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Hello!

So, my question is basically, "what's the big jump/difference between AP and AD?".

I know this question has already been asked and the short answer is: "AP for pixel and photo editing and AD for vector-based graphics and illustration."

Here's my point: I've been using Photoshop and Illustrator for a while but I'm transitioning to Affinity, 'cause it's lovely. I've been doing social media posts that mix images and graphics (text, shapes, graphic elements, etc) since before the transition, and it was clear to me the point where PS and AI intersected. I could not do "organic" strokes with the pen tool on Photoshop, neither could I edit text as curves. I couldn't work smoothly with gradients, merge shapes with complex operations—like pathfinder—and the list goes on. Photoshop was pretty limited in vector managing, and Illustrator couldn't do pixel work.

Fast forward, I open Affinity Photo and it's like I don't need a vector software anymore. Everything I'd need to open Illustrator for is inside Affinity's pixel-based editor. As if it's not enough, AD can handle pixel manipulation—though I didn't use it enough to know its limits.

I've tested both AP and AD during the free trial and, after expiration, bought Photo. I'm considering buying Designer now because their workflow together is pretty amazing, but do I really need it? What can Designer do that Photo can't? I feel like I can take the pen tool on Photo and create any shape I'd want, applying colors effortlessly. Can someone enlight me?

Thanks!

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Howdy,

Designer has Assets, Symbols, Artboards and Constraints. In your scenario of taking the Pen Tool in Photo and making a shape,  yeah, you can do that but say you wanted to save that shape? In Designer you could save it to the Assets panel and then use that shape in any other document.

Say you wanted to create a business card, a letterhead, an envelope, a tri-fold brochure, etc. How do you do that efficiently with just Photo? In Designer you can create multiple artboards in just one file. You could create a logo, save it as an asset and then use it across those artboards. Or create a logo or graphic and make it a symbol, then use that symbol across your multiple artboards. If a client wants you to change a vector graphic/logo, you can go into the symbol, make your changes and it refreshes across all of the instances that you placed it.

There is a tremendous amount of overlap between both apps but both have their own specific set of features that are important and crucial. Designer has a subset of bitmap tools like Photo but I can't get to the Channels, I can't use the Filters that Photo has, the Cloning, Patch tools, etc.

It is worth it to have both, and for the price almost a crime not to buy both.

 

 

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Designer is a 'Page' based program, so you have bleed and with Artboards, a limited amount of print Imposition. So much better if you design stuff for printing , like  pamphlets and so forth.

Designer also has text on a path, the Corner Tool, Vector Cropping Tool, and a dedicated Transparency Tool.

For drawing, vector brushes, and the Pencil Tool

It is also more sophisticated the way it deals with groups. It has 'Container' layers (a sort of group) as well as normal group layers so you can control the snapping and selection of multiple objects. More powerful and I suppose more useful to serious artists with very complex illustrations.

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

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Thanks for the enlightenment, guys.

So, artboards are definitely important. That's one of the Photoshop features I expect—as many other people—to see implemented in AP.


About assets and symbols, I can see its usefulness in the workflow, even though I don't really know if it would be worth buying AD for this exclusive reason.
Nevertheless, I'm trying to get better with vector workflow, as I never enjoyed playing with Illustrator that much. AD is the most intuitive and smooth experience I've found so far in this matter. 


Still, I can't see a big jump from Photo to Designer in my specific workflow. I'm trying to find arguments to make the purchase more reasonable, as I live in a country in which $49.90 is not much of a bargain, even though it is in contrast with competitors.

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Hi, Kheewz,

Consider another potion of the cost. I started w. Designer when it had just reached v 1.4. 1.5 & 1.6 came out pretty quickly. 1.7 has not shown up yet, but I would suppose before Publisher comes out of beta. That leaves 1.8 & 1.9 before I need to spend anymore $$. I have decades of using graphics software behind me, and this is far and away the best buy for a Pro level software I've ever come across.

There have been some teases about what might be in the 1.7 release, most notably improvements to isometric drawing.

Toltec mentioned the corner tool and the vector brushes. I've found those incredibly  useful.

Everyone is waiting for a vector warp tool and a blend tool. Both of those are on the list for near term development. Together, I think those will double the program's possibilities.

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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4 minutes ago, gdenby said:

That leaves 1.8 & 1.9 before I need to spend anymore $$.

I don’t think we know that for certain! There have been strong hints that 1.8 is in the works, but I’m not aware of there having been any indication of whether that will be the last 1.x version or whether there will also be a 1.9, 1.10, 1.11 and 1.12.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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If you prepare files for press you need AD. At least bleeds are mandatory.

