Affinity Photo VS Photoshop | Checking Every Tool

have you ever wondered how the tools and freedom photos stack up against the tools in photoshop well that's what we're here to talk about today hi my name is ben nielsen and i'm a media design educator and today we're going to take a look at the tools inside of affinity photo and photoshop now when you open up affinity photo it's very clear that it is very similar to photoshop the layouts of the two programs are almost exactly the same and you can tell just from the names that both of them are aimed at dealing with photos or what we like to call raster graphics but you might wonder how do the tools in each of these programs compare so today we're going to go along all of the tools on the left hand side of each program and see which ones are present in both and which ones are unique to one or the other of these programs now there are lots of features that are present in these programs that are not contained within the tools there are panels along the side and menu options up at the top there are so many different features here but to keep this video from being three hours long we're not going to take a look at every feature inside of every program today we are just going to focus in on those tools in the toolbox along the left-hand side of each program many photographers designers and artists rely on particular tools for their workflow and so this video might be able to help you know if the tools that you need are present in infinity photo in case you're thinking about switching to it from photoshop so let's go ahead and dive in and look at the options for tools in affinity photo and photoshop all right now here we are inside of the two programs so i have photoshop here on the left it's the current 2021 version and this is a funny photo on the right we're going to be starting over here in photoshop and we're going to look at the tools in photoshop because i think those are the ones that people are most familiar with so we're going to take a look at each of those and as we go through it we will then try to find the corresponding tool if it exists over in affinity photo and at the very end we'll look to see if there are any tools in infinite photo that aren't present in photoshop an important thing to note here is that affinity photo uses these personas along the top so you have like this photo persona and then this liquify persona develop persona the tone mapping persona and the export persona and the tools along the left-hand side will change depending on what persona you're in so that is not quite analogous to what photoshop does so occasionally we might have to hunt for a tool elsewhere but for the most part these personas are actually things that are done inside of like other dialogue windows inside of photoshop so for example the develop persona is very similar to camera raw inside of photoshop which has kind of its own set of tools and almost functions like almost like an add-on application so we've got those and we won't be looking at each of these in particular because they are different for example like the liquify persona that works kind of like with the liquify filters inside of photoshop and so there are some different aspects of this that we won't be comparing necessarily but we'll try our best to find the tool in affinity photo if it exists so let's just start at the top here here is the move tool it's the four-way arrow inside of photoshop and that corresponds to the move tool which is the black arrow inside of affinity photo and one thing that you'll note right away is that if any photo uses colorful icons and photoshop uses grayscale icons and that's just a difference in the way that their user interfaces are designed i kind of like the affinity photo ones better just because i think it's easier to tell one tool from another when there's a little bit of color involved and photoshop has a lot of tools and so sometimes it can be hard to find them but if you're pretty familiar with the program you're probably using just keyboard shortcuts anyway and so it doesn't make that big of a difference okay so the move tools are used to move things around on the screen and they basically do the same thing in each program i am not going to demonstrate the features of each tool as we go through i'm just going to note if there are differences between them because i again i don't want this to be a super super long video i just want it to be as informative as it can be without taking up too much of your time so let's keep going inside of the move tool if we hold down on it we find the artboard tool and there is no artboard tool inside of affinity photo and i believe the reason that there isn't they're probably just planning on you using affinity designer if you need multiple artboards if you're working that way because the workflow between the two is fairly seamless it's actually a lot more seamless than it is between photoshop and illustrator because affinity programs share the same file type so you can move between them very easily so no artboard tool over here so if an artboard tool is a deal breaker for you you'll need to stick with photoshop okay moving down we're getting into our selection tools we have the rectangle marquee if we jump over here it's actually going to be under what looks like the lasso here let's hold down we find the rectangular marquee so those are essentially exactly the same tool as we go down we also have the elliptical marquee here we also have the elliptical marquee and then the columnar key and the row marquis are also here which are also found here now why you need the common real marquee tools i've never really understood if you know why you need those tools go ahead and drop in the comments because i thought it was interesting that affinity chose to include them when affinity as we go along you'll