Affinity Designer Features

This is a fantastic alternative to Adobe's Illustrator, especially at Affinity's pricepoint. To be fair, we're not a design agency first, we make websites and do marketing primarily. However, when we do want to work with vector graphics, Affinity Designer matches up almost 1:1 with Adobe Illustrator. The real pro is the one-time fee of $50 instead of a full adobe suite subscription. This allows our...

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Some of the terminology and keyboard shortcuts made the onboarding slightly more difficult for our long-time Adobe Illustrator users, but they've adopted nicely over time. There's always growing pains when you switch tools, but there are many more features that do match up 1:1 that this was a no brainer for our company.

Great set of features and sensible pricing, updated regularly

Sometimes doesn't export how you'd expect in all formats

This is the easiest to learn in graphic design software. I like that I can edit parts of a design and link or embed the update. I have created book covers (for print), e-book templates, and recently a sticker series (convention logo sticker items for event items). It has helped me save time (revising templates instead of building from scratch with each one), and I was able to create exactly what the client wanted. I've also created marketing graphics for social and launches of books and media (for clients). I can create custom templates to save time with each project (and there are a lot of built in custom templates already).

The main thing I like the least is that the Affinity software is not 'one' integration. It is three different programs. This is not my favorite thing for a few reasons, but, mostly I wish they were one, because I have started at least three projects in the wrong one (of the three I have).

It's modern, FAST (in capitals), easy to use, affordable and regularly updated. Also, Affinity Designer (and it's companion applications Photo and Publisher) are available on both Windows and macOS with 100% file compatibility; In addition there is an iPad edition available, again with 100% compatible files and great drawing features for Apple Pencil.

The management of ,global colours' and 'normal colours' needs some getting used to. Once you know how it works, it works well, but it's a bit different than I expected.

-Affinity Designer is an intuitive and powerful vector design software that is easy to use.-It has an efficient workflow and allows for the creation of complex designs quickly and accurately.-It offers a wide range of tools to help create professional-looking designs.-It is compatible with both Mac and Windows.-It has a great user interface and is well organized.-It offers support for vector and raster images.-It can be used to create illustrations, logos, icons, diagrams, and web page layouts.

-The learning curve can be a bit steep for those who are new to vector design.-It lacks some of the advanced features found in other vector design software.-It does not have a built-in library of templates and shapes.

It's a powerful tool for vectorial drawing, it has everything a designer needs to create, it's very easy to use and learn and can switch with other raster drawing software (affinity photo). The computer requirements are very low, so the software can work even on old computers. It has been developer both for Mac and Win, and has a full compatibility with Adobe's Suite.

The interaction with wacom's graphic tablets could be improved. That's all.

For many years I worked with the Adobe Suite tools, including Illustrator. Each year I had paid over $600 to rent these tools in a subscription. One day I discovered Affinity Designer. I put it through all the tests of art design functions I normally used Illustrator for. I was absolutely blown away that I could literally do everything I once did in Illustrator. The best part is, not only the price of Affinity Designer 1/12 that of Adobe Illustrator subscription, but I actually own Affinity Designer. I love this software. In fact, I went back and purchased all of their art tool lines: Affinity Photo, Publisher, and art-tool add-ons. I own all of these Affinity art tools at a fraction of the cost of one Adobe Suite subscription.

I have no negative comments about Affinity Designer.

The interface is less complicated. Layer management is awesome. It supports non-destructive editing for both vector & pixel editing. It supports live preview while changing any properties like colour, font & effects of the design.

There is no image tracing option. Lacking of Shape builder tool, pattern tool, real vector brush tool made this software hard to recommend to others.

Affinity Designer is very affordable alternative that does most things as well as Adobe Illustrator (and a few things it does even better!) The UI is actually more intuitive than Illustrator in most ways, and those who come from Photoshop or Illustrator will have absolutely no problems adjusting to it. Affinity Designer is perfect for UI design, and illustration.

Unfortunately Affinity Designer is missing some of the more advanced features available in Illustrator, though none of these will be a deal-breaker for most users. The Affinity suite of apps also seems to have some (mostly non-critical) issues with memory management. Complex files can cause the software to become rather sluggish even on high-end computers. Adobe Illustrator is not immune to this, but this seems to happen with less complex files with Affinity Designer.

