Both Pixelmator Pro and Affinity Photo are proprietary software that stands in good competition with Photoshop. These two software are Photoshop’s biggest closed-source competition, but they each stand as fantastic editing tools. With support from Apple and Canva, both Pixelmator Pro and Affinity Photo have powerful development teams behind them, helping you produce amazing image compositions, but one is better than the other.
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About Affinity Photo
Available on multiple platforms
Affinity Photo is one of three creative software in Serif Affinity’s trio of creative tools. The suite consists of Affinity Photo for photo editing and development, Affinity Designer for vector graphics and illustration, and Affinity Publisher for layout design and desktop publishing. The three tools in the Affinity suite can be purchased separately or as a bundle and are all available for the desktop — Windows and macOS — and iPad tablets.
Affinity Photo is a raster graphic and image editor, in which photo editing falls. Claiming to be the only fully loaded photo editor available across Windows, macOS, and iPadOS without losing features to accommodate platforms, Affinity Photo is a powerful resource with a relatively steep learning curve.
Its major uses are for photo retouching and editing, creating multi-layered compositions, and creating digital raster illustrations or paintings.
About Pixelmator Pro
A macOS app
Pixelmator Pro is considered an all-in-one editor. It’s owned by the Pixelmator Team based in Lithuania; however, Apple agreed to acquire Pixelmator towards the end of 2024. While its main focus is raster-based editing, Pixelmator Pro also offers great digital illustration options, including vector tools.
Pixelmator Pro is only available on macOS. With an Apple-influenced user interface, it feels like a native app. The Pixelmator Team also has Photomator, a photo-editing tool which includes AI features, RAW format support, and video support, and a Pixelmator app for iOS and iPadOS.
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro vs. Affinity Photo: Price
Both one-time cost, which gets you more?
Unlike their major competitor of Adobe Photoshop, both Pixelmator and Affinity products are billed as one-time cost software.
Pixelmator Pro is only available through the Apple App Store and costs $50. This price includes regular updates — Pixelmator has a roadmap of historical and future updates on its website, and the software has lots in store for the future. The Pixelmator iOS app is $10 for a parred-down version of the tool.
Affinity Photo is also available at a one-time cost. Affinity Photo as a sole app costs $70 for either Windows or macOS. Affinity Photo for iPad is a separate cost of $19. These prices apply only to the current version of Affinity software — Version 2 released in 2022 — but does receive updates within the current version.
Affinity also offers a universal license for all apps across all operating systems for only $165. This license covers Windows, macOS, and iPadOS, and it includes all three Affinity suite tools: Photo, Designer, and Publisher. Universal license holders will be granted a discount whenever Version 3 is announced, and older versions can still be used, albeit without updates.
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Pixelmator Pro vs. Affinity Photo: Photo editing
Photo-specific editing
Although Pixelmator Pro isn’t specifically just a photo-editing tool, it offers plenty in the way of photo-editing features. Affinity Photo is a photo-specific editing tool.
Pixelmator Pro provides retouching features, such as Repair, Clone, Lighten, Darken, Saturate, Desaturate, Sharpen, Soften, and Smudge tools. These can be used to transform your photos minutely or with major improvements. There are also reshaping tools if you need to change physical elements within your photos. These include: Warp, Bump, Pinch, and Twirl.
Source: Serif
Affinity Photo offers excellent photo retouching tools like Dodge, Burn, Clone, Patch, and Blemish Removal tools. Using frequency separation, you can smooth skin easily. Object removal in the form of inpainting, and liquify features for sculpting the perfect shapes and features in your photos. Affinity Photo also has great color tools with black and white features, colorizing options, and color adjustments to name a few.
Pixelmator Pro vs. Affinity Photo: RAW support
RAW is best for photographers
Pixelmator Pro allows you to import RAW format images for direct editing. Pixelmator Pro uses macOS support for editing RAW images, meaning any image that can be opened or edited in the Apple Photos app can also be opened and edited within Pixelmator Pro.
You can edit RAW images as direct image imports or as layers within a Pixelmator project. Some of the RAW processing tools apply changes destructively rather than non-destructively, so you need to be aware of accidentally overwriting your RAW format originals.
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Affinity Photo offers full RAW development. You can shoot photos in RAW format and edit in a 32-bit workflow. Using Affinity Photo 2’s RAW editing features, you can bring out details and color in ways not offered using other formats, taking your photos to the next level easily.
