Serif is best known as a developer of low-cost Windows image-editing and design software, so the birth of the Affinity range was big news for Mac owners. Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo use code written for the Mac from the ground up, with no need to cater for legacy hardware and software compatibility and an emphasis on flat-out speed and live image effects and adjustments.
The other headline story is the price. Both apps are available from the Mac App store for £39.99/US$49.99, which massively undercuts the price of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (or did, when you could still buy a licence outright) and is half the price of an annual Adobe Photography Plan, for example.
So that's fine if you own a Mac, but not much consolation for Windows users who've instead been faced with a choice of paying for an Adobe subscription or lesser, more amateur-orientated products like Photoshop Elements or Corel PaintShop Pro.
But with the announcement of a forthcoming Windows version, Serif has dropped a bombshell. All along, when asked about Windows versions of its Affinity apps Serif has confined itself to vague noises about the difficulties involved, but it turns out the company's developers have been working on Windows versions for a year.
These will be on display on Serif's stand at The Photography Show, March 19-22, and you can sign up to the Affinity Windows beta program on the Serif website. Windows versions of Designer and Photo are both under development and Serif has promised to keep the same highly-competitive pricing as the Mac versions.
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