I've used Photoshop for around 6 years now, I know it off the back of myhead and I want to say that Affinity Designer is the only best alternative to photoshop out there. I have to give credit to the team who made this, but ofcouse I'm gonna nit pick. Lets get started
Affinity Designer Pros:
1. The performance
it's outstanding! its that good that even adobe kinda got spooked, so the update which went to 2019 they tried to update their back end to try to at least keep up with Affinity with performance.
2. Going from Photoshop to Affinity Designer
It's a walk in a park. The hotkeys are pretty much the same as photoshop, but you will come aross some hipcups when opening some PSD's which is to be expespted.
3. The price
Stright away I'm gonna say I would be happy to pay way more then what you guys are chargeing, like I would be happy to pay around £100 or £200 for this program. in my opoinan I feel like you guys should change you pricing model. Exsample: Academic license £39.99 Hobby license £48.99 Indie & Freelancer license £159.99 Commercial license £389.99 this would support your development alot.
Affinity Designer Cons:
I know that some people will disgaree with what I will say which is fair enough, but I still think these needs to be addressed in my opoinan.
1. The only huge issuse I have with Affunity Desigener is the UI/UX
Layers
The issue I have is that the layers and folders are so hard to tell apart, it just becomes a huge mess of confuson and fustraion. In Photoshop you can tell which is the folders and the layers with a quck glance, now if your like me and have a memory span like a goldfish well this starts to turn into finding nemo. Gimp even has this problem but they are kinda going in the right directon but not at the same time, so if your doing a very big project and it needs folders and whatever yea I'm sorry I tried but I just cant it slows my work down like 90% depending how big the project is.
2. Toolbar
There are to many colors going on. I get distracted with the colors, its nice to only have the color from the project which I'm working on. I know that some people like the icons instead of flat gray ones, but for me it means when working at the midle of the night half a sleep they dont blend all into each other The image shows 3 toolbars Affunity Desigener, Photoshop and Blender out of these 3 toolbars Affunity Desigener is the one I dont like, simple and clean is the best way to go with programs. Everybody wants it their way thats, why I think maybe down the line Affunity should add somthing where you can change these types of things becuase then everybody is happy
I could nit pick on some more things but they are not as important, I think its just me need some more time with the program to understand it abit better. Other then that would I recomend the program YES! but NO! you might be asking why are you saying no? well that becuase of the fact that I want serif to change their pricing model once that happens then what are you waiting for go and buy it! I want to support serif they have made a great product it just needs some tweaking. Also please can you support linux, me and some other colueges wants to move from windows/adobe and it would be very intresting to see serif domate the linux market before adobe
Note: Sorry for any bad spelling/grammer mistakes I nerly lost all this 2 times I just want to put it out there cus knowing my luck I will lose all this lol