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> Affinity Designer for a few vector operations and tools not supported by Figma Can you elaborate? I like Figma for its interface design capabilities, but fee

by bbx 2y ago

> Affinity Designer for a few vector operations and tools not supported by Figma Can you elaborate? I like Figma for its interface design capabilities, but feel like Illustrator has more complex vector design. Would you consider Affinity Designer as more similar to Illustrator feature-wise?

karaterobot 2y ago
Illustrator definitely has more sophisticated tools than Figma. Figma's basically got the pen tool, point manipuation, and a couple of boolean operations, and that's it. It's perfectly fine for making simple icons and so on, but you would suffer if you tried to make a complex illustration in Figma. Affinity Designer has a lot more than Figma, but less than Illustrator. A practical example would be the "Divide" operation. This is the boolean operation that creates new shapes out of overlapping sections, for example if you had two partially overlapping circles and you used Divide on them, the result would be two pac-man shapes and a leaf shape. Though it has Boolean operations like Union, Subtract, Intersect, and Exclude, Figma doesn't have Divide at all. Both Affinity and Illustrator do. Divide is a really, really powerful step in building complex shapes out of simple ones, so when I need to use it, sometimes it's easier to just open up Affinity Designer, even if the rest of the design is in Figma. Beyond this, Illustrator has a host of neat ways of working with vectors that neither AD nor Figma do. All kinds of warp actions, meshes, and a really nice system for recoloring shapes quickly. It's been 5 years since I opened it up, so I am probably forgetting a lot of important differences.
- bbx 2y ago
  I love Figma but I agree that proper vector tools are lacking. Illustrator is complex but very powerful. Would you say that AD is enough for your needs regarding vector design? (I'm looking at ending my Adobe sub this year, would like AD to be a suitable replacement).
  - karaterobot 2y ago
    I used to do a lot more illustration (character illustrations for marketing and so on), and if that were still the case, I'd probably still be using Illustrator. I think Affinity Designer is up to doing everything I'd need, but it's probably a step down in terms of functionality, while requiring me to learn an entire new application's shortcuts and conventions. In other words, a lot of work just to get back to being almost as productive as I was before. Fortunately, these days, the most I am asked to do is make an occasional icon, so a combination of Figma and AD is more than I need.

by bbx 2y ago

karaterobot 2y ago

Illustrator definitely has more sophisticated tools than Figma. Figma's basically got the pen tool, point manipuation, and a couple of boolean operations, and that's it. It's perfectly fine for making simple icons and so on, but you would suffer if you tried to make a complex illustration in Figma. Affinity Designer has a lot more than Figma, but less than Illustrator. A practical example would be the "Divide" operation. This is the boolean operation that creates new shapes out of overlapping sections, for example if you had two partially overlapping circles and you used Divide on them, the result would be two pac-man shapes and a leaf shape. Though it has Boolean operations like Union, Subtract, Intersect, and Exclude, Figma doesn't have Divide at all. Both Affinity and Illustrator do. Divide is a really, really powerful step in building complex shapes out of simple ones, so when I need to use it, sometimes it's easier to just open up Affinity Designer, even if the rest of the design is in Figma. Beyond this, Illustrator has a host of neat ways of working with vectors that neither AD nor Figma do. All kinds of warp actions, meshes, and a really nice system for recoloring shapes quickly. It's been 5 years since I opened it up, so I am probably forgetting a lot of important differences.

bbx 2y ago
I love Figma but I agree that proper vector tools are lacking. Illustrator is complex but very powerful. Would you say that AD is enough for your needs regarding vector design? (I'm looking at ending my Adobe sub this year, would like AD to be a suitable replacement).
- karaterobot 2y ago
  I used to do a lot more illustration (character illustrations for marketing and so on), and if that were still the case, I'd probably still be using Illustrator. I think Affinity Designer is up to doing everything I'd need, but it's probably a step down in terms of functionality, while requiring me to learn an entire new application's shortcuts and conventions. In other words, a lot of work just to get back to being almost as productive as I was before. Fortunately, these days, the most I am asked to do is make an occasional icon, so a combination of Figma and AD is more than I need.