Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/30/affinity-photo-is-an-awesome-l.html
…
1 Like
You’ll have to register with an email address, but that’s all.
Download works.
There is also a free trial version of Affinity Designer.
And a free trial version of Affinity Publisher Beta.
If it really lives up to the blurb, € 46.21 + VAT is a good bargain.
And there’s also Gimp – totally, 100% free: https://www.gimp.org/
23 Likes
Yep. Came here to say the same. Gimp is powerful enough for all my needs and some. WTF would you pay for something when there is all this incredible, open source on offer. Same for office suites, video editing, 3d animation, audio editing and operating systems. How come bb are shilling for corporate entities?
8 Likes
GimpGimpGimpGimpGimp
6 Likes
Yes, try GIMP.
5 Likes
irfanview for light tasks on windoze , and then gimp for heavy lifting on almost any os - - https://www.irfanview.com/ and https://www.gimp.org/
< yes , i really want to post the url again ! , but , thanks for the advisory !! >
4 Likes
If you like Affinity Photo you’ll love their Designer software (illustrations and the such). I can’t say enough good things about their creative software. I’ve spent the last few years looking for affordable alternatives to Adobe and their Creative Cloud $uite (call me old fashioned by I’m not a fan of renting my software) and Affinity is killing it!
3 Likes
I’ve been using Gimp for professional work for over a decade. If you don’t need Pantone colors, don’t use Photoshop or this lesser thing that BB is shilling. Use Gimp. It’s free as in freedom and as in beer. It is is cross platform – Linux, Mac and Windows. It has great documentation, tutorials and plugins galore on the Web and YouTube.
It’s inevitable that BB will push an alternate to Illustrator for vector graphics. Forget that, use Inkscape. When BB pushes an “alternate” to Maya or other 3D software, ignore them and check out Blender. And when BB pushes an audio editor, try Audacity.
8 Likes
I tried the GIMP. Didn’t like it, personally, but I’m glad other people do!
FWIW, it’s not Photoshop that makes a huge difference in my processing world, so much as Lightroom. Last time I looked, which I admit was a while ago, the open source equivalents really weren’t anyway near as effective. Not saying they couldn’t be - just that weren’t when last I checked.
I pay for the Adobe CC Photography plan which is like a tenner a month, but my Flickr Pro account also gives an extra 15% discount on that Adobe plan, which ends up saving me more money than the value of the Flickr pro account in the first place, which is nice.
3 Likes
I replaced Photoshop and Illustrator with Affinity products two years ago, and what a huge improvement.
The Gimp is really not an option for many use cases. The cross platform ability to draw and paint on an iPad - which is, for my money, the best tool for those who draw there is, with a Pencil – and to seamlessly move files back to a laptop, or a Surface, added to the fantastic way that on a laptop you can move your editing environment to Designer to Photo to Designer, quickly and again seamlessly…incredible. And when it comes to drawing, Photo and Designer on MacOS with a tablet are fantastic. easily the equal of the Adobe ripoff competition.
I would disagree that the interface is unintuitive, and that someone just starting would find it difficult. Quite the opposite – there are many many subtle ways that the Affinity products are far more suited to a newbie, particularly one on the iPad, which is likely to be their main entry point for many new users. And when I move to Illustrator or Photoshop for the things that they still continue to do better than the Affinity suite, (and there are quite a few), it’s the Adobe offerings that now feel clunky and littered with irritating UI quirks.
My biggest criticism of the Affinity products is this: they clearly have set a direction that’s about introducing new products, and new platforms for existing products, at the huge expense of filling in their feature set. There are so many basic things that you learn to work around - or can’t work around, necessitating a trip to Adobeland (which for me are my legally owned pre subscription versions) – and forums full of users who cannot understand why, after what is often years, a key and basic feature is not present. The fact that a decade-old version of Photoshop or Illustrator is set up to do things that Affinity’s products cannot is pretty damning.
I have no connection to the company, and no one is paying me, by the way. But they just announced the beta of their InDesign competitor. I hope this completes their suite, and they can start to focus on getting features that are missing into the mix. The guys there seem to be pretty good at responding in the forums, and there is a pretty good community that they host, sometimes very critical of the path that they take… which I think is to their credit…
4 Likes
In addition to mentioned here open source alternatives, I recommend RawTherapee for processing raw photos. It has lots of features and intuitive user interface:
https://rawtherapee.com/blog/features
2 Likes
Affinity is miles better, more sophisticated, and more fully-featured than Gimp. A lot of people like Gimp, especially its price, but I’m glad that BB and others are supporting the developers behind a quality alternative to Adobe products. They’re doing good work.
I don’t think that posting the suggestion that people try out a well developed alternative to Photoshop (and, yes, Illustrator, and soon, InDesign) is “shilling”. Gimp’s free, and acts like it. Sometimes paying for a quality product is worth…uh… money.
9 Likes
Came to say this. I’ve been using Gimp for at least the last five years. It’s a little clunky sometimes, but it’s always being improved. I’m not a power user by any means, but I think it’s a great piece of software.
For those that need vector drawing capabilities and don’t want to pony up for illustrator, Inkscape is a good alternative.
4 Likes
I recall 15 years ago trying to work on some logos with transparent gradients and failing miserably with Photoshop. Always looked like garbage.
I also recall knocking the same thing out in about 10 minutes in GIMP, looked beautiful.
4 Likes
I have not thought about GIMP in years. Thanks for the nudge.
1 Like
GIMP and me is an on-off, love-hate relationship since the first version came out.
Think Taylor/Burton without the booze and physical abuse.
3 Likes
Can anyone suggest a powerful image collection management tool? I know this thread is about editors, but I hope I can fork it enough for a little collection handling advice. I am still using Google’s orphaned Picasa desktop program because I have yet to find anything that’s close for speed. I have, for many years, tagged all my photos using IPTC tags. Picasa can find any photo in a split second (as long as I’ve tagged it). My photo collection is at about 50,000 images. I don’t do much editing-- Picasa has some basic tools, and for heavy work I use GIMP. I just need something I can move my collection to when the Win 7 desktop eventually stops working. Suggestions? (Google Photos is a big shoebox of pictures-- it can’t search by IPTC tag.)
4 Likes
Are there no comparable graphic software programs that one can buy and actually own anymore?
(Serious question; not my usual snarky sarcasm.)
3 Likes
So big question: does this have the ability to add text boxes? To draw from a blank piece of paper, with shapes & rulers & grids?
I actually like Procreate quite a lot on my iPad Pro, but it doesn’t have a MacOS version. And Procreate doesn’t have the option of adding text, so I end up using multiple pieces of software. I’m primarily building fantasy maps and book covers.
