
Affinity Designer: A Love Story - robenkleene
https://design.infinum.com/case/affinity-designer-a-love-story
======
mortenjorck
Affinity Designer is an excellent piece of professional creative software, but
Serif’s business model is broken.

They’ve erred on the other end of the spectrum from Adobe. Rather than get
greedy and force users into renting their software as Adobe has, they’ve tried
to stretch out a very low price of entry into a multi-year series of free
updates – and it’s not working.

I paid a mere $50 for Affinity Designer half a decade ago. While it’s seen
some valuable updates since then, the core promise of an Illustrator killer
remains out of reach: Key features like blends, pattern brushes, distortion
envelopes, and more have sat on the 1.x roadmap for years, and the marquee
feature of 1.8, released a few weeks ago, was a years-in-the-making _bugfix
for the expand stroke feature_.

I _want_ to give Serif more money so they can bring Designer up to speed with
Illustrator, as fifty dollars every 5+ years clearly doesn’t support the kind
of development effort this requires. I don’t want to _subscribe_ to Designer
either, but there are other proven models: Look at Sketch, which has an
optional, annual upgrade program, and has shipped vastly more functionality
than Designer has in the same time period.

My criticism isn’t entirely fair as Serif has also been occupied with
launching Photo and Publisher during this time, but there’s no escaping the
conclusion that Designer has stagnated. I really hope the company finds the
right course correction that keeps the Affinity range affordable while
sustainably funding development.

~~~
leokennis
I don’t think their business model is broken, I think your expectations are
wrong.

Clearly it will be insanely hard to compete with Illustrator. It’s a brand
name and industry standard.

But if you can convince enough people that they can get a pretty good
approximation of Illustrator for a fraction of the price (and you adjust your
rate of shipping features accordingly), that can be a great business model.

~~~
mattkevan
If you go for the volume licensing deal, that is an annual subscription, and
it works out at about £13 per year per licence.

One company I worked for had one laptop with Creative Cloud shared between an
entire department because they couldn’t justify getting everyone CC just for
occasional use.

When I pointed out what good value Affinity was, they promptly rolled it out
for the entire organisation.

------
seanwilson
I moved from Inkscape to Affinity Designer. The interface for Affinity
Designer is orders of magnitude better but I do like that Inkscape lets you
load + save to SVG files instead of being geared towards a proprietary
forward. However, after a while, I kept finding when I would Google "how to X
in Affinity Designer" and find a feature I thought was obvious was missing
with no plans to implement it.

I ended up switching to Sketch and it's orders of magnitude again better for
me. I primarily draw icons, logos and interface mockups. Sketch gives you lots
of ways for quickly iterating over lots of mockups that I couldn't find in
Affinity Designer so I'm much happier now.

Either way, they're both good for different use cases and both have free
trials.

I'm considering Figma now because I don't like being tied to using a Mac and
want something that might work on a Chromebook. You can run Inkscape on
Chromebooks now but I'm pretty sure sure I can't go back to the interface. Are
there any alternatives I haven't considered?

~~~
asfarley
Yes! I ran into _exactly_ the same thing with Inkscape, aftering purchasing
Affinity thinking that it was going to be the 'pro' version of Inkscape. Now
I'm regularly going back to Inkscape for features that Affinity doesn't
consider to be important:

1) Auto-trace (come on - I could write this myself, not implemented yet?)

2) Provide option to preserve aspect-ratio in exported SVGs

Makes me wonder whether it's worth the continued investment in learning.

Also, I am not sure 'personas' is the best choice. After trying both, I
somewhat prefer Inkscape's single UI which balances the needs of any sort of
editing.

I find it quite jarring to go looking for a control for 10 seconds until I
realize I'm in the wrong persona. Maybe I just need more practice though.

