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Not since Adobe launched InDesign as a “Quark killer” in 1999 have I been this excited about putting a brand new piece of software through its paces.The parallels are there: When Serif, a British software company with some award-winning products under its belt, first announced Affinity Photo several months ago, it boldly declared that it had Adobe Photoshop in its sights.In an interview with Creative Bloq, managing director Ashley Hewson was quoted as saying:“Photoshop is an amazing piece of software. But the problem is, it’s built on 25-year-old architecture. When that architecture was being created, Adobe couldn’t have anticipated the incredible developments we’ve seen in computers since. Which means that they’re now struggling to adapt Photoshop to take advantage of modern computing power.”So how does Affinity Photo, just released (July 2015) on the Mac App Store after a months-long public beta, measure up? Can it stand up in the same ring as Adobe Photoshop? Could it be (gasp!) a Photoshop-killer?Let’s find out.Price:This is a pleasant surprise. At $49.99, Affinity Photo is less expensive than even Photoshop’s little brother, PS Elements ($79.99), let alone the pay-in-perpetuity $9.99+ per month for Photoshop itself.Getting Started:For a program that claims to do some heavy lifting, the download is fairly lightweight at 182MB. Installation is a breeze, and takes only a few minutes.When you launch it, you are greeted with a splash screen (can be turned off for future launches) that has links to a selection of downloadable images that have been worked on using the software. Don’t dismiss them out of hand: These are layered files and it can be quite instructive to see how they are set up.The interface (love the purple) seems fresh and inviting. One of the first things you will notice is that it feels different from Photoshop, and yet looks familiar. The familiarity is because the toolbar options on the left and the palettes on the right are set up in a way that Photoshop users will recognize (click on images for a larger view).That familiarity extends to the program doing things you would expect Photoshop to do. For example, clicking on the title of a value in a palette ("White Balance" in the example below) automatically selects that value, saving you an extra click.It gets better. Pretty much every keyboard shortcut you are used to in Photoshop works in Affinity Photo as well. In this, Serif appears to have take a page out of Adobe’s playbook…when InDesign was first introduced, Adobe offered the option to use QuarkXPress keyboard shortcuts if you preferred.Creating a new document brings up a typical dialog box, but Affinity Photo has a couple of nice extra touches: You can set document margins (live area), and it even allows you to ‘Retrieve Margins’ from your printer. What would have been a killer feature is adding the ability to set bleeds and crop/registration marks…Serif says this is part of their plan for a later release.As for opening existing documents, Affinity Photo can handle most image formats you would typically deal with, including layered Photoshop files (PSDs). You can work in any colour space you wish, including CMYK and LAB. Photographers and retouchers will be especially pleased…Affinity Photo even handles RAW and 16-bit files, much like Photoshop’s Camera RAW.Skill Level:The developers have done a fantastic job, this feels like a very polished program with a friendly, inviting interface.Let’s be clear about this, though: If you’re an existing Photoshop user, you will feel comfortable, but if you are new to image editing software, be ready to invest some serious time into getting anything useful done. Affinity is a pro-level program, and the learning curve for a beginner will likely be only a little shallower than it is for Photoshop.That said, there are a number of tutorials on the Affinity Photo website as well as what appears to be a fairly active forum.Using the program:Affinity Photo has four ‘Personas’, which could be loosely defined as workspaces: Photo, Liquify, Develop and Export.By default, you will be working in the Photo Persona, and this is typically what you would use for most of your image editing.Picking one of the other Personas changes both the toolbar as well as the palettes. This approach is different from Photoshop, which creates new, smaller windows for those functions. I really like the Affinity approach because it allows a full-window workspace by default, and with only the palettes that are required, so there’s no unnecessary clutter.I found Liquify a somewhat surprising choice for its own Persona, but then I don’t do much glamour retouching. Still, the tools are intuitive to use. There is one Liquify tool (Turbulence) that isn’t available in Photoshop, and is good for some fun effects.Much more useful (potentially, if not in reality) is the Develop Persona. This is clearly aimed at photographers, and is similar to what Photoshop offers through Camera RAW. When you open a RAW format image, Affinity Photo automatically switches to the Develop Persona, with its own tools and palettes. These allow you to adjust Exposure, Clarity, Contrast, Vibrance etc, apply lens corrections (distortion, removing lens vignetting, reducing chromatic aberration) and a whole lot more.Unfortunately, Affinity Photo offers no presets for any lens, so the usefulness (in this version at least) is greatly curtailed. While the program reads the image EXIF info (including the make and model of my camera and the lens), there is no simple way to