Best Photo Editing Apps for Mac in 2018. The built-in Photos app on Mac offers several useful photo editing tools. You can crop, adjust lighting and color, set the white balance, add filters, remove unwanted blemishes, and a few more things. Affinity Photo supports unlimited layers, groups, layer adjustments, filters, masking, and more. Mac App Store is the simplest way to find and download apps for your Mac. To download Affinity Photo from the Mac App Store, you need a Mac with OS X 10.6.6 or later.
In celebration of being named Apple’s best Mac App of the year,. This is the first discount of any kind we’ve seen for this powerful photo editor since it was released earlier this year.
In addition to receiving top honors from Apple, it has also been named an Editors’ Choice and amassed a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from hundreds of App Store users. 5 years in the making, Affinity Photo redefines the boundaries for professional photo editing software for the Mac.
With a meticulous focus on workflow it offers sophisticated tools for enhancing, editing and retouching your images in an incredibly intuitive interface with all the power and performance you need. Unsure if Affinity Photo is for you? Take advantage of this to put it through its paces.
Affinity Photo for desktop (Mac + PC) $50 Usually, the price of software comes at the end of the review, but with Affinity Photo 1.5, the image editor for Mac and Windows, the price is the starting point, along with a prominent qualifier from the product’s website: 'No subscription.' Key Features. Professional editing tools for almost anyone who needs to manipulate images.
Edits are mostly non-destructive. Windows and Mac support. Inexpensive, with no subscription required.
Batch processing Affinity Photo’s developer, knows its audience. When Adobe shifted Photoshop and nearly all of its other products to a, it prompted an outcry from customers who didn’t want to be locked into a perpetual fee. Four years later, despite the move being apparently successful for Adobe, subscription pricing continues to be a point of contention for many people, turning into an opportunity for developers like Serif. If you’re already familiar with Adobe’s flagship, it won’t take long to orient yourself in Affinity Photo. However, simply offering a less expensive image editor isn’t enough. We’re beyond the point where photographers will put up with limited software to save a few bucks, and with Affinity Photo, we don’t have to.
You won’t find some of the specialized features Photoshop includes, such as its 3D tools, but most everything else is there – sometimes to Affinity Photo’s detriment. Getting Started Affinity Photo's personas break up the editing experience into five main categories.
Software should be evaluated on its own merits, and for the most part I’m looking at Affinity Photo through that lens. How does it perform for photographers? Does it get in the way when handling familiar operations? Does it improve the editing experience? Comparisons to Photoshop inevitably come up, and I’ll refer to them when needed, but this isn’t specifically a comparative review between Affinity Photo and Photoshop. That said, if you’re already familiar with Adobe’s flagship, it won’t take long to orient yourself in Affinity Photo.
If photo editing beyond the basics is new to you, it’s easy to pick up. Working modes, aka 'Personas' Affinity Photo is built around four working modes, referred to as “personas,” each of which contains its own specialized tools. These personas include: Photo, Develop, Tone Mapping and Export. The Photo persona is the main editing interface, with adjustments, layers, masks, and the like. The Liquify persona is a playground for distorting areas when retouching (creating an editable mesh of the entire image and then pushing and pulling the pixels to do things like make areas seem slimmer or to correct distortion).
The Develop persona kicks in when opening a raw file for pre-processing, akin to Adobe Camera Raw. The Tone Mapping persona is exclusive for working with HDR (high dynamic range) effects, which can apply to single images as well as several merged shots. And lastly, the Export persona provides tools for creating versions of the image outside the application, from specifying file types and compression levels to preset slices. You’ll also find tools for painting and drawing, including extensive controls for creating and manipulating brushes, but for the sake of brevity, I’m looking at the application in terms of editing photos. I am a current CS6 and CS3 user (different computers) and was looking for a replacement for future upgrades.
I have been using Photoshop professionally since PS2.0 in the early 90s. I needed to have a viable serious replacement with all the features in Photoshop. I use most filters, blend modes, masking tools, etc. After researching all the alternatives to the Adobe subscription model, I was attracted to Affinity products.
I have found the interface 'similar' to CS6. However, if you are familiar with Photoshop, there is NOT 1-to-1 functionality to accomplish tasks. This may frustrate some previous Photoshop users (it frustrated me at first too).
That said, I stuck with it, learned the new flow and now consider the $50.00 price tag a give away. As with any powerful program, the more complicated it is, the steeper learning curve. If you need something simpler, there are plenty of free choices out there. I tried Affinity after PS CS3 no longer ran on my computer following the Windows Fall Creators Update. As a Photoshop user since version one, I just didn't care for Affinity, found it had a rather steep learning curve; it was too dark and busy looking, despite tweaks to the interface. So I downloaded a trial version of Photoshop Elements 2018 and felt right at home using Expert Mode.
