LU_Design

I ask myself something similar every time I'm looking through graphics marketplaces for design elements for websites, brochures, business cards, fliers, etc.! I imagine a proper graphics designer could build it from scratch in a few boring minutes. I don't know about you, but I'm guessing I could find the right online resources to come pretty close in an hour or so.

I want to throw out there really quick that there's a good primer on managing stock vectors from Ezra at Affinity Revolution.

Hi Dan, Thanks for the fast reply. I get where you're coming from. Ideally, I wouldn't use them either, but I'm not a strong enough designer to make quality illustrations on my own yet. I tried FreePik, but I didn't have any luck finding any graphics that have the right look but that AD could also handle. I'm steering clear of the sites that primarily offer free graphics because they tend to be lower quality, and the graphics that I'm looking for are more advanced than the clipart-style content you tend to find on free sites. Also, I think the stock image industry may be run by organized crime or something. There seems to be a lot of inbreeding and cross-ownership between many of the image sites, so people could be paying wildly different prices for the same source files. And I really dislike how most of them use a ridiculous credits system for purchasing assets. It's a burdensome and entirely unnecessary step. I've seen a post or two on the forum about a marketplace for Affinity designers, which sounds awesome, but they don't appear to have gained any traction yet. It would be cool if there were a function in Serif's ecosphere where designers could contribute to a marketplace from commissions from other users so they'll have revenue tied to the content they produce for the site. I'd be first in line for something like that. Now that I think about it, it's probably worth a separate post to see if any Affinity ninjas are available for consulting work. I just don't have a feel for how big Serif's user base is or whether there's enough interest to accommodate a service like that. I think I understand the problems with managing files in AD/AP that were created in Illustrator/Photoshop, and given the proprietary characteristics of Adobe files, I don't know what Serif can do to improve compatibility that they haven't already done yet. I have a feeling that Shutterstock is my best bet, so I'll probably spend a little money to find out how good their files are. I'll report back here with some feedback. I probably should document more specifically here what I've found on the other sites, but I get the sense that most people either build their own graphics, or they have a source that works for them so they don't spend any time in the forum discussions on it. But the long and the short of it appears to be that many vector and raster files that were created with Adobe software have proprietary content that AD/AP can't apply to the image and/or the files weren't saved in a format that can be understood outside of Adobe's products. I'm learning the hard way that there are some functions that are easier to learn to do myself than to purchase from someone else, but I haven't been able to make the time to become a competent designer myself because it's such a small part of my job. I'll post anything I learn here for anyone with a similar challenge, but hopefully there are a few other members that have cracked the code of reliable stock graphics. Thanks again!

Hi, Affinity Forum! I recently purchased AD and AP to scratch an itch and start doing more of my own graphics design work. As I become accustomed to the software and develop my design skills, I lean on stock graphics websites for things I can't yet build myself. The problem is that I'm having a very hard time finding graphics and illustrations that can be reliably managed by AD/AP. It didn't take me long to figure out that free graphics are out, which is just as well because those sites are a nightmare to navigate. I also found that with many inexpensive graphics, AD would either report that the file doesn't contain a PDF stream so it can't be opened, or it would automatically assign a color palette to the file and it would look too distorted to use. Based on my experience, I think the problem isn't with AD/AP but my graphics sourcing. I've had a little bit of luck with VectorStock, but I haven't found any websites that track the kind of compatibility features that AD needs (like a PDF stream for .ai files). Has anyone come up with guidelines for AD/AP-safe stock graphics or identified any sites that are consistently reliable? Shutterstock seems like the obvious choice, but I want to see if there are any less expensive alternatives, or at least any sites that sell assets individually. Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!