For decades, Affinity has tried to loosen Adobe's firm grip on the graphic design, layout, and photo editing software industries by offering similar tools for less. And now, under Canva's ownership, the company bundles three formerly separate apps (Designer, Photo, and Publisher) into a free program called Affinity, with dedicated Pixel, Vector, and Layout workspaces. The suite is well-designed and full of useful tools, and we appreciate that you only pay if you want to unlock extra AI features. However, professionals and serious hobbyists are still better off with the equivalent Adobe Creative Cloud apps: Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. They remain our Editors' Choice winners for their respective categories, thanks to their better compatibility, deeper feature sets, and more sophisticated interfaces.

Price: Is Affinity Really Free?

Yes. If you want extra AI features in Affinity, however, you can pay for a Canva Pro subscription ($15 per month per person). AI tools include Colorize (for black and white photos), the ability to generate Images and vectors with text prompts, Generative Expand and Fill (to extend the edges of and image to fit your layout); the option to trace bitmap images into vector lines; Portrait Blur and lighting controls; Remove Background; Super Resolve (to enlarge raster images without pixelation); and more. Of course, you don't need AI features to create handsome design work. One note for Mac users: You must have a machine with Apple silicon to use Affinity’s AI features.

That's still far less than an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription ($69.99 per month with an annual commitment) that includes Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop (among many other apps). A version with fewer AI credits is slightly more affordable at $54.99 per month with an annual commitment. Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop each cost $22.99 per month with an annual commitment.

Other Photoshop competitors cost less: ACDSee Photo Studio is $149.99 for a lifetime license, and CyberLink PhotoDirector is $99.99 for the same. Alternatively, you can pay $64.99 per year for the latter. Meanwhile, the web-based Photopea is free with an extremely affordable premium version.

Getting Started With Affinity: A Relatively Lightweight Install

Since the Canva acquisition, Affinity is no longer available on the Mac App Store or the Microsoft Store. Instead, you download it directly from the website after signing in with a Canva, Facebook, or email account. The suite still runs on both macOS and Windows, with AMD/Intel and Arm installers available for the latter. An iPad version is in the works.

On our test PC, Affinity takes up 1.4GB of disk space—the same amount as the previous Affinity Photo app did on its own. The Windows version uses the modern MSIX installation format, which optimizes disk and network usage, and we appreciate it. For comparison, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop each take up over 2GB.

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When you first run the program, a very noisy video proclaiming Affinity's awesomeness greets you. Then, you can choose whether to share your usage data with Canva for product improvements; this isn't the same as letting Canva train its AI on your content. Next, you can view a Welcome panel with tutorial videos that demonstrate how the program works.

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Affinity doesn't offer an automated tour of its interface like Corel PaintShop Pro, Lightroom, and Skylum Luminar do. That said, we appreciate that it has a help window that outlines all the program's features. Affinity has an AI help chat box called Ritson that provides accurate information about the program's features and procedures. Many other photo editing apps, including those from Adobe, make you go online for help. Adobe also has an annoying habit of sending you to user forums and even resources for other products.

Interface and Ease of Use: Customizable and Clear

Affinity's interface has buttons for its various functions, which it calls Studios. The default Studios are Layout, Pixel (photo editing), and Vector. Other Studios include Canva AI, Color Grading, Compositing, Retouching, Slice (for exporting artboards, layers, and image regions), and Typography. The user experience is quite adjustable. You can easily add or remove Studio buttons, along with tools within them. It's even possible to create a custom workspace.

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The app defaults to a dark gray color scheme, though a darker, high-contrast theme and a light one are also available. The software's colorful icons stand out more than those in most other photo editing apps, but you can make them monochrome if you prefer. As with Photoshop, the interface shows a toolbar across the left and an info panel to the right for things like (in menu order): Layers, Histogram, Swatches, Adjustment, and Transform. You can undock all 25 of its modules.