It's almost impossible to judge any vector illustration software without drawing comparisons (excuse the pun) to Adobe Illustrator, and in many ways Affinity Designer compares very well. It certainly feels fast, as a modern, native Mac app should. And unlike Illustrator, you can buy the app for a very affordable one-time purchase—no monthly subscriptions. Affinity has done a great job of unifying (mostly) all their apps, and this has to be mentioned too—Designer exists as part of an ecosystem, which for many designers, makes it the first genuine alternative to Adobe's Creative Cloud.

I have not found the transition from Adobe apps to be an altogether easy one. In some part, that is just the nature of switching from tools that one has grown very familiar with over many years. But some of it goes beyond that. The Affinity apps (and Designer is no exception) exhibit some *interesting* UI behaviours. Some of the more frustrating ones: - poor windows management, making Separated Mode...

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Coming from Illustrator, it's very easy to adapt to, just minor differences in some workflows, but mostly it's intuitive. It can open and edit Illustrator files if they are pdf compatible, even deal with complex things like knockout groups correctly. It's also has some great ideas that I was pleasantly surprised by that made the workflow better and faster. Affinity devs listen to user feedback and regularly update their apps, so any features that it lacks it will probably get soon.

Lack of a good font manager, it just takes the fonts you have installed in your OS. No Google fonts integration or anything like Adobe Fonts, so if you're missing fonts you have to manually find them online and (buy or) download them the old-fashioned way. Some odd workflow choices, minor things that can slow you down. Like no native way to permanently reset the bounding box of an object after it has been rotated, they have a toggle that works for 1 operation and switches back to the (skewed or rotated) original. The align UI and the order of actions to chose what to align to what is strange and can waste time. Other minor things like that that I ran into, but all in all it works well and gets the job done.

Both Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer are excellent and capable replacements for the Adobe CC packages they replace. But most of all, unlike the Adobe apps they replace, I "OWN" the Affinity apps. Although I don't use Affinity software every day, when I need it, I need it immediately. I cannot afford to be denied access to leased software, simply because some black hat hacked a license server that...

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The way effects handles background textures is quite different from Photoshop and Illustrator and there is a resultant learning curve. That said, you can, with just a little more effort, achieve an output that is almost identical to what came from the comparable Adobe app. In fact, once you learn how to manipulate the effects, you can some times create a better looking output than what can be produced with an Adobe app. There are some shortcut keys that are in Adobe apps, for which I have not yet found a comparable shortcut in the Affinity apps. OTOH, there are some shortcuts in the Affinity apps that are no available at all in the comparable Adobe products. The negatives with Affinity apps are very minor, compared to the positives of being an "owned" product.

I have been looking for software like inDesign and Photoshop without breaking the bank. I wanted software that was functional, easy to use and set up, and something that didn't require a subscription. When I found Affinity, I was blown away with how good it was. And the fact that the publisher software works hand in hand with the photo software is a very nice touch. Coming from Adobe, the learning curve was relatively low, and I could open my old adobe files and pick up where I left off. Very, very happy with my purchase.

If I have to include cons, I'm going to have to be nit-picky. I wish I could safe natively to other file types (I can export to indesign file types, or photoshop file types, just not with the save function) but that is very minor. In some documents, exporting to a PDF took some time, although it was a very large document and not normal to do under any piece of software. Overall though, these are very, very minor issues.

- You can create and handle CMYK documents. - The user interface is extremely simple which makes it easy to pick up and learn it. - You can save files on different drives and you are capable of performing live updates on the storage file. - You have the option to generate procedural vectors and self created as well. - The effects and alterations on your designs are extremely fast, the refreshing is...

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- You do not have the access to all of the Adobe programs like Premiere, Dream weaver, After effects, etc. - The tools it has are not as convenient as the shape builder form the competitor.

It's cheap, although it still remains less powerful that some free apps

Development seems to have ground to a halt on this app. Investing time and energy learning could be a waste of time as it may not be around in the future.

I started looking for something cheaper than Adobe. While Adobe has the market corned, the price is very high considering it is a subscription based service. I started looking into Affinity during the pandemic after downloading the iPad app. After some research, I decided to take the plunge and try it out. The price was only $50 with no subscription, which I could easily stomach. The price itself is a huge selling point. I began using Affinity designer and found it far more used friendly than Adobe Illustrator. Because there is no cloud services or extra software, your computer's power goes directly to the app. Plus, because there is an iPad app, you can easily switch between devices.

If you are used to Adobe products, it will be a learning curve moving to Affinity. you do not have access to Adobe fonts and will need to install font files from either another website or buying them from Adobe. You will also have to think about cloud storage for your projects. I use Google Drive and all of my projects and data sync perfectly.