apply lens profile corrections. Likewise, there are no White Balance presets, which means there are going to be an awful lot of manual adjustments needing to be made.I should note that I am using the last beta build rather than the initial release. However, when I contacted the company by email, Affinity Product Manager Dale Cook did reply that the first release was near-identical to the build I have installed. I will be pointing Dale to this review, so if the lens profiles do exist someplace, I will be happy to update this answer.Finally, there is the Export Persona. Affinity Photo actually has a very nice implementation for exporting an image. Using the same keyboard shortcut as Photoshop’s Save for Web (Shift-Option-Command-S) brings down a slider that lets you choose from a number of formats, including EPS, PDF, PSD, TIFFs, not just JPGs and GIFs. You can also adjust the export document size and quality.The Export Persona, however, allows you to create and save Slices. Though web designers will benefit most from this, the additional export options (EPS, PDF etc) expands the audience for this feature.Features I liked:Speed: While I was not about to do any Macworld type lab tests, Affinity Photo appears to deliver on its speed promise. I timed how long it took for both Affinity Photo and Photoshop to open two large, multi-layered files. A 515MB PSD file with 12 layers took 16 seconds to open in Photoshop, and 11 seconds with Affinity Photo. A second, more complex 10-layered file weighing in at 727MB took 46 seconds in Photoshop, and 29 seconds in Affinity Photo.Working with filters and various tools in Affinity Photo was also a breeze with the sliders delivering pretty much live redraw and no time lag even for complex operations. Very impressive.History Slider: I loved this feature so much, I found myself missing it when I went back to real work with Photoshop. The History palette has a slider, so rather than click through individual history states to check which version you’d like to go back to, you can just move the slider quickly and visually review this in seconds.Save History: Another brilliant feature. You can save your history along with the document when you close a file, taking the guesswork out of what you did to achieve a particular result, or just to go back to a specific history state from the last time you worked on the file.Auto-shortening of titles in palettes: Palette tab titles automatically shorten so you know exactly what to click on. For example, Effects will show as FX when not the selected tab, Adjustment shortens to Adj, Layers to Lyr.Space-saving child layers: Adjustment layers and smart filters reside on the same level as the actual image in the Layers palette. A small thing, but a nice space-saver for those like me who often work with numerous layers.Before and After Previews: This is one area where Affinity Photo shows off the speed of its engine. Using any filter brings up a palette which offers the option for real-time previews. You have the option of a Mirror View (Before & After images side by side) or Split View, where a movable divider bar allows you to view as little or as much of the ‘After’ result.Photoshop Plugins: Affinity Photo has a somewhat limited set of filters, but it does allow you to use Photoshop plugins. This is very useful indeed, especially for those who own commercial plugins like the Nik or Imagenomic suites.Very intuitive for Photoshop users. I was able to fix a RAW image, colour correct and add a sky to a blown out area…all in about 7-8 minutes and using just palettes and keyboard shortcuts (rather than having to look through the menus). Not bad for a program I’d launched for the first time less than an hour earlier.Comparable results to Photoshop. Many of the pro tools like the Selection Brush and Refine tools for masking hair, and the Inpainting tool (Affinity Photo’s version of Content Aware Fill) deliver results very close to what Photoshop offers.I wasn’t about to spend too long on masking hair, but here’s one on which I spent just a couple of minutes each in both programs.The original is on top, the result using Affinity Photo at left and with Photoshop at right.Likewise, here’s the result of using the Inpainting tool. Simply do a loose selection around the Statue of Liberty, say “Take that, David Copperfield” (that part is important) as you move the selection to the side, and poof, she’s gone. Total time: 10 seconds.The Lady Vanishes: Using the Inpainting tool, Affinity Photo's equivalent of Photoshop's Content Aware Fill tool.Double-click to zoom. Double clicking on a layer thumbnail automatically zooms in and fills the screen with that layer object. A useful shortcut.Control points. Clicking on a layer adds control nodes along the border and a lever that you can drag to resize, rotate etc. The nodes are also very visible which is great on busy backgrounds.Typography: This is pretty good. Has support for tabs including decimal alignments and tab stop leaders (dots/underscores/glyphs).What’s lacking:Actions. This is a big part of my production workflow and not having it is a deal-breaker for me. That said, it is apparently planned as an additional Persona in an upcoming (free) upgrade.Pantone colour library support. Ouch. Another big one for me. However, Affinity’s Dale Cook said in his email he estimates Pantone support to appear by the end of the year (again, a free update).Colour sampling. Using the eye-dropper tool is a somewhat convoluted process (click on eye-dropper, drag it to the image, and when happy, click on foreground colour. Changing