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Affinity Photo supports a decent number of keyboard shortcuts, but we don't know why (as in Photoshop) the export shortcut requires you to press four keys simultaneously (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-W). In Lightroom, it's just the intuitive Shift-E shortcut. Thankfully, you can edit any of the literally hundreds of menu options' shortcuts to taste. You can also drag and drop an image onto the app, either to get started or to add it as a new layer.

Holding the Ctrl key and scrolling the mouse wheel zooms in on a photo, while double-clicking switches you back to the Fit view. One Affinity Photo interface convention we particularly like is that double-clicking a control slider sets it back to its original state. The side-by-side and split views that show your image before and after edits are also useful; they are accessible via clear buttons at the top of the program window. A circular back-arrow button lets you reset each adjustment group, and you can uncheck each group's checkbox to turn off its edits. Unlike most photo apps, the app lacks a full-screen view. Hitting Tab hides most interface elements, however.

You can undo and redo actions up to the limit you set in the settings, while a History panel with a slider lets you take your work back to earlier states. The main interface adapted well to our 4K test monitor; some programs display tiny interface text on high-DPI monitors.

Photo Editing: Boatloads of Tools

Affinity is not a workflow solution like ACDSee, CyberLink PhotoDirector, Lightroom, or Zoner Studio. You don't get tools for importing or organizing a collection of photos, let alone a panel that shows drive locations like in DxO PhotoLab. In other words, you can't just load all the photos from a card after a shoot. Even Photoshop and Photoshop Elements offer complementary apps, Bridge and Organizer, to handle those organization functions.

Opening Raw Camera Files

When you open a raw camera file in Affinity, you don't have to open a separate window, unlike in Photoshop. Instead, the software just switches you to the Develop interface. Here, you can nondestructively adjust a photo's black point, clarity, contrast, exposure, noise, white balance, and more, but you don't get auto settings like in Photoshop and most alternatives. That's disappointing, since such settings can often give you an idea of how to start improving an image. The automatic tools in competing apps, such as Lightroom and Photoshop, continue to improve thanks to AI algorithms that determine optimal adjustments.

Nonetheless, we appreciate Affinity's Develop Assistant button and panel, which gives you quick access to choices like noise reduction and sharpness. Unfortunately, you don't get automatic, AI-powered noise reduction like in several other apps. The sliders for color noise and luminance work as expected.

Once you click the Develop button, your photo becomes a layer in an Affinity document. You can still go back to the Develop interface after this, however, since that button remains above the image when you select its layer. Once you develop the image by clicking the button, the only way to make adjustments is to add a separate adjustment layer for Levels, White Balance, and so on. Photoshop offers a Raw Camera filter for even more adjustments without the need for redeveloping.

File Support and Raw Rendering

Affinity Photo supports a fair number of raw camera file formats, though it can't open images from some newer models, such as the Canon R6 III. The software supports the JPEG XL format, which combines ultrahigh resolutions with reduced file sizes. It naturally works with Photoshop's PSD and Illustrator's AI format. The DNG, EPS, GIF, PDF, SVG, TIFF, and WebP file types, along with other less common formats, round out the options.

The initial rendering of a raw image file in Affinity Photo isn't quite as good as in Lightroom and Photoshop, which use the same raw conversion technology. The Adobe apps produce images with better detail and more lifelike colors. For this test, I use the default Adobe Color profile. Affinity uses a proprietary rendering engine that doesn't include the profile options you get in Adobe software, such as Adobe Color, Adobe Monochrome, and even Adaptive Color (which analyzes the photo with AI to determine the best rendering).

Below you can see the rendering of a raw camera file in Affinity Photo (left) and Adobe Photoshop (right).

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After editing or rendering, you have to export your edited image to a standard file format like JPG or PNG to use it in the real world. Photoshop's files use the .psd extension, whereas Affinity's use the .afphoto extension.

