Affinity Designer Plugins

[Peregrin]

I don't know if this should be here or in Feature Requests, so by all means move it to whichever is correct.  In any case, I was wondering if there were any plans to add support for plugins in Affinity Designer (as has been done in Photo).  If so, will you focus on existing Adobe Illustrator plugins or on plugins designed for Designer?

 

I also have a question concerning the nature of plugin support (both as it is now and in the future), which is why I elected to post this under "Questions" rather than requests.  Are there (or will there someday be) plugins designed for Affinity, or is the feature meant specifically for supporting Adobe's plugins?  Is it possible to create plugins specifically for use in Affinity Photo?

[Lee D]

Hi Peregrin,

 

We don't have any current plans to add plugin support into Affinity Designer, however this may change in the future. Hopefully as Affinity development continues and it becomes more popular, plugin makers will want to make their plugins compatible with Affinity Photo and work with our developers to achieve this.

[nametag]

Hi Peregrin,

 

We don't have any current plans to add plugin support into Affinity Designer, however this may change in the future. Hopefully as Affinity development continues and it becomes more popular, plugin makers will want to make their plugins compatible with Affinity Photo and work with our developers to achieve this.

 

I'd really like to see this be made a higher priority with Affinity Designer.  So much of my workflow in Sketch and Illustrator relies on the use of plugins to automate, organize and simplify tasks. Take a look at what Invision Craft and Astute Graphics are doing to add amazing functionality to these apps.

[SaucyWeeTart]

We don't have any current plans to add plugin support into Affinity Designer, however this may change in the future. Hopefully as Affinity development continues and it becomes more popular, plugin makers will want to make their plugins compatible with Affinity Photo and work with our developers to achieve this.

 

Would it not make more sense to offer plugin support earlier rather than later? That way, the community itself will help you proactively build and popularize your products - hopefully leading to a snowball effect. I see it as a potentially very powerful growth mechanism.

 

I'm sure you guys have thought about it but I'm curious what your thoughts are.

[R C-R]

Would it not make more sense to offer plugin support earlier rather than later?

As the developers have mentioned many times, the biggest obstacle to that is the number of plugins that rely on features not (yet) implemented or have no direct counterpart in either Affinity product, like Photoshop actions. So it isn't just about supporting more plug-ins, it is about supporting everything those plug-ins need to function.

[v_kyr]

Plug-ins? - There is no dedicated own plugin-ins API or any Affinity specific third party tools integration documentation available here from Serif for third party developers so far. Without such needed official infos about possible Affinity interfaces (some API usage programming examples, a function/method overview & howto docs etc.) it's all more or less here like taking a route out into the blue!

[SaucyWeeTart]

As the developers have mentioned many times, the biggest obstacle to that is the number of plugins that rely on features not (yet) implemented or have no direct counterpart in either Affinity product, like Photoshop actions. So it isn't just about supporting more plug-ins, it is about supporting everything those plug-ins need to function.

 

Do you have any links to some appropriate threads discussing it in more detail? I'm not a programmer/developer so I have a tendancy to suggest things that might not be technically feasable.

[R C-R]

Do you have any links to some appropriate threads discussing it in more detail? I'm not a programmer/developer so I have a tendancy to suggest things that might not be technically feasable.

Try a Google, Bing, etc. search like this:

Photoshop actions site:affinity.serif.com

 

(generates about 150 hits using Google, only some of which are relevant.)

[SaucyWeeTart]

Try a Google, Bing, etc. search like this:

Photoshop actions site:affinity.serif.com

 

Nice one, ta.

 

Maybe PS actions aside, I'm curious as to how Bohemian implemented their 'plugin' functionality into Sketch. Would it have been a very time-consuming process to develop? If so, on what scale?

[v_kyr]

Hard to tell, you better ask them (Bohemian) since they should know best for their own software. At least they have provided good infos for third party developers!

[Zyrl]

Hi everyone, this post hasn't been bumped in a while but a member redirected me to this discussion. From my understanding, the reason why this hasn't been implemented was due to the ability of affinity designer in relation to making plugins work. 

However, how feasible would a compatible plugin wherein one is able to grab resources (like icons, photos, vectors, etc.) from an online database inside affinity designer instead? I feel like it might be, since it won't be dependent on an actual application feature (for example, photoshop plugins using photoshop actions as referenced from the posts above).