background colour is an extra step).Layer palette selections. When selecting/deselecting multiple layers, you have to uncheck each layer one by one (unlike in Photoshop where you click and drag down across multiple checkboxes to do them all in one go). If you’re working with 20-30 layers, that’s 20-30 clicks, not one.Arrange/Tile documents. Affinity Photo doesn't have this very useful Photoshop feature.Drag and drop between documents. You cannot drag layers from one open file to another; the only way to do it is through copy and paste.Ability to add or change keyboard shortcuts. Being able to set your own custom shortcuts speeds up workflow, it’s a pity this isn’t (yet) available.Shapes library. There are only a limited number of vector shapes and there is no ability to add custom shapes from what I can tell.Photo stitching, Focus stacking. If you’re a photographer, you will likely miss having features like photo stitching (for panoramas) and focus stacking.On the bright side…Affinity has posted a roadmap for features that are currently in the works. Some of these will be very useful:ArtboardsCustomisable shortcut keysTool PresetsPublishing PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4Trim and Bleed controlPrinter marks including crop, registration, colour bars and InfoVerdict4/5 Stars.For a Version One software, Affinity Photo is a very impressive release. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Adobe Photoshop, but what’s mostly missing are high-end features that not everybody needs.A graphic designer who makes a living off image editing will not want to abandon Photoshop entirely just yet, but for others who require pro level software and cannot justify Adobe's subscription cost, Affinity Photo is shaping up to be a serious alternative. In fact at the current price, with free upgrades assured for the first two years, Affinity Photo is a downright steal.Tip of the hat to Craig Weiland for suggesting I do this review.

Easily open desired links in PDF viewerOpen in PDF Viewer is a simple and very lite addon that allows you to easily open desired PDF links in a chosen PDF viewer.Note 1: after installing the addon, you need to connect it with native applications (i.e. adobe acrobat reader) on your machine. In order to make this connection, a separate patch is provided in GitHub. Please download and install this patch.Follow the instructions in the above GitHub page to download and install the related patch to your system. After installing, the "Open in PDF Viewer" addon in your browser can communicate with a PDF viewer on your machine (Window, Linux or Mac).The default option for the PDF viewer is adobe acrobat reader. In Windows 10, the default location for Adobe Acrobat is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe". If you have a different OS, or if you installed Adobe Acrobat in a different folder, please adjust the field accordingly. You can change this from the options page.There is also an input field which you can add arguments for the viewer. For example, to open PDF as full-screen or without a toolbar. Please note that, if you change the PDF viewer make sure to change the input arguments as well. Each PDF viewer has its own arguments to operate. If you keep Adobe as the default PDF viewer,In order to operate with this addon, please right-click on any link (a link to a PDF document) and then click on - Open and Download with PDF Viewer - item from the context menu. The PDF file will first be "downloaded" and then "opened" in a default PDF viewer (the one which is set in the options page). Please note that the PDF file will be downloaded in the "default" download folder in your machine.

★★★★Not since Adobe launched InDesign as a “Quark killer” in 1999 have I been this excited about putting a brand new piece of software through its paces.The parallels are there: When Serif, a British software company with some award-winning products under its belt, first announced Affinity Photo several months ago, it boldly declared that it had Adobe Photoshop in its sights.In an interview with Creative Bloq, managing director Ashley Hewson was quoted as saying:“Photoshop is an amazing piece of software. But the problem is, it’s built on 25-year-old architecture. When that architecture was being created, Adobe couldn’t have anticipated the incredible developments we’ve seen in computers since. Which means that they’re now struggling to adapt Photoshop to take advantage of modern computing power.”So how does Affinity Photo, just released (July 2015) on the Mac App Store after a months-long public beta, measure up? Can it stand up in the same ring as Adobe Photoshop? Could it be (gasp!) a Photoshop-killer?Let’s find out.Price:This is a pleasant surprise. At $49.99, Affinity Photo is less expensive than even Photoshop’s little brother, PS Elements ($79.99), let alone the pay-in-perpetuity $9.99+ per month for Photoshop itself.Getting Started:For a program that claims to do some heavy lifting, the download is fairly lightweight at 182MB. Installation is a breeze, and takes only a few minutes.When you launch it, you are greeted with a splash screen (can be turned off for future launches) that has links to a selection of downloadable images that have been worked on using the software. Don’t dismiss them out of hand: These are layered files and it can be quite instructive to see how they are set up.The interface (love the purple) seems fresh and inviting. One of the first things you will notice is that it feels different from Photoshop, and yet looks familiar. The familiarity is because the toolbar