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Anyone using Affinity Photo (instead of Photoshop) with LR?

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process

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Jun 10, 2013
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Lightroom Version
6.x
Lightroom Version Number
6.14
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Is anyone reading using Affinity Photo (instead of Photoshop) for more complex editing from within Lightroom?
What are your experiences? How do you find it compares to Photoshop, and is there anything you're missing? Does it integrate well with LR?
I've searched the forum but could only find old articles on the subject, and I assume Affinity Photo has matured a bit since then.

I ask because I've been using and still use Photoshop CS4 together with LR, for further editing some photos which I feel LR on its own can't handle that well. I'm very happy with this, but run into the problem of having to use an "outdated" OS. The latter is no concern of mine, but the fact that many apps I want to use demand a more modern OS is a problem.
I'm on a Mac and use MacOS 10.11 (El Capitan), planning to upgrade to 10.12 (Sierra) soon. But that's as far as it goes, because Photoshop won't even install on 10.13 (High Sierra).
 
I have but only use it occasionally because Lightroom is now so capable. It seems to integrate fine.

I can't answer the Photoshop question, because I never did get to grips with it.

Why not just download and give it a go? It's absurdly cheap anyway, but at the moment it's half price!
 
Yes, I noticed! So I downloaded it and now have a (90 day) trial installed.

A quick test showed that it did integrate with LR, and allowed me to edit an image just as with Photoshop.
It's a little overwhelming at the moment as it looks so different to what I'm used to, but perhaps spending some time reconfiguring its layout will help.
 
I think this family of apps has potential.

I have Affinity Publisher and am awaiting its mail merge functionality (on the list but no promised dates). I will then use it to create books containing my images and metadata from Lr, just as pdfs or in a format suitable for Blurb. I have no reason at the moment to use Affinity Photo as I am happy with Photoshop, but I am seriously anxious to find an alternative for Adobe InDesign. I am pushed in this direction also, because Adobe are making it extremely difficult for me to install my CS6 version of InDesign and Acrobat Pro on my laptop and was very happy to put Affinity Publisher on my laptop for approx. 25 Euros, which gives me desktop publishing on my laptop and also allows me have multi page editing of pdf's.

I am glad to see some relatively recent improvements in the Book module, but think this module has yet to achieve its full potential. I would prefer to have the full book feature set contained within the Lr / Ps partnership and avoid using 3rd party products... While I am happy to use Blurb for some things I also want to be independent of Blurb.
 
I am in love with the Affinity apps, once you get up to speed on them they are amazing, transitioning between apps and personas greatly enhance the speed and effectiveness of your workflow. And yes they still need some development work...

I had no problems using LR with AP, but I am also letting LR go and I am in the process of transitioning to Capture 1 Pro. I am still using LR on the periphery, but it will be gone soon...
 
I've not used a desktop publisher fro quite a while, but the chance to snag Affinity Publisher for £23.99 seemed too good to miss - so I just did. More self isolating learning I think.
 
I've not used a desktop publisher fro quite a while, but the chance to snag Affinity Publisher for £23.99 seemed too good to miss - so I just did. More self isolating learning I think.
The brilliance of the Affinity apps is how seamlessly you can edit components of a project. You can directly edit an image or graphic while in publisher (or any of the other apps). You can buy all three right now for $75 US, just crazy...
 
I have laboured with InDesign for years and years and have been waiting for a total rewrite by Adobe or a decent alternative. Affinity Publisher does not have all the features of InDesign but it will meet most of the needs of a lot of people. I will keep InDesign CS6 on an old workstation as a fallback for myself until Affinity Publisher has the Mail Merge feature I long for. While I have a full Capture One licence, I am sticking for now with the Lr + Ps combo, hoping the last few critical usability items I need in Lr get added in the not too distant future [a. Remember last focus image per folder, b) Finish the Book module and c) Allow me select import based on date and or file type (ie raw or jpg)].

