You are going to be impressed. Affinity Designer smokes Illustrator in speed, opening files is thee times faster. I used to use the Cloud version of Illustrator and it choked on large files, could not even open 250 meg files. AD opened them in less than a minute. AD is also faster than Inkscape for editing vectors. AD, however, does not have a raster to vector conversion so AD and Inkscape complement one another.
I look forward to your review and comments since my use in focused / limited to vector editing!!!
Well, I gave the Mac trial version a shot.
Itās a wash for me. Doesnāt play well with my Wacom. Forums confirmed this.
I was impressed with some of the tools and functions, like the expanded āshapesā menu hidden under the triangle shape (especially arrows), and the global color pallet.
I will attempt a small project in Affinity tomorrow. At this point, I am more interested in the ios app version; while I really like the adobe Capture app, I have been very unimpressed with the adobe Draw app.
If I come into an iPad (ahem, universeā¦ are you listening? Santa?) I would want to be able to use it to draw with. Drawing with my finger on the iphone5 is like trying to paint minifigures with a mop.
I got it for $39 last week when they released it to the beta users - thought it was a deal, but it looks like thatās just the intro price Either way, itās a decent app and one I recommend to my laser students who want something with a bit more official support than Inkscape but donāt want to pay the price of Corel (my fave) or AI (2nd fave).
Is anyone able to compare AD against Inkscape? I used Illustrator and CorelDRAW side by side for years but slipped away from them as I changed industries. Now trying Inkscape since itās Open Source but kinda frustrated with the way it worksā¦ doesnt feel as intuitive to me.
Another nice feature of Affinity Designer is that when you open an Inkscape SVG file, all the layer names are maintained. Illustrator drops all the names which is a real pain if you are using lots of layers. Lots of nice features in AD. I will try and list them as I remember.
Looked at the Mac trial version for a bit last night. Iām not sure that Iāll need it, as Inkscape does everything that Affinity does. Itās just a matter of figuring out how each one does it. Though as @timtsuga mentions, Affinity does not seem to be able to rasterize a bitmap. I could be wrong and just did a cursory look through the menus. There is a ārasterize vectorā command, and it had no effect on the .jpg that I had open at the time. I need to do some tutorial watching to figure more out.
I found Affinity Designer much easier and faster than Inkscape when selecting vector arcs, plus the graphics showing which vectors are selected is better. Maybe @chadmart1076 has a faster computer than me! Iām using a Mac with a Corei3 chip on an iMac. Or maybe since he works in Seattle and is closer to Microsoft and I live in Olympia, all software runs faster there! :-)))
Iām testing it on an 8-10 year old Macbook Pro. I donāt actually know the specs, but I venture to say it isnāt fast. I didnāt do much in my first look at the software, and need to sit down and pump out a whole design to see how it flows. Also, I would assume that the speed of a Mac is inversely proportional to itās proximity to Microsoft! Olympia is technically closer to Cupertino, so your Mac should run faster than mine!
Lol! Glad you are on a Mac! My secret to keeping my 2010 iMac with a Corei3 chip running fast is to have a 2016 PC with a Corei7 chip sitting on a desk across the room. My iMac runs faster with a little competition if it thinks I am going to abandon it for a PC, which I am not! Apple iMac completely smokes a much higher end PC in the graphics arena. I think PCās still donāt have graphic cards!!!
Honestly, I much prefer PC to Mac. It just happens that my laptop option right now is an old Macbook. Eventually I want to get a new laptop, or maybe a Surface. My desktop (where I do most of my design work) is a PCā¦ also fairly old, but with a pretty robust graphics card.
Iām using a Mac with a Wacom table, tooā¦and havenāt really noticed any issues with Affinity. My tablet is under a year old, though, so perhaps I havenāt used it in enough situations to know the difference.
Kudos to you.
Olympia is technically closer to Cupertino, so your Mac should run faster than mine!