{"id":60567,"date":"2020-04-15T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=60567"},"modified":"2020-05-04T15:27:25","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T20:27:25","slug":"work-from-home-essentials-illustrator-alternative-affinity-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/60567-work-from-home-essentials-illustrator-alternative-affinity-designer\/","title":{"rendered":"Work From Home Essentials: Illustrator Alternative \u2013 Affinity Designer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Affinity<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19 has dramatically changed the way millions of people work. Many OWC customers are impacted, including creative professionals like photographers, illustrators, and graphic designers. The Rocket Yard has readied a new series for our friends in the creative space, to introduce the Affinity suite<\/a> of applications from Serif<\/a>. If you are a creative professional or an aspiring digital artist looking for alternatives to Adobe\u2019s subscription plans, now is a great time to consider a switch. To do their part<\/a>, Serif has temporarily reduced its prices<\/a> by 50% for the entire suite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth pointing out that these are not product reviews or how-to articles, but a general comparison between applications. Ultimately any switch has to benefit the user in terms of cost, efficiency, or both. Canceling a Creative Cloud subscription and\/or subscribing to only one or two apps, can drive the cost down from the default $52.99\/month (and counting) to $20.99\/month for most apps or $41.98\/month for two. Saving roughly $10-30 per month is a big deal for many artists, especially in challenging times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know some artists are OK with Adobe\u2019s subscription plans, and none of what you\u2019ll read is to suggest that Adobe\u2019s solutions are anything but capable. But some people may find these new apps (or a mix of apps) to be exactly what they need. This article focuses on Affinity Designer. Last week we also covered Affinity Photo<\/a> and Affinity Publisher<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Affinity Designer<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Background<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Affinity<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As with photo editing applications, there are several vector illustration apps on the market that offer an alternative to Adobe Illustrator, such as Corel Draw. For many creative professionals, switching away from a workhorse like Illustrator will require the new software to check several important boxes. It must also provide a substantive advantage, whether it is the ability to create something new or creating things with more efficiency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article can provide some insight into why Affinity Designer might be worth a look for many Illustrator users. Like Affinity Photo, Designer offers a professional feature set<\/a>, is available for Mac, iPad, and PC, and offers a very affordable perpetual license (currently just $24.99).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UI Comparison<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Adobe has focused on updating the Illustrator UI in recent years, both to modernize and simplify it, including the move to a global Properties panel, which went a long way towards the latter goal. Being a much younger product, Affinity Designer was developed from the start to have a modern UI. Both apps default to a dark-themed UI with options to separately lighten or darken the canvas area and other UI elements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both apps also default to a setup where the UI elements and document(s) are grouped into a single window. The tool icons are displayed down the left edge, modifiers and options across the top of the screen, and a group of tabbed panels down the right edge. As with the other apps we compared, the main difference is that Adobe\u2019s UI has more flexibility in how elements can be combined and saved (as workspaces). However, this isn\u2019t as big of an advantage with Illustrator as with Photoshop or InDesign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the other two workflows, in Illustrator, there are many novel ways (i.e., multiple features that do not resemble each other in appearance or process) to arrive at the same result. Over time \u2013 30+ years in this case \u2013 Illustrator\u2019s feature set got a bit out of control. The end result is a series of workflows that are tougher to learn (or even find) than they should be. For general purpose users, many, learn only as much as they need to accomplish the immediate task and then stop until the next task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affinity Designer was built from the outset to perform a large majority of the tasks a person might want to accomplish in Illustrator CC. But it has more intuitive ways to get there while leveraging what is already familiar (e.g., robust grid options, familiar Bezier conventions, similar color and gradient options, etc.). More impressive is Designer\u2019s responsiveness to user input; most features are hardware accelerated (particularly on Macs), providing real-time feedback (i.e. no lag). Small details like live-previewing effects and blend modes are also included. What\u2019s more, Designer allows for full pan and zoom at 60 FPS and effectively has unlimited magnification (pointing out that it\u2019s 1,000,000% feels gratuitous but that\u2019s what it is). These items can be a big deal for heavily layered projects with intricate detail. Designer also has full support for DCI-P3 displays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takeaway: <\/strong>Illustrator\u2019s UI strength \u2014 massive feature set that can be combined into many possible configurations \u2014 is also a potential weakness, sometimes making it difficult to find what you need, especially for new users and those who use the app occasionally. Designer\u2019s UI maintains a good level of familiarity for \u201cAdobe switchers,\u201d while simultaneously keeping complexity to a minimum, and providing real-time UI feedback wherever possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\"Adobe<\/a><\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Affinity<\/a> <\/td>\n\t\t\t\t<\/tr>\n\t\t\t<\/tbody>\n\t\t<\/table>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\tAdobe Illustrator UI vs. Affinity Designer UI \n\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n<\/center>\n\n\n\n

Required Functionality<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are certain capabilities that most people will expect when considering a switch from Illustrator CC (or other vector apps) to Designer. We\u2019ve listed a few of the obvious ones below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n