The difference is that a Live Filter can be added to that layer only and doesn’t affect everything beneath it, like a standard adjustment layer. These are similar to Adjustment Layers in that they are editable and don’t bake an effect into the layer. One powerful set of effects is Live Filter layers. Nevertheless, you’d have a great comfort factor with Affinity Photo, since the toolset, adjustment layers and layer styles working in a similar fashion. In general, Affinity Photo feels a lot like Adobe Photoshop, but as with any of these tools, things are in enough different places that experienced Photoshop users will be counteracting years of muscle memory in making the switch. Most of the image adjustment tools in the Photo Persona are adjustments layers. Liquify is designed for image distortion based on a mesh. Photo is the closest to Photoshop in style and toolset, while Develop is more like the Lightroom toolkit. Its four modes includes the Photo, Liquify, Develop, and Export Personas. I spent more time with Affinity Photo, to see how viable it is as a Photoshop replacement. Finally, export through the Export Persona. Switch to the Pixel Persona for paint and adjustment functions. Start in the Draw Persona to create your document. The layout is built around three modes called “personas”. ai files, but roundtrip compatibility is largely through certain common standards: PNG, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, SVG, EPS, PSD or PDF. Since I’m not a big Illustrator user, I really can’t adequately compare Illustrator and Designer, except to say that it’s a very capable vector-based drawing and design application. Most of it has initially been with the public beta of Photo. I’ve been testing both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for a few months and have been very impressed. Due later this year will be Affinity Publisher – a desktop publishing application. Affinity Designer just won the Apple Design Award at WWDC 2015. Both applications are available through the Mac App Store. Affinity Designer is aimed at Adobe Illustrator. Affinity Photo, which was released on July 9 after an extended public beta period, competes with Adobe Photoshop. This is a separate line from their Windows products and is their first collection built from the ground up to take advantage of the newest Mac and OS X capabilities. Both are being developed for the Mac platform by British software developer Serif. Photoshop users who are looking for an alternative to Adobe may find a refuge in Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.

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