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For digital artists/painters: any reason to have BOTH Designer and Photo?


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I'm looking at the feature sets of both Affinity Designer and Photo, and I see that Designer already has most (if not all) of the features that digital raster artists need. It has traditional media brushes, layer opacity and blend modes, blending brushes, selection tools. I might LIKE to have the mesh distort tool for my digital art, but I don't really need it. That's all I can really think of as far as essential features for my digital art, which makes me wonder if Photo would be redundant for my purposes.

 

I'd like to know what fellow digital painters think about this. :)

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I'm no expert. I have both and think probably its similar to having Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.  Designer is vector, Photo is pixel. Like I said, I'm no expert but that's how I see it. The sets of tools are very different.

Life is one long design process

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It's been years since I've touched Illustrator so I can't say for sure, but I didn't think it had blendable raster brushes like Designer does (referring to the DAUB set)? That's the main thing that's making me think that a dedicated raster app may not be necessary for me.

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i am a hobbyist photographer. i looked at some designer tutorial and was literally amazed by what a digital artist can do with it and by the process itself of creating an image... but i wouldn't even imagine where to start from and how: basically it looks like my brain is not able to conceive a non-existing image and start the process of creating it by using tools that make it come into life. i am rather used to "frame" what i see around me and fix it into an image using my camera. then i can improve that image, or sometimes modify it and (hopefully) add some feeling. sometimes i use the drawing tools that photo implements, but the way i use them is anyway oriented to image improvement.

 

from my point of view, designer is for those who create images using digital tools where they would have used paper and pencil twenty years ago or so. photo is for those who start from a photograph and need to do what they would have done by diving into a dark room twenty years or so. since both programs feature a set of tools that usually pertain the other field (that is, they overlap somehow), my personal opinion is that as a digital artist you can start with designer alone. if in the future your workflow includes adding pixel images, possibly photographs, to the images you create, and you find that those photographs may need complex editing in order to be used, then you could consider photo too.

 
obviously your mileage may be very different...

take care,

stefano

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Thank you for your replies, that gives me something to chew on. :)

 

Let me be a bit more specific about the information that I'm looking for...

 

Digital artists/painters, what features of Affinity Photo do you use in your works that are NOT also available in Designer?

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Well, filters.

And the ability to process pictures. I take pictures of anything I can think of for composites. 
I need to develop them.

 

I think they are so affordable that I purchased both without even thinking about it. -And they work so well together.

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2

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Thank you for your replies, that gives me something to chew on. :)

 

Let me be a bit more specific about the information that I'm looking for...

 

Digital artists/painters, what features of Affinity Photo do you use in your works that are NOT also available in Designer?

In short I would say, final image tweeks and corrections to colours, contrast and lighting. These I find are often easier to do in Photo if needed.

But having said that 90% of your time or more will be spent in Designer.

At the price point for these apps then having Photo as well, even if only needed occasionally in your workflow, I think is a good investment.

A nice thing about having both apps is that you can send a project file from Designer to Photo an back again without having to close and open the separate apps. In whatever app you’r in just go to; File > Edit In Photo/Designer.

To facilitate this further, where possible I have loaded exactly the same user added content like brushes to both apps. Though I would note vector brushes are only usable in Designer.

Finally out side of creating original art I’m sure you must take the odd photo or two from time to time, no? And every photo deserves the chance to be edited with Affinity Photo ;)

macOS 10.15.7  15" Macbook Pro, 2017  |  4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU  |  Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB  |  16GB RAM  |  Wacom Intuos4 M

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Hi Schizandra. For me this is a pair of applications that work so well together that enjoying one without the other now seems perverse. As I understand it, they share the same underlying software 'engine' so your work can move from one to the other and back without fuss and so layers can take advantage of both. Consider Madame's post above and don't allow yourself to think it has to be 'EITHER' Raster 'OR' vector -- Freedom! (And roll on Affinity Publisher, can't wait)  :). Thanks everyone for this compelling software and the discussions.

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Thank you all for your replies. :) I'm expecting to purchase both apps, because for the price, why not. I suppose it just surprised me, the extent to which Designer blurs the line in the raster-vector dichotomy. Which isn't a bad thing, of course.

 

Asha, if memory serves me, you're a member of the Procreate forum as well. Mind if I ask you how Affinity Photo compares to the Procreate experience?

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Hi schizandra--yes, it's me! :)

 

I haven't tried to use AP with Astropad with iPad Pro and pencil, and so far have been diddling around with only a mouse. I would say AP is much more like Photoshop than Procreate. With both PS and AP, although it is possible to paint, there are a hefty number of photo editing tools which Procreate doesn't have. To me, Procreate is more like the desktop program Corel Painter, but much more intuitive and directly accessible due to touch, gestures and stylus input on the iPad.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you for your replies, that gives me something to chew on. :)

 

Let me be a bit more specific about the information that I'm looking for...

 

Digital artists/painters, what features of Affinity Photo do you use in your works that are NOT also available in Designer?

 

In my case stronger raster editing capabilities, presets/tool binding, live filters and liquify persona.

Brush engine is almost the same excluding the Paint Mixer Brush which can blend colours both in RGB and RYB models.

This tool could be a great discriminating factor among AD/AP but I'm not yet able to tame it...  :unsure:

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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