Lens Profile-Based Corrections

Like ACDSee, DxO PhotoLab, and PhotoDirector, Affinity Photo includes lens-profile-based corrections for chromatic aberration and geometric distortion in the Develop interface. Affinity Photo's corrections leave you with more aberration and distortion compared with Lightroom's. The Defringe option in Affinity improves matters, but the software doesn't have an eyedropper to hone in on the offending shade of magenta.

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Adobe's lens profile correction also reduces geometric distortion. Note how the building leans more in Affinity's result below:

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Basic Photo Editing: Everything You Need

The Pixel Studio looks a lot like Photoshop, with a toolbar on the left side and a stacked group of tabbed panels on the right. In the panels, you get brushes, a color picker, a histogram (with warnings for clipping), and swatches. In the middle is the Layers panel, which you can switch to Brushes, Channels, or Stock modules. The lower panel offers a photo navigator and sections called Channels, History, and Transform.

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The Layers panel shows you which edits apply to each layer. Buttons at the bottom of it let you add Adjustment, Effect, Filter (26 categories of these!), and Mask layers, and you can create layer containers and folders. Oddly, the basic New Layer button is on the right-hand side, next to the Delete button. The Stock tab in this panel lets you find images from Pexels, which provides a lot of free content.

We approve of the crop tool because, like Photoshop's, it lets you either resize the crop from the image sides or draw a new rectangle inside the image. It offers presets for all the standard aspect ratios and a straighten tool (a line on the screen that you adjust to fit the horizontal axis in your image). But you don't get an auto-leveling feature. And if you want a content-aware crop-and-fill tool like Photoshop's, you need to pay for a Canva Pro subscription. In testing, the generative expand feature worked just as well as in similar software.

Effects: Some Fun Things to Try

Affinity Photo is primarily meant for Photoshop-style editing rather than mere photo adjustments. It has excellent layer support, with over 30 blending styles, a large selection of effect filters, and useful masking tools. You can add Pattern layers, apply layer effects (such as emboss, glow, and so on), and link layers. The latter type is helpful for reproducing a pattern across the entire image as you draw. It's fun to use.

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Another layer feature lets you save visibility states so you can easily switch between views of a project with many layers. It's just one of several dozen panels you can add.

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The Fill tool lets you apply bitmaps, gradients, hatch patterns, or solid colors to a layer. The gradient choice is especially flexible, with conical, elliptical, linear, and radial options. Control-wise, it's as good as Photoshop's Gradient, but we miss Photoshop's extensive selection of preset color combo gradients.

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The Live Filter Layers menu offers a wealth of nondestructive effects, including those that add noise, blur, change lighting and colors, distort, and sharpen. Among the distortion group are Lens Distortion, Liquefy, Perspective, Pinch/Punch, and Twirl. The Liquefy choice offers a dedicated interface with control over brush size, hardness, opacity, ramp type (Gaussian, Linear, and several more), and speed.

AI Upscaling: Works Well

One of the premium AI features, called Super Resolve, did an excellent job of turning a splotchy, low-res photo into something sharper and more pleasing. You can choose up to 400% scaling. Here's a split view showing the improvement on the left at 200% upscaling and the original on the right:

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Selection Tools: Not Quite Up to the Competition

Affinity has AI-based auto-selection tools for objects and photo subjects, though the latter is available only for Canva Pro subscribers. With Object Select, you hover the mouse cursor over parts of an image to select objects. Object Select worked, as you might expect for objects, but it was less than optimal for people with fine hair detail.

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You can refine the selection by changing feathering, ramp, or smoothness settings and by brushing over areas that should be in the selection, but you don't get as good a result as with Capture One's and Photoshop's equivalent tools. The Select Subject AI tool did a better job. It doesn't let you add to or remove from the selection with a brush, though you can still use Refine Selection to extend or feather the edges.

Affinity's healing tool requires you to select a source area to replace a blemish or unwanted object. It's not as sophisticated as Photoshop's content-aware Patch and Move tools.

Masking options include live masks based on frequency band range, hue, or luminosity. They update if you change the source image. You can also combine masks into compound masks and edit them nondestructively.

