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Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

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Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#81

Post by egypturnash »

jwatte wrote: post #41

Illustrator needs disruption, true. But Photoshop needs disrupt even more! (And don't get me started on only two computers for the full subscription install!)

Photoshop's seeing some serious disruption in the comics scene; a LOT of people I know have been switching to Manga Studio 5ex and raving about how much better it is for basic painting/drawing, never mind extra domain-specific features PS will probably never have.

Also there are a fuckton of people trying to disrupt PS but very few stabs at Illustrator.

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#82

Post by jkestner »

gulpahum wrote: post #25
egypturnash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of it is that Adobe's UIs have gotten so relentlessly fucked-up. They have their own cross-platform UI toolkit that always feels just a little wrong. And they keep on making things worse; the latest release of AI, for instance, has a truly horrible new font dropdown menu due to their desire to integrate a 'buy fonts on Typekit' button into what once worked quickly and elegantly.

I know that Mac users are very sensitive towards all cross-platform and non-native UI toolkits. I have always wondered why I haven't seen many complaints about the Adobe non-native UI on Mac. So, its interesting to hear that it does feel a bit wrong.

Oh, the complaints are there. You should follow http://adobegripes.tumblr.com

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#83

Post by fractallyte »

wldcordeiro wrote: post #78

I actually like Illustrator a lot and can't see this or even Inkscape as actual alternatives to it.

Try Creature House Expression. Until MS acquired the company, it was the best alternative to Illustrator out there, with features way beyond anything Adobe could offer.

Last I checked, Microsoft were still offering both Windows and Mac versions as free downloads. The Mac version doesn't work on modern OSX, but the Windows version is awesome - and it works perfectly on WINE too.

Note that this is professional software, with an 'appropriate' learning curve. I love the user interface. The manual is friendly, comprehensive, and very well illustrated.

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#84

Post by pbhjpbhj »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #52
hnha wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with that much money, have you thought.about paying inkscape developers to accustom your needs?

though I'm sure inkscape devs wouldn't refuse some funding, they aren't necessarily pimping their services for custom work on the project. It seems to be slowly evolving, so who knows how long it would take to get somebody who could code what he's after.

Inkscape seems to have some pretty active devs who've worked on quite a few projects including others in the libregraphics group (eg Scribus).

Their Launchpad page says

>"Inkscape has 122 active branches owned by 62 people and 6 teams. There were 188 commits by 16 people in the last month."

Just because there's no price tag on it doesn't mean it's not for sale?!?

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#85

Post by tumultco »

jpgvm wrote: post #76
tumultco wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the founders of Tumult Hype here -- When we started out Adobe was still sticking to their Flash guns. As HTML5 was the only method to make animated web content on iOS, it was clear someone needed to make tools aimed at graphic designers, so we decided that someone should be us! Luckily with no other competing apps around, we didn't have to deal with an uphill battle on feature parity unlike these vector editor…

Hype is awesome. I do wonder though, how many people do you get asking for you to support Windows? I know alot of Adobe shops that adopted Windows in previous years so I am just curious what the numbers are like.

Thanks!

We get maybe 2-3 requests a week for Hype on Windows. My napkin math estimates of potential customers (those that don't write in or saw our FAQ, and then would go on to buy) shows this might lead to lower double-digit percent income coming from a Windows port. This roughly corresponds with our site traffic, which is 18% Windows users.

My general thought is (at this time) we’d do better to develop enticing new features to expand our user base than doing a Windows/web port.

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#86

Post by tumultco »

sbarre wrote: post #70
tumultco wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the founders of Tumult Hype here -- When we started out Adobe was still sticking to their Flash guns. As HTML5 was the only method to make animated web content on iOS, it was clear someone needed to make tools aimed at graphic designers, so we decided that someone should be us! Luckily with no other competing apps around, we didn't have to deal with an uphill battle on feature parity unlike these vector editor…

Thanks for the detailed answer.. Also, Hype is awesome. :-)

Thanks!! :)

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#87

Post by ris »

hnha wrote: post #28
teilo wrote: post #15

What with the Adobe CC subscription fiasco, my company is already looking for alternatives that we can use wherever it makes sense. Adobe, as part of their new subscription model, is trying to force us unto paying 40% more per seat than an individual license would cost. At that price we would be paying significantly more than we did when we just purchased upgrades. (We have upwards of 80+ seats.) So far I have manage…

with that much money, have you thought.about paying inkscape developers to accustom your needs?

I think the most glaring omission stopping many people considering Inkscape a serious contender is colour support. Inkscape lacking CMYK support (& while we're at it, spot colour support) pretty much excludes it from a lot of print work. And this is coming from an Inkscape lover.

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#88

Post by pbhjpbhj »

buro9 wrote: post #31

This looks great, but... Mac only. I really long for a tool like this for Linux.

Anyone know the leading emulator (or similar) for running OSX programs on linux distros [Kubuntu in my case]? Is there even anything serviceable? I guess I'm after the WINE of OSX.

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#89

Post by stevewillows »

soperj wrote: post #44
stevewillows wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myself and other creatives, the only thing really holding us to Mac and PC is Adobe. A complete design suite (illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver, and indesign) would be a complete game-changer for the industry.

what do people even use dreamweaver for any more??

Plenty of designers (web and graphic) use DW on a daily basis. Some use it because they're just used to it, where as others need to use it because they can't hand-code.

Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative

#90

Post by jayvanguard »

armandososa wrote: post #6
sbarre wrote: post #3

I wonder how this compares to Sketch? There seem to be a bunch of Mac-only vector apps coming out in recent years.. Not just these direct Illustrator competitors, but HTML5 animation tools too like Hype, Paintcode, etc.. that provide vector drawing and animation tools, and are coming from small teams and cost very little (relatively speaking)... Is this because there are more powerful native components in OS X that m…

In my humble opinion, as a 20 year user of vector software, Sketch sucks for drawing. It has very interesting features, mostly for UI/UX design work, but drawing anything mildly complicated is a nightmare. I'm excited to try Affinity (later today, whenever I have a chance) because their example drawings look very complicated and nuanced. …But maybe I am not a judge of good vector creative tools because I love Corel D…

> Sketch sucks for drawing

So it isn't just me then. I just downloaded Affinity and within 10 minutes was as productive for core drawing tasks than I am in Sketch. Of course I miss the artboards and would like to see arbitrary export sizes (@0.5x etc.)

Great tool so far. I'm looking forward to using it more.

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