“The beta period has been invaluable to us and we’ve worked round the clock implementing the features and making the improvements the community has been asking for.” “One of the things we take really seriously is listening to our users,” said Tony Brightman, head of Affinity development. Over 230,000 people downloaded that beta version, really helping Serif develop the product further in the last 5 months.” Meaning it competes with Photoshop when it comes to photo-editing.

The beta version revealed that the software is blindingly fast and robust, and includes “high-end capabilities such as RAW processing, PSD import and export, 16-bits per channel editing, and ICC colour management. Hailed as an alternative to Photoshop, the program took five years in the making, time enough to aim at redefining what professional photo editing software for Mac is. The beta version of Affinity Photo launched last February, to an enthusiastic reception.

While many had to look elsewhere for options, some Mac users have waited for the surprise from Serif, a company that has mainly been on the PC camp, but this time decided to create a program that has Mac computers as destination.

Affinity Photo for Mac may well be the reason why Apple dropped their own Aperture photo editor and indexing system and will never launch the Aperture 4 Mac users were expecting.

Affinity designer alternative