Over the past several months I’ve received
many requests to make a video comparing GIMP and Affinity Photo – especially after I
released my GIMP vs Photoshop: Complete Comparison video. Well, today I’ll finally be
giving the people what they want! Here is my comparison between GIMP and Affinity
Photo. But of course before I get into that, don’t
forget to check out my website at DaviesMediaDesign.com. As always I have tons of GIMP, Inkscape, and
Darktable tutorials on here, you can get more by becoming a DMD premium member, and I have
tons of free software Help Articles so definitely check that out. You can enroll in my GIMP Masterclass: From
Beginner to Pro Photo Editing on Udemy, and as I mentioned you can get more by becoming
a DMD Premium Member. Finally, you can check out my Affinity Photo
tutorials over on my new channel Pro Photo Vector. I’ll include a link to this as well as all
the relevant links to this tutorial in the description of the video. Alright, so let’s start with a quick introduction
to the two programs, starting with GIMP. As many of you know I have been using GIMP,
a free and open source photo editor, for over a decade now, and have been creating tutorials
for the software since 2011. In fact, May 17th of 2021 will be the 10-year
anniversary of my YouTube channel. The GIMP program itself has been around since
1996 when it was created as a free software alternative to Photoshop for Linux operating
systems, and is currently available for Windows, MAC, and Linux machines. GIMP is primarily a raster-based photo editor,
with all the tools you need to professionally edit and retouch photos from start to finish,
and also includes plenty of tools for creating graphic design compositions or photo manipulations. It’s a free and open source program, which
means it’s developed and supported by a decentralized, worldwide community of developers
and users like you or me. Though GIMP is a standalone software, it works
well in conjunction with other free and open source software like Inkscape, Scribus, Darktable,
and Blender, to name a few. Affinity Photo, on the other hand, was first
launched in 2015 by Serif, a private British software developer, essentially as a rebrand
of an earlier software known as “Photo Plus,” which was originally released in 1999 and
retired in 2017. Today, the Affinity Photo software is available
for Windows and MAC machines as well as for the iPad, but is not available for Linux machines
at the time of this video. In my opinion, this software is really the
first premium Photoshop alternative to go toe-to-toe with the dominant Adobe flagship
product. Like GIMP, Affinity Photo has all the photo
editing tools you need to edit and manipulate photos, though Affinity has a few extra bells
and whistles like a complete suite of non-destructive editing features and the built-in automation
of more advanced editing tasks like focus stacking or RAW image editing. Affinity Photo charges a one-time fee for
a single license, and can also be integrated with additional apps like Affinity Designer
or Affinity Publisher – which together, along with Affinity Photo, are known as the
“Affinity Trinity.” Now that you’ve been introduced to GIMP
and Affinity Photo, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how these two programs compare, starting
with their core photo editing features. If you’re used to premium software, opening
GIMP for the first time might be slightly confusing. There’s no welcome screen that directs you
where to go or what to do. However, once you figure out all you need
to do is go to File>New or File>Open, everything else about GIMP should seem familiar to anyone
who’s ever used image editing software. GIMP operates in a single workspace, with
an image window in the center and tools, menus, and dockable dialogues surrounding it. If GIMP has proven anything, it’s that there
are a base set of features that people expect in a solid photo editor. For any editor to be taken seriously, it should
have transform tools, paint tools, text and shape tools, smart selection tools, a layers
system with masking and blending abilities, various practical filters and effects that
can be added to images or layers, and robust importing and exporting capabilities that
support a wide variety of file formats. It should also have a customizable user interface
that can be tweaked based on the user’s preferences, and the ability to import custom
or third-party patterns, brushes, fonts, and palettes. GIMP has all these features, which means it
sets the bar pretty high for premium software. Premium Features in Affinity Photo
If Affinity Photo has proven anything, it’s that the “premium” features of a program
start with the automation of advanced photo editing techniques, as well as having a comprehensive
suite of non-destructive editing features – all in a turn-key solution that doesn’t
require any additional software. This is where GIMP starts to lose pace with
Affinity Photo, and where Affinity Photo shows it’s worth the money. For example, Affinity Photo supports built-in
