Affinity May Be Building a Lightroom Competitor

Back in 2015, we saw the launch of Affinity Photo, a sleek, lightweight, and powerful alternative to Adobe Photoshop for doing professional edits on photos. Originally released for Mac, it launched for Windows at the end of 2016. Now it seems like there’s more big news on the horizon: a possible Lightroom competitor.

With Adobe fully embracing the subscription software business model, and profiting big time from it, the Affinity brand is trying to fill the void left behind by Adobe, targeting photographers who want software they can pay for a single time instead of subscribing to.

Affinity Photo

That’s why rumors of an Affinity Lightroom competitor has many photographers excited. The news comes from a single Tweet posted by Affinity in response to a user’s question:

When asked if there are plans for a “photo processor/organizer,” Affinity replied that it has a Digital Asset Manger in the works.

There’s no guarantee that the software launches anytime soon, or at all, but if it does, photographers will likely have a new alternative to Lightroom that’s both fast and cheap. While Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan will cost you $10 per month, the popular Affinity Photo will only cost you a one time payment of $40.

And perhaps the new Lightroom competitor could be bundled with Affinity Photo for an even more attractive bundle deal for photographers looking to leave the Adobe ecosystem entirely.

We’ve reached out to Serif (the company behind Affinity) for comment and will update this post if we receive a statement from them.


Update on 6/28/17: Serif has confirmed to PetaPixel that it’s building digital asset management software.

“We are starting to work on an Affinity DAM app,” the company says. “It’s something which will come to fruition after we have launched Affinity Publisher next year, so probably at least 12 months from now…”

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