Nice job comparing the two. I've used both, but find that my productivity grinds to a crawl using GIMP because of its very dated UI. I also appreciate that Affinity Photo shares the same keyboard combinations as Photoshop which for a power user I find convenient. The $49 one time price for Affinity Photo is an excellent value and they constantly make incremental updates to the app.
well done, great comparison, I'm advocating open source all the way, the more people use and even give a little to the developers maybe then they can develop full time and it will develop quicker and benefit everyone with what is arguably not deal breakers in my opinion as a professional myself, gimp, Darktable, Inkscape, Scribus and so many more including the big one Blender are just going from strength to strength when everything is adding up from the microtransactions, open-source is the best time to be learning it and using it, i am giving a presentation to artists next month locally to hopefully show the full extent at which professional artist can do everything they need and more with open source, thank you for all you do to show this is possible, you are an inspiration!
@@giovannipeirone3915 Krita is one of the best apps out there for digital drawing and painting but which allows you to manipulate photos as well, it's one of the few apps that has true 32bit colour representation builtin for mac users in open source. Many use it for digital painting for concept art in the pro industries
Really good comparison but I think it's important to point out that you might want to lean more towards Affinity if you're frequently flicking between raster, vector, and publication/layout software. This is by far the most attractive thing about using Affinity over GIMP+Inkscape+Scribus for me. And also why I find it nicer to use than the Adobe suite.
It was an excellent video 😁 Fortunately, GIMP still offers me enough so that I can retouch my photographs, but I confess that I was curious about Affinity
I've used photoshop before but tried for years to use gimp and found the transition not very easy. Also applying filters in Gimp out of the box just seemed like their default settings made the raster images look worse whereas out-of-the-box photoshops filters didn't require much tweaking and look passable as soon as applied. So I gave up trying to use gimp years ago and then last year ran into Affinity Photo and all the hotkeys worked just like in photoshop, the live filters worked like smart objects in photoshop... the transition was just intuitive and the filters just like photoshop looked somewhat decent requiring only a little tweaking. The ability to apply filters and effects through a mask non-destructively with graduated levels of application, just all the stuff I was used to with photoshop. Its only missing a few features such as selection to path/live/auto-trace and the ability to do more fine tuning of color range selections.
Thank you. I used to do simple editing with Gimp. It is the best alternative to the paid programs. Now I have tried Affinity Photo and Designer for 90 days and I am very convinced. It's clearer and you stay in the flow better than in Gimp - I think. The tutorials are great. Among the paid programs, Affinity is the winner for me. Especially compared to Adobe and the programs I know from the graphics studio but are much too expensive for me privately anyway. Affinity allows a similar high quality and performance as Adobe products but much cheaper and without subscription.
I've been using Affinity Photo for more than 2 years. I started image editing in GIMP but switched to Affinity. Eagerly waiting for GIMP 3.2 where I can do non-destructive editing and maybe then I can switch back to GIMP again. Thanks for the comparison video btw. 🙂
Another great benefit of GIMP is that it is made for Linux, so I will stick with the GIMP. And it is completely enough (along with RawTherapee) for my need for photo editing.
It has been brought to my attention that I accidentally calculated the cost of the 3 apps to be $134.97. I think I added one of the apps in there as $34.99 for some reason rather than all three for $49.99 each. So, yeah, the cost of the three apps is actually $149.97. Math is fun.
I was thinking to get Affinity few weeks ago but i stayed with GIMP and Rawtherapee. I am really curious about this video. Thank you for doing your videos Michael.☮️
@@oswaldmensin5283 i know it is worth money. I just decided to stay with software combination which is extremely powerfull on its own. And that is mainly RT. No reason for me as amateur photographer to invest money to software which in the end do not offer to me something which i already can not achieve in free software.
@@billionairepodcastno problem with Linux, macos is the problem here not the apps. Darktable is better than paid apps, between Gimp and other FLOSS apps it's easy to get done what you need to for while artist eco system.
ngl I really want to like gimp but it is stil too confusing and its PSD support isn't good enough, which isn't good when working with other artists who work on photoshop
I just returned to Windows 10 from Linux and my mom bought me the Affinity Trinity to make my book covers, because GIMP (sadly) is not fully compatible with PSDs made in PS. Even with the same fonts installed, I was unable to edit any text layers having effect styles applied. GIMP treated the text layers as raster layers, whereas Affinity allows me to edit them with effects applied.
I still dont understand the subscription based distribution of Adobe. If PS doesn't give me back anything through my work it doesn't pay to use it. That leaves only the professionals and Corporates using it. If they don't expand their user base then there will come a time when the base saturates and then possibly they may have to rethink.
Thanks, I'm in the process of dumping Adobe! Purchased Luminar AI and learning DaviVinci resolve and was considering Gimp now will purchase Affinity Photo.
