Started by davey1892, 4 Nov 2025. 3 replies, 111 views
Saw someone on Facebook saying Affinity Photo has gone free since Canva took it over. Is that right or is there a catch? Been paying Adobe a tenner a month for years and I only use Lightroom for basic stuff and the odd bit of cloning in Photoshop. If I can bin that off I bloody will.
From what I read its all merged into one app now and free, with the AI bits tied to a Canva subscription. Havent tried it yet. Its not a Lightroom replacement though, theres no catalogue, so you'd still need something to keep track of your files
OneMoreLens said:Its not a Lightroom replacement though
Correct. Affinity is an editor, not a DAM. It'll open your raws, but it doesn't keep track of them, so there's no library, no keywords, no searching by date or lens, and no edit history across thousands of files. For a couple of edits a month that's fine. For a decade of photos it isn't.
If you want free and you want both, darktable does the library and the raw development, and Affinity covers the pixel-level stuff like cloning and compositing. Two apps, zero rent. Some people use digiKam for the library instead, which is a bit friendlier, then send files to whatever editor they like.
The learning curve on darktable is real though, I won't pretend otherwise. Give it a quiet weekend, not an evening.
Cheers both. Downloaded it last night, the cloning's fine for what I do, got a bloke's head out of a shot of Bamburgh in about two minutes. Had a look at darktable as well and it's like a bloody aeroplane cockpit so that's a job for another weekend. Might just keep Lightroom till the renewal and decide then.