~~~
drwu
3) Gradient mesh fill

4) Flexible guide lines for free 3D perspective drawing

5) Things are rasterized, which are for sure supported in SVG or PDF (well
done, inkscape)

6) (optional) TeX export

------
ocdtrekkie
I've been using Krita a lot as my Photoshop replacement lately, but I bought
both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer and have been impressed with how
much they offer for such a significantly more reasonable price. It's time to
tell Adobe "no" to subscription based software.

~~~
achow
I was always surprised by Adobe's lack of product thinking and software
development chops and their revenue and share price (inversely proportional).

All of their products never evolved, very poorly integrated, terrible UX and
product design in general, bad software development maturity.

The last one is an educated guess based upon all of the previous points and
also Steve Jobs publicly shaming them due to Adobe's inability to react on
Flash issues. [1]

Adobe took very long time to react to Sketch software challenge, and the
result (Adobe XD)is just about OK, nothing remarkable.

[1] Steve Jobs' open letter:

Thoughts on Flash

[https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-
flash/](https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/)

~~~
Marazan
Thoughts on Flash is filed with lies. It opens with lies and continues with
lies.

Apple denied Abobe access to APIs they needed to make Flash run better on Macs

~~~
sbuk
Lies? The main points were; not ‘open’, which wasn’t wrong or a lie; ‘full
web’, again none of the points were incorrect, and hindsight show flash on
Androids was a poor user experience. In terms of ‘reliability, security and
performance’, flash was a train wreck - no falsehoods there. It certainly
rinsed the ‘battery Life’ on my Windows laptop at the time. Finally, it
clearly wasn’t designed with ‘touch’ based devices in mind.

Jobs last point harks back to the main development platform for the Mac being
Metrowerks CodeWarrior for Macintosh. Apple were essentially beholden to a
third party with regard to improving their OS, which along with licensing
other hardware vendors, nearly put them out of business. Whether you or anyone
agree or disagree with his motive, you could see _why_ Jobs didn’t want to run
that risk again. There is also the elephant that is the App Store in the room,
but again, once bitten (retailers not carrying Apple Compatible software), you
can understand the decision, without necessarily agreeing with it.

> _Apple denied Abobe access to APIs they needed to make Flash run better on
> Macs_

It didn’t run particularly well on Windows, Linux or Android either...

~~~
Marazan
The SWF spec was completely open, there were multiple Flash players both open
source and commercial. So a lie.

Flash was designed, as its very first use case, for touch screen kiosks. So a
lie.

Flash Player was perfectly performent, shit code that ran on it is different
to the platform. When the first round of HTML 5 demos came out I made my own
Flash equivalents, the HTML 5 demos ran at 80% CPU on my machine, the Flash
versions ran at 5%.

~~~
sbuk
Not really. It was an open spec, but controlled solely by Adobe.

> _Flash was designed, as its very first use case, for touch screen kiosks. So
> a lie._

Bullshit. It was originally release By FutureWorks(?) as a vector tool to run
on PenPointOS - that failed, so they pivoted to use the core as an animation
tool for the web. Macromedia bought it added extra functionality, including
‘actions’. Adobe acquired Macromedia, and Flash, in 2006 (if memory serves
correct). I remember them stopping development of, the vastly superior to
Illustrator (IMHO), Freehand. They release Flex, which you may be confusing
with Flash as it was based on it, as a platform for enterprise apps. If there
was any kiosk targeted features, they were very definitely and after thought.
So no, not lies.

Lastly performance. Annecdata. It ground my laptop to a halt and my desktop
sounded like a jet engine taking off. I used quite heavy 3D and cad programs
at the time, and even they did hog resources like Flash did. Admittedly, total
annecdata. But enough people at the time saw fit to complain about it.

------
AmVess
I switched to Affinity Photo a while ago. It took a little while to get used
to it, but I don't miss PS at all now. Granted, I'm not a professional photog,
but I've been using PS since it was released.

I also have Designer, and it is quite good...although I don't know enough
about Illustrator to be able to compare them.

Adobe has gotten lazy and sloppy. The CC launcher/updater frequently needs to
be reinstalled, and PS is slow in quite a few areas. Simple batch resizing
photos in PS is a real chore because it only uses a single core. Affinity uses
all of them, and the performance difference is pretty stark.

Affinity frequently updates their products with new features. I purchased this
product a few years ago and haven't been charged for new releases.

Affinity allows 5 one serial to be installed on 5 machines.

All of their products are for sale for 50% off.

