(This article is in no way sponsored by Affinity, Adobe, or GIMP nor is there any partnership between the Affinity team and me.)

In this day and age, there are numerous reasons you would need a photo editing and creation tool. Reasons can range from anything between wanting a platform to do a digital drawing on your computer to simply wanting a way to edit, crop, or convert family pictures. Unfortunately, Adobe’s Photoshop, though very useful, is prohibitively expensive and now it is only accessible through a subscription type model. Luckily Affinity has answered our prayers.

Affinity Photo is much cheaper than photoshop at only $50 in a one-time payment that also includes all future updates at no additional cost. Just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean it pulls any punches also. In my experience using Affinity photo, I have never once experienced a compromise in quality or function for the lower price. I can’t recommend this software enough. At this point, the only reason to buy photoshop would be if there is one very specific addon that you need that Affinity photo doesn’t have.

There is also another well-known alternative to Photoshop that is free, GIMP. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It doesn’t have near the feature set that affinity or photoshop has and personally I find the GUI and the layout basically unusable but it also is a decent alternative if you just don’t have the cash to buy a more robust software.

If you’re having trouble choosing what software to use I made a helpful infographic below.

Side By Side Comparison

Affinity	Photoshop	Gimp
Features Both Pixel and Vector Editing Over 1,000,000% zoom Dynamic Guides Advanced Grids Snapping Options Full CMYK and ICC Color Management Brush Stabilization Web, UI, and App Design Optimization Advanced Memory Systems Dynamic Symbols Supports Photoshop Files Fully	Features Stroke Smoothing Better Brush Organization 3rd party Brushes Quickly Share Creations Variable Fonts Color and Luminance Range Masking Paste as Plain Text 360 Panorama Workflow 3rd Party Tutorials	Features Customizable Interface Inkscape Swatchbooker Scribus Hardware Support
Supported Languages English Dutch	Supported Languages English Turkish Dutch Swedish	Supported Languages English
Pricing A one-time payment of $49.99 that includes the newest version for free and no subscription fees.	Pricing $29.99 a month for the monthly plan $19.99 a month for the annual plan that’s paid monthly $239.88 a year for the prepaid annual plan	Pricing Free and open source.