Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => Article Discussions => Topic started by: SunshineD on November 06, 2025, 09:32:17 am
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Canva turned Affinity Studio (Photo, Designer, and Publisher) into one free app, no subscriptions, full editing tools, except for a few AI extras that need Canva Pro.
Anyone here already tried the new Studio? How does it stack up against Adobe? https://luminous-landscape.com/affinity-goes-free-except-for-a-couple-of-things-what-professional-photographers-need-to-know/
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I've been using Affinity designer for years. Photo less so: the RAW converter seems to require more work to get you to the starting point.
The missing app is obviously a Lightroom replacement. Serif has been promising this for about 4 years... Obviously Canva has decided to go another way.
So my (amateur) workflow still starts and stops with Lightroom with occasional touching up in PS.
The integrated Affinity app is lovely (the formats were already compatible but full integration is better). Unfortunately, I cannot cancel my Lightroom subscription (or photography plan as Adobe calls it) because there is no robust free/affordable alternative.
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Serif has been promising this for about 4 years...
I never saw anyone from Serif "promising" this, it was mainly denied and just wishful thinking by many users.
A DAM with full suite integration is a massive omission from Affinity, as is the lack of a way to revisit RAW conversions (as offered by most other serious players), this is a deal killer for many.
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I had a good experience with Affinity Studio with my first dive in. Did some overall corrections on a photograph, switched seamlessly to Layout mode, set up a print on a paper size, could add captions and ran it out on my Epson. All without any hassle and able to switch back and forth between editing pixels and managing elements on a page.
I'm a committed Capture One user so Lightroom was never an issue for me, it'll take a while before Photoshop fades in my usage but it's happening already. Curious as to how this proceeds.
And then there's Pixelmator Pro, acquired by Apple, rumored to be part of a creative bundle with Final Cut and Logic. I do hope that doesn't become another subscription.
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How good are the selection tools in affinity. The recent upgraded by adobe have really freed up lots of editing time for me.
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You have to download an AI model to activate the AI assisted selection tool, if that’s what you’re asking. Easily done. But if you’re curious the app is easily downloaded.
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How good are the selection tools in affinity. The recent upgraded by adobe have really freed up lots of editing time for me.
Hi,
The selection tools are good. Affinity 3.x also offers some AI functionality for subject selection in the free version (only need to download the machine learned model).
Kind regards,
Bart
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A DAM with full suite integration is a massive omission from Affinity, as is the lack of a way to revisit RAW conversions (as offered by most other serious players), this is a deal killer for many.
A DAM is missing, true.
However, you can revisit RAW conversions if you select to output your RAW conversion as a RAW layer instead of a pixel layer as shown in the attached picture.
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However, you can revisit RAW conversions if you select to output your RAW conversion as a RAW layer instead of a pixel layer as shown in the attached picture.
It's just all so clumsy and inconvenient.
Really not worth bothering with when other programs do it so much better.