~~~
slantyyz
I have Affinity Photo, but I find I don't even use Photo for photos at all.

It's usually for manipulating non-photo raster stuff for the web. For photos,
I pretty much use DxO (Lightroom equivalent) exclusively.

I have found Lightroom equivalents to have just the right amount of Photoshop
functionality that a) lets me do everything I need faster than a dedicated
Photoshop type app, b) lets me do that stuff in batches faster.

------
ilmiont
I used Affinity Designer as my only design tool for about a year (UI design)
from late 2017.

I liked it overall and I liked what Serif has built it around it, even going
so far as to offer printed documentation (the Workbooks) and the beautiful
Affinity Spotlight website which is a really wonderful website unto itself.
And there was the obvious benefit of the low cost and perpetual license.

The featureset was adequate for me and the interface initially won me over.

But I ended up moving away for two main reasons:

1\. It tended to feel sluggish as hell. 2\. Frequent crashes in the middle of
work. 3\. Lacking basic productivity capabilities, e.g. no ability to interact
with the layers pane (rename, reorder etc.) using the keyboard shortcuts.

I was running it on an i7-7700k with GTX 1080 Ti and yet there was often a
perceptible delay between clicking something and the action occurring. Even
expanding layers in the layer pane, or double clicking a text field... there
was a very small but perceptible delay.

More serious though was (3) especially combined with (1)... little things like
tidying up file layers were vastly more time consuming than they should have
been.

I was suggested to try Figma and have never looked back. It has keyboard
shortcuts for everything and all interactions feel instantaneous... even
though it runs within the browser! The first time I used it I was astounded
and then made the switch within weeks. Haven’t run Affinity in over 18 months
and it would take a lot for me to try it again.

I now run a Linux desktop anyway so not really even an option...

------
xs
Been using Affinity Photo for a year now. I love it. I feel confident with the
tool and can make some pretty cool things. No other tool has made me feel that
way. I've spent 10 years on and off using gimp and photoshop. Never could get
it. I tried Krita and Pixlr. They were buggy and had shortcomings. Affinity
Photo has a great price and absolutely rocks.

One thing I still think is clunky though is the Color Picker Tool. I have to
select my paint brush, then click and drag the color picker to the color I
want, then click the color I want again to get it on my paint brush. I think
other tools simply let me hold alt+click on the color to get that color on my
brush. But Affinity is like a 5 step deal which slows me down a lot.

~~~
brianpgordon
I'm a Photo (and Designer) user too, just for casual use. The only features I
really miss from GIMP are animated gif editing, a "crop to selection"
function, and to a lesser extent a click-and-drag perspective transform. The
Affinity forums have helpful information for working around missing features,
but it seems like some people there have a weirdly defensive attitude about
how there are good reasons for every missing thing...

Designer was a bigger win for me because I've always found the Inkscape UI
baffling.

------
uxcolumbo
I'm an ex Photoshop user - stopped using it when they moved to a subscription
model.

I'm an ex Sketch user, because I moved back to Windows (feel that Apple is
ripping users off and I can get better choice, quality and performance
elsewhere. I don't need shiny and thin and $20 cables that break often).

I like Figma - amazing what the engineering team achieved there. But it's
primarily an online app and I'm worried they might get acquired by some of the
bigger companies.

I'm now using Affinity Designer and Photo. It does most of the things I need.
It has some minor UX annoyances (or maybe my Photoshop muscle memory is not
fully overwritten yet).

Maybe I'm one of the dying breed that prefers to have a native app with a
perpetual license and the option to choose when to upgrade and being more in
control.

I'm not sure whether it's sustainable for Serif to charge $49 for an app. I'd
be happy to pay more if it meant they could work on those other things
mentioned here by others.

EDIT: typos

------
saagarjha
I didn’t even know Affinity had a student discount. I’m not even a graphics
designer and I have it for I have it for all my devices. It’s great to not
have to pay a subscription just to tinker around with Photoshop-level tools,
and I am very glad that it exists and is so high-quality.

------
open-source-ux
It's worth noting that the Affinity apps are available for both Mac and
Windows (in contrast to some Mac-only design tools like Sketch). Overall, I
find the UI of the Affinity apps to be...OK. Some tasks feels a bit clunky
(but less clunky than Adobe apps). I still recommend the Affinity apps if you
are looking for alternatives to Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. But be
aware that the Affinity apps are not identical in features to Adobe's apps.
The Affinity website has a good showcase of how people are using their apps:

[https://affinityspotlight.com/](https://affinityspotlight.com/)

It's also nice to see some competition against the behemoth that is Adobe. In
particular, these smaller, more nimble competitors (Sketch, Affinity, Figma,
Procreate) have shown that you don't always have to beat the dominant company
in a market, just carve out enough space in the same market to succeed.

------
guitarbill
after struggling with inkscape for way too long. finally, i downloaded the
affinity designer demo, and actually got stuff done. it isn't perfect,
splitting/deleting parts of a curve was trickier than illustrator. but
overall, very happy. i'm a convert.

------
albertop
I wish they had a Lightroom replacement. It is the only thing keeping me
shackled to Adobe.

