Affinity Photo

WordWeaver, learning a new tool can be daunting, so I sympathise with your hesitation. I had been using Photoshop for a couple of decades, and switching over to Affinity Photo was not easy. Not because of the program - Photo is an unbelievably pleasant app to use - but because it is indeed hard for old dogs to learn new tricks. The app is FASTER than Photoshop, more responsive, and my entire system thanked me for deleting all of the Adobe crap - including over 1Tb of 'cache' files that Photoshop kept in my system folder.

It took me about 3 months to get used to the interface, and go through all the tutorials, and teach myself a new way of working. I think I could have progressed a lot faster if I hadn't been so stingy, and had bought the hard-cover guide.

I also had a handful of old plugins that I was very comfortable using, and could not port over with any success to Affinity Photo. While this was frustrating at first, it did get me to spend some time looking around at NEW external apps that are available currently. The $20/month that you'll save will enable you to invest in some other tools, if you need them - I have become a fan of AuroraHDR, and have also added heaps of editing tools to my iPad (like Plotagraph). All in all, it must have taken me somewhere between 6 to 9 months to completely leave Adobe behind, but I'm sure glad I did - and I'm certainly not thinking of going back.

Take a look at GraphicConverter as well - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/263/graphicconverter
As it's try-before-you-buy, you can test to see if your Photoshop plug-ins work in it. You may wind up breaking up your workflow from Adobe into several different applications for different things. (I own copies of both Affinity Photo and GraphicConverter as both are handy tools.)

@Teksestro and @Aetnaria : Thank you both for your feedback. Although neither of you specifically answered my plugin compatibility question regarding the aforementioned plugins, I do appreciate your input.

This is such a hard decision to make, financially-speaking, and workflow-related. I really don't want to have to break up my workflow between several different apps. For one thing, it would be more time-consuming, and my time is very important to me. Aside from that, I am very organized, and having to break up my work between several apps would be hard mentally as well. So those factors alone push me towards biting the bullet and paying Adobe, as much as I don't like it.

What irks me the most -- aside from the annual subscription which would be hard on my pocket -- is the fact that unlike other software, Adobe Photoshop CC stops working if you fail to renew your subscription. I just really don't see the fairness in that at all. It should be like other non-subscription software, where even if you don't purchase a new version each year, the old version will continue working, as long as it remains compatible with the current OS.

Oh, how I miss the old days when software developers issued software licenses for life, with free updates and upgrades. The greed today is pitiful. :(

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/

Switch to Affinity's products. I have all three - Designer, Photo, Publisher for macOS & Windows - and their software blows Adobe out of the water. I made a post above where you can download any of their software as a trial and then buy when ready.

Well, while Affinity Photo is indeed a very nice image creator/editor, I have come up against a brick wall in deciding whether or not to switch to it from Adobe Photoshop. As it turns out, due to a partial implementation of Adobe's plugin SDK in Affinity Photo, NONE of my current PS plugins work fully and completely -- if at all -- in Affinity Photo. These include the following plugins:

Alien Skin Eye Candy 7
Xenofex
Flaming Pear plugins
Filter Forge
Topaz Lab's Glow plugin
SuperPNG plugin

From the reading I have done, it seems that the ONLY plugins which DO work with Affinity Photo are something called the Nik Collection, which I know nothing about.

So, my advice is the following: If you depend heavily on using Photoshop-compatible plugins in your current workflow, and are not willing to start from scratch with Affinity Photo -- that is, without any PS-compatible plugins -- then switching to Affinity Photo is NOT advisable at this current time.

Furthermore, from what I have read, it seems that Serif is currently in the process of building its own plugins system for Affinity Photo. I take that to mean that Photoshop plugin compatibility may be dead in the water as far as Affinity Photo is concerned.

As I said, Affinity Photo is indeed very nice; and if you are just getting into image creation and editing, and have no experience with Adobe Photoshop, then Affinity Photo would be a wise choice, and would save you several hundred dollars a year, which is what Adobe charges for a Photoshop annual subscription.

I'm a graphic designer, but not professional one. Nevertheless, I do create posters and other things for my shop on Etsy. For all the stuff I need I use GraphicConverter. I wouldn't call it "basic", but it is the one which is really really very fast and top of the line image editor. It does much more than basics. Despite GUI being not as excessively sleek and smooth as Pixelmator or Affinity(which I hate), GC has tons of features which are easily accessed thru menu, and which produce excellent and fast results. I won't switch to anything. GC is the best ever for what I do.