I don't mind that PSE double the price of Affinity because editing is so very familiar and I'm impressed with some of the features that were initially new to me. Saying that, PSE is missing some of the more sophisticated features of it's big brother, which might be available in Affinity. I don't personally need some of those missing features but you might. I highly recommend downloading a trial version before buying. Tried PS 12 - 14, did not really like it. I don't care for being locked into a subscription mode for Photoshop either.
AP seemed the reasonable way to go and used that and results are good. What I don't like about AP is that is does get pretty confusing to me, at times, to the point where I have to start over. I don't understand why AP cannot produce a manual, which I would gladly purchase, to help with some processing aspects. They have great support group and promptly answer questions online.
Just wish I had a source document to help through some questions or problems encountered. AP says they are working on one but I have been hearing that for over a year now with no results. My camera gear is minimal. Fuji X pro 2 and the trio of 2.0 primes.
I have tried lots of software (owning it all). Affinity is a bargain for someone who wants Photoshop functionality.
It is not a Lightroom replacement. ( I hate Adobe). I have used On1 raw, LR, Picktorial, Capture1, Affiinity, Iridient, and a few others.
I look for the easiest way to process a raw file while getting optimum results. That is Picktorial 3.0. Hands down especially for Fuji X files. I use LR on the Ipad Pro 1.5 and hope Picktorial steps up to that Platform because in the future the Ipad Pro is the platform I want to work in. Affinity for me is just way overboard.
Too much stuff that makes me waste to much time. It also needs to be non-destructive in some of its features. I keep LR subscription because it syncs from Ipad to Mac. That is the only reason.
Don't rely on software to compensate for your inability to use your camera. A good photographer learns composition. A good photographer learns their equipment. A good photographer can accomplish the same result as a photographer with 10x larger budget.
EG: I want to photograph birds. Do I buy a 800mm lens at £10000 or do I buy a ghillie suit at £80 or a hide at £200, use unscented soap and some knowledge of the birds I want to photograph. The internet is full of gear heads with zero talent tossing off over how the next camera off the conveyer belt is the must have thing in order to make their life complete. I really despise morons that belt on about how the dynamic range of camera X is so much better than camera Y. Talentless, bad photographers will always bang on about equipment. Good photographers get on with what they have and will be more likely to produce good results.
Affinity Photo, Photoshop and the like are the digital equivalents of the darkroom processes we used for film. I don't agree that post-processing is a minor or optional part of the production of a good picture. Anyone can take a photo, but composition and camera technique are only the start of making a picture.
![Affinity photo app for mac laptop Affinity photo app for mac laptop](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125513297/834269492.png)
A rant against post-processing software is as irrelevant as one against Edward Weston's darkroom technique. New equipment makes gear-heads happy, even if it doesn't make them better photographers – good luck to them, but they clearly aren't the only snobs on the block. I agree with several of the comments - the UX is terrible, inconsistent and confusing. And far from simple, logical. Yes - I am happy I paid for this. I can't afford Adobe. And I love open source, but the GIMP simply hasn't matured enough, and honestly looks janky, which I don't want for something I love.
But I just don't know what they're trying to do with the user experience?. The menus are illogical. Things you expect to be grouped together are not, but scattered all overt he place. The live filters - takes up huge amounts of screen estate. destructive / non-destructive is inconsistent. It annoys, confuses, wastes my brain time, and shows they don't care enough to get it right. The Designer application for vector graphics is much much better.
They should take some lessons from the free LightZone (not Lightroom) which has a very simple idea - layers of non-destructive changes, applied to adjustable shapes over the image. Everything is adjustable at any time. 'Don't rely on software to compensate for your inability to use your camera'.
This statement displays ignorance about the nature of digital photography. We use our raw capture as a first step, and then work the image creatively with PP software to it's final version. This is the modern version of what great photographers did in the darkroom. It is 50% of modern photography, and as important and creative as is the capture.
I would never consider using a photo straight OOC, as it is only half-finished. OTOH, I totally agree that a good photographer relies on skill, talent and experience - not on gear. Gear obsession and pixel-peeping - rampant on these forums - has little to do with good photography. I've developed skills with LR and PS for many years, and have no intentions of changing to a new program. 'Once you’ve clicked the Develop button, your edits are baked into that pixel layer. Did you overcrank the contrast when you imported the raw file? Sorry, you can’t go back into the Develop persona and change just that attribute; you’d have to select the pixel layer in the Photo persona, switch to the Develop persona, and then apply a negative contrast value to compensate.
