5 Affinity Photo Tools That We Need in Adobe Photoshop

For most things retouching, Adobe Photoshop sets the pace and has been the industry standard for decades. However, as alternative software improves and innovates, there are some features that Photoshop doesn't have that would improve it.

I have been using Adobe Photoshop for nearly 20 years, which can't be true, but sadly is. I picked up the software in my early teens when I wanted to make websites in Dreamweaver and I got a little hooked. Photoshop seemed unthinkably complex and deep to the point of being tantamount to impossible to master. Now, I look back and I see that it was comparatively simple compared to today's iteration

A big part of why Photoshop has been in the industry standard for so long is because it is the industry standard. That is, to maintain its position at the top of the pile it had to keep improving and innovating to quench the ever-growing thirst of its users. However, somewhere in the last decade or so, we have seen the rise of many alternative programs similar to Photoshop. Some try to do more than Photoshop will ever try to do by becoming a "one-stop shop" for post-production and some try to do what Photoshop does, but offer it to their users at a much lower price. Whatever the case, these lesser-known applications have had to innovate just to get a sliver of the market share, which has lead to occasions like the premise of this video: a Photoshop alternative has powerful tools that Photoshop itself does not.

What tools would you like to see added to Photoshop? I must say, since watching the video, it surprises me that, as Abbey Esparza says, all tools in Photoshop don't have live previews as they do in Affinity.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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10 Comments

Just to save you time:

- A better gradient tool
- Built-in Frequency Separation
- Color Image Brushes
- Saving History States to the PSD
- Fully Featured iPad App

Thank you - just what I need under every Fstoppers video!

Live effects.

that's right thank you

I agree. Photoshop filter preview is an utter sick joke. These things have not been touched in years. They look like they were designed in the days of Win 3.1. Gradients too. Adobe is milking the AI functionalities in PS but for goodness sake fix the basic shit before you move to advanced tools.

That gradient tool does look like a massive oversight from Adobe.

I've said it before - and I'll say it again. Adobe is BLOATWARE plain and simple. Try to completely (and I mean completely not just drag it to trash) uninstall Adobe and you'll quickly find that you need another program to uninstall it. Cleaver? Nope. Adobe CC is a sucker game. Pay a subscription for a program, pay again for more storage when you run out of the "free" storage, and rely on you internet connection....yeah - that's the ticket (for profits I mean). Affinity Photo is much cheaper, does a good job and is fairly easy to learn. But if you're in the Adobe world keep on. You'll be helping with the corporate dividends.

"I've said it before - and I'll say it again"

Dance, while the record spins!

Amen. Thus endeth the lesson.

If using Affinity what's the best way to open for edit directly out of Lightroom, or even using currently open/editable PSD layers inside of Premiere directly