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Adobe revisited


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WOW, yesterday I had to go back to PS6 to update a project.  I couldn't believe how difficult it was to take care of several of the tasks.  15 months ago when I started with AD the main question I seemed to ask was "Why in the world did the Affinity devs do it this way?"  Now going back to PS I find that the way that AD did it makes more sense and usually is easier.

 

When I started I was looking for a substitute for AI but with no monthly bill.  I had expected AD to be a knockoff of AI.  I admit I was somewhat disappointed when it wasn't.  But I found that most of the actions made enough sense that though they were different they were mostly pretty easy to pick up.  Now going back to Adobe, only when I absolutely have too, I find in most cases the Affinity process (muscle memory aside) really is more natural, logical, intuitive, etc.

 

I know in the past half year I find myself rarely questioning why does AD does it this way, so I should not have been surprised.  But Adobe's methodology was even so much more cumbersome than I remembered.

 

I know there are other people on the forum that disagree with this, but I suspect there are not many that have given Affinity a fair try for more than a few months that aren't appreciating the difference between Affinity and Adobe.

 

Thank you Affinity team for all the planning and work you have done.  Job well done.  Now if we could get some lingering bugs taken care of, like Expand Stroke...  <_<

 

Mike

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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Personally I believe that Illustrator still has a slight edge on AD which is understandable. I have been using AD for a while now and have converted a lot of my Illustrator files over to AD. Once Affinity have added a few more of the features from Illustrator that are missing from AD e.g. preview mode for individual layers, there really will be no reason for me to go back to Illustrator.

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I'm not even sure that the beta forum is the right place to discuss this but I am very pleased that Affinity doesn't slavishly follow Adobe's UI conventions.

 

In some ways, Adobe is stuck in the past, encumbered by user expectations of how things "should" work, even when there are faster, more intuitive ways of interacting with Ui elements that the latest OS's can easily support without the need to tack on tons of inefficient resource-eating code.

 

Sure, this can make the learning curve steeper than one might like but I think it is well worth the effort in the long run.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 1 month later...

The best creativity tools are ones that do not distrupt your flow. You can work quickly and focus on the idea, not the process. In effect Affinity Designer is an open doorway because the process is intuitive. Illustrator is a series of confusing and time consuming roadblocks.

 

You could take anyone with basic design competency and let them learn Affinity Designer by just sitting them down at the computer and leaving them to their own devices. I can't imagine doing that with Illustrator, at least not with anyone I wish to remain friends with!

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I agree that Affinity Designer is so much more intuitive than Illustrator.
However, for professionals, Affinity Photo still has some "hiccups". Mainly in the channels  area.
I expect to be able to use all the paint/edit tools, as well as all the adjustments with any additional channel and that is still not possible.

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