[adi_cataleya]

On 12/13/2016 at 6:08 AM, Peregrin said:

I don't know if this should be here or in Feature Requests, so by all means move it to whichever is correct.  In any case, I was wondering if there were any plans to add support for plugins in Affinity Designer (as has been done in Photo).  If so, will you focus on existing Adobe Illustrator plugins or on plugins designed for Designer?

 

I also have a question concerning the nature of plugin support (both as it is now and in the future), which is why I elected to post this under "Questions" rather than requests.  Are there (or will there someday be) plugins designed for Affinity, or is the feature meant specifically for supporting Adobe's plugins?  Is it possible to create plugins specifically for use in Affinity Photo?

+1

 

[jamesholden]

On 3/14/2017 at 2:48 PM, SaucyWeeTart said:

 

Would it not make more sense to offer plugin support earlier rather than later? That way, the community itself will help you proactively build and popularize your products - hopefully leading to a snowball effect. I see it as a potentially very powerful growth mechanism.

 

I'm sure you guys have thought about it but I'm curious what your thoughts are.

This is old, but I for one am as passionate as ever about full plugin support for AD.

[jamesholden]

PS even just Illustrator plugin support could be fantastic

[Anotbot]

I keep looking at Affinity Designer, as I'm keen to drop Adobe from my pipeline, but the lack of plugin support means this isn't possible and so, even though I have affinity Photo I don't use it, as it's easier just to stick with adobe until I have replacements for  PS, Illustrator and Lightroom that work seamlessly together and have the plugins I need. 

I'm sure others are also holding back from jumping ship for the same reason - plugins need to be supported or Illustrator will continue to be required by pros...

Edited May 27, 2019 by Anotbot

[jamesholden]

Plug-ins are a biggie for me as stated before, they have raised it may/will come in some form, but haven't given any firm dates and it's very possible a stable version may only be 2020

[jacobhalton]

My 2¢ is that a plugin API can improve Affinity products exponentially.

Reason: Plugins were originally the main thing that made Bohemian Coding's Sketch much much better than Photoshop, and they've been one of the main things we share in design chats and help for process improvements.

Plugins were also the main thing that kept me and a bunch of other designers from switching to Figma, but now that Figma has plugins this year, a ton of designers I know are switching.

It seems like a much better way to see what users need and how to improve the core app if other developers are making plugins that work with Affinity, and if something really catches on, it could just be added as a native feature.

[Joachim_L]

I would love to see my Mimaki FineCut plugin for Illustrator working with ADesigner. So again +1 from me also.

[dizeyner]

4 years later and still waiting on plugins. I know for a fact mr retro is interested in porting his to affinity but where is the stumbling block? Maybe its time to start courting those third party creatives to the table. and not just for photoshop but for designer as well.

[Yoon]

Plugins would solve the problem with the Blend Tool, which can't be added many years later.

[Hummanoid]

Affinity generally wasn't changed at all. Seems like developer was give up on it. Between 1.7 and 1.8 was YEAR! And what we finally get? Nothing really useful. Plugins for this time boosted Sketch and Figma, but AD is stay on same place.

[jamesholden]

44 minutes ago, Yoon said:

Plugins would solve the problem with the Blend Tool, which can't be added many years later.

Agree. Plugins for AD could potentially be a game changer.

[gafvert]

On 3/2/2020 at 9:11 PM, jamesholden said:

Agree. Plugins for AD could potentially be a game changer.

I agree that plugin support for Designer would be interesting, but in my case from a developer perspective. I develop some specialized macOS design software for making halftones and patterns that I think could be interesting to make into plugins to fit in better with designer workflows. And since I'm going away from adobe personally I don't want to build Illustrator plugins, so being able to make plugins for Affinity Designer would be great.

[jamesholden]

3 hours ago, gafvert said:

I agree that plugin support for Designer would be interesting, but in my case from a developer perspective. I develop some specialized macOS design software for making halftones and patterns that I think could be interesting to make into plugins to fit in better with designer workflows. And since I'm going away from adobe personally I don't want to build Illustrator plugins, so being able to make plugins for Affinity Designer would be great.

I think we're essentially saying the same things, so agreed.

I might add that additional support for Illustrator plugins would open up AD's creative potential considerably.

As a side note I will never forgive you Serif + Affinity for introducing that dreadful reCAPTCHA here . It's a running joke that no matter the logic you use to select images, you're better off choosing them  randomly.

Anyhoo back on topic.. 

 

[achilles]

Inkscape, a free program, has tons of useful addons, it's time Affinity follow this way!