Adobe vs Affinity Photo

Adobe got into trouble earlier this year after they updated their terms of service and users discovered that Adobe claimed the right to use user-created content to train their AI. Adobe defended its action by pointing out that it had already implemented a similar policy on its stock photo service. Adobe’s self-own is true. It had implemented a similar policy on its Adobe Stock Photo Service, which had caused many users to leave the service. Why compete with yourself when Adobe’s AI produces images from your submissions?

The stock service protesters didn’t bother Adobe and it then pushed the same terms of service onto its entire user base. The resulting firestorm of protest somehow caught Adobe by surprise. Bizarrely, Adobe defended the move by pointing out that it was not the first company to implement such a policy. This is when I along with many other users headed for the exits.

Honestly, I’ve been looking for an Adobe Photoshop replacement for a long time. If I could find a true substitute for Photoshop that runs on Linux I’d abandon Adobe–and Windows!–once and for all.

Recently I found a true Photoshop replacement. Affinity Photo is cheaper than the Adobe product and has all the Photoshop features you would expect plus some features that Adobe doesn’t have. And best of all it runs appreciably faster than Photoshop.

On the negative side, Affinity Photo doesn’t work on Linux. This is a pain but but nothing new. I have the Linux equivalents, including GIMP, but none of them are as good as Photoshop. Who knows though? After the latest Windows’ Day Zero critical security bug, I might move to Linux 100%, and settle on GIMP.

While Affinity Photo is great, there is one show-stopper for a user like me. If, like me, your main camera is a Nikon Z8, you should know that Affinity Photo does not support the Z8 raw file compression. This means that the app cannot open raw photos taken by the Z 8. This is a huge problem. Affinity stated that a patch is in the works but the latest patch (they regularly patch the app) did not address the issue. If this isn’t patched, I cannot use the product.

Setting aside for now the problem with the Z8, I can strongly recommend Affinity Photo.