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They seem to have an incredibly effective marketing strategy. The launch trailers for both of their flagship graphics editors were super sexy. But are all the

by kakarot 10y ago

They seem to have an incredibly effective marketing strategy. The launch trailers for both of their flagship graphics editors were super sexy. But are all the features really there? I watched a few videos of people using it about half a year ago and I noticed that a) a few essential features were missing and b) the interfaces have limited room for customization, and they are split up across several "workflow" views that really just get in the way. Does that mirror your own experience? Have you used other vector drawing programs like Inkscape, Illustrator, or Blender?

slig 10y ago
> Does that mirror your own experience? Have you used other vector drawing programs like Inkscape, Illustrator, or Blender? My experience with creative tools such as this is very limited. I mostly customize things and follow instructions from video tutorials. That said, I can't stand Inkscape on macOS. It's a disaster, and not worth the trouble. I've used Illustrator during their 30 day trial, but since I'm not using it on a daily basis, it's not worth the subscription.
- kakarot 10y ago
  Affinity hands-down has the most attractive pricing scheme I've seen for its class of software. I have no doubt it isn't worth every penny. I prefer supporting Free Software like GIMP and Inkscape when possible, but there are some things that Photoshop does much better, and some of these things were absent in my evaluation of Affinity Photo. The only software I've found to have a better pricing overall scheme is the Substance suite. $20 a month rent-to-own, and you can "buy" individual programs from the suite with this strategy one at a time instead of all at once, in case you want to secure ownership of a particular program. It's an incredible business model for software.
petewailes 10y ago
I've used Illustrator and Inkscape, but Affinity Designer is my daily go-to. There's certainly some stuff it doesn't have that I miss, but overall it's a great piece of software, with fantastic performance and enough novel, useful features that it's definitely worth the price, and using over the other two.
jkaunisv1 10y ago
I prepare files for my laser cutter, I used to use Illustrator but the subscription fees were just ridiculous. When Affinity Designer came out I bought it and started using that instead. It definitely doesn't have feature parity with Illustrator and while quite polished feels like a beta to me because of some interface issues. The one that always bugs me is that it's really painful to delete a segment between two points (ie. for vector A-B-C-D I want to remove B-C and end up with two vectors A-B and C-D). I have an illustrator friend who uses Affinity and he loves it because he doesn't have the same precision requirements I do (every extra line in a laser design is wasted time on the cutter). So it depends what you're doing with it. Affinity is committed to continuing development on it and those updates are free, and adoption has been quite good so I expect issues like this to be fixed eventually.

by kakarot 10y ago

slig 10y ago

> Does that mirror your own experience? Have you used other vector drawing programs like Inkscape, Illustrator, or Blender? My experience with creative tools such as this is very limited. I mostly customize things and follow instructions from video tutorials. That said, I can't stand Inkscape on macOS. It's a disaster, and not worth the trouble. I've used Illustrator during their 30 day trial, but since I'm not using it on a daily basis, it's not worth the subscription.

kakarot 10y ago
Affinity hands-down has the most attractive pricing scheme I've seen for its class of software. I have no doubt it isn't worth every penny. I prefer supporting Free Software like GIMP and Inkscape when possible, but there are some things that Photoshop does much better, and some of these things were absent in my evaluation of Affinity Photo. The only software I've found to have a better pricing overall scheme is the Substance suite. $20 a month rent-to-own, and you can "buy" individual programs from the suite with this strategy one at a time instead of all at once, in case you want to secure ownership of a particular program. It's an incredible business model for software.

petewailes 10y ago

I've used Illustrator and Inkscape, but Affinity Designer is my daily go-to. There's certainly some stuff it doesn't have that I miss, but overall it's a great piece of software, with fantastic performance and enough novel, useful features that it's definitely worth the price, and using over the other two.

jkaunisv1 10y ago

I prepare files for my laser cutter, I used to use Illustrator but the subscription fees were just ridiculous. When Affinity Designer came out I bought it and started using that instead. It definitely doesn't have feature parity with Illustrator and while quite polished feels like a beta to me because of some interface issues. The one that always bugs me is that it's really painful to delete a segment between two points (ie. for vector A-B-C-D I want to remove B-C and end up with two vectors A-B and C-D). I have an illustrator friend who uses Affinity and he loves it because he doesn't have the same precision requirements I do (every extra line in a laser design is wasted time on the cutter). So it depends what you're doing with it. Affinity is committed to continuing development on it and those updates are free, and adoption has been quite good so I expect issues like this to be fixed eventually.