anyone have experience with Affinity Designer?

[vorropohaiah]

I'm thinking about dabbling in vector-based programming. After about 2 years of working on my atlas maps, I've realised that vector-based software might be an easier option, but I've been putting it off pretty much day one because I'm looking forward to learning a new program from scratch.

I'0ve been thinking of Inkscape, and possibly Illustrator, bus I've recently come across a new (to me) program called Affinity Designer, which looks gorgeous, blends Photoshop and Illustrator and is realtively cheap too.

I was wondering if anyone here has experience with it and would you recommend it?

[Voolf]

I can reccomend it. I don't own the program, but i check it last year and its a solid software. They constantly making new updates with new features. For its price totaly worth it. You can check the trial version.

Now i cannot recommend Affinity Photo. At least not yet. That one i have bought and it is almost a year and still cannot use it for drawing. They can't handle with proper tablet support. Some tablets work, some (mine wacom) don't work well. They rushed the software and released it with many flaws. Tablets problem is just one of MANY. Good thing is they are making new updates almost every week, but i am still bit disappointd it is taking them so long time to six wacom input issue.

There is still one more software Gravit Designer, which was introduced already on this forum by ChickPea in this thread. I played with it just for a moment. At first glance looks nice and has many features, but i haven't check it properly yet. You may try it, it is free

[vorropohaiah]

a lot of what I do needs features of the Affinity Photo, unless they've been incorportated with the Affinity Designer. that's a shame as i use a wacom.

thanks for linking to the other option too

[ChickPea]

Ha, funny you should mention this. I'm a diehard Linux user, but I kept going back to Affinity Designer and looking at their vids & their site, and just last weekend I finally succumbed and bought it. Even though I need to run it in Windows, sigh. I'm kinda kicking myself that I didn't just buy it when it was initially released for Windows and was going for about £20/£25 or thereabouts.

I've always used Inkscape for vector stuff, and I love it, and Inkscape does some things that Designer won't do (or, at least, I haven't figured out how to do it yet). But Designer has some fantastic features like brushes, and brush pressure. I haven't actually tried it with a tablet yet, but you can adjust the line pressure even with a mouse, so you get a line that changes thickness and doesn't look so... vector. It also feels far more stable than Inkscape, which can be a bit crashy sometimes.

I've only had a week, so I'm still getting to know the ins and out of it. I have a few little niggles over things that Inkscape does better, but sometimes it's just that you need to adjust your way of working. The colour picker is completely non-intuitive (you have to drag it from the colour selection panel). I don't like how the alignment tool works compared to Inkscape. Everything is created on its own layer. Soooo many layers! (Though grouping helps). It doesn't have things like Interpolate and some other Inkscape features that I'm very fond of (though the power duplicate tool sorta kinda does the same). This is all pretty trivial to be honest, but occasionally annoying when you're used to having a feature. If you haven't used Inkscape, or even Illustrator, these things probably won't bother you.

I haven't even tried the 'pixel painting' part of it yet, but I'm looking forward to that. I can't draw for toffee and I like vector for that reason. I think Affinity Designer is (hopefully!) going to be a good mix of Inkscape and Gimp for me, because I usually work between the two anyway.

You can get a 10 day free trial and I think if you download the beta version, you can pretty much run it indefinitely, though you may encounter bugs. It's definitely worth trying though, for what it costs. I also like the fact that it's being heavily developed, with (I believe) two or three big upgrades pushed out in the last year. I'm hopeful that the little things that bug me will get smoothed over! I would definitely say try it and see how you go. They've got a ton of help videos and it'd be worthwhile watching a bunch of them to get the hang of how some of the features work.

[vorropohaiah]

thanks for the feedback!

I was intrugued by the pixel / vector stuff as, to my knowledge, this is the only program that mixes the two, which is really interesting.

I'm pretty sure I'll give the trial a try at this point

[Redrobes]

I know Gamerprinter keeps saying how the software he uses does pixel and vector at the same time. That one is Xara Extreme - free on linux, costs on windows I believe.

[Voolf]

a lot of what I do needs features of the Affinity Photo, unless they've been incorportated with the Affinity Designer. that's a shame as i use a wacom.

Well check the trial version of Photo too. As i said before, not all wacoms don't work. Maybe you are using the model that is working well.

I think Affinity will become first real rival to Adobe PS and IL in near future.

[vorropohaiah]

Well check the trial version of Photo too. As i said before, not all wacoms don't work. Maybe you are using the model that is working well.

I think Affinity will become first real rival to Adobe PS and IL in near future.

i have a 10-year old white bamboo. I had problem getting drivers for it to work on windows 10 so I'm not holding my breath!