Would I be mad to quit Photoshop after 20 years – or is this the smartest move to make? I just can't decide!

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop for more than 20 years, which feels like a lifetime in the world of digital photography. Over that time, it has become second nature - a constant in my workflow, evolving quietly in the background as my own shooting style changed.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use Photoshop anywhere near its full potential, but every update still manages to surprise me with a clever new tool or refinement that reminds me just how powerful it really is. And yet, despite all that history, I’ve found myself seriously questioning whether it still deserves its place at the centre of my editing life.

The reason is simple: the way I actually edit photos day to day is far more modest than the software suggests. I try to get things as right as I can in-camera, whether I’m shooting digital or film, which means my editing is usually light-touch. Exposure tweaks, a bit of contrast, gentle curve adjustments, the occasional spot or heal when dust sneaks onto the sensor, and a crop if the framing needs tightening. That’s about it. Increasingly, I’ve realised that this kind of workflow doesn’t demand a sprawling subscription ecosystem - it just needs solid, reliable tools that stay out of the way.

This is where Affinity enters the conversation. The latest Affinity photo editor offers a full suite of image-editing tools that comfortably covers everything I actually do, and then some. Exposure, curves, retouching, cropping, layers, masking – it’s all there, alongside graphic design features that blur the line between Photoshop and Illustrator. Crucially for me, it also supports DNG raw editing, which means it can handle my files properly without compromise. On paper, at least, it ticks every box I genuinely need ticked.

What makes this feel like more than idle curiosity is the growing sense that my reliance on Adobe is largely habitual. I’m paying for depth and complexity that I admire, but rarely exploit. Affinity, by contrast, feels leaner and more purposeful – built for photographers who know what they want to do and just want to get on with it. For someone whose editing philosophy is rooted in restraint rather than rescue, that’s an appealing proposition.

That said, there is a hesitation I can’t ignore. At the moment, Affinity doesn’t offer the same kind of seamless, native app workflow across iPad, iPhone, and Android that Adobe Lightroom does.

I use Lightroom almost exclusively to edit images taken on my phone, and I do a surprising amount of editing that way these days, even from files taken from my camera too. Going cold turkey from Adobe would mean shifting all of that work back to a desktop or laptop – something that won’t bother many readers, but for me would feel like a definite step backwards in convenience.

And yet, the numbers are hard to ignore. Walking away from Adobe would mean a saving of around $240 or £240 a year – money that could be far better spent elsewhere. In real terms, that’s personal breathing space, or even something tangible like film photography supplies, which would translate to roughly 500 feet of film. So am I mad for even considering it, or is this a quietly genius move? Right now, it feels like a genuine crossroads between comfort and clarity – and I’m not entirely sure which path I’ll take.