Affinity Photo has become the first choice for photography and creative professionals around the world, who love its speed, power and precision. Born to work hand-in-hand with the latest powerful computer technology, it’s the only fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iOS. Affinity Photo is ranked 3rd while Lightroom is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Affinity Photo is: Pay once, get updates forever.
A message from the Affinity team
As a way to lend support to the creative community during these difficult times, we’re once again offering a 90-day free trial of the Mac and Windows versions of the whole Affinity suite, for anyone who wants to use them (even those who have previously completed a free trial). We’re also bringing back the 50% discount for those who would prefer to buy and keep the apps, including our iPad versions.
More info about supporting the creative community initiativeIn other news…
our apps are fully optimized for the next generation of Mac
Ready to go on Apple’s Big Sur and primed to deliver superfast performance on Macs with M1 chips, recent updates to the macOS versions of our apps mean huge performance gains.
Learn more about Apple and Affinity updatesIs Affinity a good alternative to Lightroom? Yes is the short answer, but with a few critical caveats, especially if you are used to the speed of Lightroom.
Cost
The main reason people object to buying Lightroom is that it's a subscription. Around £10 a month will get you both Lightroom and Photoshop. With Affinity you just have a one-off payment of around £50.
Speed
I'll get my biggest objection to Affinity out of the way to start with. It is just much, much slower than Lightroom. A 33MB RAW file from my Canon 5DIV takes more than 7 seconds to open in Affinity, and a similar size file from my X-T1 takes more than 13 seconds. I use a Mac Pro - the tower kind, not the laptop. It is very fast, I have plenty of spare hard drive, but Affinity takes a looooong time to process big files. With Lightroom, files open instantaneously. No wait at all - because it isn't loading the whole file, you are just working with a preview.
Photoshop, which needs to open the file from scratch like Affinity rather than working from a preview like Lightroom, takes less than a whole second to get the file ready to work on.
Once your file is open in Affinity, the processing is fast - there's no lags as you wait for edits to show on screen.
Catalogue
Lightroom is more than just an editor, it's a digital asset manager. It was set up to mimic a photographer's workflow, so you simply work from left to right in the workspace: import, edit, print or share. At the import stage you can add keywords and rate your images. You can view all your images at once, or narrow your search by date, keyword, ranking, kit used, settings used, and more. I use this function daily: I'll search for photos tagged 'Scotland', and shot with my 11-24mm if I need something landscape and wide angle. Or I'll look for anything with a shutter speed of more than 15 seconds if I'm doing a piece on long exposure. None of this is available with Affinity. In this respect, Affinity is much more like Photoshop than Lightroom. It's a photo editor, nothing more, nothing less.
By having to rely on my Mac's folder system to use Affinity, this is how my files show up when I go to open them:
Compare the much more useful view available in Lightroom:
Affinity Lightroom Replacement
Layers
Affinity has layers, giving you more options than Lightroom (where you are limited to your single photo layer and nothing else - you have to keep dipping in and out of Photoshop if you want to work with layers).
Selections
Affinity is much more sophisticated than Lightroom when it comes to local editing. The selection tools work well, and intuitively, allowing you many more options than the adjustment brush tool in Lightroom.
Getting started
To get started with Affinity, watch the series of video tutorials here: Click for Affinity tutorials
To get started with Lightroom, watch this series of video tutorials: Click for Lightroom tutorials
Conclusion
The actual editing output on Affinity is great - no question that I could use it to get professional quality edits. But if you need to work fast, or work with big files, or need previews, or like the integrated catalogue that Lightroom has, or want uncomplicated non-destructive editing, then Affinity will irritate you. If you just want a non-subscription based editing platform that is powerful and professional, and you're not already used to the speed of Lightroom, you'll be very happy with it.
This review just covers the desktop version of Affinity, but I should add that I love the iPad version of Affinity more than Lightroom mobile, because I don't use the catalogue when I'm working on my iPad, and it is quicker and cleaner to start up. I'll be sticking with Lightroom on desktop and laptop, and switching to Affinity on iPad. You do need to buy Affinity for iPad separately from Affinity for desktop.
Affinity Vs Lightroom
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Affinity Photo Vs Lightroom
Lightroom Presets In Affinity Photo
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