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Like Affinity, it has a configurable interface and allows you to choose which adjustments you’d like to have displayed in the control panel.
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Luminar, meanwhile, is known for its simplicity and a clear user interface.
#Affinity vs pixelmator pro software#
The photo interface of Affinity Photo is also highly customizable so you can change it to fit your needs – this is similar to Affinity Designer, the software for graphic designers who want something like Adobe Illustrator but without the monthly fees. Once you get the hang of it though, Affinity is pretty straightforward and easy to use. Export Persona (for saving your images)īecause the system of Personas is unique to Affinity it can be confusing at first.Develop Persona (for RAW photo development).Photo Persona (for retouching & editing).These make the workspace less cluttered by refining your focus to one task at a time. The image you’re working on sits in the center and control panels run on the side or top of the workspace.Īs we touched on previously, Affinity Photo divides its primary functions into sections called Personas. Luminar’s interface is stylish and intuitive.īoth Luminar and Affinity Photo have a similar general layout and design aesthetic. It’s just a matter of pre-developing in the Develop Persona first and then making your more complex adjustments on top of that. That said, if you can get around the workflow issues, Affinity Photo is certainly very powerful for detailed, slick photo edits.
#Affinity vs pixelmator pro plus#
In picking a winner here, we’re going with Luminar because the workflow is more streamlined, plus you can easily sync adjustments made in one image with any other photos in the image library – a great time-saver, especially for professional photographers (see our Luminar tutorial to see how simple it is to get started.) Any adjustments can be tightly and selectively applied to parts of an image using masks, and it tends to allow for very accurate edits.Īs mentioned above, it wouldn’t be unfair to think of Luminar as being more like Lightroom and Affinity Photo as being more like Photoshop when it comes to image development. Luminar, meanwhile, allows for non-destructive image editing in a single workflow. Additionally, batch processing is limited to one Persona at a time. This two-step process sets Affinity at a bit of a disadvantage because it means that you can’t easily change your initial adjustments once you’ve moved from one Persona to the next.
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The thing about this is that you really need to commit to your RAW adjustments first in the Develop Persona before you can move across to the Photo Persona and make use of its more powerful tools for advanced editing. The main difference between Luminar and Affinity Photo when it comes to RAW image development is the workflow.Īffinity Photo has different areas called “personas”: pre-processing is done in the Develop Persona, while detailed photo editing happens in the Photo Persona.
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