see that affinity has decided not to include some things that maybe were left over from like old ways of doing things in photoshop they just don't include them whereas photoshop really needs to keep them around so that the users who know how to use them are able to keep using them anyway i'm not sure why these are needed but if you use them a lot drop in the comments and let me know if you use them okay next is the lasso tool we've already seen the lasso tool so we'll jump over here and there it is it's called the freehand selection tool works the same way you draw a selection on your page with it now just to show you here there are other options under the lasso tool in photoshop there's the polygonal lasso tool and the magnetic lasso tool and you might think that those are not present here in a feeding photo but they actually are you just choose the freehand tool and then you can select up here where it says type you can choose between a polygonal type and a magnetic type and if you do that you get those features as well so basically the same options for those types of selection tools all right the next selection tool in photoshop is everybody's old favorite the magic wand tool if you remember back in the days of like photoshop 2 and stuff the magic wand tool was kind of the bread and butter of selecting back then and we don't use it too much anymore because it's kind of not as useful as other tools have been developed but there is a corresponding tool over here called the flood select tool so it also looks like a magic wand but it's not called the magic wand tool i'm assuming there's some kind of legal reason for that just called the flood select tool all right under the magic wand tool you have the quick selection tool which kind of came next and really that's probably become over the last several years people's primary way of selecting things and we do have that here with the selection brush tool so a little bit of a different name but selection brush tool and then we come to photoshop's new one which is the object selection tool and if you haven't seen this because a lot of people get into the flow of how they do things in photoshop they don't really pay attention to what's new coming out this has been out for i don't know a few years now maybe two or three and you can just select over an object and then photoshop will analyze it and do its best to select it and it does a fairly good job we'll have to come do some cleanup here with another selection tool but it can do a pretty good job you can also change the mode to be a lasso mode let me deselect here and you can get it to be a little bit better if you just lasso around what you want i just need a picture in here to be able to bring up the tools and so i put in this picture of the ipad which i use in my most recent course on creating youtube thumbnails so you can check that course out in the description we use affinity publisher for that but a lot of the same things can be done in infinity photo so you can see that that is a pretty good object selection there using that lasso and unfortunately affinity photo doesn't have anything like the object select tool so that's not present in free photo if you love that tool then you're gonna have to stick with photoshop now affinity photos selection brush is pretty good you can select things quickly but not as quickly as this obviously we'd have to come clean up the edges though all right let's hit command d to deselect okay so that is it for selection tools we've basically gotten through all of them okay next is the crop tool and the crop tool of course very basic tool something that everybody uses often when they're working with photos and the crop tool in affinity photo is also the crop tool so they look very very similar almost exactly the same icon for them and they function very very similar but underneath the crop tool we have a perspective crop tool which is not present in affinity photo and then we have the slice tool this is where things get a little bit interesting over here so you have the slice tool which you can use for like web design user interface design slicing out different elements it's actually probably a more useful tool inside of a vector program but they have it here in case people are doing that type of work inside of photoshop and if any photo because it uses the same code base as a fan designer also has that option so we can jump over actually to this export persona and we'll actually find the slice tool right here so the slice tools there now in photoshop the slice tool is broken into two tools the slice tool and the slice select tool and if any photo both of those features are rolled into one tool so the slice select tool just is used once you make slices to select it in affinity photo you make the slice and you use that same tool to select it okay we'll hop back to the photo persona and so after the slice tool we have the frame tool and the frame tool is for creating placeholder images and you probably use this more in indesign if you use it you can see it's showing you that's a nice thing here is that photoshop recently added in this like little guide to each tool so it kind of shows you what's going on here so it makes this little frame now there is nothing like that that i know of in affinity photo i have not been able to locate anything like that so that is just not present you can produce similar results using shapes and clipping masks but there is no dedicated frame tool all right next we have the eyedropper tool this is kind of a tried and true tool it's been in photoshop for a long time and it really is an important part of many photographers and designers workflow so we've got this eyedropper tool and if we jump over here we find the third tool down in affinity photo is also the color picker tool which is the eyedropper tool now underneath the