panoramic stitching, focus stacking, batch image editing, RAW processing, macro recording,
which is the equivalent to Photoshop actions, and an HDR merge feature. It also has non-destructive editing features
made popular by Photoshop like adjustment layers, effects layers, and vector shape tools. Finally, it offers a panel with quick-access
to free stock photo sites like Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay – much like how Adobe offers
quick-access to Adobe Stock from within Photoshop. Affinity Photo also uses a dynamic “Personas”
system - “personas” being the term Affinity uses for “workspaces” - that show or hide
certain tools and toolbar shortcuts depending on the persona you’re in. There are 5 main personas in total, with each
one serving a specific purpose, though the Photo Persona is likely where you’ll spend
most of your time when inside the program. I have an entire tutorial dedicated to personas
on my other channel, Pro Photo Vector, if you want to learn more about this subject. But the Photo Persona is the main workspace
where you edit, manipulate, or retouch your photos, as well as add text, shapes, and effects
to your images or objects. This persona is most similar to what you’d
find in the GIMP user interface. Affinity Photo has some additional characteristics
that are unique to this program, like the live previewing of effects and pixels inside
your brush head. It has a virtual “Assistant” that pops
up every now and then when the program has automatically performed an action for you
– such as creating a pixel layer when you’re trying to paint on a new document that doesn’t
have any layers. Finally, Affinity Photo provides a live preview
thumbnail of image adjustment presets inside the Adjustments panel so you can easily see
how the adjustment will affect your image prior to applying those adjustments. When you open Affinity Photo for the first
time, you’re greeted with a welcome screen, not unlike the one you’d find in Photoshop,
that contains quick links to useful resources like tutorials, premium assets, and project
samples. You can also create a new document
using your own settings or any of the dozens of pre-installed templates. I should note that GIMP also has built-in
templates as well as tons of tutorials and assets for users to reference – but Affinity
neatly integrates these resources into a welcome screen, which improves the overall ease-of-use
of the program. So this leads me to my next point - GIMP can usually reproduce most of the premium features
and effects found in Affinity Photo, but it often requires the use of third-party plugins
or the installation of additional open source software. For example, the BIMP plugin allows for batch
image editing directly within GIMP, while Darktable, an open source RAW processor, allows
for RAW image editing and performing HDR merges for exposure bracketed images. The free, third-party Hugin software can stitch
panoramic photos. Inkscape can be used for vector shape drawing,
and the G’MIC plugin has tons of additional features and effects that can further expand
GIMP’s capabilities. So up to this point I’ve been singing the praises of Affinity Photo as a premium software,
but I’d like to now cover the weaknesses of the program. For one, its smart-selection tools aren’t
as good as I’ve seen in other programs. Photoshop is still the industry leader when
it comes to its Subject and Object selection tools, which provide decently accurate selections
of complex areas with minimal clicks. And there are other lesser-known programs
that have had breakthroughs with smart selection technology like Luminar 4’s AI-powered sky
replacement feature. Affinity Photo’s main smart selection feature
is its Selection Brush Tool that pairs with its “Refine Selection” dialogue, but to
me this feature is not that groundbreaking. This is especially true when you consider
that GIMP has already announced it’s working on a similar selection brush feature, known
as the Paint Select Tool, which has already been released in its 2.99.4 development version. GIMP also has the Foreground Select Tool,
which is a pretty powerful tool or outlining subjects and erasing image backgrounds. In other words, while Affinity Photo is innovative
in many areas, it lags behind in the crucial “smart selection” category. Secondly, although the Affinity Photo assistant
is a cool little feature unique to this program, it is necessary because Affinity Photo has
many behaviors and rules that are counter-intuitive to new users. For example, when you create a new composition,
by default the composition will contain no layers despite displaying a document or canvas. You either have to add a new pixel layer or
import a photo into that document to basically be able to perform any action. To me, it makes more sense to start a new,
blank composition off with a Background layer by default. Thirdly, which I'm pretty sure is a real word, the “Styles” panel, which allows