options on the left and the palettes on the right are set up in a way that Photoshop users will recognize (click on images for a larger view).That familiarity extends to the program doing things you would expect Photoshop to do. For example, clicking on the title of a value in a palette ("White Balance" in the example below) automatically selects that value, saving you an extra click.It gets better. Pretty much every keyboard shortcut you are used to in Photoshop works in Affinity Photo as well. In this, Serif appears to have take a page out of Adobe’s playbook…when InDesign was first introduced, Adobe offered the option to use QuarkXPress keyboard shortcuts if you preferred.Creating a new document brings up a typical dialog box, but Affinity Photo has a couple of nice extra touches: You can set document margins (live area), and it even allows you to ‘Retrieve Margins’ from your printer. What would have been a killer feature is adding the ability to set bleeds and crop/registration marks…Serif says this is part of their plan for a later release.As for opening existing documents, Affinity Photo can handle most image formats you would typically deal with, including layered Photoshop files (PSDs). You can work in any colour space you wish, including CMYK and LAB. Photographers and retouchers will be especially pleased…Affinity Photo even handles RAW and 16-bit files, much like Photoshop’s Camera RAW.Skill Level:The developers have done a fantastic job, this feels like a very polished program with a friendly, inviting interface.Let’s be clear about this, though: If you’re an existing Photoshop user, you will feel comfortable, but if you are new to image editing software, be ready to invest some serious time into getting anything useful done. Affinity is a pro-level program, and the learning curve for a beginner will likely be only a little shallower than it is for Photoshop.That said, there are a number of tutorials on the Affinity Photo website as well as what appears to be a fairly active forum.Using the program:Affinity Photo has four ‘Personas’, which could be loosely defined as workspaces: Photo, Liquify, Develop and Export.By default, you will be working in the Photo Persona, and this is typically what you would use for most of your image editing.Picking one of the other Personas changes both the toolbar as well as the palettes. This approach is different from Photoshop, which creates new, smaller windows for those functions. I really like the Affinity approach because it allows a full-window workspace by default, and with only the palettes that are required, so there’s no unnecessary clutter.I found Liquify a somewhat surprising choice for its own Persona, but then I don’t do much glamour retouching. Still, the tools are intuitive to use. There is one Liquify tool (Turbulence) that isn’t available in Photoshop, and is good for some fun effects.Much more useful (potentially, if not in reality) is the Develop Persona. This is clearly aimed at photographers, and is similar to what Photoshop offers through Camera RAW. When you open a RAW format image, Affinity Photo automatically switches to the Develop Persona, with its own tools and palettes. These allow you to adjust Exposure, Clarity, Contrast, Vibrance etc, apply lens corrections (distortion, removing lens vignetting, reducing chromatic aberration) and a whole lot more.Unfortunately, Affinity Photo offers no presets for any lens, so the usefulness (in this version at least) is greatly curtailed. While the program reads the image EXIF info (including the make and model of my camera and the lens), there is no simple way to apply lens profile corrections. Likewise, there are no White Balance presets, which means there are going to be an awful lot of manual adjustments needing to be made.I should note that I am using the last beta build rather than the initial release. However, when I contacted the company by email, Affinity Product Manager Dale Cook did reply that the first release was near-identical to the build I have installed. I will be pointing Dale to this review, so if the lens profiles do exist someplace, I will be happy to update this answer.Finally, there is the Export Persona. Affinity Photo actually has a very nice implementation for exporting an image. Using the same keyboard shortcut as Photoshop’s Save for Web (Shift-Option-Command-S) brings down a slider that lets you choose from a number of formats, including EPS, PDF, PSD, TIFFs, not just JPGs and GIFs. You can also adjust the export document size and quality.The Export Persona, however, allows you to create and save Slices. Though web designers will benefit most from this, the additional export options (EPS, PDF etc) expands the audience for this feature.Features I liked:Speed: While I was not about to do any Macworld type lab tests, Affinity Photo appears to deliver on its speed promise. I timed how long it took for both Affinity Photo and Photoshop to open two large, multi-layered files. A 515MB PSD file with 12 layers took 16 seconds to open in Photoshop, and 11 seconds with Affinity Photo. A second, more complex 10-layered file weighing in at 727MB took 46 seconds in Photoshop, and 29 seconds in Affinity Photo.Working with filters and various tools in Affinity Photo was also a breeze with the sliders delivering pretty much live redraw and no time lag even for complex operations. Very impressive.History Slider: I loved this feature so much, I found myself missing it when I went back to real work with Photoshop. The History palette has a slider, so rather than click through individual