Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer
About Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer is a graphic design software, which helps creative professionals manage documents, create vector designs with gradients, blend modes, adjustments and effects, edit images, build artboards, and more using various built-in tools. The platform allows organizations to customize text topography and supports multiple image and vector file formats including EPS, PNG, TIFF, GIP, JPEG, PDF, SVG, and PSD.
Affinity Designer enables creative teams to add paragraph or character styles, frames, and ligatures to text, preview designs in standard or retina resolution, and create artboards of any size with screens, menus, and pages. Managers can set up column guides, isometric grids, and planes by defining spacing, sub-divisions, gutters, and angles, among other specifications. The application lets designers convert imported vectors, text, or primitives to editable curves, export artboards, and save stroke styles for future references. Organizations can also store design elements or assets to custom subcategories and utilize the corner tool to soften or round shapes and lines.
Affinity Designer helps users create customizable vector or raster brushes, configure tool behavior, and user interface (UI) settings according to requirements. Designers can also isolate, hide, rename, lock and merge layers, replicate symbols, and position objects based on specific values.
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- Industry: Mining & Metals
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Best Alternative for Adobe Illustrator
Reviewed on 31/10/2021
Overall, I am very happy with this app because I can finally work on vectors and graphic designs...
Overall, I am very happy with this app because I can finally work on vectors and graphic designs without worrying about monthly fees. It is so cheap and powerful. This is definitely the best alternative for Adobe Illustrator.
Pros
I was an avid user of Adobe Illustrator before they changed into a subscription model. When I learned about Affinity Designer, I grabbed it immediately without second thoughts. It works great and has all the features and tools I need for my work and business.
You just have to pay once and you get all future updates for life! Also, their mobile app comes free after your purchase. How cool is that? The app can be used on desktops and/or tablets. I have tried it on my iPad Pro and it's really fun to use, though I'd still prefer working on a computer. The price is so cheap and hard to beat. I will never look back after using this software for almost 5 years. I am now a fan and I highly recommend this app.
Cons
There is nothing to dislike with this software. I never had any issues or crashes so far. I love it!
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Great alternative the Adobe Illustrator
Reviewed on 30/11/2021
I use a lot, especially when designing stuff for softball t-shirts or for laser engraving.
I use a lot, especially when designing stuff for softball t-shirts or for laser engraving.
Pros
Great set of features and sensible pricing, updated regularly
Cons
Sometimes doesn't export how you'd expect in all formats
Alternatives Considered
Linearity CurveReasons for Choosing Affinity Designer
When they went cloud and subscription based, Affinity products are a one off feeSwitched From
Adobe IllustratorReasons for Switching to Affinity Designer
It works and got used to the workflow, works in the same fashion for all Affinity products (Photo, Publisher)- Industry: Graphic Design
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10
Not fit for purpose
Reviewed on 23/1/2019
Not really a finished app
I have been trying to integrate Affinity Designer into a professional...
Not really a finished app
I have been trying to integrate Affinity Designer into a professional workflow for a number of years now but I've come to the conclusion that it's just too painful and there is nothing to indicate that this will improve.
Back when I first purchased this app the developers were promising a roadmap of future improvements which would bring it closer to some of the industry-standard vector apps out there. It's been two years now and not a single thing on that list has been implemented. The few updates which have come down the line have focused on things like the app icon.
The developers have moved on to other projects, and it seems to me that for all intents and purposes, development on this software has been abandoned. I wouldn't wish to speculate if this software will even be supported in a few years.
So we're left with an app which lacks some of the most fundamental vector editing tools. With the exception of skew, vectors cannot be distorted in any way (including perspective) and it even lacks a knife tool. These are tools which are actually provided by many free editors.
Furthermore, many tools are very poorly implemented. Convert to curves produces hilariously unusable results and things like Offset Path simply don't exist. The developers themselves are notoriously unresponsive to please for further development.
Since going cross-platform there have been many reports of Designer's instability and since the implementation of Apples Metal API
Pros
It's cheap, although it still remains less powerful that some free apps
Cons
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.
- Industry: Media Production
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
How not love it?
Reviewed on 12/3/2022
I have the whole suite working together: Designer, Photo, Publisher and it helps me stay on a...
I have the whole suite working together: Designer, Photo, Publisher and it helps me stay on a competitive level against other businesses offering the same services.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Entertainment
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
A game changer
Reviewed on 2/1/2021
I used to have a very specific workflow that involved the 2 most common image software on the...
I used to have a very specific workflow that involved the 2 most common image software on the market. These are expensive for the kind of tasks we were doing and a recurrent payment. Affinity Designer (and it's brother, Affinity Photo) replaced these with a one-time payment so we were able to get exactly the same results, same quality and same effiency.
Pros
It allows you to do all the advanced stuff you need to do. Of course, there are some industry-standards out there this software will be compared to. Affinity Designer will for sure save you money after you spend some time in the initial adaptation translating all your knowledge from other tools to it. It sounds scary but it isn't. Things are just called differently and some others just have a different shortcut, but all what you know should still apply. A very cool thing I saw is that the developers are always interacting with users and they do listen to the requests! It's very, very lightweight (v. 1.8.5 is less than 500mb). Updates happen frequently but it's up to you to install them. Also it's equally lightweight in terms of resources used when running. The industry standards require everytime more and more ram and cpu while Affinity Designer runs very smoothly on all low-mid range pcs.
Cons
The documentation isn't always super super clear. As it's an evolving sofware and features are being added or changed, this is really important. A couple of times i had to rely on youtubers to find how to do certain things.
Affinity Designer FAQs
Below are some frequently asked questions for Affinity Designer.Q. What type of pricing plans does Affinity Designer offer?
Affinity Designer offers the following pricing plans:
- Starting from: US$4,999.00/one-time
- Free Trial: Not Available
Affinity Designer is offered across three pricing plans, outlined below. A free trial is available. Mac: $60.54 Windows: $60.54 iPad: $24.21 Licenses for businesses and educational institutions are also available on request.
Q. Who are the typical users of Affinity Designer?
Affinity Designer has the following typical customers:
2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500, 501–1,000, 1,001–5,000
Q. What languages does Affinity Designer support?
Affinity Designer supports the following languages:
English, German
Q. Does Affinity Designer support mobile devices?
Affinity Designer supports the following devices:
iPhone (Mobile), iPad (Mobile)
Q. What other apps does Affinity Designer integrate with?
Affinity Designer integrates with the following applications:
Adobe Photoshop
Q. What level of support does Affinity Designer offer?
Affinity Designer offers the following support options:
Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base
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