
Affinity Designer – Illustrator alternative - oulipian
https://affinity.serif.com/
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teilo
What with the Adobe CC subscription fiasco, my company is already looking for
alternatives that we can use wherever it makes sense. Adobe, as part of their
new subscription model, is trying to force us unto paying 40% more per seat
than an individual license would cost. At that price we would be paying
significantly more than we did when we just purchased upgrades. (We have
upwards of 80+ seats.)

So far I have managed to push back and make Adobe give me the same pricing for
new Teams seats as individuals pay. Not sure how long I'm going to manage
that, however, as we are already in "special deal" territory.

We are at the point of using CC for nothing but interop with our customers and
vendors wherever we can, and pushing our designers into using alternative
tools wherever possible. If Adobe doesn't get their head out of their rear
end, we will be buying less software from them, not more.

~~~
hnha
with that much money, have you thought.about paying inkscape developers to
accustom your needs?

~~~
michaelbuddy
though I'm sure inkscape devs wouldn't refuse some funding, they aren't
necessarily pimping their services for custom work on the project. It seems to
be slowly evolving, so who knows how long it would take to get somebody who
could code what he's after.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Inkscape seems to have some pretty active devs who've worked on quite a few
projects including others in the libregraphics group (eg Scribus).

Their Launchpad page says

>"Inkscape has 122 active branches owned by 62 people and 6 teams. There were
188 commits by 16 people in the last month."

Just because there's no price tag on it doesn't mean it's not for sale?!?

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sbarre
I wonder how this compares to Sketch?

There seem to be a bunch of Mac-only vector apps coming out in recent years..
Not just these direct Illustrator competitors, but HTML5 animation tools too
like Hype, Paintcode, etc.. that provide vector drawing and animation tools,
and are coming from small teams and cost very little (relatively speaking)...

Is this because there are more powerful native components in OS X that make it
easy/easier to build this kind of application now?

Or did the whole Adobe thing just reach a critical mass of disgruntled-ness
and this is the result?

~~~
tumultco
One of the founders of Tumult Hype here --

When we started out Adobe was still sticking to their Flash guns. As HTML5 was
the only method to make animated web content on iOS, it was clear someone
needed to make tools aimed at graphic designers, so we decided that someone
should be us! Luckily with no other competing apps around, we didn't have to
deal with an uphill battle on feature parity unlike these vector editors do
with Illustrator. So I wouldn't say we were disgruntled, just trying to fill
in a hole. And, on a personal note I had a need for such a tool for a side
project I was working on.

OS X is a great platform to develop for generally speaking. We naturally
leverage WebKit, and Quartz and CoreImage frameworks I'm sure do a lot of
heavy lifting for the vector-based tools. Also keep in mind a larger percent
of graphic pros use a Mac than the general population, so if you're building a
tool it is a safe bet to start on the Mac.

~~~
jpgvm
Hype is awesome.

I do wonder though, how many people do you get asking for you to support
Windows? I know alot of Adobe shops that adopted Windows in previous years so
I am just curious what the numbers are like.

~~~
tumultco
Thanks!

We get maybe 2-3 requests a week for Hype on Windows. My napkin math estimates
of potential customers (those that don't write in or saw our FAQ, and then
would go on to buy) shows this might lead to lower double-digit percent income
coming from a Windows port. This roughly corresponds with our site traffic,
which is 18% Windows users.

My general thought is (at this time) we’d do better to develop enticing new
features to expand our user base than doing a Windows/web port.

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Osmium
I'm looking for something with solid EPS import and export. So far, I've found
Sketch flakey (some things imported incorrectly, other things cause visual
glitches), OmniGraffle great _except_ when I export a document as EPS which
has other EPS-imported elements embedded in it, they appear to be rasterised
(which defeats the point). And that's pretty much it–Pixelmator, despite
becoming more of a vector tool, doesn't support EPS at all. Inkscape works
flawlessly except that it's awkward to use on a Mac, especially without retina
support (which is somewhat crucial for an graphic editor).

I've just tried Affinity Designer and it seems like it has good EPS import
support (all elements editable etc.) and EPS export, but the exported EPS
appears rasterised. When I open it up again in Affinity Designer, it's no
longer editable. But maybe I'm just doing something wrong...