Affinity’s RAW support lists hundreds of cameras’ RAW formats, including RAW formats from iPhone 13 up to 15 Pro Max and including Samsung Galaxy S23 and Ultra too. There’s almost no RAW format that isn’t supported in Affinity.
The Develop Persona in Affinity is an interface that provides better results for RAW editing. It has options for both destructive and non-destructive RAW editing, depending on the RAW engine selected. It isn’t good for batch processing, and may slow your system down when editing lots of RAW format images at a time.
Scalable illustrative features
All shape tools in Pixelmator Pro are vector, meaning you can draw, resize, and manipulate the shapes with no quality loss. Pixelmator’s shape library features ready-made shapes such as rectangles, speech bubbles, arrows, polygons, and more. They can easily be customized using the Smart Shapes tool.
You can also turn vector shapes into masks in Pixelmator Pro, allowing your photo to sit in a frame in the shape of your choosing. This option allows you to make quirky collages or digital marketing pieces easily, using the sharp edges of vector shapes.
Despite Affinity Designer being a better tool for vector designs, you can create and edit vectors directly in Affinity Photo. You’ll need to save in a vector format like EPS or PDF, otherwise your vectors will be automatically rasterized upon saving.
Adding most effects to vectors in Affinity Photo will rasterize it with no warning. The text in Affinity is typed as vector, allowing you to resize with no pixelation.
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Pixelmator Pro vs. Affinity Photo: Manipulation and editing
Raster image tools
Both software come with many editing tools, filters, and ways to manipulate your photos or images. Both tools offer similar features across editing options.
There are layers in both tools, allowing for layered manipulation and blending modes to apply various styles. There are dozens of filters and effects in both software, too.
In Pixelmator Pro, the effects get you similar results. There are options for blurring, distorting, color adjustment, tile, stylizing, and more. You can add star, cloud, and bokeh effects on all or part of your images, and further styles.
Affinity’s filters offer color, blur, and even astrophotography applications. You can add halftone effects, Gaussian blur, and sharpen your images easily.
Pixelmator Pro vs. Affinity Photo: AI features
Speed and efficiency in your workflow
Affinity doesn’t have any specific AI tools; however, Affinity Photo has an inpainting tool, which is the closest you’ll find to a generative AI replace function. Since Canva acquired Affinity in 2024, there may be an introduction of AI features in the future to match those available in Canva’s software.
Pixelmator Pro has AI features, but they’re integrated neatly within its traditional tools. This allows users to benefit from the intelligence of AI and machine learning without gimmicks. Pixelmator’s ML Enhance option takes time away from fiddling with all the sliders in photo editing, and it allows for customization of the results.
Pixelmator Pro also has an AI masking tool, allowing you to remove or hide the background at the click of a button. It works much better than many other tools’ background removal features. There’s also AI-powered selection tools and Smart Erase, which severely cuts down time in your editing process.
Pixelmator Pro vs. Affinity Photo: App compatibility
Use these tools with others
Pixelmator Pro has native compatibility with other Pixelmator Team tools, such as Photomator for Mac and Pixelmator for iOS and iPadOS, but it also has great compatibility with many Mac-based tools. With Pixelmator Pro on your macOS, you can use its editing features to edit photos directly from the Apple Photos app without needing to import them to Pixelmator Pro itself.
Similarly, you can use the Apple Shortcuts app to process multiple images in the background, without needing to open Pixelmator Pro to do so. With Apple’s acquisition, there will be more compatibility in the future, although due to Pixelmator Pro being an Apple-only software, it’s not expected to be compatible with Windows tools or systems.
Affinity Photo is incredibly compatible with the two other Affinity apps; however, you already have to own them to benefit. You can move projects between the three apps to benefit from each software’s strengths. It doesn’t have much compatibility with external apps, unfortunately. However, due to Affinity’s larger operating system compatibility, you might find more benefits from being able to use it across a wider range of systems compared to Pixelmator Pro.
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Pixelmator Pro provides better photo-editing results
Not only is Pixelmator Pro cheaper for the standard app compared to Affinity Photo, but its features are richer and have better power engines behind them. Although you’ll find better operating system compatibility through using Affinity Photo, the lack of operating system options for Pixelmator Pro are made up by the increased compatibility with Apple apps. Pixelmator Pro has well-integrated AI features, along with a large range of editing tools, and flawless vector features. Overall, Pixelmator Pro makes a better choice for photo and image editing.
