PHOTOGRAPHY EXPOSED

by John Peters A.R.P.S.



  

AFFINITY PHOTO

Affinity has a range of products, but I'm talking about Affinity Photo. There are special deals on Affinity Photo, I bought my copy when it was available for roughly half price, around £ 25 during one of the makers 'special offer periods' and used the savings to buy a book on how to use Affinity Photo. When I was a heavy user of PHOTOSHOP, it was still available on CD for a one off purchase. Then the latest developments were applied to the monthly rental product and as a tight Jock, I disagreed with paying a rental. Affinity Photo became my product of choice, a replacement for Photoshop with 90/95 percent of the options covered, a fairly easy learning curve, good YOUTUBE tutorials, and a growing userbase with lots of online help, Affinity became a suitable replacement for Photoshop. I've got to say, I've never looked back. In a few months, I'll be quids in compared to renting Photoshop, I also own the product which is easy to customise. Yes there is a learning curve and you may want to stick with Photoshop because you know how to use it. No problem. Affinty may not be everyones cup of tea. Have a look at free editors covered in E _ EDITING. I also use two free editing programmes that cover the majority of my editing, CLONING too.

TOP TIP Affinity Photo is a serious replacement for Photoshop, there may be others too, but as a photoshop user for many years, I never thought I'd consider another product. If you want to learn to use Affinity Photo, do it alongside Photoshop, learning one task at a time. Once you are comfortable on how to achieve a specific task in Affinity Photo, move onto another task.

Many editors fail on flexability of area/object selection, burning and dodging, cloning or layers but Affinity Photo handles them all. You can even load old layered photoshop files, what more do you need?

Affinity Photo

Affinity Photo, a real alternative to Photoshop. It works for me. No I don't receive any money from Affinity or anybody come to that.

 Affinity Photo

A windy day at harvest time adds that little extra to a common scene captured by many. I didn't realise this photo was quite as effective until I travelled home to my then home of Eyemouth and loaded it up on the big screen. This shows the main layout of Affinity, the layout is totally customizeable. Just show what you use.

 Affinity Photo

My gear in the field as it were. Please note the use of the tripod, standard equipment and used most of the time.I used ND graduated filters instead of 'paint.net' at this time.

TOP TIP Please note the low viewpoint that adds to the impact of the photograph. Dont shoot everything from eye level, learn to change your viewpoint for good effect.

TOP TIP I use a windows 10 laptop but link it with an HDMI cable to a large 27" monitor to make visuals a bit easier. I have the best of both worlds, the laptop for portability, the large screen for better visuals and ease of use now my eyes are not what they used to be. If editing, I often enlarge an image to 400% to show up any imperfections arising from my editing. Enlarging an image makes certain types of editing easier too.

TOP TIP Version 2 of AFFINITY PHOTO is available so there might be some good offers upcoming for version 1, check this out.