Affinity Photo is an award winning Photo Editing developed by UK company Serif. It’s ridiculously cheap at £25 or $25 for one time purchase and you get free updates. Yes FREE updates. Like any really powerful software packages there’s a learning curve, YouTube has lots of great videos of how to use Affinity which makes it easier. If you take photos they can be improved by post processing, period.
Check it out.
Affinity Photo
I am absolutely nothing to do with Affinity other than being a long time user from its release several years ago. It only gets better.
Mike, I know we talked about this and I said I paid about 24 quid. This was about 6 weeks back and I've had two updates since then. Just to add to your post: the updates are not only free you don't even have to do anything for them except press a button when their message pops up.
You're certainly right about YouTube. When I first got it I thought 'probably too complicated for me at the moment, i.e. I'd have to put a lot of time in to get to grips with it. I couldn't have been more wrong, courtesy of YouTube and the people who have taken the time to put some tutorials on there.
'Pretty easy to use really. I've come 'round to the way of thinking that I turn off my in-camera noise reduction because I find it too aggressive and don't like the look of the pictures as a result, and in Affinity I turn off all of the denoise levels except for denoising the background because I tend to take pictures at 100 to 400 ISO and that sort of noise is pretty much hidden by the bird's feathers anyway and a bit more detail will be retained as a result.
The highlights and shadows feature is impressive in Affinity as are the bits and pieces such as tint and exposure.
I'd imagine that those more serious about their pictures, and with more time, get a lot more out of it than I do; but from my perspective for 24 quid and just wanting to do a few minor bits and pieces to the picture, it's a bargain really.
What I don't know at this point is how much my current laptop is limiting the look of my pictures and what Affinity can do. I'll find out in a few weeks when I get a laptop with a much more capable processor.