A desktop publishing app will allow people get over the short comings of the Print Module where you want to add professional layout that includes Titles, Captions and other metadata. Adding the current text features in the SlideShow module to the print module would eliminate the most needs for a third party desktop publisher to get fully finished prints for most people. Glad that Serif have added this toolkit to the mix.
 
I have laboured with InDesign for years and years and have been waiting for a total rewrite by Adobe or a decent alternative. Affinity Publisher does not have all the features of InDesign but it will meet most of the needs of a lot of people. I will keep InDesign CS6 on an old workstation as a fallback for myself until Affinity Publisher has the Mail Merge feature I long for. While I have a full Capture One licence, I am sticking for now with the Lr + Ps combo, hoping the last few critical usability items I need in Lr get added in the not too distant future [a. Remember last focus image per folder, b) Finish the Book module and c) Allow me select import based on date and or file type (ie raw or jpg)].

A desktop publishing app will allow people get over the short comings of the Print Module where you want to add professional layout that includes Titles, Captions and other metadata. Adding the current text features in the SlideShow module to the print module would eliminate the most needs for a third party desktop publisher to get fully finished prints for most people. Glad that Serif have added this toolkit to the mix.
Undoubtedly the Affinity apps are missing some parity features at this point, but they have made great strides. I suspect Ver 2.x will be when they really blossom.

It shows what can be done with a clean sheet design (integrating all of your apps). I you are heavily invested in one platform it makes it hard to switch.

A little competition is always a good thing.

Ps. I am not affiliated with Serif in anyway, nor any other software company for that matter.
 
Neither am I.

I was very upset with Adobe for so many issues with the usability on most Adobe platforms. I understand the challenge of bringing legacy applications forward. I am glad to see that something has happened inside the Lr / Ps product management in the last 12-18 months and I have seen substantial improvements to so many items that were under the hood or barely visible (in both Lr and Ps) which have been professionally and almost silently resolved. These make a big difference. I will give a big thumbs up for the management and team that made this happen.

I hope that a final push will get some of the long user requested items over the line.

While Serif may have started with a blank canvas, the challenge they set themselves is indeed a high target, so complements to them also.
 
Neither am I.

I was very upset with Adobe for so many issues with the usability on most Adobe platforms. I understand the challenge of bringing legacy applications forward. I am glad to see that something has happened inside the Lr / Ps product management in the last 12-18 months and I have seen substantial improvements to so many items that were under the hood or barely visible (in both Lr and Ps) which have been professionally and almost silently resolved. These make a big difference. I will give a big thumbs up for the management and team that made this happen.

I hope that a final push will get some of the long user requested items over the line.

While Serif may have started with a blank canvas, the challenge they set themselves is indeed a high target, so complements to them also.
It is good to hear that Adobe is finally allocating some resources toward LR/PS... It was milked for far too long.

Yeah Serif has done an amazing job.
 
For $25 I purchased Affinity but haven't looked at it.
 
I'm the OP with a little update:
I've ended up upgrading to 10.13 as Photoshop CS4 did actually work there after all!
The key was to install it on an earlier MacOS/OSX version (I installed it within 10.12), then upgrade the drive to 10.13 as its apparently just the Adobe CS4 installer which can't handle 10.13.

I also purchased Affinity Photo (at a 50% discount) after having tried out the trial version and found it to appear like a good Photoshop alternative. Alas I haven't quite gotten round to using it properly yet. I'm so accustomed to using Photoshop for little things and really need to spend some time re-learning things with Affinity, but hope to get there soon.
 
Affinity Photo is priced low like many of the “Photoshop lite” imitators with limited feature sets, but don’t mistake it for one of those — it is close enough to Photoshop to be a viable alternative for a lot of people. Most of the differences are not obvious, easier to spot for pro/power users. Don’t let slight UI differences distract you; if you don’t see a feature from Photoshop right away, take the time to figure out where Affinity put it, because most Photoshop features are in there in some form.

