Personally though, I find it much more cluttered than Pixelmator Pro. The interface is comparable to the current version of Photoshop. UI basics and document set upĪs with Ascension’s original tutorial, I’ll set up my document to be 2000x2000 pixels at 300DPI. I have a much more powerful Windows gaming PC, but I want to get a sense on how Affinity Photo performs on my daily driver. Affinity Photo is also available on Microsoft Windows and iPad OS. The machine is old, but there’s some hardware acceleration at work via the Intel HD6000 GPU in my Mac. I may release the full tutorial as an exclusive bonus to my subscribers.įor the purposes of this review, I’m using the trial version for macOS Catalina, on a five-year old MacBook Air (i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM). Instead, I’ll work through the stages of Ascension’s technique, post my results and thoughts about the differences between Affinity Photo and Photoshop. If you are unfamiliar with maps made this way, here’s an example from Ascension’s original tutorial.

So, what follows is my attempt at creating an atlas-style fantasy map first made popular many moons ago by Ascension over at the Cartographer’s Guild. This may seen unfair, using a tutorial designed for a different app, but Affinity is often proclaimed as a Photoshop replacement, and if I were to buy it, I’d do so on this basis. However, there’s a project I have in mind that’s very Photoshop-heavy, thanks to the style’s use of filters and selection techniques that Pixelmator doesn’t support.

I should note I’ve dabbled with Affinity Photo before, but never really took the plunge because my needs are met by Pixelmator Pro and Procreate. In light of this success, I decided to give Affinity Photo a non-trivial test to see how it stacks up against Adobe Photoshop. Colour me impressed, for the app performed really well - but then, so did Pages, Apple’s free word processor. My foray into the Affinity Suite officially began when I used Affinity Publisher to knock up a paperback book as part of my review of Adobe Indesign alternatives.

I review Affinity Photo as an Adobe Photoshop replacement, by putting the app through its pace using Ascension's Atlas Style fantasy map tutorial. Affinity Photo review: Can it create Atlas-style fantasy maps?

Affinity photo work book