eyedropper tool in photoshop we have a bunch of different options we have the 3d material eyedropper tool the color sampler tool ruler tool note tool and the count tool and those tools they're just not present inside of affinity photo now i don't really know much about most of these tools i really just use the eyedropper tool so i'm not sure if you need these tools in your workflow go ahead drop into the comments let me know i know there's several different tools that have been added to photoshop in recent years updates and i haven't really needed to use them but let me know what kind of workflow you use those for and if that would stop you from being able to switch over to affinity photo so none of these infinity photo all right going down we find the bandage which is the spot healing brush and if we jump over to a funny photo we are going to find a very similar looking bandage although this one looks a little bit more realistic as a bandage probably more recognizable as a bandage and this is called the healing brush tool but what we were looking for right now is the spot healing brush and that is actually the blemish removal tool so both of these will take small areas and try to solve them without a sample just using the area around the area you've selected to heal it so they look at a spot and they try to heal them and they do essentially the same thing then you have the healing brush tool which we've already seen over here is the healing brush tool next you have the patch tool and over here the patch tool so most of these healing features are here now the content-aware move tool is not present as far as i can tell inside affinity photo so the content of remove tool is where you can select something and then move it in the page and it will try to content aware fill in the area it's not something that i've needed a lot in my photo projects but it might be crucial to some people's workflow and then the red eye tool the red eye tool is in both of these so you can see it's called the red eye tool in both well i guess this one is the red eye removal tool but they are the same tool they will select red eye and basically turn those pixels black so that the red eye goes away i feel like red eye it just is not as big of a deal as it used to be seems like cameras are a lot better at not producing red eye now so many people are taking pictures with their phones which don't seem to produce red eye at all because they aren't using a flash feature like regular cameras do and so you just don't see it that much but it is here and i think that would be especially useful if you're working on old photographs if you've got a lot of photographs that you've scanned in then you might need that red eye removal tool or if you're doing a lot of flash photography yourself now you probably would still need that alright then let's move down here to one of the major tools which is the brush tool of course this is used by almost anybody who is doing any kind of artwork inside of photoshop and there are lots of people who still use photoshop for artwork why they haven't moved to procreate i'm not exactly sure i think procreate is actually a much better tool in terms of this kind of artwork but it's here and it is also here in infinity photo you have the paint brush tool so very similar to the brush tool they're essentially the same thing underneath here we have the pencil tool the pencil tool is like a hard edged brush tool and we don't have that exactly here i believe the closest thing to it is probably the pixel tool which will paint exact pixels kind of similar coming at it from kind of different i guess frames of reference but there's the pencil tool and the pixel tool then you have the color replacement tool this is a fairly recent tool in photoshop and it's used to replace a specific color and here we have the color replacement brush tool so essentially the same tool there all right next we have the mixer brush tool and that's going to allow your brush to act more like paint like it says here it's simulating painting techniques and over here we have the paint mixer brush so very similar to tools here okay as we go down we find the clone stamp tool an old trident tool tool here in photoshop one that we used to use a lot back in the day use it less now as other tools have been developed that do the same thing but better content aware stuff and ai and things still an important tool for us to have and that tool in a faint photo is called the clone brush tool so similar same features you set the place that you're looking for and then you clone over alright then you have the pattern stamp tool and as far as i can tell there is nothing like the pattern stamp tool inside of affinity photo so i couldn't find anything that would be the same all right let's go down here and we find the history brush tool this allows you to essentially undo in just certain portions of the image and over here it's called the undo brush so the history brush and the undo brush and then in photoshop you have the art history brush which if we let this pop up here it says paint stylized strokes with pixels from an earlier state of the image so it just allows a more stylistic approach to it and that brush is not featured inside of affinity photo so there's no equivalent for the art history brush tool in infinity photo but for the history brush tool there is all right next we have erasing so the eraser tool is here and over here we have this one that looks like a pencil that's actually the eraser brush tool so those do the same things they will erase pixels now generally we aren't going to want to erase because we don't want to actually change pixels most of the time if we're racing we're going to be using some kind of mask for some people this is important probably in more artistic features using photoshop but it is present in both and