Affinity Photo 2

Serif’s Affinity Photo 2 is the low-cost, no-subscription alternative to Adobe Photoshop, but is it a serious rival? Rod Lawton finds out

Affinity Photo 2 is just about the closest direct alternative to Photoshop on the market. As with Photoshop, it’s designed for sophisticated, detailed and advanced image manipulation, though it can also be used for relatively quick and simple image enhancements too.

Like Photoshop, Affinity Photo is an all-round design tool, not just a photo editor. It supports vector graphics for creating illustrations and type layers for adding text. It’s clear that the design community is where much of Affinity’s focus lies. But what we’re looking at here specifically is Affinity Photo 2’s potential as a photo editor – and it has a lot.

The price is a slight increase over the previous version, but still low for software of this calibre. Affinity Photo might be priced like a budget program, but it’s far from that. And Adobe refugees will be delighted to learn that there no subscription plans, and that until version 2, every single update since launch had been free.

Affinity Photo is not really designed for beginners – it has no cataloguing and browsing features and it doesn’t offer one-click insta-ready ‘looks’ for your social channels. This is an old-school Photoshop-style photo editor, but – and this is why it has become popular – without the cash outlay or the subscription.

Affinity Personas Affinity Photo offers five different workspaces for various tasks. These aren’t just different configurations of the same tools – the tools are different and you use them at various stages of the workflow.