I think your math is wrong. The full Affinity suite is $149.97 (unless you get a discount). Also you can use Affinity software on more than one device, you just have to be the only one using it. But you do need to purchase different copies if using a different OS as it's not cross platform for activation.
You know what - you're right, and I have no clue how I came to the figure I used in this video. I think I added $34.99 for one of the apps for some reason. Whoops!
This was interesting to watch, I was thinking about getting Affinity Design but now I'm not sure if I should get inkscape instead. Ahhhhhh. Definitely want Affinity Photo now though, with that whole thing about making images for print, still don't understand everything about that yet but I know I'm going to be needing it soon.
I use both. I don't think Affinity Photo is 'Completely' better than GIMP. I can't use G'MIC in Affinity Photo. But I (not 'switched', but) bought into Affinity Photo for just one thing: Brushes! GIMP does support .abr's, but Dynamic brushes have a much harder time getting into GIMP. Davies, do talk about brushes if you can!
You can actually use G'MIC in Affinity Photo. I do. Just go to the G'MIC website, click the big black download button on the left, then scroll down the page where it shows the icons for photoshop, Affinity Photo, and a couple others. Download the .zip file from that section. From there just unzip the zip file you downloaded into a folder that you never move. Inside of Affinity Photo, go to Edit > Preferences > Photoshop Plugins and click the add button. Navigate to the folder where you unpacked the zip file and add it. Also, you might want to tick the "Allow unknown plugins to be used" tick box in the preferences dialog. Then just restart Affinity photo and it should be there and working under the Filters > Plugins menu.
Thanks for the comparison! I have all three Affinity programs, and have purchased them as soon as they came out! I also have Gimp, and Krita, but have not used it much, but I intend to since your videos!
Thank you for all your excellent tutorials. I used to be a Photoshop user until they started their subs scheme! I now use GIMP with some excellent results. I am also considering Affinity. I recently read an article promoting ACDSee! I am keen to know how it compares to Affinity. If anyone has an idea.
Affinity has Lab color capability which is very important for color work. Unfortunately Affinity does not "remember" (stick, freeze, etc) certain user settings; most notably it always defaults to eye dropper sample size of 1 pixel, which is stupid, and user changing to 5 or 9 pixel samples just resets to default '1' at next program use.
Gimp has a really good edge detection filter, that's about it. They should really also change the workflow for selections and layer copying. There are multiple steps to transforming a selection to a "floating" layer blah blah, this function is much quicker and easier in all the other programmes, that could be streamlined a bit, AND lack of multilayer exr support that millions are now using will make them stay away. Those things could be fixed and of course it is totally free. Its easy for the general public to criticize, and not see how much hard work goes into it. If the features were there I would have continued to use it. love free software. I did buy Affinity for only 32 quid and that was a good move. Opens up a multilayer exr in no time and PS cant even do it without a plugin.
Obviously not. Those of us who are computer literate like to have control over our systems and follow good security practises. Spyware is absolutely not welcome. But I'm sure your cheque is in the post, Mr. Shill.
Hi there, how hard would it be to transition from Gimp to Affinity Photo, in terms of workflow etc. Am still new to this, so I thought I’d pick up Gimp first and if I enjoy the whole thing, then buy Affinity Photo later. Thanks, great video.
Michael, this was an amazing job you did. I had just been considering getting Affinity. The only tempting thing about it is stacking. Linux is severely lacking in advances there. I would love a way to do it with Gimp. But I decided to say no because my loyalty to Open Source. You made so many powerful points about why to stick with it, but I doubt most will see the benefit. If it does ever get the upper hand in this particular game it will never lose it. That is the way Open Source works.
Nice video! I was wondering if you can make more tutorials on installing gimp plugins, since I already have G'mic and resynthesizer, and noticed other gimp plugins that I want to download, but don't know how.
Great video, Michael. How about following this video up with a Background Removal Challenge comparing GIMP and Affinity Photo like you did with Photoshop before? 🙂
I've been using GIMP since 1998 on SunOS(pre Linux) and still use it along with Corel AftershotPro (commercial raw editor) on my Linux boxes. But on Windows I use Affinity bought with their 50% offer during a black Friday deal. It is much slicker but if Gimp gets adjustment layers it will do most of what I want. The other big tick for Affinity is the ease of switching between raw and photo modes as well as the various stacking tools. It also integrated well with the Nik plugins which I use a lot. One other big advantage of Affinity which you didn't mention is that it is compatible with Photoshop plugins so most of those just work in Affinity with no hassle - no lost investment. I agree about the styles in Affinity, but I think they are more about the Affinity Designer product than Photo itself...
