It has now been five months since I did something I honestly never thought I would do: I completely walked away from Adobe Photoshop.
After using Photoshop as my photo-editing software of choice for around 15 years, I went cold turkey, cancelled my reliance on Adobe’s ecosystem and moved my entire photography workflow across to Affinity Photo. Five months later, I have absolutely no desire to go back.
That is probably the biggest compliment I can give Affinity. This is not a piece of software I have opened a few times, played around with and decided was “good for something free.”
I have actually used it. I have edited JPEGs, TIFFs and DNG RAW files from multiple camera systems, put it through the sort of everyday photographic work I would previously have handed straight to Photoshop, and so far it has never presented me with a problem that has made me wish Adobe was still sitting on my computer.
For my workflow, Affinity has effectively replicated every single action I regularly performed in Photoshop – and in many cases I have found the transition far easier than I expected.
And that is before we get to the rather extraordinary fact that Affinity is completely free. Not free for seven days. Not free with a heavily restricted feature set. Not free until you export your image.
Canva says the new Affinity is free to use with its professional pixel, vector and layout tools included, with free updates and new features continuing over time. You need a free Canva account to download and activate it, but there is no subscription required for the core application.
There is one caveat, and for me it barely qualifies as one. If you want to use Canva’s generative AI tools inside Affinity – including features such as Generative Fill, Generative Expand and generative editing – you will need a premium Canva subscription.
But I never really used those features when I was paying for Photoshop anyway. I edit photographs rather than reinvent them, so losing access to generative AI has had practically no effect on how I work.
If you can live without that side of modern image editing, what remains is an extraordinarily capable professional photo editor that costs absolutely nothing.
That distinction is important, because free photo-editing software has historically come with compromises. There is normally a missing feature, an awkward interface, limited RAW support or something else lurking around the corner that eventually sends you back toward paid software.
Affinity simply has not felt like that to me. Layers, masks, curves, selections, adjustments, retouching, resizing, sharpening, color work and RAW development are all there. And once you have spent a little time arranging the interface around the way you work, the experience becomes remarkably familiar.
This is not Affinity attempting to be a lightweight Photoshop alternative. For the photography work I actually do, it has become my Photoshop replacement.
And perhaps the most encouraging thing is that Affinity is not standing still. Version 3.3 has just arrived, with Canva describing it as Affinity’s biggest photography update yet, paying particular attention to RAW development.
Reusable RAW presets can now be carried across an entire shoot and into workflows including panoramas and focus merges, while the RAW tools themselves have gained broader controls over detail, color and tonal adjustments.
There are improvements to sharpening and detail refinement, hue and saturation curves, wider lens and camera support, Wavelet Denoise and updates to HDR workflows. There is even now a dedicated Astrophotography Studio for photographers working with stacked night-sky images.
RAW presets are probably one of the additions that interests me most, because this is precisely the sort of seemingly straightforward feature that begins to matter when software becomes part of a serious workflow.
Being able to create a look and then carry it across a series of photographs makes Affinity considerably more practical when you are processing larger shoots rather than working on one photograph at a time.
Likewise, additions such as Wavelet Denoise, improved RAW refinement and the new saturation and hue curves show that Affinity is not merely chasing flashy features for a press release. There is quite clearly an effort being made to improve the fundamentals that photographers use every day.
The full 3.3 update is considerably larger than that, but I think that is almost the point. Affinity keeps receiving meaningful updates without suddenly presenting the user with another bill.
Canva says Affinity will keep getting free updates and new features, and that makes the whole proposition feel very different from the subscription model I had become accustomed to over the years.
I spent so long paying for Adobe because Photoshop was simply part of my photographic life. It was the software I knew, the software I trusted and, perhaps more importantly, the software I did not really think about replacing.
Affinity has made me question why I accepted that recurring cost for so long.
Another part of this story still excites me: the iPad. Affinity says a new iPadOS version is in development and coming soon, although there is currently no announced release date. When that arrives, I think Affinity could become an even more disruptive proposition for photographers.
Put genuinely capable RAW development, layers, masks, retouching and professional photo-editing tools onto an iPad without attaching another mandatory monthly fee to them, and suddenly you have something that beginners can download simply because there is nothing to lose, while experienced photographers can install it because they already know exactly what those tools are capable of doing.
That is where I think Affinity could genuinely change the game. Free software removes the hardest part of convincing somebody to try something new. There is no purchasing decision and no subscription calculation. You download it, throw a RAW file into it, and see what happens.
And having spent the last five months doing exactly that, with files from different cameras and in different formats, I suspect a lot of photographers who download Affinity will end up leaving it installed.
I certainly have. After 15 years with Photoshop, I expected leaving Adobe to involve compromises, workarounds and probably the occasional moment of admitting that I had made a mistake. Instead, Affinity has been a breath of fresh air.
It does what I need it to do, it has handled everything I have thrown at it, it continues to get better and, most importantly, it has finally freed my photography workflow from a software subscription I had come to assume was unavoidable.
Five months ago, I went cold turkey on Photoshop. I thought Affinity would have to prove that I could survive without Adobe. Instead, it has left me wondering why I did not leave sooner.
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