Photography News Issue 64

Photography News | Issue 64 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests

Affinity Photo 1.6.7 £48.99

Specs

Panoramamerge

Price Desktop version £48.99 (£19.99 for iPad) SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (DESKTOP VERSION) MAC Hardware Mac Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini Processor Intel 64-bit Core 2 Duo or better (from 2007) Memory 1.07GB of available space; more during installation Display 1280x768 display size or better, supports regular, retina, and expanded gamut DCI-P3 displays WINDOWS Hardware Windows-based PC with mouse or equivalent input device. DirectX 10-compatible graphics cards and above Memory 2GB RAM (4GB RAM recommended) Operating systems (64 bit) Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 (Service Pack 1; Aero enabled), Windows 10 Hard Disk 670MB of available space; more during installation Display 1280x768 display size or better Contact serif.com 2GB RAM minimum Operating System 10.9 Mavericks and later Hard Disk

Many cameras allow in-body Raw processing and all offer filters and colour settings for brilliant out-of- camera JPEGs. So you could argue there’s no need for post-processing. Ultimately, though, we all knowthat to make the most of our images we need a powerful software – and editing is part and parcel of image creation. Affinity Photo is available for Mac and Windows, and there is a tablet version, too. The tablet app costs £19.99 and offers many of the features of the computer version, but it is the desktop version, which sells at £48.99, we will focus on here. There is a comprehensive collection of non-destructive Raw processing tools, including lens corrections and distortion control, as well as core effects like lens corrections and exposure, clarity and black point setting. Once the Raw has been developed, you have editing functions, including curves, cloning and healing, shadow and highlight control and hue/saturation controls. There is also a wide range of image improvement options, including de-noise and a good number of image adjustment presets. For the more creative, selection tools and layers give even more potential to fine-tune your shots. As always with a new software, it takes a little while to get acquainted. However, I did find Affinity Photo decently user-friendly. The first thing for me is to get a workspace I can deal with. There is a Separated Mode, as opposed to the default Merge All Windows mode, which suited my two-screen set-up. It lets

There is a comprehensive collection of Raw processing tools, including lens corrections and distortion control

Above This handheld panorama started life as nine images. Affinity Photo did a fine stitching job, with no unevenness or joining flaws

me place toolbars wherever I want on the second screen and have the image on the other. This mode suits single-screen use too. In Merge All Windows, the tools are arranged on the left and above the image area and, on the right, are the many palettes. These can be left open or minimised, depending on your preference. You can also tailor the look of the palettes, so you can have dark and moody or nice and bright with larger type. The icons are similar to those found in other imaging software, but if you’re not sure, hovering the cursor over the icon reveals its name. Affinity Photo lets you enjoy techniques, such as focus stacking, HDR, panorama stitching and stacking, too. There’s nothing new here and these techniques are possible with Lightroom/Photoshop but, with focus stacking for example, Affinity Photo gives a fully automated workflow non-Photoshop experts can enjoy. All you have to do is select the images you want to focus stack and a couple of clicks later, you can have a cuppa while the software does its job. I used a focus-bracketed macro scene shot with a Fujifilm GFX 50R with a 120mm macro lens, and a 2012

Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM running the latest Mojave OS system. The 100 JPEGs were put in a folder (2.88GB total size) and, from start to finish, it took around 17 minutes to finish the stack. The software did a great job. Normal stacking is also possible in Affinity Photo – for that I tried a sequence of star shots. I like to shoot handheldpanoramas, so I tried Affinity Photo with a nine- image pano shot taken on a Nikon D850. Total file size was around 500MB and the saved Affinity Photo project was 1.05TB. The process took around ten minutes, producing a file measuring 18,854x8030pixels, which I cropped down. Unlike Lightroom or dedicated stitching softwares, there was no projection option here, but the job looked well done, with no patchiness or other stitching gremlins in the area of smooth sky, for example. Images produced in Affinity can be saved as .afphoto files should youwant to go back to them at a later date, or they can be exported as JPEGs, TIFFs and PNGs, among other options. Overall, Affinity Photo is a well- endowed software with an expansive feature set to suit photographers of all levels – with good handling too. WC

Verdict

Affinity Photo is a user-friendly, powerful editing software. At under £50 for an outright purchase, it’s great value, too. Its feature list is impressive and it has the editing versatility you would expect from full-blown Photoshop. There are plenty of enticing extras, too, including focus merge and panoramic stitching. A terrific value editing app. Pros Great price, amazing feature set that includes focus stacking and panorama stitching Cons Seems slow, a better indication that the software is working would be good

Focus stacking

Above Affinity Photo’s focus merge feature did a great job with this 100-shot focus bracket taken on a FujifilmGFX 50R. The 100 JPEGs measured 2.88GB, so there’s a lot of information to be handled. The merging process took around 17 minutes