If you made a lot of changes, like gradient overlays, you’ll need to start over.' Thanks for making that clear. Since my first real understanding of editing was with CNX2, with its ability to go back and easily redo any step, that's how I think sw should work.
The fact that Affinity doesn't means it's off my list for consideration (and saved bookmarks). Actually, I probably couldn't get my head around its use pf PS icons, rather than text-labeled titles for options, as most other editors use.
Text labels let me look and easily choose what I want to do, even if I'm using an editor with which I'm not that familiar. I have also trialled many editing programs but Photo Director was the one that I liked the most and have purchased. Compared to Affinity Photo I found Photo Director much more intuitive to use. It has advanced editing features which made it a 'must buy' for me. The cost was very attractive too, similar to what Affinity Photo is currently being sold for.
Version 9 of Photo Director has just been released so I'm waiting for an upgrade offer from Cyberlink to arrive in my in-box and will upgrade from v.8. In continuing to play with my trial version, I've come to the realization that Affinity isn't perfect, it's a good start, and it has some interesting features. But above all, it's $50 flat fee, no subscription. So that's about 4.5 months worth of an Adobe Photography subscription, if you want to put it into perspective. It could be worse, and I could probably get over the jittering during photo editing, but for $50, it's a great deal. The other route I could recommend would be to go with C1 Pro at around $300 flat fee (although they do offer a subscription now, which I didn't see 2 years ago so it must be fairly new).
A bit more expensive, but a bit more polished than Affinity. I think if Serif can really improve the issues (jitter) from Affinity, we may have a real competitive product, and if they can keep the price less than C1 Pro ($300), then I think they have a chance, especially with hobbyists who can't justify the high(er) cost of C1 or Adobe subscriptions. Affinity Photo is for more than Capture One. We need to remember that there are more of a artists than photographers. A photographer is there to capture as is and it is their profession. Artists can be there to use camera as content creation tool and then uses other tools to create the artwork, photographs being just a tiny pieces in work.
That is the Affinity Photo target goal, not directly photographers like Capture One or Lightroom. So if person is a photographer, then Capture One is already a better choice. But if a person is artist, then Affinity Photo is better.
To create the artwork like in that video, majority of the gear is meaningless as the quality comes from elsewhere. Just like portrait photographer quality comes with location, lighting, model and pose and not from a thin DOF or widest DR.
Affinity Photo is still the most frustrating software I have ever used. On a MacBook Pro is was really slow. But most important: It is still the first and only software I never understood. Using Aperture for years, I was never able to edit a single photo with Affinity Photo.
Watched a lot of the great tutorials. More than once.
So: I have to admit that I am too silly. It's really sad. Just take a short glance at the tutorial videos. Great features! Perhaps it would work better with my new Ryzen 7-system and Windows 10. But I fear: my learning curve would stay the same.;-).
I have been using Afinity and On1 Photo RAW 2017 fro over 3 months now and am delighted with the results from both. I parallel I have let my Adobe subscription run during this period of adjustment and now feel but now feel confident enough in the ability of this software and the way both software developers are adding to and updating their software that I am ready to cancel my Adobe subscription. Together with Topaz’s plugin collection, Affinity and On1 Raw I have all of the tools and photo editing software that I require without being locked into a subscription that dictates my workflow and cash outlay. PS Adobe subscription just cancelled. Now I am a free photographer! There are countless people infuriated by Adobe's crazy decision to make all their icons 50 shades of grey!
Some icons are so similar (identical in Acrobat's case) that it is impossible to make a quick tool selection. The whole point of an icon is that its distinctive appeance breeds instant recognition. Adobe, in their idiocy, think it's fine to spend three seconds each time identifying the stupid grey icon you want. The price of Affinity proves once again Adobe's obscene greed charging what they do for what is nearly all ancient code. 'It’s also frustratingly opaque: The software will apply a tone adjustment, but the edits aren’t reflected in the settings anywhere.' That's the way a profile tone curve works: it's applied during initial rendering, before you start playing with the image. Most raw converters do not let you play with it but bury it into the selected camera 'Standard','Landscape','Portrait','Vivid' etc.