~~~
err4nt
I work with vectors a lot and I'm wondering why you're set on EPS as a format
instead of using something like SVG.

Does ElementaryOS support retina? It works well as a dual boot!

~~~
michaelbuddy
I think the types of EPS files you can create is expansive. Not sure if it
means that it supports more features of illustrator such as filters and that,
but it may do more than SVG for that reason. Also does SVG support CMYK?
Because that's definitely something EPS is used for, trading CMYK vector
files.

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pavlov
Serif, the company behind this product, was founded in 1987. It's cool to see
innovative new products from people who have been around for a while.

In the software business, too many companies older than a decade just end up
milking their installed base forever with lame feature upgrades wrapped in an
ancient GUI.

~~~
michaelbuddy
It's smart they going this direction, perhaps a result of them getting some
key players in their staff. I haven't played with Serif since probably 2002.
Back then the interface didn't seem all that smooth, but they do a lot of work
in the education marketing area, so their products are probably evolving
reasonably well. It's interesting your mention in the last sentence, because
that's how Xara Designer Pro feels in a way for me after yet again buying
their latest app. Where as they are adding useful things, some core stuff is
still not addressed and GUI is a bit haphazard.

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airlocksoftware
Just tried out the beta. I can't import Adobe Illustrator files yet (their
forums says this is coming later). But otherwise it seems like a pretty good
replacement. The panning and zooming is much better that AI. You can also use
keyboard arrows to scroll through fonts and it shows up immediately, which is
another thing about AI that has always annoyed me. I don't see any support for
scripting (which I like to use to export icons), but it is a beta.

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buro9
This looks great, but... Mac only. I really long for a tool like this for
Linux.

~~~
adamredwoods
Or Windows, even. I thought we are in the cross-platform software era?

~~~
michaelbuddy
If you want a tool like this for Windows, you want Xara Designer Pro probably.
Or Serif does make Draw Plus and many other apps for Windows -
[http://www.serif.com/drawplus/](http://www.serif.com/drawplus/)

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heldrida
Looks good, but unfortunately I'm on Ubuntu, may use Win on a VM, but that's
it! Such a pitty there's so many new tools like this coming out, but just for
Mac. £37 is affordable

~~~
NickPollard
If this was available on Ubuntu, I would definitely spend £37 on it.

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cageface
I'm very happy to see new alternatives to Illustrator and Photoshop emerge
because they are both terrible tools for interface design.

Maybe I'm missing something but basic snapping doesn't seem to be working very
well in this beta. With snapping enabled I still can't seem to easily draw
rectangles that snap tightly to grid lines. I get locations that are all over
the map instead. Sketch used to have this problem as well but they finally
fixed it in version 3 and it was extremely frustrating to use for UI design
before this was fixed.

So unless I'm missing something this is going to sit on the shelf until they
get snapping really nailed down. Looks nice otherwise.

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gulpahum
This reminds me of Mischief (for Mac and PC) [1], which is incredibly fast
vector drawing application.

The way Mischief handles its details of graphics, speed and huge range of zoom
is by using adaptively sampled distance fields (patented technology) [2].

It would be nice to know if Affinity Designer uses some advanced technology to
achieve similar properties.

[1] [http://www.madewithmischief.com](http://www.madewithmischief.com) [2]
[http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~frisken/frisken.html](http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~frisken/frisken.html)

~~~
Tloewald
Mischief is a neat program, but it's kind of the opposite of this program —
Mischief pretends pixels don't exist, whereas this program has a lot of pixel-
centric features.

