For a long time Adobe Photoshop has been the only real professional level image-editing program, but software company Serif has launched a professional photo editing program which competes directly with Photoshop at a much lower price – and for a single payment rather than the software subscription system introduced by Adobe. Affinity Photo has been built from the ground up for speed and performance and compatibility with the Photoshop PSD file format.
If anyone is interested, I’ve recently produced a series of videos on Affinity Photo 2 for Amateur Photographer, covering everything from new features in version 2 through focus stacking, HDR merge, object removal, non-destructive editing and panorama stitching. Here’s a list, with links.
Verdict: 4.5 stars Affinity Photo 2 is not a huge leap forward from version 1 for photographers, but more a major refresh and rebranding for Affinity. It remains an extremely powerful professional Photoshop rival at an exceptionally low price. Its tone mapping is superb, its RAW processing can now be applied non-destructively and its central Photo personal is hugely powerful.
Choosing the best image editing software can be complicated. It all depends on what you look for most in your photo editing software. Here are 12 programs with their own distinct strengths.