Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
affinity.serif.com
Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
1–10 of 96 posts
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#2Just tried out the beta. I can't import Adobe Illustrator files yet (their forums says this is coming later). But otherwise it seems like a pretty good replacement. The panning and zooming is much better that AI. You can also use keyboard arrows to scroll through fonts and it shows up immediately, which is another thing about AI that has always annoyed me. I don't see any support for scripting (which I like to use to export icons), but it is a beta.
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#3I 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 make it easy/easier to build this kind of application now?
Or did the whole Adobe thing just reach a critical mass of disgruntled-ness and this is the result?
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#4Serif, the company behind this product, was founded in 1987. It's cool to see innovative new products from people who have been around for a while.
In the software business, too many companies older than a decade just end up milking their installed base forever with lame feature upgrades wrapped in an ancient GUI.
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#5I 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…
It's Adobe. Illustrator is buggy and inaccurate with UI flaws that have existed for years. Plus the subscription model really messed with pro indies who paid for CS. We're looking for a big change ASAP.
Really interested to see if this works. Most indie vector apps have not been ready for production use.
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#6I 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 Draw and I miss it so very much since I switched to Mac.
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#7I 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…
It's Adobe. Illustrator is buggy and inaccurate with UI flaws that have existed for years. Plus the subscription model really messed with pro indies who paid for CS. We're looking for a big change ASAP. Really interested to see if this works. Most indie vector apps have not been ready for production use.
It won't open .ai files, even thought the home page says "Full support for AI". I had to look in the forums and found an apology.
Since they're not playing straight, here's the direct download so you don't have to give them your personal info:
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#8I 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…
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.
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#9How about adding Mac-only to title?
Re: Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative
#10I am excited to see more application options in this space. Adobe has achieved a monopoly in creative circles with their applications, specifically Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign (and for a long time Flash and Acrobat as well). Flash is a great tool but the format was never really opened to other applications and now it's losing to HTML5. I do credit Adobe for opening up the PDF format, and it would be great if more standard formats could win out regardless of the application that created them.