What's the best Affinity program to use for creating movie posters?

[LoudNoises]

I've been using Affinity Photo 2 for a while now (as a free trial), and while I'm still learning about what I can and cannot do with it, I'm really enjoying using it, despite the slow transition I'm currently going from Photoshop to Affinity.
The thing is, I've used Photoshop for years up till this AI and subscription bullcrap started happening, and I've always used it for making movie posters. However, since Affinity as 3 different programs, I don't know if I should keep Photo 2, buy the other 2 programs (Designer 2 and Publisher 2), or remove Photo 2 and use Designer 2 and/or Publisher 2 instead.

Which of the three Affinity programs (Photo 2, Designer 2 and Publisher 2) do you think is best for creating movie posters?

[thomaso]

Doesn't that depend on your personal understanding of "movie poster"? - For me, the only typical characteristic would be the use of an extremely narrow and thin font for the list of actors/director/producer etc, while everything else can be like a general poster, an advertisement, a photo, an illustration, etc.

If you have a certain style and can show examples, we might recommend a specific app. Otherwise, I think unless you're doing complex vector illustrations but more photo editing/compositing, APhoto is fine.

Nevertheless you might test ADesigner, too, and experience its vector features and its limitation in raster image editing, compared to APhoto. Of course, also APublisher can create “movie posters,” but without its Designer + Photo Personas (which require the apps, too), it’s more limited, but it has a lot of useful features for bulk copywriting (books, brochures, catalogs etc).

[LoudNoises]

Well, I figured any kind of movie poster, like the ones seen here

[Komatös]

Hello @LoudNoises and welcome to the forums.

Affinity Photo is the right tool for this type of composites. However, I would advise you to also get Designer and Publisher on board, especially as two individual licences are more expensive than the universal licence.

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, LoudNoises said:

like the ones seen here

Since you asked for "the best Affinity program (…)": there is not a single one. The "best" would, as mentioned by @Komatös, all three with their different advantages, while APublisher for these examples is mainly a tool for a faster workflow, if only through its Studio Link feature that combines AD + APh features without having to leave the app and open another one. In addition, APub offers the advantage of being able to create multiple layouts within a multi-page document without always cluttering the Layers panel with all layers from all pages like in AD (while APhoto does not allow creating multiple "pages" within an .aphoto document at all).

There are two places in your examples that might be worth recreating in the trial versions of ADesigner and APhoto to experience the limitations of each app.

Try using APhoto and ADesigner separately to create with each app this text distortion with straight, upright letters without rasterizing the text (= keeping text editable) and this image composition (assuming it is based on ~5 separate images).

 

[Dazmondo77]

I completed a 3x A1 Movie Poster job early December, which will feature in a movie about a struggling horror movie actor, staring Laurence R. Harvey from the Human Centipede movies, which was really good to work on. I'll get the actual Movie Poster job once the movie is completed, although I know the director of the movie is good mates with Graham Humphries who is a total legend, and may do them a discount? I digress --- I used Publisher via studiolink which covers all bases Although for the actual movie artwork, this time I used Rebelle for the first time which is a brilliant paint app, and finished off in Pub (photo studiolink) all played out on an A1 pub page.

So my advice = go for the universal licence