My experience with Affinity being an illustrator user

[MikeDuf]

Hi,

 

My name is Mikael and I am working on illustrator around 50-60hours per weeks.

I really want to find a good illustrator alternative at home and none have came close to replace my adobe's software.

 

Until I found about Affinity.

 

Affinity photo is going to replace photoshop for me. 100% sure. It feels like its a complete software that can do pretty much everything I expected from a photoshop competitor.

 

Affinity Designer feels a little younger. Missing features are really changing the game and leaving a gap between Designer and Illustrator. The gap isn't big though!

 

Features that I haven't found (maybe they're hidden somewhere) are the following : 

 

-Auto-trace (not a big deal... its never perfect and tracing it manually is a better solution)

 

-Deformations (arc, shear, perspective, ...)

 

-A proper mirror (would like to use shortcut and be able to place a center manually for the reflection so I can "work in mirror")

 

-A way to turn shape into guides. I create master files so people can edit things in later and I place a lot of guides. Right now it looks like a mess using lines and they tend to forget to delete the shapes if I leave them on a locked layer

 

-Variables importer (I do buisness cards and things that require importing data such as text and images... I think I've read somewhere that it would be a feature in your next software...)

 

-A way to use plugins like fontself, variable importers, ... scripts...

 

-That one is more a question than a feature... Is it possible to save each layers in there own eps files named with the name of the layer? I mean a one click solution not manually hidding, saving, ...

 

I think its the points that really stood out for me. I may not be the average Joe so I'm not sure all the points I brought are necessary... but they are the ones I found.

 

 

I really love the interface and I will buy both softwares. I like where its going and the toolbar on top is really helpful! I'm more a "keyboard shortcut" guy but I like having the tools I don't use a lot up there so if I forget the shortcut its still easy to get to it.

 

 

Thanks!

[gdenby]

Hi, MikeDuf,

 

Yes, Designer is still young. 

 

Deformations are in the version 1 roadmap, so should show up in the not too distant future.

 

Auto trace is also in the roadmap, but it seems iffy based on comments from the past few months. Serif would like to do soething better than what is already available. As you note, the available tools are not always very good.

 

There has been mention of a scripting language addition.

 

I don't recall reading anything about a mirror function. Current capabilities require a bit of work, but not too much. Likewise, exporting specific layers is not a 1 click operation. Takes several steps.

 

Not sure what you mean when you mention turning shapes into guides. There are lots of good snapping options to grids, guides, and object geometries, but I don't know how others might be able to use them w/o having their own AD app.

 

So, yes, bunch of stuff that are yet to be available. But what is there works quite well. 

[MikeDuf]

Not sure what you mean when you mention turning shapes into guides. There are lots of good snapping options to grids, guides, and object geometries, but I don't know how others might be able to use them w/o having their own AD app.

 

Hey thanks for answering!

 

In illustrator you can turn anything into guides. You select it, go to guides and click create guides. It turns into color lines that works as guides (Like when you drag from the ruler). So let's say I want to tell the client they can fit a picture in a certain area I place a guide and they know what goes where. If I do that with lines dragged from rulers it will be a mess on the screen.

 

Yeah mirror could work better... but at least its there.

 

One feature that I use a lot is the Patterns.

I imported a file from illustrator and it converted the pattern to vector shapes. So I guess there's no what to make patterns work in Affinity... I have clients asking for camouflage and such things that works way better when they are used as patterns.

 

That could be another good feature to implant later.

 

The future of Affinity is paved with gold. I can't wait to see where it will be in 1-2years!

But for now I'll keep my illustrator subscription and cancel photoshop. I'll buy both Affinity photo and Designer and see where it goes waiting for publisher.

[Ben]

-A way to turn shape into guides. I create master files so people can edit things in later and I place a lot of guides. Right now it looks like a mess using lines and they tend to forget to delete the shapes if I leave them on a locked layer

 

-That one is more a question than a feature... Is it possible to save each layers in there own eps files named with the name of the layer? I mean a one click solution not manually hidding, saving, ...

 

I will be working on guides again in the future.  I had hoped for 1.6, but right now it's looking like it will be a bit later.  I will look at options for turning layers into guides, using the existing snapping system.  The snapping system itself still needs work - in order to allow for arbitrary shapes as guides I need to look at some solution for geometry snapping - which is going to be quite involved.

 

As for exporting each layer to EPS, you can already do that with the Export persona.  Create a Slice from each layer you want to export, set it up as EPS, then you can one-click export the lot to a given folder.

[R C-R]

As for exporting each layer to EPS, you can already do that with the Export persona.  Create a Slice from each layer you want to export, set it up as EPS, then you can one-click export the lot to a given folder.

In case it isn't obvious, you can create the slices in the Export Persona Layers tab by selecting the layers (or groups) in that tab & clicking the "Create Slice" button at the bottom of the panel. Then switch to the Slices tab & click the "Export Slices" button to export each layer (or group) to a separate file.

[MikeDuf]

Thanks guys!

Guides will help me a lot!

I worked with the duplicate tool and the symbols tool last night. I am really enjoying what I came up with messing around. I noticed that I can't work seamlessly between illustrator and affinity because it won't keep the groups and all... and I know its that way with every software... But that means I will have to do my work from A to Z in a software or another so I think affinity will be my to go for logos! Really loving it!

 

In two weeks i'll have my new wacom intuos so I'll be able to use the brushes to see if it match my needs for calligraphy. Can't wait!

 

Oh and thanks for the tips for saving layers! :) I'll try that later today!

[MikeDuf]

Just a little update... I used the slices system to export and this is magic!

 

I've been able to use that with the option continuous (or something like that) checked and now it does all the job automatically.

What I'm doing is designing many parts of a design in a file but on different layers. Then they are all saved as layers and imported in an other file but placed in a mask to fit the sizing. So instead of placing it all manually it does the 4-10 sizes automatically.

 

I haven't found such features in Illustrator (continuous and slices) and its a lot faster and more user-friendly in Affinity!

Sad it doesn't allow you to import variables. But I now know affinity is at one feature of being my only designing software/suite!

[mobabs]

Hi, I am new to Affinity Designer and loving it. There is one thing I find I miss from using Illustrator and that is how the guides work. I can't find a way of locking guides on a page other than giving them their own layer and locking that. More importantly, I can't make my own guides. I often need to make a guide box by converting a rectangle into a guide which is then locked in place. Is this a feature that you will bring to Affinity at a later date? It would be a great help.