Although I’ve spent some time trying out Affinity Photo, I haven’t done a lot of super critical production work with it (I still do all that in Photoshop). I have read some grumblings online that certain features may not produce the same level of quality of output as Photoshop. But it might be good enough, at least if the feature is there, Affinity can work to improve it. In any case the software certainly punches above its price class.

Also very important to understand is that it isn’t just a question of whether Affinity Photo is “as good as” Photoshop. If you become experienced and comfortable with Affinity Photo, you might start to ask questions the other way too. The next time you use the current version of Photoshop you might be surprised that Affinity Photo is actually more advanced than Photoshop in some ways. For example, Affinity Photo has nondestructive Live Filters, so that when you apply something like Unsharp Mask as a Live Filter to a layer, you can double-click it to edit the filter settings. In Photoshop, using Unsharp Mask nondestructively is possible only if you remembered to take the extra step to first convert the layer to a Smart Object; otherwise it’s destructive.

A couple other quick examples: Affinity Photo has a Metadata panel. In Photoshop, EXIF/IPTC metadata is not visible unless you open the modal Info dialog box. Also some users have wanted Adobe to add a waveform and vectorscope (popular in video editing) as color correction reference tools in Lightroom and Photoshop; Affinity Photo already has that today. In Photoshop, the popular technique of frequency separation must be done as a number of manual steps (or an action); Affinity Photo has a built-in Frequency Separation filter.

This might all be academic for now, since you got Photoshop CS4 running on macOS 10.13. But CS4 will never run on the current macOS 10.15 or the just-announced macOS 11; if you upgrade your system that far or buy a new Mac, that is when you’ll have to decide between subscribing to the current version of Photoshop or switching full time to Affinity Photo.
 
If someone does buy Affinity and is looking for tutorials, have a look at Udemy Online Courses - Learn Anything, On Your Schedule | Udemy

Their Solid Foundations course is currrently on offer at £13.95 (reduced from £99,95), and I'm impressed with the professional production and presentation. It doesn't cover RAW development, but I have Lightroom for that :)
It does start with the very basics, but for me that's OK because it helps me get familiar with the interface.
 
That's a great deal!
Do you know of other tutorials which aren't so "in depth"? I'm mostly at the stage where I have to re-learn where things are located but not the whole workflow. Come to think of it, I think Affinity might have a user forum where this sort of thing can be asked.
 
Not sure about other tutorials in general. This is the list of courses offered by the author of Solid Foundations (sorry about the format, it's an extract from a pdf)

About the courses I offer

offer a comprehensive selection of courses for Affinity Photo which go into detail about the various things you can do with Affinity Photo.

ӽӽIf you want a detailed course that focuses on the various tools Affinity Photo has to offer, then the ‘Solid Foundations’ course could be right for you. Enter this coupon - EFOUNDATIONS - for a large discount off the full price. Go here - Affinity Photo: Solid Foundations

ӽӽIf you want a course that focuses on various image enhancing workflows then the ‘Beginner to Pro via Reference and Workflow’ course could be right for you. Enter this coupon - EWORKFLOW - for a large discount off the full price. Go here - Affinity Photo: Beginner to Pro via Reference and Workflow

ӽӽIf you are in a hurry to learn the most important stuff, then Affinity Photo: The Fast Guide could be what you need. Enter the coupon EFASTGUIDE for a large discount off the full price.

ӽӽFor a course that assumes you are comfortable with the basics but you’d like to know various techniques for things like photo restoration, natural media effects and black and white recoloring, then the ‘Little Box of Tricks’ course could suit you. Enter this coupon - ETRICKS - for a large discount off the full price. Go here - Affinity Photo: The Little Box of Tricks

ӽӽFor a comprehensive look at using the Develop Persona to enhance RAW files, go here - Affinity Photo: Raw Image Development. Enter this coupon - EDEVELOP - for a large discount off the full price.

ӽӽFor a workflow based course specializing in developing landscapes, go here - Affinity Photo: Developing Landscapes . Enter this coupon - ELANDSCAPES - for a large discount off the full price.
 
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