Non-destructive editing in Affinity Photo 2

Non-destructive editing has become an important principle in photo editing. Instead of making permanent, irreversible changes to the pixels in an image, non-destructive editing simply stores processing ‘instructions’ that change the appearance of the image while you’re working on it, but only become permanent when you export a processed version of the photo. The original image remains unaltered.

Affinity Photo 2 does offer non-destructive editing, with adjustments made via adjustment layers rather than directly on the image, ‘live filters’ that can be re-edited or removed and, in Affinity Photo 2, the option to work with ‘live’ raw files where you can change the raw processing settings even when you’ve started working on the image.

Like Photoshop, Affinity Photo 2 is essentially an old-school photo editor designed to work directly with pixels, so the non-destructive approach doesn’t feel as integral as it does with programs like Lightroom or Capture One. It also relies on using Affinity’s own bespoke file format for storing your changes. Nevertheless, it’s perfectly possible to apply extensive edits to a photo which can be removed, modified or replaced at will.