there's the background eraser tool if we come over here we find that there is a background erase brush essentially the same tool here that's going to allow you to select a color and then erase just that color then you have the magic eraser tool which is going to work like the magic wand but for erasing and over here we have the flood erase tool which will work like the flood selection tool but for erasing so essentially the same tool there they're just going to look at the pixels and with one click try to erase all the ones of the same color continuing down we find the gradient tool and the gradient tool actually goes by the same name but looks quite a bit different in terms of icon over here is the gradient tool in affinity photo and you can see here it's a circle instead of a square and it shows the gradient coming out so it's a little bit different but they will do the same thing they will allow you to apply a gradient and the features are going to be similar you'll find that in photoshop you have a linear gradient radial gradient angled gradient reflected gradient and a diamond gradient over here you have solid linear elliptical radial conical and bitmap so slight differences in the types that you have so if you rely on one type of gradient in particular make sure that you know whether or not it has that type of gradient all right then there you have the paint bucket tool this is used to flood an area with color generally a selection and so we also have that over here it's called the flood fill tool so paint bucket tool flood fill tool they're the same tool and then you have the 3d material drop tool not something that i've ever used again like i said there's been several of these 3d tools added i haven't really used them and they are not present over infini photo so if you need that 3d material drop tool you'll need to stick with photoshop moving down here we find the smudge tool and that's here with the blur and sharpen tools and so if we hop over here we can see the smudge tool right here so then we also have the blur tool and the blur brush tool these ones look very similar the sharpen tool and the sharpen tool and you might notice that affinity photo actually has an extra one called the median brush tool so it's got that one as well which photoshop does not have not a tool that i really use though so i wouldn't say that that's any kind of a deal breaker for most people but that is one of the first tools that we've seen over here in affinity photo that are not present in photoshop and we have our old favorite the dodge tool and over here we have the dodge brush tool same thing underneath we have the burn tool and we have over here the burn brush tool this one i like the icon better because it's fire i think that's a little bit more clear than the hand and then the sponge tool is last over here we have the sponge tool okay we'll keep going here you have the pen tool old tried and true for making paths pen tool and there are a lot of different tools under the pen tool free form curvature anchor point add anchor point delete convert anchor point tools so when we hop over here to affinity photo we are going to see the pen tool and underneath we're going to see nothing except the node tool which we'll get to in a second so essentially all of the features that affinity thinks you need in the pen tool they have built in to just the pen tool and so it doesn't have as many things such as like the freeform or the curvature there are a lot of different like settings you can mess with but it doesn't have as many features there so depending on what you're doing you may or may not need these tools i find that the pen tool on its own is pretty satisfactory for anything that i need to do inside of one of these raster programs and of course converting you can do with a keyboard shortcut with the node tool so slight differences there all right next we come to the t which is the horizontal type tool and this is where we will really see photoshop pull ahead in some ways so if we come over here we have the a which is the artistic text tool if we hold down we'll also find the frame text tool these both are essentially built in to just the horizontal type tool you either click for point text or drag out to have a text box so those two tools in a few photo are essentially one tool inside of photoshop and then these other tools are not present inside of affinity photo at all the vertical type tool is not there now some people have tried to make workarounds to not having a vertical type tool but it is a major issue inside of all of the finished programs that they can't really handle anything besides left to right text and left to right languages and that is a big issue in various parts of the world where their language doesn't run in what we would think of as like a traditional western form we're really not sure why affinity hasn't fixed this yet they've known about for a long time people have commented on it many times and the truth is it's rather inexcusable that this hasn't been fixed yet i don't know why i would like to see affinity actually address if there's some reason why they feel they can't do it or something that's holding up development on it but can't do vertical text here and you can't do right to left languages or basically anything except left to right languages without a lot of extensive kind of just hacking your way around the problem which is not a good workflow for anybody to have to deal with so we also don't have these masking tools now you can pretty easily turn text into a mask but we don't have tools that are built to create selections and easy masks you just have to use the type tool and then make a mask one thing that you see kind of as you look at these two tool sets is that photoshop developed over a long period of time right and so they developed these tools like i said