Is Canva Affinity Photo Editor any good?

[Geoff F]

Canva an Australian based company, have bought the Serif Company and are offering a suite of design software in one package for free. So everybody is asking 'What is the catch?'

Serif Affinity was a reasonable alternative to Photoshop and some years ago I used Serif Photo Plus which did all that I wanted. Eventually I moved to Photoshop, but they keep bringing out new options which I never use so they are just clutter for me and I am paying a little over £100 a year for Photoshop so the Canva option looks interesting.

So does anybody have any more information on this alternative photo editor?

[LenR]

Hi Geoff, I have not previously heard of Canva so have no personal experience with the product.
However, a quick on line search indicates some user concerns. It seems it is not entirely free and the so called "premium elements" are on a pay to use basis. I am not sure how that would compare with the tools offered by PS. It uses an AI image generator and there are comments about slow performance. A little research maybe appropriate......

[Manfred M]

Affinity Photo was a decent Photoshop clone. The tools were similar, but the menu system was a bit odd. I bought the first version and quickly gave up on it, simply because I knew Photoshop a lot better and worked better for me (it had a wider range of colour spaces to work in, for instance).

For the average photographer who wants to get beyond Lightroom, I would suggest that it would be a good direction to move into, given the price. Canva has deeper pockets than Serif ever did, so hopefully the "free forever" promise comes true.

My opinion at the time was that Photoshop was more polished and had a greater community backing it. I don't think that will have changed. I expect I will take another hard look at it, but am unlikely to move to it because I use so many other Adobe products in my personal work.

[Geoff F]

I might give it a try but I am in a bit of a computer mess at the moment. The latest version of Photoshop wasn't working well for me. Slow and kept freezing. So I foolishly used C Cleaner to try to refresh my rather old computer running Windows 10. This resulted in a total loss of computer settings. So when all attempts of a restoration failed I decided to upgrade to a new computer with Windows 11. But this means I will have to reload all software which will be a struggle.

[Manfred M]

Geoff - I can relate. My current computer is over 10 years old and I have just bought a new custom built one. Right now, I am busy transferring many terabytes worth of data from the old to the new system.

Reason for the replacement is somewhat along the lines of what you have written - software, especially Photoshop not working well, especially with the camera I bought last year. When raw files are often well over 200MB and I use multiple layers in photcomposites, things just bog down and need frequent reboots.

[Geoff F]

At the risk of becoming a Whinging Wilfred, I also have other digital issues to cope with. My broadband provider substantially increased prices so I decided to switch to another company with full fibre lines. This resulted in a visit from a line engineer, who didn't have a ladder to climb the connection pole. So he simply drilled a hole in my wall, in the wrong place, and left. A month later, another man arrived with a hydraulic platform and a better idea for the new line position. So I now have a faster broadband but there is a fault with my landline phone which allows me to make calls but not receive any.

A phone call to the line supplier resulted in another 'will fix it within 48 hours' promise. We will see what happens.

Having a questionable phone line tempted me to get a back up smart phone, but it is smarter than me so I can't understand how it works. Anyway it all makes work for somebody. UK readers of a certain age may recall a Flanders and Swan song entitled 'Twas on the Monday morning when the gas man came to call' which detailed how every tradesman caused a bit of work for somebody else and you end up going round in a circle without actually getting anywhere 'It all makes work for the working man' was one of the lines from that song.

[DanK]

Geoff,

my computers were recalled (they were on lease, and the lease expired), and I am just now getting close to finishing configuring a new one. It's a nightmare because some software companies (Microsoft and Adobe, I'm looking at you) haven't bothered to write utilities to transfer all settings.

I gave up our landline. For several years, we used a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) device that can be purchased here for about $100 and allows you to have a landline that is nearly free, but we finally decided to get rid of it because we got mostly spam calls. Now we just use our cell phones.

Dan

[Geoff F]

Set up my new computer today. A lot easier than I feared. Some software failed even though I had an installation DVD because the company had gone out of business but most reinstalled with no serious problems. I even got into My Account at Photoshop and everything reinstalled. Windows 11 makes Photoshop look slightly different but I seem to be adapting without too much difficulty. Even my personal preference settings transferred to the new installation.

[DanK]

Glad your transition wasn't too bad. I'm almost done with mine. I had no problems with installation of software, other than having an out date link for a statistical program, but getting things set up as I am used to takes forever. Some is the fault of the vendors. For example, Microsoft has never bothered writing a utility that copies all of your preferences for Office applications. I tried Chat GPT to find out how to get one thing back in Word. I asked twice; it was right once. Some was my own fault. For example, despite days of copying files and going through lists, I forgot to copy my Lightroom printing templates/ fortunately, I was able to restore them from my online backup.

