Most people working with RAW images have probably considered getting a Lightroom subscription if they don’t already have one. It’s the standard for handling RAW files and for good reason. Adobe has some of the best editing software on the market, but its products aren’t the most accessible. Luckily, Affinity is now free, and it includes everything from the old graphics trio - Photo, Designer, and Publisher.
Affinity Photo is now called the Pixel workspace, and it still has the Develop persona for processing RAW images. It’s not an exact 1:1 match for Lightroom, both in terms of features and UI, but it has everything you need for the full RAW development pipeline. And the best part is that the whole app is free to use. Here’s why it can replace Adobe’s Lightroom…
What exactly is the Develop Persona in Affinity?
The place where you develop RAW shots
If you’re not entirely caught up to speed: Affinity has merged its graphics suite into one new app, namely the old Affinity Photo, Publisher, and Designer. They’re now split into separate workspaces in the unified app, namely Pixel, Layout, and Vector, respectively. Pixel is what Affinity Photo used to be, and it brought the entire workspace with it, including the Persona selection.
Affinity’s Personas are sub-workspaces for specific tasks. They include Liquify for warping images, Tone Map for working with HDR, and the Develop persona for developing RAW images. The latter is where you want to go for editing your RAW files - you’ll find it on the left side of the top toolbar.
The Develop space is basically Affinity’s dedicated environment for turning RAW sensor data into usable images. It’s designed for the early stage of photo editing, before you start compositing, retouching, or doing any pixel-level work. It includes all the bits and bobs you need for color correction and color grading.
The cool thing about Affinity’s architecture is that the Pixel workspace is right there, so once your RAW files are developed, you’ll be directed right back to Pixel for further creative editing. This is one less step than Lightroom’s “Edit in” feature that sends your developed shots over to Photoshop, which already makes it more user-friendly than Lightroom.
Better tool access
Affinity is just easier to navigate
Out of the gate, you’ll find a bunch of tools in the left panel that you can use right away, whereas you’d have to dig for the same ones in Lightroom. There’s the White Balance tool, which lets you quickly correct images with inconsistent lighting by just dragging across the canvas. It works by sampling the pixels underneath your cursor and calculating the average color from that area - letting go of the mouse sets a white balance correction from that sample to the entire image. This is a major win for anyone who’s new to RAW editing or doesn’t have time to shuffle through the rest of the features.
The Blemish tool in the left panel also works by sampling areas from your own file. It’s a quick way to get rid of little imperfections - but don’t expect any major pixel replacements, it’s not generative. There’s also the Red Eye Removal tool if your image has people or animals with red pupils.
I really like that all the masking options are also located in the left panel; it creates some separation from the rest of the color and lighting tools. You’ve got Mask Paint, Mask Erase, and Mask Gradient tools for different masking techniques via addition or removal. And all the lighting and color adjustments can be applied to each mask individually.
The lighting and color adjustments
For detailed editing
Affinity sports everything you need for color and lighting correction in RAW shots. The right panel has all the basic controls for exposure, color enhancement, white balance, and shadows/highlights. You’ve also got detailed color editing with tone curves, black & white editing, and split toning. All the lens options are there too, including lens corrections, defringing, and chromatic aberration removal.
It has a couple more detail adjustments such as noise reduction/addition. For advanced color correction and grading, you’ll be spending most of your time in this panel of controls. The masks you created with the masking tools are also in this panel.
Affinity also gives you a histogram and scope waveforms, though I admittedly rarely use these as I’m not a pro photographer. The navigation panel is at the bottom, and the clipping controls are at the top for identifying areas that are blown out or too dark. Furthermore, Affinity lets you create and add custom presets, so you don’t have to start from scratch with every shot of the same batch.
There’s no need to pay for Lightroom
Affinity is not a 100% match for Lightroom’s offerings. There aren’t auto corrections like you’ll find in Lightroom, but you can enable the Develop Assistant which makes automatic tonal and exposure adjustments when you load a RAW file. It also doesn’t have batch editing, so it’s not suitable for those who work with large photoshoots. But for the average shooter who needs to edit a couple of shots a day, it more than suffices. Plus, there’s no subscription.