Affinity Photo Review and verdict 2026

Professional photo editing, free since 2024.

Free.

Our take

Understanding Affinity Photo.

Affinity Photo is a professional photo editing application for photographers and designers. It covers layers, masks, RAW processing, color correction, and multi-image compositing. A serious Photoshop competitor for years, it became free in 2024 after Canva acquired Serif. For anyone looking to avoid an Adobe subscription, the pricing question is settled.

Practical uses

Retouch a RAW photo gallery end to end.
Create an HDR merged image from multiple exposures.
Apply frequency separation for advanced skin retouching.

Pros and cons

What Affinity Photo does especially well — and the limits to anticipate.

Pros

Entirely free for professional features.
Interface comparable to Photoshop—easy transition.
No subscription; perpetual license.
Excellent RAW, HDR, and frequency separation capabilities.

Cons

Less rich ecosystem than Adobe (no integrated Lightroom).
Third-party plugin support more limited than Photoshop.
Smaller community and fewer learning resources.

Affinity Photo: when it makes sense.

Affinity Photo makes sense for photo retouchers seeking a free, robust Photoshop alternative; for the full Adobe ecosystem or simple editing, another tool may fit better.

Keep if

You want a Photoshop alternative without subscription.. You do RAW or HDR photo retouching regularly.

Challenge if

You need the full Adobe ecosystem (Lightroom, Bridge, Sync, etc.).. You're new to photo retouching and want something simple.

Our verdict on Affinity Photo.

Why this verdict

Very good

Affinity Photo is fairly easy to replace with an alternative, a free tier to test before paying, clearly documented use cases.