Affinity Designer is the best Adobe Illustrator alternative that will let you edit SVG, AI, EPS, PDF files with ease. The controls are very intuitive and easy to use, the results are way too good and so far, after all these years there's nothing I regret from using Affinity Designer If you buy a set of tools on the Serif store, you do not have to download them and install them on a certain folder, you just go into the panel, click, that's it. You have it ready to use and installed properly.

The only thing I cannot do in Affinity Designer so far is to get a PNG and trace it into a vector. For that, I have to use Inkspace but everything else: Affnity Designer. Another thing that you may feel limited is that you see templates for Illustrator everywhere but not for Designer. You can still open them but all the layers groups will be merged into a single giant group making you spend some time rearranging things.

when i was starting my career as an animator, so i need a program in which i work to create vector designs and illustration to animate. so i have 2 options in front of me adobe illustrator which is very popular and affinity designer. i have seen the interface of both, and i find affinity designer very easy and simple to create these illustration. it is less confusing for beginners. affinity has a better interface than adobe illustrator. i like it's features and they provided 2 different sections like design persona and pixel persona. it is very helpful for me. yes using affinity i have started my career and now i am successfully running my firm.

there is nothing to dislike about but as the area which they need to focus is exporting and file compatibility with other software's. this is the only one thing which i find little hard to deal with using affinity as i am using adobe after effects for animations and only eps and png files are supported so it's increases the work while exporting and also there is one problem with export. when exporting and submitting to websites like shutterstock it is unapproved because of rasterization problem and if i select nothing will be rasterized then it will remove all the effects like if i have choosen the transparency effect so it will remove the effect and give me solid color. so that's something i can't figure out till now.

-Purchase once and use forever. You don’t need a monthly subscription fee to access every feature -Accesible price, you don’t need to break the bank to purchase this app -Rich interface and tools

-Interface and interactions may be hit or miss since it’s software built for tablets and may not always play nice when using mouse and keyboard - Slight learning curve when coming from other options

I capture a lot of HEIC images with the iPhones and knowing that I can easily import them into Affinity Designer without the need to convert them into any other format or always trying to remember and change my phones camera settings to JPEG every time i take photos is a big plus. Thanks to AD and It has always been my first to go software when planning to use images from my phone. I would also like to mention about the shape builder in Affinity Designer which has been a fun tool and very easy to use. I use it a lot for quick logo designing. Quick steps such a simple drag to combine segments works perfectly.

I appreciate that AD comes with an iPad version which is a plus. However, in other use case, the blend modes seem not to work and sometimes I have experienced freezes when trying to export slices. Hopefully an update will address this soon.

Affinity designer has all the priority features I look for in a design program. I hate switching to new software, but I found Affinity to be a fairly easy transition from Illustrator. Occasionally I can't find a tool I wanted in the spot I assumed it should be, but a quick search solves that problem. I love the way the tool bar is laid out and found all the main tools I wanted were easy to access. This is now my go to design program and I love that it is not a subscription based software.

While some designers fault Affinity for not having certain features I found that all of the vital features I needed are included.

It is an essential App in my work. Easy to use and intuitive, multiplatform on Win Mac iPad (no iPhone). It is constantly updated and is a reference in the current design software. Library of plugins, brushes, fonts, gradients... own and third party. Very good community to ask questions and excellent tutorial channel.

Compared to applications with much more time and experience, they may not have more complex tools. But with knowledge of what you are doing you can achieve the same result.

I like how much you get for the money you pay. It is a one-time payment, very budget-friendly, and you get a software that gives you everything you need to create what you have in mind: create a logo, write something or make an amazing artwork to print, to share. I am still amazed by the things that you can do with this software.

It is not that I don't like this, but you really need to put in the time and energy to learn it. And this was expected because you can create such amazing things with it. You can find tutorials and classes that will guide you. Just take your time and don't give up.

First of all, because when you create vector elements and delete a point, it does not destroy the whole element that you've created. I like that you can organize in folders what you are doing and by double clicking on an item in the folder you selected it and you can edit it. For now, I've used affinity designer to make pdf documents as giveaway for my readers on the blog and to make design for my cutting machine. When I bought the application I received some templates to use, I have not used them yet but I assume they are useful. You can also create artboards to make design for sites and applications. You can export each artboard separately in different formats.

I faced a little problem. It is not compatible with Adobe Illustrator. At work I had this program and I sent a file home to make some changes but I could not do that because I could not open my document. Instead I have no problems with the eps format.