Affinity Photo by Serif

Last summer, when I upgraded to a new 27 inch iMac, my CS5 Adobe programs were not happy.  Neither was I! After CS6, Adobe switched to a monthly fee model and was too costly for my infrequent uses. Even Photoshop plus Lightroom was $10US plus HST each month or about $165CDN annually after HST and conversion.

Initially I was running macOS Sierra and more recently I changed to High Sierra. InDesign was a headache. Downloading the old version of Java helped as InDesign uses dozens of modules all linked by Java. It was still a bit flaky as I systematically tried various modules.

Another victim was Photoshop. The crop tool refused to work. And my LittleSnapper was no longer supported. Its crop option stayed too dark. A new free program called Snappy solved that. I learned that Affinity Photo was a cheaper option for Photoshop and had a 10 day trial for free. I liked it and paid the few $$ (about $80 total with HST and conversion). Upgrades are free at present. While Acrobat works, Preview can open pdfs and Affinity Photo can extract images from pdfs (another problem with Photoshop CS5).

Fortunately Lightroom still works so I use it regularly. The makers of Affinity Photo plan to offer an option for Lightroom in another year or two. Apple Photos is nice too, but refuses to use Lightroom's library so I would have to reenter 70,000 plus key words and notes. No thanks.