~~~
slig
Have you tried ON 1 Photo?

~~~
albertop
Trying now. Thanks!

------
leeoniya
the quality and value of both Designer & Photo is exceptional. I got a
personal license for both and a 5-pack for work. Not being bound to a
SaaS/subscription model was key.

one thing that's odd is that you cannot export to bmp. it's been requested on
their forums but continues to be strangely absent.

------
seangp
I love the affinity suite. Our entire studio has switched from Adobe to
Affinity and we haven’t looked back - we’re very happy. Latest version of
photo supports smart objects so we can now use PSD mockup templates which was
the one thing we really missed in the previous version. We do use Sketch for
UI work but they have really been dropping the ball lately. We’re now running
several versions behind in Sketch because of all the bugs and poor UI choices.
Might even switch to Affinity designer for all our UI in the near future.

------
gtm1260
The value of being able to collaborate and share on the web in Figma has
outweighed any feature of almost any other graphics editor.

------
dr_kiszonka
I quite like Affinity too, but have a small gripe with the company. While they
have free online tutorials, they also sell "workbooks" for their software,
which seem to be beautiful manuals. Why are users expected to pay for manuals?
Shouldn't their PDFs be free downloads?

More generally, why do many tech companies charge for training in using their
products? For instance, Google has GCP courses on Coursera, but you have to
pay $49 month to access labs. I don't see this practice with physical goods,
but we seem to accept with software.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Why are users expected to pay for manuals?

...why shouldn't they? They take extra time/money to create, and not all users
will necessarily need them. If a third party wrote a book on Affinity and
charged for it, we wouldn't bat an eye. Shouldn't the developer get the same
privilege?

~~~
PunksATawnyFill
Manuals and books are different things.

Nobody should be expected to pay for a manual; that's part of the product. An
advanced book? Sure.

Look at Resolve: It has an EXTENSIVE (and pretty decent) manual, which costs
nothing... and for most users, neither does the product.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
As GP mentioned, Serif offers free online tutorials. It's just that they also
sell additional "workbooks".

------
jvns
I've been really impressed with Affinity Designer's features but I've had a
lot of problems with the iPad app. It frequently uses up 100% of my disk space
for no apparent reason unless I periodically uninstall and reinstall the app
-- I found a lot of people in the Affinity Designer forums complaining about
this issue since 2018 but it hasn't been fixed.

I ended up having to stop using the iPad app because of the disk space issues
and because I kept on losing work because Affinity Designer didn't save
reliably.

