Affinity Photo is a software solution for photography and creative professionals, a fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iOS, from Serif Ltd.
$21.99
one-time fee
Pixlr
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Pixlr is a photo editing tool formerly part of the Autodesk suite of products, now from 123RF from the Inmagine Group (acquired 2017).
For single-person teams or very small teams, I think Affinity Photo is great as it has a one-off cost and no ongoing subscriptions. If people are familiar with the Adobe products it might take a period of adjusting to Affinity Photo. It might also be overkill for some people's needs. But it does offer everything and room to grow. So weighing up what you need to do with photos and seeing if it fits is important.
If you're in a situation where you're regularly creating content for a website, social media page, or even printed materials, Pixlr is a great option! It allows you to create something simple from scratch (with just a solid background and text) or something more complex (with multiple pictures, layers, fonts, shadowing, etc.). It's our go-to method for creating content. If you're someone who isn't very tech savvy, the learning curve for using Pixlr effectively could be discouraging. The interface is intuitive, but there's a lot to it
Almost all of Adobe Photoshop's features for a fraction of the cost. It was an easy decision for our organization.
The interface and most of the features are an almost mirror image of Photoshop. Flat fees instead of high yearly fees are much more desirable for our small team.
They have a great support forum for the little one-offs that aren't quite like the Photoshop app, or don't have the same exact name as Photoshop. The forum really helps when this happens. The YouTube support from the company and other users has been very helpful as well.
I use Sketch as my primary vector design tool. Affinity allows me to take a .ai, .eps, or other proprietary format and convert it to .svg for use/manipulation with Sketch and back. I can't say enough for this feature. It has helped me stay less pigeon-holed into Adobe products, which have lacked innovation for a long time in my opinion.
For a regular user of Photoshop, Affinity is a very easy transition. It has all the same features and once you adapt to it, and it provides a quick return on investment.
I don't have direct experience with a member of Affinity's support, but their forum and YouTube videos that other users have made make it relatively easy to find similar features in Affinity that are available in Photoshop or Illustrator. The differences are negligible for our small, yet experienced team.
I think Affinity Photo is on par with Adobe PhotoShop. They are very similar products with both bringing many features users need. The main reason I picked Affinity Photo was its pricing of it. I didn't require Adobe products all the time. And felt they weren't offering me as much value.
Canva is a similar program using for creating content. I've tried out their suite as well but always end up coming back to Pixlr because of ease of use, and my familiarity with the product. They continue to make upgrades to the product and have always had what we feel we need to make top-notch looking graphics for our organization.