Brushes: Near-Photoshop Level

We cover vector illustration in more detail below, but Affinity Photo includes a good variety of raster brushes in the Pixel module, with charcoal, ink, shading, and watercolor options. You can use sub-brushes (combined brushes), do symmetry drawing, and even use wet-brush-edge paint accumulation. It can also import Photoshop (.abr) brush packs directly. Brush styles include Acrylic, Engraving, Gouaches, Inks, Markers, Pens, and Pencils—a full toolbox with a high degree of customization. Nevertheless, Photoshop has the edge, with more and deeper brush customization possibilities.

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Merging Images: Especially Good for Astrophotography

The Panorama tool had no trouble stitching three test images together in testing. You can apply noise reduction, automatically align images, perform an HDR merge, and remove ghost images in overlapping areas simultaneously. One unique tool Affinity Photo provides is astrophotography stacking. It requires special images such as calibration shots and long exposures, but it can help make night skies look clear and detailed.

Illustration: Competent Vector Tools

Whereas the Pixel Studio lets you edit and create raster (pixel-based) images, the Vector and Layout Studios offer the same for vector graphics. It’s important to understand the practical differences between them (shown below). Raster images don't resize well. Because they keep their original resolutions, the pixels simply get larger when you scale them up, resulting in unsightly pixelation. Raster file types include GIF, JPG, PNG, and TIFF. Curves define vector files, making them resolution-independent. You can scale them infinitely without loss of quality. Vector file types include AI, EPS, and PDF (so long as it doesn’t contain any raster images).

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper)

The Vector Studio's toolset largely hasn't changed versus the deprecated Designer app, but it does have some new goodies. For example, the new Image Brush is mesmerizing thanks to its 50 different pixel-based image options. What that means is that you can assign any of those brushes to a vector line (including type). I’ve used circles below to show how it works. You can convert color images to a single color by choosing a swatch after selecting the shape.

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper)

Affinity's large number of standard editable vector brushes has long been one of our favorite aspects—it outshines Fresco and Illustrator in this regard. That said, Affinity can't match Illustrator's brush-making capabilities, nor does it offer repeat and pattern brushes in addition to the artistic brush. You can at least make any edits to an existing brush, rename it, and save it.

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper)

Design and Page Layout: Most Features Carry Over

I don’t see radical differences with the new Layout Studio versus the older Publisher app—most of the basic layout tools (such as font control, linked text and images, Master Pages, multi-page documents, and text styles) are the same.

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper)

What’s new is the ability to edit vector artwork right within the Layout Studio. Now that we've spent some time with the combined app, it feels natural and surprisingly fluid to mix and match the tools across the three Studios. And, as in the Pixel Studio, a handy raster and vector stock panel lets you drag and drop images from Pexels and Pixabay for free.

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper)

All that said, we note a few disadvantages with the Layout Studio versus InDesign. For example, whereas Affinity supports Variable Type, it has only limited access to OpenType features. In other words, if your OpenType font has advanced or specialty alternates, you’re out of luck.

For editorial designers, Affinity lacks InDesign’s powerful Global Regular Expression Print (GREP) features. GREP is a code that lets you define rules for formatting, search for instances, and automatically format them to your specifications. For example, if you want all phone numbers to be bold, all words in parentheses to be italic, and every instance of chapter names to be small caps, you could use simple GREP code to accomplish that.

Performance and Export: Responsive, With Respectable Speeds

Although Affinity took a little longer to load images than Photoshop in testing, we didn't encounter any significant slowdowns. Even generative AI functions weren't unduly time-consuming.

Affinity lets you create custom image slices and export to 18 image formats, including EPUB, GIF, HEIF, JPEG, PDF, PNG, PSD, SVG, TIFF, WebP, and WMF. The program also offers color management (including ICC profile import) and soft proofing. An interesting option is the Lanczos 3 resampling, which takes longer but supposedly produces superior resizing results. However, we saw more detail after enlarging a photo with Photoshop’s automatic bilinear option.