Adobe's Photoshop has dominated the landscape for photo editing pretty much since its debut in 1990, and it has amassed a large community of users and developers. Its massive popularity has only contributed to it being that much better, since tons of resources are poured into its development.

But that doesn't mean there aren't rivals, and in 2015, a company called Serif debuted its competitor: Affinity Photo. Despite being much younger than Photoshop, Affinity Photo has developed a strong reputation for itself as a solid alternative. Not only does it have a lot of tools available, it's also priced in a more consumer-friendly way. But can it really be a replacement for Photoshop? Let's take a closer look.

Affinity Photo vs Adobe Photoshop: Price and licensing

Let's talk about the first big difference between these two apps, which is how they're sold to you and how much they cost. As much as Photoshop is a popular tool, Adobe has also become well-known for its less-than-ideal pricing schemes. The standard Photoshop app is available as a subscription as part of Adobe Creative Cloud, and the cheapest plan, which includes both Photoshop and Lightroom, in addition to 20GB of cloud storage, costs $9.99 per month. However, this is on a one-year commitment, meaning you have to stay subscribed for a full year. If you cancel the subscription, Adobe will charge you half the cost of the months remaining in your commitment.

Affinity Photo is completely different in this regard. Serif sells this product as a one-time purchase. A license for Affinity Photo V2 (the current version) costs $69.99 (prices are a bit higher in Europe), and then it's yours forever. You can also buy a bundle called the Affinity V2 Universal License, which includes Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher. The problem with this approach is that, at some point, a totally new version of Affinity may be released and force you to pay again. When Affinity V2 launched in late 2022, some users who bought the V1 version were burned by having to pay for the new version, especially since the company doesn't offer much of a discount for those upgrading. It's something to keep in mind, though it should be a few years before the next major release, and you're likely saving a lot of money in that time so you can pay for the upgrade if you want it. Affinity Photo also has a more generous 180-day free trial, so you have time to see if you can get used to it.

Both apps are available for Windows 11 (or 10) and macOS, with separate versions for the iPad.

UI and ease of use

Affinity will feel very familiar

Photo editing software is pretty complex with all the tools it offers, so no matter how you slice it, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve if you're new to editing photos. However, if you're familiar with Photoshop, chances are it won't take too long to get used to Affinity Photo, either. As the newer player on the field, Affinity Photo took a lot of cues from Photoshop's design, so the vast majority of the tools you could want to use are available in just about the same position as they would be in Photoshop. Some options are a little different, but overall, it won't take too long to get used to the UI in Affinity. The primary difference you'll see right away is that the tools have colored icons in Affinity.

However, as a Photoshop user, there were some things that weren't immediately obvious to me in Affinity that you'll have to get used to. In Photoshop, after selecting an object, you can right-click it and quickly duplicate it to a new layer, but that's not the case in Affinity (instead, you can simply copy and paste or use the top menu bar). Also, a selection doesn't automatically disappear after duplicating it, which was a bit odd. These aren't necessarily criticisms, just things you'll have to be ready for if you're switching from Photoshop.

If you are learning how to edit and compose shots, it can be useful to have some lessons available, and both Photoshop and Affinity have something for you here. Photoshop offers a ton of tutorials across different categories and skill levels, and it's the clear winner in this regard. Affinity also has a lot of tutorials on its YouTube channel, but that does mean watching a video and finding a way to follow along on your own. There are also a few tutorials built into Affinity that serve as a training ground in themselves, but they're very few. Photoshop comes with a Discover app that presents the tutorials in a more friendly way, so it's a bit better in this regard.

Features and tools

AI gives Photoshop the edge

Serif has clearly tried its best to replicate Photoshop's features as much as it can, and a lot of is here. All the selection tools you'd expect are here, you can create new layers and masks, and develop RAW images with all the tools you'd expect, adjusting exposure, contrast, black and white levels, and so on. There's a lot we would have to cover if we went over everything that both tools include.

Developing RAW images is, I would say, a little easier in Affinity than in Photoshop. With Photoshop, if you want to use a RAW image, you need to first develop it in the Camera Raw plugin, or use Lightroom to edit it first. Affinity Photo has the whole workflow integrated into the main app, which I feel makes a bit more sense and simplifies things. It has all the adjustments you'd expect, including noise reduction (or addition), as well as lens correction with the ability to detech the lens you're using, which seemed to work totally fine in my experience. Almost anything you can do in Photoshop, you can also do in Affinity Photo.

The big caveat here is AI. Adobe has been betting hard on artificial intelligence and Adobe Firefly to improve its tools, and it's really paying off. Tools like object selection are far smarter in Photoshop, and it's much easier to select exactly what you want without having to manually cover every area of an image, since Photoshop can detect an object more intelligently. Similarly, Photoshop has generative fill, which can be used to erase unwanted elements from a picture and replace them with something else. Affinity Photo does have tools for removing blemishes and smaller objects, but it's just not capable of fully replacing a large portion of a photo and producing a lifelike result. Similarly, AI-powered noise reduction is not available in Affinity Photo, and that's another feature that's very useful in Photoshop.

Affinity supports Photoshop plugins

Something else that's important to consider with apps like this is the plugin support. Photoshop being as popular as it is means there is a never-ending array of plugins you can download and use with it to provide additional features and capabilities for your editing workflow. It's hard to compete with such a huge community of tools, but thankfully, Affinity does support Photoshop plugins. While I can't vouch for every plugin working just as well as it does in Photoshop, the goal seems to be for every Photoshop plugin to work.

Photoshop still benefits from its integration with the rest of the Adobe ecosystem, though. If you have other Adobe apps, Photoshop offers interoperability with a lot of them, like InDesign or Fresco, or, of course, Lightroom. That being said, Affinity Photo can also play nice with Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, so it's not completely standalone.

Size and resource usage

Finally, let's touch on the size and resource usage of these apps. This may not matter a ton to you, since you likely have a fairly powerful PC to run Photoshop in the first place, but it's good to know. A quick comparison between the installation sizes shows that Photoshop takes over 4.5GB of space, while Affinity Photo 2 comes in at under 1.4GB. That's just the raw installation without any plugins, but it's still a pretty big difference, and that's enough space for a lot of projects to work on.

We also tried a simple test of simply opening the apps and seeing which one used more resources, and Photoshop seems to be the hungrier of the two as well. Not by a huge margin, but just launching the app and opening a RAW image, Photoshop used about 1GB more of RAM compared to Affinity Photo.

Which one is right for you?

Affinity Photo comes very close to replacing Photoshop across everything it does. The only thing really holding it back is the lack of AI-powered features that make Photoshop so easy to easy if you're a relatively inexperienced editor. Right now, that's where a lot of the value of Photoshop is, and Affinity can't take that away just yet.

That being said, not everyone wants to use these AI features, and a proficient Photoshop user can probably be just fine without them. If you're familiar with the more advanced tools in Photoshop, you can use Affinity just as well, and you'll be saving a lot of money going that route.

• Adobe Photoshop

  See at Adobe

• Affinity Photo

  $70 at Affinity