Affinity Photo

I was looking for a good Photoshop alternative, since I got a new iMac with El Capitan 10.11 and my Photoshop CS4 stopped working. The tools I really need are Healing Brush, Clone, various selection tools, layers & layer masks, a pen tool for creating vector objects, the ability to scale & warp selections - basically, I wanted to get as close as possible to Photoshop's capabilities. When I found Affinity Photo for $30, I was skeptical, but after using it for a while, I'm really happy with it.

As far as I can tell, all the standard Photoshop keyboard commands work - Space for pan, Space-cmd for zoom in, Space-alt for zoom out, J for healing brush, B for brush, P for pen, etc. And you can also add or change any of the keyboard shortcuts through Preferences. There is a good online forum, where they post tutorials & respond to customers (and customers can interact.) The interface is clean, with tools on the left, panels (layers, history, navigator, channels, swatches, styles, etc.) on the right, and on the top are context-sensitive commands that change depending on the tool you are using. There is support for plugins, although I had to go to their support forum to search for instructions on how to get my Photoshop plugins to work.

As far as I can tell, there isn't anything to replace Photoshop actions, which is the biggest downside for me. Otherwise, Affinity Photo has everything I need

[Edited by zeichner42, January 06]

[Edited by zeichner42, January 06]

Many features, light, clean interface, not expensive

This program is primarily an alternative to photoshop, many of the alternatives posted are alternatives for vector drawing programs like illustrator. Serifs version of Illustrator is a program called Affinity Designer. Ive been using the Beta version of Affinity Photo and I've got to say it's very impressive thus far, the best replacement to photoshop that Ive ever used!

I am using Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer in a Windows 10 environment for more than a year and it really worth the 40€ spent. It is fullfilling most of my needs and I definitely uninstalled Photoshop and illustrator.
The transition from Adobe products was very smooth and it wasn't like passing from Adobe to Corel. In fact I was surprised to be able to work on my projects in a couple of hours after installing the software.
I am using AFP with a Gaomon PD1560 graphic tablet the perfect combination for a freelancer with a tight budget.
Notice that Affinity photo is regularly updated and the Serif team is quite reactiv.

Farewell Adobe!

I think that in this time could definitely replaced the Photoshop, only one payment and impressive possibilities with editation photos.