Since Gimp is Open Source software, it depends on volunteer developers to keep it up-to-date. This can be a major drawback, especially when there are significant issues. This happened with the Mac version last year. I ran into two bugs (well-known once I figured out where to look for help) that remained unfixed because there was no Mac developer to address the bug reports. The first was when an upgrade disabled about half the fonts on a Mac user's machine. The solution was to go back a level to the version before the font-handling was changed. Not totally crippling, but definitely annoying. The second was that no matter what resolution you created a project at, Gimp saved and exported it at 72 DPI. That led me to trying Affinity Photo. More on that in a bit. In the meantime, GIMP went through at least two minor version updates, which were not available for the Mac. After over a year, I saw that a Mac developer was finally working on GIMP again. One programmer for everything Mac. I have no idea what the support has been like since then, so won't comment. I have to agree that Affinity Photo is not intuitive. I'm not a graphics designer or heavily into photo manipulation. I'm a writer who needs to design book covers and promotional graphics. I'd worked with Gimp for years, and pretty much knew how to do what I needed to. (I also signed up for your GIMP course on Udemy last year, which is how I wound up discovering the bugs.) Figuring out equivalent function in Affinity Photo was frustrating for me. Courses weren't really oriented toward what I wanted to do. At this point, I'm using Photoshop Elements because I found a course using it done by a crafting person which had tutorials on things like collages, which are closer to my projects. Even though it does have limitations (no CMYK again), so far it's working for me.
Right now they are free. All versions have been 1.xx & there have been many. They might start charging after 2.0 but even if they raise the price a bit it's still a bargain.
Two mistakes: 1) There is no need to use the Quick Mask when transforming a selection. 2) Serif (Affinity) states that I can install all my Affinity applications on "as many PC's as I have Windows installed on". I really liked your comparison; and the models or girlfriends used were VERY attractive.
It could be sooner - though I did base this number on timelines from previous versions, including more recent releases. Could also be longer. Who knows.
Youre comparing GIMP with Affinity Photo and you throw in Inkscape, Darktable, Hugin... These are all separate software not some extensions to GIMP and can just as well be used with Photo (although in most cases you dont need them). G'mic is fantastic and it can be used with Affinity as well (in fact I am using it within Photo. Just like I am using Inkscape with Designer) Later in your comparison of GIMP and Photo you compare Photo to... Photoshop. Saying that Photos is lacking in smart selection capabilities while (intentionally?) demonstrating wrong use of the tool (you want to select that girl? Make a brush bigger to start with...). Essentially you compare Photo against Gimp+Photoshop+Inkscape+Darktable+Hugin instead of directly compare GIMP and Photo. Which sadly would be devastating for GIMP. Some of the tools present in Photo - like Liquify for example - you have never mentioned... You never talk about GPU acceleration either. Also you are sugarcoating GIMP (no worries, this is coming to GIMP 3.2! In 3 years, maybe...) and at the same time making up hypothetical, bad scenarios for Photo (watch out! It MAY change to subscription model!). It shows bias towards GIMP, but to your credit you never say that GIMP is better. Which is pretty much only good thing about this sort of weird "comparison" of Photo against rest of the world :D
Inkscape may be better than Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator. But GIMP and Krita are unfortunately nowhere near as good as Affinity Photo. Mainly because Affinity allows you to mix vector and raster and non-destructive editing in the same app, which really makes things fast and easy.
I love Gimp but damn the UI is ugly compared to Affinity Photo or Krita. The developers working on it are clearly better at coding than design. Speaking of Krita, how about a comparison video of Gimp and Krita?
I use Adobe Suite for professional work because of the work flow. But Affinity Photo, Design and Publisher is destroying every design software out there from best UI and UX and great functions. Open source software will never pass as better then a paid version of anything because quality control, ugly interfaces and developers that work on open source applications they move on to work on paying projects, no time to fix anything or else. But hey! free is better to a certain point. At the end you end up paying more is you decide to avoid controlled built applications for many reasons. Example: Affinity Design, Photo and Publisher are fun and joyful applications but the export to AI. PDF is a nightmare, cheap application but you pay more for fixing files for delivery. I figure out how to export Affinity to Adobe products cause that is a standard file format that ALL Production/Studios companies uses. Again, if you not serious on entering a professional work and share files around any open source application will be fine. The GIMP UI horrible and ugly in so many ways that turn off the desire to create anything on this app. Mean while Affinity Photo, Design and Publisher is SUPER fun to use them, it is like a Ferrari but when you are ready to export your files all the beauty is no more. That's why I use every applications I can to create my contents and export them from any Adobe Product to make sure Directors, Producer, Animators, etc can open are use the file without ZERO problems. For Reason World Productions: 1. Adobe Suite is a MUST have. 2. For Semi Professional but you must use Adobe suite with Affinity Photo, Design and Publisher so other professional can open your files. 3. For everything else out there any free Open Source application will be fine. Until the fix the SUPER ugly Interfaces and functions with commonsense open source is a wild-card. And you can not be really on developers free time to any improvements or updates. Anyway, great videos!
