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I’ve used Affinity Designer as a cheap alternative to Illustrator. Not surprisingly it’s way better than Inkscape (the Inkscape UI alone makes me lose all inter

by oefrha 7y ago

I’ve used Affinity Designer as a cheap alternative to Illustrator. Not surprisingly it’s way better than Inkscape (the Inkscape UI alone makes me lose all interests in designing anything), but Illustrator definitely has a lot more features and power tools, and arguably more importantly, a hell lot more online resources. So I guess Affinity Designer fulfills the role as a budget alternative, but not much more.

derefr 7y ago
I've always wondered why the space of professional graphics programs isn't like the space of professional DAW (audio) programs. With DAWs, everything is a standardized plugin (a VST) that can be run inside any of the workstation programs. Customers can buy VSTs separately from any consideration of what ecosystem they're going to be using them with.
- ksml 7y ago
  I have no experience with graphic design programs, but I would guess that it has something to do with the fact that VSTs are self contained and have extremely simple interfaces. A VST takes some input (MIDI or audio) and produces some output (MIDI or audio). That's it. They're extremely modular, and you can chain them together in arbitrary ways so long as the inputs/outputs line up. I imagine it's not so simple in the graphic design world, and without such a simple interface that everyone can agree on, it's much harder to create standardized plugins that everyone can use.
- chefandy 7y ago
  Because only now are viable professional alternatives to Adobe programs starting to show up. Adobe would be shooting themselves in the foot by working with some interoperable plugin format. Also, for graphic design at least, plugins are a much smaller part of your workflow than they are in audio production— the basic tools really are the most important thing in design. I'd say most professional graphic designers, if absolutely necessary, could replace their entire digital workflow with a few hundred dollars in art supplies, maybe minus typesetting and color matching functionality, and likely produce more interesting (if much slower and less polished) results. I don't even think they make Letraset letters anymore.
- chefandy 7y ago
  Come to think of it, one of the most important graphical resources we have is even more interchangeable than VST plugins— fonts.
  - derefr 6y ago
    That's very true! Although, I don't think it used to be true; there used to be several different, incompatible font systems. There were many simple bitmap-font formats for operating systems/display protocols (Windows, MacOS, and X11 all had their own); and then there were more complex, vector font formats, originally designed for printers to use internally, but then extended to computers through desktop-publishing software (e.g. Adobe Type1, Apple TrueType.) If you think about it, much of the original point of desktop-publishing software, back when OSes could only natively use bitmap fonts, was that desktop-publishing software could do WYSIWYG layout and preview-rendering for vector-font "instructions" (e.g. PostScript.) Fonts were indeed a lot like VSTs!

by oefrha 7y ago

derefr 7y ago

I've always wondered why the space of professional graphics programs isn't like the space of professional DAW (audio) programs. With DAWs, everything is a standardized plugin (a VST) that can be run inside any of the workstation programs. Customers can buy VSTs separately from any consideration of what ecosystem they're going to be using them with.

ksml 7y ago
I have no experience with graphic design programs, but I would guess that it has something to do with the fact that VSTs are self contained and have extremely simple interfaces. A VST takes some input (MIDI or audio) and produces some output (MIDI or audio). That's it. They're extremely modular, and you can chain them together in arbitrary ways so long as the inputs/outputs line up. I imagine it's not so simple in the graphic design world, and without such a simple interface that everyone can agree on, it's much harder to create standardized plugins that everyone can use.
chefandy 7y ago
Because only now are viable professional alternatives to Adobe programs starting to show up. Adobe would be shooting themselves in the foot by working with some interoperable plugin format. Also, for graphic design at least, plugins are a much smaller part of your workflow than they are in audio production— the basic tools really are the most important thing in design. I'd say most professional graphic designers, if absolutely necessary, could replace their entire digital workflow with a few hundred dollars in art supplies, maybe minus typesetting and color matching functionality, and likely produce more interesting (if much slower and less polished) results. I don't even think they make Letraset letters anymore.
chefandy 7y ago
Come to think of it, one of the most important graphical resources we have is even more interchangeable than VST plugins— fonts.
- derefr 6y ago
  That's very true! Although, I don't think it used to be true; there used to be several different, incompatible font systems. There were many simple bitmap-font formats for operating systems/display protocols (Windows, MacOS, and X11 all had their own); and then there were more complex, vector font formats, originally designed for printers to use internally, but then extended to computers through desktop-publishing software (e.g. Adobe Type1, Apple TrueType.) If you think about it, much of the original point of desktop-publishing software, back when OSes could only natively use bitmap fonts, was that desktop-publishing software could do WYSIWYG layout and preview-rendering for vector-font "instructions" (e.g. PostScript.) Fonts were indeed a lot like VSTs!