# Moving away from Lightroom - Affinity Photo?



## jerry12953

Operating System: Windows 10
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): 6.13

Hi,

Thanks to the major cock-up that Adobe has made with Lightroom, very sadly I'm beginning to think of alternatives. As a first step towards that end I'm thinking of installing Affinity Photo as a secondary editor which i can start to get my head around while still using LR6 for most things. I know its not a like-for-like alternative but does that sound like a good start? 

Will I be able to use the "edit in" command or is that restricted to Adobe products?


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## Cerianthus

you can set other external editors then Photoshop in you preferences. (edit, preferences, tab external editor). You can direct LR to an exe file.


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## Conrad Chavez

Affinity Photo is more of a replacement for Photoshop than for Lightroom. Both Affinity Photo and Photoshop are pixel-based editors that let you do many things Lightroom can't do, like composite multiple images with masks and layers, edit in non-RGB color modes like CMYK, add text, and design and export graphics for web sites and mobile devices.

Lightroom is primarily a parametric/non-destructive raw image editor with strong organizational features. But that doesn't describe Affinity Photo. In terms of parametric raw editors, right now some of the direct competitors to Lightroom are On1 Raw and MacPhun Luminar, who are both discounting their latest versions to try and pick up some Lightroom defectors. There's also Capture One, and the free Darktable. Keep in mind that if you're a heavy user of the organizational tools in Lightroom, you might not find them in most of those alternatives.

Affinity Photo can edit raw files, but it's in a side module, like the way Camera Raw is a plug-in to Photoshop. If you really do want to switch over to an application that's more like Photoshop than Lightroom, then Affinity Photo is a strong candidate.


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## jerry12953

Thanks for that, though I must admit I've never understood what "pixel-based" meant ..........


I've updated to LR 6.13 and plan to keep on using that for the forseeable future. However the time will come when I will need to jump ship and it won't be to anything Adobe; hopefully this dreadful cock-up will encourage other software developers that there is a market for an alternative to LR.  I've never liked or needed Photoshop so Affinity will be a good alternative for that for the limited use I will make of it. 

 It puzzles me that Affinity can be had for less than £50 while PS (when it was available as a standalone programme) was £600+. Surely Adobe weren't profiteering???


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## MarkNicholas

jerry12953 said:


> Thanks to the major cock-up that Adobe has made with Lightroom, very sadly I'm beginning to think of alternatives.



Which cock-up are you referring to ?


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## jerry12953

Withdrawing the standalone version; making LR subscription only and ONLY with photoshop; the re-naming fiasco; hiding Lightroom Classic away on their website suggesting it is on its way out; possible new performance problems.


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## Roelof Moorlag

MarkNicholas said:


> Which cock-up are you referring to ?


I think he's refering to all arguments mentioned in the 13 pages form this thread: Is Lightroom Classic end-of-life? 
With 320 reply's until now it's not something you can easily miss


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## Gnits

Does any one know if there has been any replies to our questions on the Lightroom Journal.  I have re-read the comments in their entirety several times already, but do not have the will to do that any more.

Matt.


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## MarkNicholas

jerry12953 said:


> Withdrawing the standalone version; making LR subscription only and ONLY with photoshop; the re-naming fiasco; hiding Lightroom Classic away on their website suggesting it is on its way out; possible new performance problems.



Well for me I was already a CC subscriber with Photoshop. The renaming to LR Classic was a surprise but understandable as the new LR CC (cloud only version) is clearly Adobe's new flagship. As for performance I can honestly say that LR Classic is the fastest most bug free version of LR I have used since I started with LR1.x. Whether LR Classic will eventually be phased out remains to be seen.


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## MarkNicholas

Roelof Moorlag said:


> I think he's refering to all arguments mentioned in the 13 pages form this thread: Is Lightroom Classic end-of-life?
> With 320 reply's until now it's not something you can easily miss


Yeah I have read most of the posts.


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## Ian Hutchinson

When I tried Affinity a little while ago the only way I could get a descent print was to put the image into PS. Kind of defeats the object of of Affinity really.


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## Conrad Chavez

jerry12953 said:


> It puzzles me that Affinity can be had for less than £50 while PS (when it was available as a standalone programme) was £600+. Surely Adobe weren't profiteering???


What's missing in the comparison is the historical context between the two price points.

Photoshop started out as an image editing tool for graphic design studios and prepress houses. You bought it for your studio along with your page layout program (Aldus PageMaker, QuarkXPress…) and your vector drawing program (Adobe Illustrator, Aldus FreeHand, Corel Draw…). At the time, all of those professional applications were priced between $500 and $1000 each. Most of Adobe's were $599-$699. This standard pricing range held into the early 2000s. This pricing was normal.

Lightroom used to duel with the very similar Apple Aperture, which Apple introduced at $499.

When Apple came out with the App Store for the iPhone, it offered applications for a few dollars each, and this completely reset customer expectations for software pricing. Now, an app over $10 is considered "expensive" and if it's over $25 it's probably "professional." Apple then introduced the Mac App Store, and the same downward pricing now affected desktop software. By the time Apple cancelled Aperture, which started at $499 as boxed software, it was $79 on the App Store.

This is the pricing environment that Affinity Photo operates in today. On the Mac, it's only available through the Mac App Store, and most of its competition like Pixelmator is priced similarly, as is PaintShop Pro on Windows. Affinity simply cannot price their software much higher and still sell it. This is the problem that faced everyone a few years ago: What do you do if you're a software developer and the going rate for your products is now 10% of what it was only a few years ago?

Another side of it is that the core Photoshop feature set has become commoditized, but the core is all most people need. There are now countless programs that can edit with levels, curves, layers, and brushes. Photoshop still has professional features no one else has but are only useful to some specific market niches, but instead of selling their flagship applications for $50, Adobe chose to differentiate from the crowd by integrating their desktop and mobile applications with a variety of cloud services, and charge a subscription fee for access to their ecosystem.


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## clee01l

Conrad Chavez said:


> What's missing in the comparison is the historical context between the two price points....
> Lightroom used to duel with the very similar Apple Aperture, which Apple introduced at $499.


 Lightroom 2 and LR3 sold for $300 full and $149 upgrade 

Now Apple gives away their operating system  free as well as their office suite of products.


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## jerry12953

clee01l said:


> Lightroom 2 and LR3 sold for $300 full and $149 upgrade
> 
> Now Apple gives away their operating system  free as well as their office suite of products.



Yes, I remember LR cost me about £200 when I first bought it, then its price halved. Now it's £240 for two years and if you then stop paying you nothing to show for it..... Bonkers.


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