop had?
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John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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9 responses to “These are the five top tools and features Photoshop needs that Affinity Photo has”
“Built-in frequency separation” Frequence Separation is so much 2012 :) No need for this for years.
Better 360 handling.
Matteo Capuzzi came here to point this out. affinity’s 360 features are so much better
If you go that way, even LR has at least 20 useful tools that PS doesn’t have…
What would be cool is Affinity Photo having more “top” tools (and usability) than LR… not just than PS.
Should have started with better performance. I’ve veen using PS since 1993 and its performance over the last 10 years has gone to complete s**t. I have a CC account through school and I use Affinity 99% of the time because Photoshop performs horribly. Even with 16cores 32 threads 32GB of RAM an RTX2070 and an SSD.
Photoshop makes a huge thing out of tasks that are simple in other applications.
Affinity beats Photoshop when it comes to focus stacking.
Two things Adobe might want to learn (read: steal) from Affinity: (1) Displacement map capabilities more attuned to a 21st-century workflow and not one out of the 19th century, and (2) a non-subscription model where customers can actually buy the software and not be forced into perpetually renting it. CS6 was touted as the best thing since sliced bread when it was released. It still gets the job done. I don’t need PS 2022 just so I can identify Auntie Bertha’s puss in a photo or automatically put a smile on the face of my neighbor’s pit bull.
The old Photoimpact has the ability to use colour photos or anything else as stamps, as long as they are changed to the right type of image for the program. It was always an under-rated editor, and Corel purchased it to destroy it.