you to quickly add styles to things like vector shapes or text, contains what I consider to
be outdated styles. Though these styles can be adjusted after
the fact by double-clicking on the “fx” logo that pops up on your text layer and navigating
through the various effects that are added to your text, I just think Affinity needs
to either revisit and tweak the default settings of these styles or get rid of them entirely. Additionally, it’s not really obvious
how to remove a style from your text or objects without hitting the undo button, undoing the
action in the History panel, or deleting the text layer and starting over. The final weakness I’ll point out in Affinity
Photo is the way the program handles transformations. Unlike GIMP, which has various designated
transformation tools that can be toggled between layer, selection, and path modes, Affinity
Photo runs all its transformations through the move tool or the transform panel. This does simplify things in some cases, but
it also unnecessarily complicates transformations in other cases. For example, if I draw a selection area with
the “Rectangle Marquee” tool in Affinity Photo, and then decide I want to change the
boundary of the selection area, I have to grab the “move” tool from the toolbox,
toggle on my Quick Mask, transform the selection area, then toggle the Quick Mask off. In my opinion, this is a lot of steps for
a very simple process. In GIMP, you simply hover your mouse over
the edges of the selection area and click and drag to transform the area. Photoshop also kind of weirdly has the same problem with counter-intuitive selection area transformations Alright, so moving on to GIMP’s weaknesses, I think the most obvious one is that performing more advanced
tasks in GIMP often requires the help of other free software, which requires figuring out
what software you need for the task at hand as well as taking the time to learn how to
use the software. My channel has worked over the years to provide
tutorials that make it easier to integrate additional free software and plugins into
your GIMP workflow, which I do think helps connect some of those dots for premium features
not directly integrated into GIMP. But Affinity Photo will save you tons of time
as it has these features built directly into the program. GIMP’s second weakness is that it currently
lacks many non-destructive editing features like adjustment layers. This means you’ll have to apply your edits
directly to your image layers in most cases, meaning you can’t go back and tweak adjustments
you’ve made to your photos later on in your workflow like you can in Affinity Photo or
Photoshop. Adjustment layers are expected in GIMP 3.2,
though by my estimation this version won’t be out for another 3 years or so. Finally, as I mentioned in my GIMP vs Photoshop
video, GIMP does not support editing in CMYK. This means that all your projects in GIMP
will be created in an RGB color space, which works fine for the web but may create some
problems when trying to print your work. Affinity Photo, on the other hand, does allow
you to edit projects in a CMYK color format, and also has a CMYK option for certain image
adjustment tools like the Levels tool. GIMP does offer soft-proofing using a CMYK
color profile, which means you can preview your image’s colors in a CMYK color mode
prior to sending them to a printer. This gives you a pretty good idea of how your
RGB colors will transfer over, but isn’t as accurate as actually editing the image
in CMYK. Next up let's talk about Affinity Photo’s payment structure. By now I think we all know about Adobe Creative
Cloud’s infamous subscription model. Affinity Photo, on the other hand, has decided
to implement the old Adobe model by charging a flat fee for its software, which keeps costs
down for creatives who use the software while also providing a-la-carte options for people
who need additional apps or resources. For example, at the time of this video Affinity
Photo for Desktop will cost you a one-time payment of $49.99 at its full price. And they do sometimes run sales, so you can get
it even cheaper than that if you buy it at the right time. They also offer their other two software,
Affinity Designer and Publisher, for the same price. The main drawback to this is that purchasing
the app only gives you access to the app on one device. So, if you have a Windows and MAC computer,
you’ll have to buy the program separately for each device. They also offer an iPad version for $19.99. So Affinity Photo can cost you as little as
$49.99 or, if you buy all three apps, as much as $134.97 per device. If you intend to use multiple devices, you
can multiply those totals by however many devices you intend to use. When you compare this to Adobe’s $9.99 per
month photography plan, Affinity Photo will start saving you money at around the 5th month
of ownership as a standalone product on a single device. If you’re someone who also needs publishing
and graphic design software, you’d have to purchase the full Creative Cloud plan from
