Affinity Photo: New Photoshop Alternative For Mac Users

It’s been a long while since we have seen any real attempt to rival Adobe for the pro photo editing crown. Serif’s upcoming Affinity Photo software for Apple users proclaims is is going to do just that and even come up with a few innovations of it’s own.

Serif, the U.K. company behind Affinity Photo isn’t new. The company was founded in 1987 and has been developing different inexpensive alternative for graphic software for decades. Affinity Photo is it’s latest attempt at creating a pro graphic software for advanced photographers.

Affinity Photo – the next photo editing software for mac users

So what does the new software |(which will initially be aimed only at the relatively small targeted audience of Mac users) bring to the table? Here is a list of claims:

Faster processing (all real time/no previews).
Full CMYK support for printing.
16-bits per channel editing.
LAB color.
RAW processing (although it is not clear what cameras/lenses will be supported initially).
ICC color management.
Photoshop PSD and 64-bit plug-in compatibility.

All these are aimed at the more advanced users but from the video above it seems that the software will include more typical Photoshop-like features including lighting effects, filters and more.

Affinity Photo isn’t ready yet but Serif is looking for beta testers and if you are interested you can head out to their website and register as a tester and wait to see if you are approved. When the full version arrives pricing will also be different than Adobe’s cloud based service with a one time payment of $50 and full updates for 2 years (the software should be fully functional after this time period – unlike Photoshop CC current subscription based model.

If you are into Adobe alternatives – you might want to read our quick review of Mylio – an alternative to Lightroom, we published a few months ago.

As always you can find many image editing related videos on LensVid’s Photo editing section.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.