No License, No Install — Erase in the Browser

Yes, for most photographer and designer workflows. Affinity Photo supports layers, adjustment layers, masks, blend modes, RAW development (Develop Persona), frequency separation retouch, panorama stitching, HDR merge, focus stacking, and 100+ file formats including PSD round-trip. Workflows that work in Photoshop generally work in Affinity Photo with minor menu-location adjustments. The main gaps are some advanced typography features, Smart Object linked behavior across documents, and the Photoshop-plugin ecosystem (some third-party plugins don't have Affinity versions). For 90%+ of photo editing tasks, Affinity is a complete drop-in replacement at a fraction of the cost.

Affinity Photo is more powerful in the same way a manual transmission is more controllable than an automatic — that power requires operator skill to access. For users who already know Photoshop or are willing to invest 20-40 hours learning Affinity's interface, the depth is real and valuable. For users who want a tourist removed from a vacation photo in 30 seconds without learning what a layer mask is, Magic Eraser does that work without the learning curve. The right tool depends on whether you want a power tool to wield or an AI assistant to delegate to.

Not directly. Magic Eraser accepts JPEG, PNG, WebP, and HEIC inputs — the formats phones and most digital cameras produce. For RAW files (.CR3, .NEF, .ARW, .DNG) you'd need to develop the RAW in Lightroom, Capture One, or Affinity Photo first, then export JPEG or HEIC for Magic Eraser editing. For PSD files with multiple layers, flatten to JPEG/PNG before importing. For users whose workflow is RAW-first, Magic Eraser slots in as the second-stage cleanup-and-edit pass after RAW development; for users whose source files are already JPEG or HEIC, no conversion is needed.

Affinity Photo does not include AI upscaling. Sharpening is available via the Unsharp Mask and Clarity filters but these are manual frequency-domain adjustments, not AI-based detail recovery. For AI upscaling specifically (recovering print-resolution detail from low-resolution source photos), Affinity users typically run Topaz Photo AI or similar as a separate quality-recovery step. Magic Eraser's AI Enhance includes sharpening, denoising, and upscaling in a single action, designed for the common case of phone photos that need quality recovery without a separate dedicated utility.

Affinity Photo 2 desktop is a $69.99 one-time license that includes free updates within the 2.x major version. Major version upgrades (Affinity 1 to Affinity 2) have historically required a paid upgrade roughly every 4-6 years. Lifetime cost estimate: $70-140 over 5 years depending on major upgrades. Magic Eraser Premium is $29.99/year — $150 over 5 years. The cost gap is real but smaller than it appears once you factor in major version upgrades, and the price models target different audiences: Affinity targets users who prefer owned-software economics; Magic Eraser targets users who prefer SaaS economics and want cross-platform mobile included.

Yes, and many users do. A common hybrid workflow: Affinity Photo for layer-based composite work, RAW development, and complex retouch where pixel-level control matters; Magic Eraser for cleanup passes (distraction removal, background swap), AI generative fill, and the mobile editing leg of the workflow. The two tools cover different parts of the photo editing space — Affinity for the manual-control work, Magic Eraser for the AI-speed work. For users with a serious photo practice, running both costs $29.99/year + $69.99 one-time = under $100 in year one, less than half of a single Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan annual cost.

Affinity Photo on iPad is well-regarded — a near-desktop-class editor on tablet — but there is no iPhone or Android version. Magic Eraser has full-feature parity across iPhone, Android, iPad, Android tablet, and web. For users whose primary photo editing happens on a phone (the dominant pattern in 2026), Magic Eraser is the only option of the two. For users editing on iPad specifically, both are viable; Affinity Photo iPad gives more manual control, Magic Eraser gives more AI speed.