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Designer, Photo or wait for Publisher?


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Hi,

I'm wondering if I could get a suggestion about what program would be ideal for me.  I don't want to buy more than one because I simply wouldn't use it very often.  I'm also not artistic, necessarily so I won't be drawing anything on my own, but would like the ability to edit work I've purchased (or photos I've taken, etc.) I need it to edit pieces of work already in my possession, such as the text of a business card, the colors of my logo, elements that I'd put on my website including both photos and other art, and be able to manipulate resolutions and file formats.  The only reason I am considering Designer is that I can keep the quality high (high export resolution) while making edits of say, my business card.  Otherwise, Photo makes more sense for me. 

I'm wondering if anyone knows what Publisher will offer?  Maybe it will allow for the basic kinds of edits I would do myself of both vector and bitmap (working in layers, resizing and moving elements, changing colors).  It seems that that is exactly the kind of program that I need if it allows for at least basic photo retouching. 

Thanks!

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  • Staff

Hi @TheOwl,

Welcome to the forums. 

We cannot confirm any features for Publisher yet. As for the other 2, Photo is mainly a photo editor, mainly used for raster work, while the designer is mainly for vector work. The best way to decide would be to try the free 10 day version for both:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/signup/trial/designer/

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/signup/trial/photo/

Thanks,

Gabe. 

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1 hour ago, TheOwl said:

The only reason I am considering Designer is that I can keep the quality high (high export resolution) while making edits of say, my business card.  Otherwise, Photo makes more sense for me. 

There will be no difference between export resolution using Photo or Designer. Photo can handle text and vector files just as well as Designer can, and vice versa with image files.

The only possible drawback with Photo is that you cannot create documents with page bleed. 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Thanks.  I guess I'll wait.  I imagine designer would allow me to do what I want, except I wonder if I'd be able to work on a single 'object' such as a photo and then export the photo outside of any kind of design.  I imagine so.  

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I took the opportunity to test Designer, and within 3 days of d-loading it, had purchased it. Give 'em a try.

Designer does do basic photo manipulations, such as contrast, white balance, HSL, etc. It will export the image in whatever format one wants. But AD and AP are set up to be complementary. I don't do much photo work, but there are times I need to continue work I started in Designer within Photo.

While both have a learning curve, I find Photo to be a much more complex piece of software.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

Huion WH1409 tablet

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Hi TheOwl,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
For general graphic design - layouts, banners, logos, small print projects that don't rely heavily on text like flyers, business cards etc - Designer is the most adequate choice. It can export any object/layer/group (such as a photo, a logo composed by several objects, whatever) - to any format you may need (this also applies to Photo). It has a few basic image manipulation tools but not advanced enough for complex photo editing operations  like filters, channels, HDR Merge, Panorama stitching etc. For that Affinity Photo is the best 
choice. Affinity Publisher is geared towards more complex desktop publishing projects which rely heavily on text blocks, text compositing, indexes, pages etc

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