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danboarder
I am excited to see more application options in this space. Adobe has achieved
a monopoly in creative circles with their applications, specifically
Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign (and for a long time Flash and Acrobat as
well). Flash is a great tool but the format was never really opened to other
applications and now it's losing to HTML5. I do credit Adobe for opening up
the PDF format, and it would be great if more standard formats could win out
regardless of the application that created them.

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graphixgeek
In the long run, as has been pointed out, the rise of a lot of graphic
software packages at this particular juncture has everything to do Adobe's
current subscription model. Like many designers, I'm still forced to use Adobe
at work because it is being advocated as "the industry standard."

At home, however, I've spent the last year looking for alternatives to
InDesign and Illustrator. Ironically, the best two that were found were
QuarkXPress (expensive, but had most of the features to equal what was being
done in InDesign) and PagePlus, which was the one chosen (granted, it has to
be either in a dual boot or in a virtual windows environment, but it does the
job).

The problem when the Affinity Suite--most notably Affinity Publisher--finally
comes to market is going to be getting commercial print shops to take their
native files. Most shops work with hi-res PDFs now anyway, but for that 5-10%
of jobs that need to be corrected within the native file(s), the shops are
going to need to be able to open the file format. Currently, most professional
print shops (in the states) take InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, PDF,
QuarkXpress, and sometimes Freehand, Microsoft Publisher and CorelDraw files.

I submit two thoughts:

1) Affinity will need to allow Publisher to import and/or export .idml files
so that previous users of InDesign can use their files in Publisher (the open-
source program, Scribus, claims to have achieved .idml import currently in
version 1.5 which is a developmental build) and export to an interim native
file format that the commercial printing world can work with.

2) Affinity will need to go on a massive marketing campaign targeting printing
vendors and extolling the virtues of adding Publisher to their armory of
tools.

Having said all that--and currently being a PagePlus and DrawPlus customer as
well as a proponent of the Designer beta--I can't wait until Affinity kicks
Adobe's a$$.

By the way, as a Sketch user, Bohemian Coding's app seems to have been made to
compete directly with Fireworks. Although it does work in vector, Sketch does
not have the chops to fully compete with Illustrator (which is the territory
that Designer fully stands in now). The only app that could have made that
claim on OS X is/was Freehand (as DrawPlus, CorelDraw, Canvas, and Xara are
all currently Windows-only).

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_random_
How about adding Mac-only to title?

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callumprentice
Pixelmator (in Vectormator mode) and iDraw are pretty amazing for my modest
needs. Looking forward to seeing what else this can do.

~~~
fineline
Agree. iDraw's new plugin API looks really interesting too.

[http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/plugins/](http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/plugins/)

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wsc981
I've been looking for an affordable Adobe Illustrator version for quite a
while. I really hope this app will fill the gap that Adobe neglected (why is
there a Photoshop Elements and no Illustrator Elements?)

As others have noted, tools like Pixelmater, Sketch and Inkscape each have
their own problems, making them an unsuitable Illustrator replacement.

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safetydank
Serif has had a solid Windows vector drawing app (DrawPlus) for a long time.
If I remember correctly, a group of ex-Xara developers moved to Serif to write
it. Affinity looks similar, I would be surprised if they aren't based on the
same codebase.

~~~
authordale
Zero shared code (am not a programmer but work at Serif). The Affinity stuff
is brand new from the ground up developed over the last 4 yrs by a dedicated
team.

You're right that some Xara devs added to DrawPlus over the years, but the
Affinity titles are fr fr fresh and have different goals and philosophy.

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donpark
Played with the beta for only 10 min but I was impressed with it. Easier and
faster than Illustrator. Felt much less buggy than Sketch 3. AI file
compatibility is a concern but looks very promising.

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8bithero
Again, no love for Linux :(

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joeyspn
Pretty neat. I just tested it and feels quite smooth (less buggy and resource-
hungry than illustrator). I'll stick to my CS, but I'll give it ago for some
new projects...

