Looking for an alternative to Adobe CC. Currently use lightroom for most my organisation & editing with Photoshop for cloning etc. I'd also like to be able to design posters etc too. Looking at macaffinity but using macbook pro & windows desktop so don't know if I'd need two packages?
and please use their services
Anyone using macaffinity
- Thread starter Ferj
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Assuming this is Affinity then you will need separate licences for Mac and Windows unfortunately - you're buying twice and no discount is offered.
Also Affinity has no organisational capability - it's just an editor - direct replacement for Photoshop.
myotis
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- Graham
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I'm using a combination of Capture One (standard license allows three activations and its Windows and Mac) and Photoshop CC plus Affinity Photo. Capture One improves its cataloguing at each release (which has been pretty dire in the past), but I still create a new catalogue for each year, and also have a catalogue for all years in both NeoFinder and Media Pro. Every so often I give LR CC a try but just convince myself with how happy I am using Capture One.
Capture One has layers along with limited cloning and healing tools, so I don't find I need to go into Photoshop and hence never learned it, but I have been recently learning it and Affiinity Photo at the same time (just to see what I am missing). Photoshop seems faster and less resource hungry than Affinity Photo (but not for everything), and Serif have been improving this with new releases. Lots and lots of training material for Photoshop of course, but Affinity Photo does have some good training videos available, and I am translating the Photoshop training into Affinity.
Overall, I am finding Affinity Photo easier to use, and the reviews I have read by professional users of Photoshop, not reviewers, suggest that Affinity will do everything that Photoshop will do, and some things that PS won't. Having said that, not all photoshop plugins work, but that is something Serif are working on, and there are mixed reviews on how good their Raw processing is (I've never tried it). They are also current working on a database program that will work across all their products, but with no release date offered (at least not the last time I looked).
Obviously, with my lack of Photoshop (and Affinity) expertise, my views are of limited value, but I am finding Affinity Photo to be, generally, well thought and easy to use. I'm also finding it easier to get results I like with Affinity. e.g I blended two images in both programs yesterday. This was a single image that I had prepared in Capture One, where I had created two images from it, one for the shadows (church pews) and the other for the highlights (stain glass window). The blend in Affinity Photo just "worked better" held more detail and was punchier than the Photoshop blend. I am sure of course that this could have been fixed, but I did very little in Affinity and spend a long time adjusting things in Photoshop. However, overall I am liking Affinity.
And, at the "moment", I am confident that my CC subscription days are numbered, and that I will be working with just Capture One and Affinity Photo in the long term.
Its not very expensive, even if you do need to buy a Windows and a Mac license, so I would think it worthwhile buying a single copy and trying it out. Apart from plug in issues and speed (both getting better) and the lack of scripting, which is now available, everything I have read about it is all good. As with any program, there seems to be a percentage of people who find it buggy, while others find it bug free, but its obvious that Serif are working hard at sorting out problems as they occur.
But, of course it has no cataloging, and there is a question mark over how good the raw processing is.
Cheers,
Graham
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