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MagyarSerif's Affinity Photo app now available for Windows as a beta
For years, Adobe's Photoshop has been the de facto software choice for professional photographers and photo editors. The market changed last year, however, when Serif's Affinity Photo app took the Mac world by storm and was named the 2015 app of the year by Apple. While the app has enjoyed success on Macs, Serif recently made Affinity Photo available for Windows as a beta version.
The photo editing software markets itself as a Photoshop alternative at a much lower price, selling for a one-time purchase of $49.99 compared to Adobe's asking price of $9.99/month for Photoshop access. Affinity’s move to Windows is even more enticing right now, as potential users can currently download the beta version at no cost. Serif will eventually charge a flat $49.99 at some point in the future.
The software is quite robust. Users can work in any color space, including CMYK, RGB, and LAB. The app also provides support for RAW files and HDR 32-bit images. Affinity also includes support for Photoshop plug-ins and file types, including PSD. Images can be exported as the expected file types, such as JPG, PNG, TIFF, EPS, PDF, and SVG. Serif aimed to provide a faster alternative to Photoshop without losing any of the features, and they seem to have hit the mark. In addition to Apple naming the software its "App of the Year" in 2015, the Technical Image Press Association named Affinity Photo the best imaging software of 2016.
It’s interesting that Serif has released a beta version for Windows this soon after Microsoft’s announcement of the new Surface Studio, an all-in-one targeted specifically for creative professionals. With Affinity’s Window’s availability and the Studio’s useful feature set, photographers may opt for the software and device.
This could be further spurred on by Apple’s disappointing revamp of its Macbook Pro line. The redesign has been met with lukewarm feelings from professional photographers and videographers, who have lamented the exclusion of features like an SD card slot and more common ports like USB Type-A. With Microsoft offering a device tailored for content creators and Affinity offering powerful app at a much more affordable price on Windows, it wouldn’t be surprising to see creatives flock to the Surface Studio and Serif’s software.
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