Adobe at $52.99 per month. This means Affinity’s “Trinity” of apps
would start saving you money before the end of your third month of ownership, or even
sooner if you buy the apps on sale, when compared to the full Creative Cloud plan. Something that I'll be personally keeping an eye out for in the future
is whether Affinity will stick to this flat-fee model, or if they will move to a subscription
model to keep their revenue more predictable. The one advantage Affinity has over Adobe
is that it isn’t currently a publicly traded company, so it doesn’t have to please shareholders
or think in the short-term. Affinity Photo does offer other products and
resources to fund its business, such as brush and texture packs, as well as workbooks, so
this could help keep them from switching over to a monthly or annual payment system in order to generate more revenue. However, Affinity could easily change its
sales model at any time for a variety of reasons and consumers could once again end up back inside a subscription trap. So that brings us to GIMP’s main advantage, and that is of course that it is totally free. Obviously that means it won’t cost you anything
monetarily speaking, but it also means you don’t have to provide any personal information
to use the program. No name and address, no banking information
- nothing. As a result, you don’t have to risk your
information being sold to a third-party, nor do you have to worry about the company you
purchased the software from getting hacked. You also don’t have to worry about decision makers implementing a subscription fee for a product that your projects now depend on. And unlike other free software downloads,
GIMP’s website isn’t full of spammy ads, fake download buttons, or strange looking
download packages. It’s pretty straightforward, consistent,
and safe. Additionally, where Affinity Photo has graphic
design and publishing software, GIMP has open source counterparts like Inkscape for vector
design and Scribus for publishing. So all of this has been basically leading us to this big question: Which program should you use? If you are a total beginner to photography, photo editing, photo manipulation, and graphic
design, I recommend you download GIMP to edit your photos, learn general photo editing principles,
and create design compositions. GIMP is fully capable of creating professional-quality
edits and compositions, and as I mentioned several times through this video can be integrated
with additional programs and plugins to extend its capabilities. It’s a great program for weekend warrior
or hobbyist photographers, as well as any professional photographer or entrepreneur
starting a business on a tight budget. Keep in mind - photography and design takes many years to learn - even if you're just learning the basics, so GIMP and other open source software will
save you tons of money while you learn your camera and develop your photography and design
style. It's important to remember, as I've said in
other videos and articles, that owning the best equipment and the best editing software
won't make you a great photographer or designer. There are tons of free and affordable resources
to help you master GIMP – including the hundreds of free tutorials on the Davies Media
Design YouTube channel, affordable courses on DaviesMediaDesign.com, or even our GIMP
Masterclass on Udemy. If, after using GIMP for some time, you start to find yourself needing more functionality
for higher-level editing tasks like focus stacking or creating an HDR merge for exposure
bracketed images, then I recommend making the jump to Affinity Photo. It is a fully capable premium software and
will save you tons of money over switching to the Adobe Creative Cloud system of products. It has all the base features found in GIMP,
as well as pretty much all the features found in Photoshop. As you develop your understanding for photography
and creative software, you’ll start to truly appreciate the automation of tasks in Affinity
Photo that help you speed up your workflow and improve the look and feel of your compositions. Additionally, like GIMP, Affinity Photo has
tons of resources available to help you learn the software – including free tutorials
from Pro Photo Vector, or premium resources, like the Affinity Photo Workbook, offered
directly through the Affinity Photo website. To sum this comparison up, I do think Affinity Photo is a great next step for GIMP users
who simply need those extra premium features. If you’re totally new to photography and
digital editing, start with GIMP, and when it's time to make the jump to premium software,
go with Affinity Photo. Alright that’s it for this tutorial, hopefully
you like it, if you did don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the bell icon to be notified each time I have a brand new tutorial. You can check out any of the links to my resources
in the description of the video, including a link to my new channel Pro Photo Vector. But thanks for watching, and I’ll see you
next time.