Text on path (or circle) is only in AD, but you can download AD file from this forum which has basic text on path preform which you can edit in AP.

Maybe you can wait for 1.7 version, there may be a price reduction for a time then.

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14 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

I don’t think we know that for certain! There have been strong hints that 1.8 is in the works, but I’m not aware of there having been any indication of whether that will be the last 1.x version or whether there will also be a 1.9, 1.10, 1.11 and 1.12.

No, its not certain, but would similar to what has happened earlier. Or there might be a jump from 1.7 to 1.9, as there was between 1.2 and 1.4. And I wouldn't be surprised if after 1.9, there might be 1.9.3 etc, getting everything buff before 2.

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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2 hours ago, Kheewz said:

That's one of the Photoshop features I expect—as many other people—to see implemented in AP.

It probably won't be implemented in Affinity Photo. The Serif philosophy seems to be to

  • keep the prices for individual applications low, so users can buy 1, 2, or all 3 if they wish,
  • put the tools into each application that they think are important/appropriate for the main use in that application,
  • and to provide integration between the applications to allow users who own multiple Affinity applications to use the tools in the other applications when needed.

That integration is becoming even stronger and easier to use, it seems, with the Affinity Publisher application that is now in its first public beta release. But we won't know more about that for awhile yet until the 1.7 beta versions of Photo and Designer are made available.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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On 9/3/2018 at 10:55 AM, gdenby said:

Hi, Kheewz,

Consider another potion of the cost. I started w. Designer when it had just reached v 1.4. 1.5 & 1.6 came out pretty quickly. 1.7 has not shown up yet, but I would suppose before Publisher comes out of beta. That leaves 1.8 & 1.9 before I need to spend anymore $$. I have decades of using graphics software behind me, and this is far and away the best buy for a Pro level software I've ever come across.

There have been some teases about what might be in the 1.7 release, most notably improvements to isometric drawing.

Toltec mentioned the corner tool and the vector brushes. I've found those incredibly  useful.

Everyone is waiting for a vector warp tool and a blend tool. Both of those are on the list for near term development. Together, I think those will double the program's possibilities.

Yeah, I'm definitely considering this, gdenby! I haven't used the corner tool nor vector brushes that much, but I can see they're useful.

On 9/3/2018 at 11:20 AM, Fixx said:

If you prepare files for press you need AD. At least bleeds are mandatory.

But you could also set the sheet size—including the bleeds—in AP document's size, right?

 

On 9/3/2018 at 12:16 PM, walt.farrell said:

It probably won't be implemented in Affinity Photo. The Serif philosophy seems to be to

  • keep the prices for individual applications low, so users can buy 1, 2, or all 3 if they wish,
  • put the tools into each application that they think are important/appropriate for the main use in that application,
  • and to provide integration between the applications to allow users who own multiple Affinity applications to use the tools in the other applications when needed.

Hmm, I see. It's a good philosophy. The prices are good and the integration works smoothly. By the way, talking of integration, we still cannot click and drag from one app to another, right? The only way of fast transitioning is ctrl+c - ctrl+v.

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24 minutes ago, Kheewz said:

By the way, talking of integration, we still cannot click and drag from one app to another, right? The only way of fast transitioning is ctrl+c - ctrl+v.

No need to click and drag:
From an opened document in Photo: File > Edit in Designer

From an opened document in Designer: File > Edit in Photo

From the way it looks like Publisher may handle integration (we can't be sure yet) the integration may be even simpler when we have 1.7 versions of all the applications available.

But no, click and drag between them doesn't seem to work, or I haven't figured it out.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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21 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No need to click and drag:
From an opened document in Photo: File > Edit in Designer

From an opened document in Designer: File > Edit in Photo

Mhm. I know this [wonderful] option, but I was thinking about a faster integration. Not that it changes much in the end.

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12 hours ago, Kheewz said:
On 9/3/2018 at 5:20 PM, Fixx said:

If you prepare files for press you need AD. At least bleeds are mandatory.

But you could also set the sheet size—including the bleeds—in AP document's size, right?

I have not found any place to set the bleeds but if you click "More" in PDF export bleed and printers marks can be added. There is though AFAIK no way to extend images/objects beyond document size – which is just what bleed is.

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19 hours ago, Fixx said:

I have not found any place to set the bleeds but if you click "More" in PDF export bleed and printers marks can be added. There is though AFAIK no way to extend images/objects beyond document size – which is just what bleed is.

What I meant was more like adding the extra space in the document size. If paper is 60x60cm, you could create a document with dimensions 63x63cm.

Not saying this is the optimal way.

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