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Hello Everyone!

 

I recently purchased both the Photo and Designer of Affinity. I am a young entrepreneur with various online ventures. I am not sure if I should invest 50-100 hours in both Photo and Designer or I should just hire a freelancer from sites like Fiverr or Freelancer etc....

 

I am a quick learner and I am able to make time for this on the side and just work extra. I know basic Photoshop (used Gimp before), I don't have a tablet with pen for drawing, I love to learn new things and am inspried by art/graphic design/marketing. I was also thinking of maybe buying moc icons and other designs from online sites and use those as starting points.

 

If I spend 150 hours in total, watching the videos on their Vimeo and such, do you guys think I will be good enough for decent edits and maybe even illustrations like our basic but creative and nice logos? 

 

Or do you guys think the fact that the freelancers may be cheaper, more creative with their expertise and saving my time for more important business stuff would be more valuable?

 

I appreciate your feedback!

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People study four years to create professional logos and illustrations. It is not only about  m a r k e t i n g, typography, colours, perceptual psychology, … 

 

If you need (unprofessional) nice logos, try it for about four days and show us your creations in "Share your work”. We will tell you what has to be changed if it needs to be changed.

 

Perhaps you can more than you think. Good luck!

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I think only you can answer this. Like anything else, learning something new can take considerable time, but the skills & understanding that comes from that may help you in ways you can't anticipate, often with things that seem unrelated until much later.

 

Regarding getting "good enough" for decent edits, it depends a lot on how good that needs to be for any particular purpose, but if you like to learn & can generate a reasonable amount of creative inspiration, you should be able to invest a lot less than 150 hours before you know if what you want to do justifies investing in more learning time or if it would be more time & cost effective to hire someone to create it for you.

 

If you are primarily focused on logos, I suggest starting with Affinity Designer & "graduate" to Photo if & when you need its more comprehensive bitmap editing features. If you have never worked with a vector graphics app before, there will probably be a steep initial learning curve "bump" but once you get past that, it will get easier & most things you learn will apply to AP as well, making that app easier to learn more quickly.

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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if you are trained in photo retouching and graphic design, 150 hours should be more than enough to get practiced with affinity software. if you know photoshop, you'll find that there are many similarities with AP. i think you are already aware that you are facing a make/buy alternative for this aspect of your business; it is not just a matter of learning a new program.

take care,

stefano

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I think only you can answer this. Like anything else, learning something new can take considerable time, but the skills & understanding that comes from that may help you in ways you can't anticipate, often with things that seem unrelated until much later.

 

Regarding getting "good enough" for decent edits, it depends a lot on how good that needs to be for any particular purpose, but if you like to learn & can generate a reasonable amount of creative inspiration, you should be able to invest a lot less than 150 hours before you know if what you want to do justifies investing in more learning time or if it would be more time & cost effective to hire someone to create it for you.

 

If you are primarily focused on logos, I suggest starting with Affinity Designer & "graduate" to Photo if & when you need its more comprehensive bitmap editing features. If you have never worked with a vector graphics app before, there will probably be a steep initial learning curve "bump" but once you get past that, it will get easier & most things you learn will apply to AP as well, making that app easier to learn more quickly.

 

 

if you are trained in photo retouching and graphic design, 150 hourse should me more than enough to get practiced with affinity software. if you know photoshop, you'll find that there are many similarities with AP. i think you are already aware that you are facing a make/buy alternative for this aspect of your business; it is not just a matter of learning a new program.

 

Thank you very much for your feedback guys! Yes, I am not familiar with Vector designs, but I always had a strong desire to learn Image manipulation and Digital Illustration, hence why I got the software. I think it's going to be a great investment for me especially since I have the room and the resources to atm. But as per anything, since I have not begun learning, I feel overwhelmed and had a feeling it would take longer. I guess the best thing I can do now is at least commit 20 hours each and see how things go from there? 

 

And yes, my goal is to just do general "skilled" image manipulation, nothing too professional and as for Designer, do logos/basic designs for website images and such.

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People study four years to create professional logos and illustrations. It is not only about  m a r k e t i n g, typography, colours, perceptual psychology, … 

 

If you need (unprofessional) nice logos, try it for about four days and show us your creations in "Share your work”. We will tell you what has to be changed if it needs to be changed.

 

Perhaps you can more than you think. Good luck!

 

 

Thanks for the feedback! This sounds like a fun challenge, especially since I have not played with them yet. I will get on this asap, and let you know how many hours it took etc... I appreciate your help. I will keep you updated.

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Hi dilyar,

 

Welcome to the forums.

 

As for Learn or hire...what can you do on paper. If the answer is, everything I want; then the answer is convert and learn. I the answer is I can't get my ideas out of my head then hire.

 

As for not having a graphics tablet, I don't have one either. Things just take a whole lot longer.

 

Here's what I did with a mouse.

colouring book.afdesign

post-705-0-06078200-1456615328_thumb.jpg

MacBook pro, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB, OS X 10.11.6

 

http://www.pinterest.com/peter2111

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i think that a good strategy would be watching the tutorials. at least, they will give you an idea of what the software can do, and how (at least, in general). you possibly have images that you edited with the gimp or ps and it will be easy to compare the available workflows. i came to ap from the gimp (no ps) and in a very short time i understood how to overcome the gimp's limits, and what new (for me) possibilities ap was offering.

even if you should decide later that you feel more comfortable with hiring when it comes to graphic art and photo retouching, at least you'll have a fair knowledge of how things are done, so it won't be a blind job for you.

take care,

stefano

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  • 1 year later...

A couple of considerations come to mind here. What value do you place on your available working time, as an entrepreneur.  At one point in my working career, I charged  $75.00 usd for mine. A 150 hour investment of time was equal to  $11,250.00 usd in billables. Those were some fun times on the net. Depending on your time value and normal work load, you might not be able to justify making learning AP and AD a priority. A free lancer just might be the best economical approach, at least until you have leisure time to attack things Affinity. Watching the videos is a super aid to learning, but nothing replaces seat time, in front of the screen, for mastering the tools and having the  time to absorb the lessons from many multiple sessions. It tends to be measured in many hundreds of hours before all the new guy patina wears off. Having a Ps background will certainly accelerate things, but I'm doubtful 150 hours is close to a realistic estimate.  Bottom line... never let making a dime stand in the way of making a dollar.

Steve

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  • 2 years later...

If you have the time and interest I would figure it out for yourself. I would work on live jobs though, something you need to create. Figure it out, ask for help, watch videos, do what needs to be done to learn the skill. It may be cheaper now to hire out, but you lose flexibility in the long run. If you are able to do the things you need to do you can get things done fast rather then wait for someone else to do it. You also acquire some great skills that are always useful and helpful for understanding the process. It will only help you in the long run. 

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