It's necessary to squeeze the typically larger DR of the camera into the typically much smaller DR of the output device. Take a read of this as to why it's important in some cases to be able to adjust it. Make sure to also scroll down to the image of the standard curve applied by Adobe. Adobe used the license for version model until recently. We all know they were successful in forcing upgrades. There are many factors that force upgrades - camera compatibility, HW compatibility, improvements to productivity, OS compatibility, lens profiles, new capabilities that have come to fashion and you need to be on par with competition. You need only one or two of those factors every year and there is your subscription model working.subscription does not require the vendor to do silly things to force upgrades.
Some are saying that 100 $/Euro for Affinity licenses is less than 400 for Adobe subscription. That would not change if Adobe was selling licenses. Adobe is much more mature and capable and pricey.
It is a choice between low price that does the job in most cases but falls short sometimes and the best in industry. I know this sounds obvious and maybe you have,but I would check the website (or download the trial and try to open one from a D850). Doesn't cost anything. This might be of some help: Looks like someone was able to with a beta version. My guess is in the current version, it may not be able to as it was released prior to the D850 And I'm wondering if the issue he's talking about has more to do with uncompressed RAWs, which can be large (probably 100MB+, as they were 75MB on the D810 at 36 MP, I would imagine the uncompressed RAWs on the D850 are a bit larger at 45 MP).
It could also be the software rendering engine too. Probably the same here. I can't justify getting the D850, at least not now or even next year.
I don't do this professionally, and my D750 is cranking out perfectly good photos (no issues whatsoever). I mean, yeah, I'd like to not have the low-pass AA filter (if I really wanted to, I could have it removed now that it's out of warranty.) and 45MP would be nice for my landscape photography. But I just can't justify a $3000 purchase at this time. Maybe in another 2 years, hopefully the price will have dropped a little by then (and the good part is that I already own the lenses so I could just get the body only.) As to Affinity, I think they will update it to support the D850 files and RAW editing, if, of course, they want to stay competitive with Adobe and other developers creating RAW photo editing suites.
The same could happen to any software package you go with. What if you switched to C1 Pro, and then they went subscription-only after 5 years (currently they offer subscription or perpetual license). Then you're in the same boat. I don't know why people think they're screwed.
You can switch. And I mean once you know what the sliders are in one program, I would think it's pretty easy to figure them out in others (they generally use similar names, like Shadows, Highlights, curves, levels, adjustment brushes, etc). The features might be in a different place or buried in a menu somewhere, but the learning curve on a new suite (especially C1 Pro) is a lot lower I think once you master one editing suite.
But that's just my experience. Others here have switched (I assume) from Adobe to C1 Pro or others without much fuss. In fact C1 Pro has tools to convert your LR catalog for you. I was playing around with this but then thought, what's the point.
I use adobe for the catalogging. If I'm paying for the photographers bundle I get Photoshop. I really do not like Adobe but. Using anyother catalog system say Apple Photos, bringing in 1 photo at a time to say MacPhun(if I wasn't going to use Lightroom) for more editing that Photos can't do, save the photo then go into Affinity to do a Photoshop type edit. That's alot of photo editing apps. Would be nice if there was a catalog system with Affinity.
@Eric, I know how you feel, I am not that far behind. I have been using LR since beta.
I actually like using it (apart from the speed). C1 is clunky in places, the grad tool needs updating. Layers can be cumbersome. But there are no modules, the mask tools superior to LR especially colour selection masks.
The DIY lens correction is superb. Despite how much I actually want to hate it, I just get a better more pleasing colour from C1. After years of being slowly driven mad by constant chopping and changing I have finally decided to throw all my metaphorical eggs into the Sony and C1 basket. I also have DXO Optics Pro and Corel Aftershot. Been and gone is Aperture, RawTherepee, Lightzone, Darktable, Iridient. All in search of the preferred output. I keep coming back to C1.
I have enjoyed the journey and trailing software. There are pros and cons to all. Preference, choice and workflow is a very personal thing, and so it should be. Best Regards. Thanks, was about to ask the same question.
I don't need to do heavy post-processing or layering, and most of my work simply involves colour/white balance corrections, straightening and cropping, fine tuning the exposure, shadows and contrast. If i think the image already looks pretty good when I'm shooting on Fuji, I just work with the JPEG file directly. So Lightroom is much more suitable for my needs than Photoshop or some equivalent.
As much as I want to shift away from LR, I've just not found a similar workflow management and basic post-processing tool that's as functional to use. Dx0 Optics Pro is too resource hungry for handling large workflows. I break out Silkypix when I feel I need some sharpness from my Fuji raw files that Lightroom isn't capable of giving, but otherwise I hate using it. I'm still mostly using LR 5.7 instead of 6 as it's far less resource hungry, but it doesn't support the raw files from my X-Pro 2.