earlier and they keep them around even if there are better tools developed because some people have learned to rely on them and so they just keep them around they don't get rid of them and that contributes of course to photoshop and other adobe programs having a lot of code baggage because they just have a lot of things that are left around over years whereas affinity programs being much newer are a lot more streamlined in terms of just the way their code is built and also in terms of their feature set they don't need to necessarily have bring in some of those more developmental steps on the way and so something like the vertical type mask tool it's not really necessary when you have a type tool and you can just turn it into a mask so we can see that with various of these tools sometimes affinity has just chosen to leave a tool out because it's not going to necessarily be the best tool for their users okay then we drop down here and things are a little bit interesting here with the path selection tool this goes into what i was saying before photoshop has a really kind of i don't know archaic way of dealing with paths because it's not a vector tool and the way that it deals with paths are funky you have that path panel and you're trying to deal with what you've drawn it's really not a great way of dealing with any kind of path objects so you have this path selection tool and this direct selection tool and these are basically subsumed in a fan designer into the move tool which can select any path object as well as any layered object and then inside of the pen tool the node tool which is for direct point selection and so that's just one area where you can kind of see that affinity is a more modern program right it can deal with these things it uses the same file type and has many of the same features as its vector brother affinity designer which just makes it a lot better for dealing with those types of issues and speaking of vectors we have our shape tools and of course these are all path-based inside of photoshop and they have to be dealt with inside of the path panel and so you have the rectangle rounded rectangle ellipse tool triangle tool polygon tool line tool and the custom shape tool which can load in custom shapes in affinity photo you have the rectangle tool ellipse tool rounded rectangle tool triangle tool diamond tool trapezoid tool polygon tool star tool double star tool square star tool arrow tool donut tool pi tool segment tool crescent tool cog tool cloud tool call out rounded rectangle tool call out ellipse tool tear tool heart tool so a lot more tools off the bat here but not those custom tools that we saw over in photoshop all right next we have the hand tool and we have what's called the view tool over here in infinity photo for moving things around of course in each of these programs you just hold down spacebar and you get that tool no matter what you're on so if i'm on the selection tool hold down spacebar and i get that tool and so you seldom actually need to click on this tool or use the h to get to it but it's there kind of built into that spacebar and then under this one we have this rotate view tool so that's for being able to rotate around while you are selecting and that tool is not present in affinity photo so if you rotate your artwork a lot while you're working on it that might be a deal breaker for you i don't know just kind of depends okay and lastly over here we have the magnifying glass which is the zoom tool and the zoom tool is also found over here also a magnifying glass so we have both and they are essentially the same allow you to zoom in and out now i think you should just use keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out just hold down alt or option and scroll and that's going to be a lot easier than switching to the zoom tool so not really relevant but it kind of has to be there for people who are used to working that way okay and that's it for tools basically after these three dots here which just allow you to rearrange tools on the toolbar you have just some functions with colors and masks and displays but those are not tools and so that sums up what which tools are here you can see which ones are and are not in affinity photo and then there really is just one tool that is infinity photo that doesn't seem to be in photoshop and that is the mesh warp tool and underneath it the perspective tool so those are there there are other ways to warp things inside of photoshop so it just is not there as a tool okay so that is it hopefully this has helped you out to see which tools are there which tools aren't there and how these two programs stack up against each other in terms of their tools like i said there are lots of other features obviously in the panels in photoshop in the studios inside of affinity photo and the different personas and filters there are so many things that these programs do and so this is not the only comparison to make but it is good to see which tools are where now i want to hear from you if you could go ahead and drop in the comments and let me know which of these tools are deal breakers for you are the tools that you need present in infinity photo and do you think you could switch over to it or is there some tool that keeps you bound to photoshop keeps you paying adobe that monthly subscription each month also remember if you're trying to learn infinity programs go ahead drop into the description of this video and check out the courses that i have available for those on skillshare i also have a playlist of different comparisons that i do with the programs so you can check that out as well we'll chat in the comments and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: ben designs

Views: 12,643

Keywords:

Id: DM8_fW1uTNg

Length: 25min 54sec (1554 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021