------
c0nsumer
I'm really liking Affinity Designer whenever I've tried it; it does pretty
much everything that I use Illustrator for.

I just wish it could properly injest .AI files. It opens them, but only does
things with the PDF header part, resulting in a loss of all groupings. Things
like long vectors (think trail routes on a hike/bike trail map) become split
into LOTS of little pieces.

Affinity Designer is great if you're starting and sticking in it, but moving
complex Illustrator docs into it kinda falls apart. :(

~~~
slantyyz
> I just wish it could properly injest .AI files.

For me, it's the only non-Illustrator app that I tried that didn't mangle them
too much (visually speaking). I had tried so many free and non-free (but
inexpensive) apps on Mac and Windows that would have so many problems with .ai
files. Once I would load them into an app, the would look nothing like I
expected them to. My use case for .ai files is usually to simply convert them
to svg or emf to be able to insert them into documents.

Thankfully I didn't have a need to edit them, because it sounds a little
nightmarish from your experience.

~~~
c0nsumer
That's very true and a good point. It does load them fine, and they are
usable. Just... Not good for editing.

For a specific example, check out this:
[http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontia...](http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontiac_Lake_17-Jun-2014.pdf)

In the original .AI the main mountain bike trail loop is a single path. Makes
it nice and easy to work on. Bring it into Designer and I think it became
dozens of really small ones?

I'd really like to move to a Designer workflow because AI is so expensive for
the no-pay volunteer work that I do making these maps, but the up-front work
of that would be tremendous. So for now... I just can't.

------
juliend2
I used to design for print media as well as for web, and I can say that
Affinity Designer does both really well. So it's more than just an Adobe XD,
Sketch or Figma replacement (web UI design).

For more than a year now, I no longer need to use my old Illustrator license
that I bought just before Adobe went cloud-only. Really impressed. And it's
going to be a no-brainer for me to get an Affinity Publisher license as well,
when I'll need to do multi-page print documents.

------
k__
I'm using Gravit Designer and Photpea for a few years now.

They're free and run in the browser. But I'm not doing much design work. Just
shirt and badges.

------
pier25
I love Photo but the lack of group isolation in Designer is a total deal
breaker for me.

Working with groups is still a nightmare even after years of demands by users
for this feature.

See this thread started in 2014:
[https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-
is...](https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-isolation-
mode/)

------
indymike
Affinity Designer, Publisher, and Photo are fantastic. I've been using Adobe,
Corel and many open-source design tools, in most cases, since version 1. The
UI is so smooth in Affinity that I usually finish work in half the time.
Affinity's features set, across all three apps, is plenty good enough for
professional use. Compatibility with Adobe and other design software is
outstanding.

------
jimbobimbo
I'm Paint Shop Pro refugee. I started using PSP back when it was developed by
Jasc. Then I bought several versions of Corel's iteration of PSP, but the
quality went down quite noticeably.

Affinity series is awesome. I bought their Photo last year, and today -
they're running a sale - got the Designer. Very nice product!

------
kyrra
My friend was selling me on affinity recently. They have a 50% off sale going
on with their products right now, and they have 90 day demos to try it.

Definitely will have a learning curve for someone that has only used
paint.net, but will be nice when I need to do the occasion graphics work for
personal projects.

------
mattkevan
Affinity Publisher is great too. If you have the other apps, being able to
edit assets by instantly switching into Designer or Photo mode and having
access to all the relevant tools is amazing. Saves so much time round-tripping
between apps.

Amazed Adobe hadn’t done something similar a long time ago.

------
bowbe
Any Sketch-to-Designer converts here that could recommend the switch? I've
been using an old standalone license of Sketch and refuse to upgrade to their
subscription model.

Things you like, things you miss, etc.

------
kmfrk
I love it too, but I find it a little weird I need the Photo app to use the
magic "remove object" tool. Otherwise Designer seems to have everything I
want.

------
atesti
Is it correct that I can just buy their products and own them? No online
activation, no telemetry, no license checks?