I found Photoshop a nuisance. For example, I had forgotten how to separate panels within groups and I how to get rid of the annoying startup screen.

But it's now almost done, and today I printed two prints for my daughter.

[Geoff F]

I agree about the Photoshop Home page being horrible but easy to remove under Preferences once you find the required line to unclick, although effects only happen the next time you open Photoshop. The main thing which might keep me with Adobe is Bridge. I find Windows 11 difficult for viewing and moving around images which are so easy with Bridge.

Several other issues are working out expensive. Such as Malwarebytes. I reloaded the software and paid for a new subscription but couldn't get the verification to work with the OTP codes being rejected. So I eventually cut my losses and got the free AVG antivirus instead. Not as easy to use as Malwarebytes but I wasn't prepared to risk any more cash. AVG was very easy to install.

[billtils]

Been there, done that, still have scars

[DanK]

That particular change is easy to do, and it's easy to find the explanation of how. However, I had LOTS of these things to do, and not all of them were as easy to figure out. For example, I had difficulty finding one of the Word tweaks, so I asked Chat GPT twice. The first answer was wrong; the second was right.

Some things are also incomplete. For example, I installed all of my Lightroom print templates. I used one two days ago, and I found that two of the settings weren't there. Perhaps those two are held in the catalog rather than in the template itself. Who knows? In any case, I will have to check each of the templates the first time I use it.

And I scan from a Canon multifunction printer that sits next to my photo printer. The scanning utility I use didn't install with the printer software, as I thought it should. I wasted perhaps 30 minutes trying to reinstall it but finally realized that the utility probably installs with the drivers for my Canon photo scanner, which I have not yet installed.

And on an on...

[tclune]

I downloaded Affinity and gave it a try. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I expect to adopt it as my primary PP software. I am only interested in the Photo component. I have found Robin Whalley's YouTube videos very helpful in getting familiar with the package, even though they are devoted to the pre-Canva versions of Affinity Photo. Here is the first in a series of his tutorials, which should allow you to find them all easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RChxuWyjaYc I also use Topaz PhotoAI as a plugin to the Affinity program instead of using the Canva AI tools, which are expensive and not very good. I have decided to migrate away from Nikon's NX Studio since they started requiring you to have a Nikon account which is free right now but I expect they will require you to use Nikon cloud storage soon. So far, I am quite satisfied with the Affinity package -- although, like any software, its structure is a bit quirky at first. FWIW

[proseak]

"UK readers of a certain age may recall a Flanders and Swan song"

For those of you who don't remember it -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0

[Geoff F]

"UK readers of a certain age may recall a Flanders and Swan song"

For those of you who don't remember it -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0

Yes, Peter, that is the song which I was thinking about.

Many years ago their witty lyrics made them popular and they still seem relevant today.

[billtils]

Manfred - do you really have "many terabytes of data to transfer"? Why not keep your data on one or more external SS drive(s)?

[DanK]

Manfred - do you really have "many terabytes of data to transfer"? Why not keep your data on one or more external SS drive(s)?

That's exactly what I decided to do recently when I was forced to update my computer. I now use a 4 TB external SSD for my photos and related stuff. Because it's recognized as a drive by Windows, it's trivially easy to set my cloud backup (Backblaze) to recognize this. However, to maintain my habit of also having a local mirror, I'll have to plug in a second SSD for the local backup.

Unfortunately, I had the external drive entirely set up before I realized that I should have reformatted it. It came in exFAT format, which I think is to make it usable with MacOS and Linux as well as Windows, and I didn't explore whether it's better for this particular use to reformat it as NTFS. From what I've read, NTFS is somewhat better for files this numerous and of this size.

[Manfred M]

Manfred - do you really have "many terabytes of data to transfer"? Why not keep your data on one or more external SS drive(s)?

Simply because I use multiple layers of backup.

I retain my main data on an internal drive. I use a couple of NAS drives (more secure than a single external HDD from failure). I expect that once my new machine is fully setup and I get my new NAS setup (still waiting for a couple of back-ordered HDDs) and retire my old ones, I will purchase a Backblaze subscription as my third layer of backup.

The one downside of NAS is that as it is connected over my home network, access to files takes longer. That's okay for backup, but I frequently look through the 20+ TB of image files, including edits. Sometimes I will go back several decades of captures and edits for things to work and rework.

The upside of NAS is that having a HDD drive is no issue as all I have to do is to replace the faulty drives and the backup restores itself fairly quickly (a few days).

[Geoff F]

I recently had a 1TB external drive fail but luckily I had most of those files duplicated onto another drive. Sometimes 'belt and braces' are a good idea.