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Add to SafariWhen comparing Affinity Photo vs CleanMyMac X, the Slant community recommends Affinity Photo for most people. In the question“What are the best Mac OSX apps for someone that's new to Apple?” Affinity Photo is ranked 9th while CleanMyMac X is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Affinity Photo is:
Pay once, get updates forever.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Lifetime updates
Pay once, get updates forever.
Pro Interface will be familiar to those coming from Photoshop
The interface, especially the Photo persona, is laid out in way that's very similar to Photoshop - a panel for icons for tools on the left, a panel for information and settings on the right.
Pro Compatible with Photoshop PSD files
Affinity Photo can import and export .psd files.
Pro Great performance
Uses the GPU extensively for fast speed on any platform.
Pro Supports layer styles
Layer styles allow non-destructively applying effects to a layer.
Pro Personas allow separation of concerns
At a high level the interface is organized into broad groups of tools called Personas. Personas like Photo for in-depth image manipulation, Liquify for warping the image, Develop for basic RAW photo development and Export for exporting. Each persona displays only those tools that are needed for that task.
Pro Powerful effects
Dozens of visual effects available. All run extremely fast with live previews
Pro Non-destructive adjustment layers
Extensive adjustment layers are non-destructive.
Pro Everything is well organized
Easy to find and use tools.
Pro Runs faster than Photoshop's old code
Pro Lots and lots of undo
Pro The easiest, even easier than photoshop
Pro The perfect combination of Photoshop and Lightroom - all in one
Pro Supports Photoshop brushes, shapes, etc.
Pro Many tutorials
But still it does not actually matter which tutorial you're actually watching, Photoshop or Affinity's, they are pretty much the same.
Pro Very, very cheap for such an app
Pro Has an iPad app
Pro Decent functionality, 100% comparable with Photoshop
Pro Much more lightweight than photoshop
Pro RAW file editing
Pro HDR image editing
Pro Powerful, cheap and lightweight
Pro Very modern and intuitive interface
Pro Color correction
Pro Very fast to learn
Takes about 20 mins, it's that easy.
Pro Growing decently fast
Pro Panorama creation
Pro Imports free images from Unsplash
Cons
Con Limited selection of plugins
Plugin support was only recently added to AP and not many plugins have been created for the program so far.
Con Can not import gimp or krita files
Free alternatives like GIMP (and Krita) are sort of "go to" apps you can always install and use for simple image editing or graphics on any computer. Affinity's support for Photoshop is great, but having support also for opening and editing GIMP and Krita files would make the versatility and use of this program absolutely superb.
Con Sneaky about trial limitation and prices
Trial version only cleans 500 MB, but it does not disclose that limit before one pushes the button to clean after a scan. While it's OK to provide only limited functionality in a trial version, the appsshould be upfront about what the limitation is.
Especially with an app that is supposed to clean your system, it's really messed up to run an activity only partially, and then ask for money. This is clearly done to play on the insecurities of the less-than-tech-savvy users, who might believe that their machine is now in a worse state than before they ran the app, and need to pay now to get a clean system.
Even when trying to close the nag screen by pressing the little X in the corner, the X turns into "Don't leave yet, get your personal discount", which opens the website and gives you even more discount than their "Deal of the day" which is shown after you download the trial. So people who just go to the website to buy pay $89 (or $69 when they get a deal of the day), but when they pay from the nag screen, they only pay $56. That is not a good way to do business, and even if it were a solid app, it's hard to support these practices.
Con Space Lens reports more storage that the SSD actually provides
For example, a 480GB SSD with 70BG free, and the sum of the folders Space Lens shows in root is about 550GB. That's definitely wrong.
Con Provides no info about things it deletes
The app does not provide any additional information about the files it wants to delete, so the average user cannot make an informed choice what to remove and what to keep. For example, it might prompt you to remove languages other users of your Mac are using. That's not a good idea.
Con Uses just a tiny window for showing details about what the app tries to delete
In full screen view, the part of the screen where the app shows a list of things it wants to remove is about 8% of the screen. So you can see 8 items at a time (out of a list that has about 80 entries), and the name of each of those items is truncated. 75% of a 24"-screen is entirely blank in that view.
Con "Flush DNS Cache" will not boost speed
It will simply flush the DNS cache, so that each request for a web page will require a call to a DNS server first.
Con Claims it will "Free Up RAM"
People who have a clue about memory management will understand that on a Unix system RAM is typically fully used, because that is the way to optimize speed. Any attempt to "Free Up RAM" will lead to other stuff being loaded into RAM immediately: the app might "free" 2 GB of RAM, but if you come back to Safari and look at several tabs, it will soon be back to only 200 MB of free RAM.
Con Expensive
A full license is $89, but there's no way of telling how long you would get free updates. Owners of the previous version will have to pay 50% of that to upgrade. The subscription service is $39 per year. If there's a new major version in the next 3 years, subscription will be cheaper. All that fits with MacPaws being intransparent and sneaky.