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teilo
Link to the beta download page: [https://affinity.serif.com/beta-
download/](https://affinity.serif.com/beta-download/)

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jwatte
Illustrator needs disruption, true. But Photoshop needs disrupt even more!
(And don't get me started on only two computers for the full subscription
install!)

~~~
michaelbuddy
Yes sir. I thought Krita was going to be a good new alternative for Photoshop,
being open source but sadly it's got basic things missing. You can't even
nudge a layer using arrow keys you have to drag layer content with the mouse.
Laggy too. GIMP is well, always GIMP. Paintshop Pro, Corel Draw, Painter those
don't really hit the mark. UI is always just odd. I feel lost honestly. I'm
glad I have cs6 master collection and plan on squeezing it for all I can over
the next few years. I hate mucking around with Illustrator, though it's got
some cool things it uniquely does. I use Xara Designer Pro for a lot of work.
It's awesome and flexible but it's not gonna replace Photoshop.

~~~
boudewijnrempt
Of course you can move a layer with the keyboard. You just need to configure
that, because that's not the default. And it's not the default because our
users tell us they prefer to pan with the arrow keys by default.

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rodgerd
I'd give a lot for a Freehand alternative - I never really cottoned on to the
Illustrator way of drawing.

~~~
fidotron
Absolutely. The Illustrator near monopoly has been a disaster for a lot of
people in either the Freehand, Corel Draw or more esoteric areas.

It's mildly amusing this is back to Mac-only territory, given that the reason
things like Xara were Windows only in the mid 90s was the logic of the era was
design and publishing was going to become a Windows NT stronghold, which
underestimated the stickiness of custom AppleScript and Quark XTensions.

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wldcordeiro
I actually like Illustrator a lot and can't see this or even Inkscape as
actual alternatives to it.

~~~
fractallyte
Try _Creature House Expression_. Until MS acquired the company, it was the
best alternative to Illustrator out there, with features way beyond anything
Adobe could offer.

Last I checked, Microsoft were still offering both Windows and Mac versions as
free downloads. The Mac version doesn't work on modern OSX, but the Windows
version is awesome - and it works perfectly on WINE too.

Note that this is professional software, with an 'appropriate' learning curve.
I love the user interface. The manual is friendly, comprehensive, and very
well illustrated.

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Kiro
Is this good for making game graphics? I tried Sketch but it was not suited
for the task at all.

~~~
hamvocke
Sure, why shouldn't you be able to create game graphics? As long as you can
export rasterized images I see no limitations on what you could or could not
create with a vector illustration software.

Could you elaborate why Sketch didn't work out for you?

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microcolonel
Although surely inferiour in some ways for now, Inkscape is more useful to me
because it's open and runs on all of my computers, it also has a usable plugin
system, a userbase...

Thanks, but no thanks.

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thisjepisje
It's funny how some mac apps mention they support "full screen" as if it's
something nontrivial.

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nyar
It isn't an alternative.

Illustrator runs on Windows and Mac, this runs on Mac. I don't have a mac, nor
do I want one, so this is unusable.

Now tell me about how design has to be done on a and how the sleek $2000
plastic encasing the computer helps you do it.

~~~
notasmartman
The dictionary defines Alternative as: one of two or more available
possibilities. This is available, and it is a possibility, even if it's a
possibility with a low probability based on your inherent bias. So, by
definition, in english, this is certainly an alternative. So I'm curious about
your motivation for the comment. You come out swinging, create a strawman, and
introduce an error, all in one sentence. You're either a troll, or you're an
idiot, and I'm honestly curious which, because I would like to assume the
former, but your post makes no sense, even as a troll message. What was your
motivation?

~~~
fred_durst
Can people please stop saying strawman over and over and over again. We get
it, you read about it on Wikipedia by way of Reddit and now it applies to
every single time someone disagrees with you.

~~~
notasmartman
I was trained in debate and logic long before Wikipedia existed, actually,
long before the web existed. I'd rather you appeal to people against serving
up logical fallacy up as substantive material for discussion.

