Hello.
I installed Affinity Photo yesterday to see if it can replace Adobe Photoshop for my needs. Note I don't use LightRoom so I am strictly talking about it as a RAW developer and JPG enhancer.
I use a Fuji X-T20 camera.
My computer is no speed demon, however it has served me well with Photoshop.
What I noticed with Affinity is that many actions, specifically opening images, takes a much longer time in Affinity.
Some examples:
RAW: PS takes about 5s, Affinity takes about 50s (10 times more!).
JPG: PS takes 3s, Affinity takes 4s (comparable here).
I also noticed I get very different results sometime, for example taking contrast down and cranking up clarity does very different things in PS and AP (in AP I get a very non-contrast image and clarity doesn't seem to add the local contrast like it does in PS). I actually found I can get somewhat similar results with tone mapping, but switching to that persona takes about a minute, which means that for that type of workflow it takes about 2 minutes in Affinity vs about 10 seconds (including adjustment time) in Photoshop.
Are there plans to improve performance? It is right now the #1 reason I may end up continuing my Photoshop subscription, as if the suggestion I'll get from Affinity or its users to buy a faster computer (10X faster than a quad with 8GB RAM and an SSD?) then it means an upfront cost of about $1,000 upfront which is equal to about 8 years of PS subscription.
Having said all this, my first impression of Affinity is favorable. It's the first such program I can see potentially replacing Photoshop for me, but definitely not as long as there are these performance issues.
Looking forward to responses from people who use Fuji X-Trans III cameras with Affinity or from Affinity.
Thanks,
Amnon