history states to check which version you’d like to go back to, you can just move the slider quickly and visually review this in seconds.Save History: Another brilliant feature. You can save your history along with the document when you close a file, taking the guesswork out of what you did to achieve a particular result, or just to go back to a specific history state from the last time you worked on the file.Auto-shortening of titles in palettes: Palette tab titles automatically shorten so you know exactly what to click on. For example, Effects will show as FX when not the selected tab, Adjustment shortens to Adj, Layers to Lyr.Space-saving child layers: Adjustment layers and smart filters reside on the same level as the actual image in the Layers palette. A small thing, but a nice space-saver for those like me who often work with numerous layers.Before and After Previews: This is one area where Affinity Photo shows off the speed of its engine. Using any filter brings up a palette which offers the option for real-time previews. You have the option of a Mirror View (Before & After images side by side) or Split View, where a movable divider bar allows you to view as little or as much of the ‘After’ result.Photoshop Plugins: Affinity Photo has a somewhat limited set of filters, but it does allow you to use Photoshop plugins. This is very useful indeed, especially for those who own commercial plugins like the Nik or Imagenomic suites.Very intuitive for Photoshop users. I was able to fix a RAW image, colour correct and add a sky to a blown out area…all in about 7-8 minutes and using just palettes and keyboard shortcuts (rather than having to look through the menus). Not bad for a program I’d launched for the first time less than an hour earlier.Comparable results to Photoshop. Many of the pro tools like the Selection Brush and Refine tools for masking hair, and the Inpainting tool (Affinity Photo’s version of Content Aware Fill) deliver results very close to what Photoshop offers.I wasn’t about to spend too long on masking hair, but here’s one on which I spent just a couple of minutes each in both programs.The original is on top, the result using Affinity Photo at left and with Photoshop at right.Likewise, here’s the result of using the Inpainting tool. Simply do a loose selection around the Statue of Liberty, say “Take that, David Copperfield” (that part is important) as you move the selection to the side, and poof, she’s gone. Total time: 10 seconds.The Lady Vanishes: Using the Inpainting tool, Affinity Photo's equivalent of Photoshop's Content Aware Fill tool.Double-click to zoom. Double clicking on a layer thumbnail automatically zooms in and fills the screen with that layer object. A useful shortcut.Control points. Clicking on a layer adds control nodes along the border and a lever that you can drag to resize, rotate etc. The nodes are also very visible which is great on busy backgrounds.Typography: This is pretty good. Has support for tabs including decimal alignments and tab stop leaders (dots/underscores/glyphs).What’s lacking:Actions. This is a big part of my production workflow and not having it is a deal-breaker for me. That said, it is apparently planned as an additional Persona in an upcoming (free) upgrade.Pantone colour library support. Ouch. Another big one for me. However, Affinity’s Dale Cook said in his email he estimates Pantone support to appear by the end of the year (again, a free update).Colour sampling. Using the eye-dropper tool is a somewhat convoluted process (click on eye-dropper, drag it to the image, and when happy, click on foreground colour. Changing background colour is an extra step).Layer palette selections. When selecting/deselecting multiple layers, you have to uncheck each layer one by one (unlike in Photoshop where you click and drag down across multiple checkboxes to do them all in one go). If you’re working with 20-30 layers, that’s 20-30 clicks, not one.Arrange/Tile documents. Affinity Photo doesn't have this very useful Photoshop feature.Drag and drop between documents. You cannot drag layers from one open file to another; the only way to do it is through copy and paste.Ability to add or change keyboard shortcuts. Being able to set your own custom shortcuts speeds up workflow, it’s a pity this isn’t (yet) available.Shapes library. There are only a limited number of vector shapes and there is no ability to add custom shapes from what I can tell.Photo stitching, Focus stacking. If you’re a photographer, you will likely miss having features like photo stitching (for panoramas) and focus stacking.On the bright side…Affinity has posted a roadmap for features that are currently in the works. Some of these will be very useful:ArtboardsCustomisable shortcut keysTool PresetsPublishing PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4Trim and Bleed controlPrinter marks including crop, registration, colour bars and InfoVerdict4/5 Stars.For a Version One software, Affinity Photo is a very impressive release. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Adobe Photoshop, but what’s mostly missing are high-end features that not everybody needs.A graphic designer who makes a living off image editing will not want to abandon Photoshop entirely just yet, but for others who require pro level software and cannot justify Adobe's subscription cost, Affinity Photo is shaping up to be a serious alternative. In fact at the current price, with free upgrades assured for the first two years, Affinity Photo is a downright steal.Tip of the hat to Craig Weiland for suggesting I do this review.