General Feedback regarding Affinity Photo

[jumbodufus]

On the whole I would have to say I am pleased with Affinity Photo although feature wise it is not much different from Serif  Photo Plus 6. The depth of editing is immense and a match for Photoshop which I have also used. I would use it if i needed to use deep editing capabilities such as cut outs and layer adjustments. However in my opinion where Affinity Photo falls short and where improvements need to be made to match either Photoshop or Lightroom is in the image sharpening department. In my opinion Affinity is quite disappointing in this respect because it lacks sensitivity. Maybe I would use it to sharpen with a High Pass Filter but the Unsharp Masking is disappointing and less sensitive than even that of Lightroom. i have found that even my Canon Software can produce considerably sharper images that are far sharper and less blacked up. Fine detail is preserved with both Unsharp Masking and basic sharpeners whereas I tend to find that with Affinity I am loosing colour sensitivity ( tends to blacken things up) and fine detail. I have tried it with a number of portrait images and in my opinion Affinity falls short in this area against both Lightroom and Canon ( camera supplied editing software). this means that I am having to swap about programmes to do the sharpening which is slightly annoying that i am unable to complete all my editing successfully in Affinity. In Affinity Photo there is a huge choice of outputs and jpg converters but in Lightroom no choice is given nor in Canon but the results are just as good if not better. I think that these are basic requirements and that Affinity should have been able to get in right but unfortunately in my opinion it has not. To be a truly serious contender to Adobe it needs to get these small but important basics right and when it does it will certainly rival Adobe PS and Lightroom but until then I am afraid I will still need to go to other programmes to complete these essential steps.

 

I have provided examples. The file names provide clues as to the editing paths used. The one developed in Lightroom was taken into Affinity Photo simply to deal tidy up the stray hairs and get rid of them. That was its only Layer edit in Affinity. I gave the sharpeners in Affinity the best try but to my opinion the results from Lightroom and Canon are both superior & sharper, less blocky and seem to be much smoother generally. I have tried to get the same with Affinity Photo but it has eluded me. In Affinity I used a Live Filter Layer with both Unsharp Mask and High Pass.