Affinity Designer vs. Adobe Illustrator: Can Designer Replace Illustrator?.Affinity Designer vs Adobe Illustrator | Creative Bloq
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- How To Save As AI with Affinity Designer | Illustrator Format
Since its introduction nearly 30 years ago, the creative software giant has expanded and become an indispensable asset in the design industry. With more than 20 desktop and mobile apps accessible via the Creative Cloud , Adobe dominates the digital graphic creation market seemingly unrivaled. The most recent challenger? Affinity Designer launched in late and promises to give Adobe a run for its subscription fees. But does it deliver? Now the company is taking on the graphics software market for Mac.
Does Affinity Designer offer enough features to sway long-time Adobe users? Or is it better suited for beginners? For new designers and old pros, Affinity Designer offers a modern, intuitive user interface that allows users to transition almost seamlessly between it and Illustrator. Budding designers will find all the necessary tools clearly organized and accessible and the default toolbars and keyboard shortcuts will feel familiar to Adobe users.
The learning curve is more like a gentle slope for designers experienced in Illustrator or Photoshop. Affinity Designer comes with all the standard pen and shape tools to complete complex vector and pixel-based artwork. With the persona toolbar—which divides vector, pixel and export tools into three separate sets—users can switch between tool sets without interruption to workflow.
For designers who work in Photoshop and Illustrator simultaneously, using Affinity Designer may be a time saver. Experienced vector artists and infographic designers will find a noticeable lack of the more advanced tools found in Illustrator CC.
For example, the current release of Affinity Designer does not include a perspective grid or column graph tool. Whether sharing working files with a team or updating templates created on another platform, compatibility is an issue that very few graphics programs have addressed in the past.
Saving back to AI, however, is not possible. Because Adobe offers a broader range of features and settings, some of these may not be preserved when importing into Affinity Designer. For example, pattern overlays and other effects or filters can get dropped from imported PSD files and imported AI files may not preserve grouped objects. Affinity Designer comes up short against Adobe Illustrator in workspace options.
Illustrator CC offers multiple Workspaces pre-set for different types of design jobs—web design, automation and pre-press proofing to name a few—and the ability to create a custom Workspace. While the program is equipped with a broad range of effects, and supports an expanded selection of vector shapes and the ability to load Photoshop brushes.
These improvements are indications that the developers at Serif understand the needs of professional designers and are working to meet those needs. The Windows beta version is now available for download, but there is no information about Affinity companion apps for mobile devices. Adobe CC is available for Mac and Windows and the Adobe mobile apps let users create and preserve editable artwork in the Creative Cloud for use across platforms. In terms of function and style, Affinity Designer is an impressive, low-budget alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
Full-service designers who need to create multi-page documents will still need to rely on InDesign—or the old Quark Xpress, as Serif has not yet released a comparable alternative. For comprehensive features, tools and shortcuts, Adobe CC has Affinity beat. However, if Serif keeps the pace, we may soon see the Affinity suite become a major competitor in the graphic software market. About the author: Katharine M. Our newsletter is for everyone who loves design! Let us know if you're a freelance designer or not so we can share the most relevant content for you.
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- Affinity Designer: How to Create and Export Print-Ready Vector Files - Primoprint Blog
Affinity Designer provides a compatible app as well. Until recently Affinity Designer was only available for MAC, however, they have recently released a Beta Windows version, which you can download here. Margaret is a teacher, designer, writer and new media artist and founder of Hello Creative Co. For creatives seeking a thorough training in illustration and graphic design, Sessions College offers accredited fully online illustration certificate and illustration degree programs.
Contact Admissions for more information. Recent Articles Creative Downtime. Adjustments and effects are non-destructive. You can apply as many effects as you like and still revert back to your original.
A huge library of adjustment layers, effects and blend modes you can apply to masks and clipping layers. Custom workspaces for many kinds of projects. A fun, useful and comprehensive shape library and shapes you can adjust and modify with easy-to-understand controls. Refined typographic control and text styles. Whether on Windows, Mac or iPad, the file format is exactly the same. Affinity Designer is full of tools meticulously developed for achieving high productivity, while maintaining percent accurate geometry.
Effortlessly add a contour to any object or increase the width of single open curves. The options you have for setting up grids and guides is almost unlimited. This is what we mean by power. From the beginning we developed our engine to work to floating point accuracy. What does this mean? Layout all your screens, pages, menus and other items in a single project across any number of artboards. Export artboards, or any individual elements in your designs, with a single click.
Symbols allow you to include unlimited instances of the same base object across your project. Edit one, and the rest update instantly. Pixel perfect designs are assured by viewing your work in pixel preview mode.
This allows you to view vectors in both standard and retina resolution, giving you a completely live view of how every element of your design will export. Whether working with artistic text for headlines, or frames of text for body copy, you can add advanced styling and ligatures with full control over leading, kerning, tracking and more. At any time convert your text to curves to take full control and produce your own exquisite, custom typography to add serious impact.
Advanced file support is at the core of the back-end technology behind Affinity Designer. The design revolution Optimised for the latest tech on Mac, Windows and iPad, Affinity Designer is setting the new industry standard in the world of design.
Serious business No bloat, no gimmicks, just all the tools you need, implemented how you always dreamed. Fast and glorious Affinity Designer was created to thrive on the electric pace of the latest computing hardware.
As complex as you like The engine behind Affinity Designer is built to handle huge documents so you can be confident in adding all those tiny details without any compromise to performance. Built for your workflow Thousands of designers around the world told us how they need their graphic design app to behave.
Timesaving functions The UI has been created to give you the best user experience possible so you can spend more time creating. Any device, anywhere Whether on Windows, Mac or iPad, the file format is exactly the same. Rock solid vector tools Affinity Designer is full of tools meticulously developed for achieving high productivity, while maintaining percent accurate geometry.
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