Affinity photo 2 vs Pixelmator Pro

[vagos]

Hello everyone.

I'm trying to get away from the subscription model of Adobe Photoshop which is draining my wallet fast.
After some research I've come across Affinity photo 2 & Pixelmator Pro.

My needs are pretty simple actually. I crop and resize images for my websites and the web ads that support them.
Once in a while I may do some simple colour correction but that's about it.

Has anyone used both programs? What is your experience on it?

 

[Slartibart]

There are plenty of programs to achieve what you describe - Gimp being one of the free ones.

Back to your question: otherwise the functional differences (e.g. panorama stitching, own RAW engine, …) between AP2 and PPro seem of no relevance for your application, if anything PPro is probably one of the most macOS-conform apps you’ll find.
But I doubt that for your use case - for which you could although just use e.g. macOS Automator btw., but I digress again 😁 - you’ll find any important difference between both programs.

 

[Mithlas]

Based on your usage description, you could also consider Acorn. Its a smaller image editing program than Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro but has a good feature set. I have all three but find that for non-complex, quick work, I always use Acorn.

 

[phrehdd]

Both are more than capable of doing the things you desire. I strongly suggest you go over to Youtube and see some "lessons" or demos of each of those apps along with GIMP and others. Sometimes there will be videos comparing apps. I use Affinity Photo 2 as it fits my needs but Pixelmator Pro back when was an easier program to use.

As you are already familiar with Photoshop to some extent, have you looked at Photoshop Elements? I think it is a one time pay product that would handle the things you have mentioned. Just check that it can handle the types of files you want and bit depth.

 

[vagos]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I dislike GIMP so I'm looking at the other options. Photoshop elements could work but it's quite expensive, at around 125€. I'm looking into Acorn 7 which has a familiar interface at only 35€.

 

[macsound1]

Since you're just doing simple repetitive tasks, Retrobatch (same developer as Acorn) is great at this.
Honestly for color correction - I used to process images for the web and just used Preview.

 

[Slartibart]

just for the protocol: you can use your Mac's Preview App to crop, resize, rotate, edit, and adjust colors, tint, temperature of your images - won’t get simpler than that probably. 🤓

 

[rhett7660]

Hello everyone.

I'm trying to get away from the subscription model of Adobe Photoshop which is draining my wallet fast.
After some research I've come across Affinity photo 2 & Pixelmator Pro.

My needs are pretty simple actually. I crop and resize images for my websites and the web ads that support them.
Once in a while I may do some simple colour correction but that's about it.

Has anyone used both programs? What is your experience on it?

I too am still working with Photoshop and Lightroom, however I have been slowly dipping my foot into Affinity's products. I like them, but there are times, I keep going back to PS because it is two steps and done, while AF is a few more or I don't know how I would do it, so I have to learn it etc.

Just like learning PS, there is a curve... Sometimes, I bang my head against the wall as I am sooooooo used to doing it the PS way (been using PS since version 4). Trying to learn a new way is daunting.

 

[phrehdd]

I too am still working with Photoshop and Lightroom, however I have been slowly dipping my foot into Affinity's products. I like them, but there are times, I keep going back to PS because it is two steps and done, while AF is a few more or I don't know how I would do it, so I have to learn it etc.

Just like learning PS, there is a curve... Sometimes, I bang my head against the wall as I am sooooooo used to doing it the PS way (been using PS since version 4). Trying to learn a new way is daunting.

I appreciate what you are saying as going to Affinity does take some getting used to and while I used older versions of PS, it was still a small challenge and I admit that PS does some things in a manner I prefer but overall, Affinity gets the job done and in some venues, a bit better than PS.