I am promoting Affinity Photos now as the default editor to use for any serious photo editing. There’s an extension to Photos called External Editors For Photos ($1 in the App Store) that is needed if you open a photo in Photos and then want to edit it with Affinity Photos. The extension saves the edit back into Photos. Otherwise, you would have to save the edited image to a file and import it back into Photos. Affinity Photos is as complicated as Photoshop. There are dozens of free video tutorials both on the vendor’s website and in YouTube. The basics of photo editing in Photos is still quite useful, and just selecting the auto option for all tools might be sufficient. But to go beyond the basics, you need Affinity Photos that takes you into Layers and Masks. What’s handy about Affinity Photo is that you can configure the layout to look exactly like Photoshop. Affinity Photo works the same for both Mac and Windows. If you are into astrophotography, there are special tools built-in just for that with additional free macros available. The real advantage of Affinity Photo is editing in real time - to see the changes to the image as you make an adjustment. Affinity Photo also works on the iPad. The base price for Affinity Photo is $50.

Pixelmator Pro is another photo editor alternative and works quite well with Photos as an external editor without the need for the Photos extension “External Editors For Photos” to save the image back into Photos. Pixelmator Pro doesn’t have as many features as Affinity Photos. The layout for Pixelmator Pro is quite different than Photoshop, and for some it might actually be easier to adjust to. Some of the features in Pixelmator Pro might be easier to work with than similar features in Affinity Photo. Pixelmator Pro is designed exclusively for the Mac, and it also works on the iPad. The base price for Pixelmator Pro is $40.

Both of the above work with the new M1-powered Macs, and both are available in the App Store.

John R Carter Sr