Affinity Designer or Photo for digital drawing ?

[Vittorio Federici]

Hi guys , I'm sorry for disturbing , but in the latest days I changed my tablet to draw digital paintings , and I was looking for a good alternative to photoshop, but unfortunately I'm confused about which of the two products to take between precisely Aff. Photo, or Aff. Designer? Given that I tried a preview Aff. Photo, I wanted to know if moving to A. Designer was a better idea, since it seems to be more 'focused on digital design, even if I'm not interested in using vector drawings.

[toltec]

25 minutes ago, Vittorio Federici said:

Hi guys , I'm sorry for disturbing , but in the latest days I changed my tablet to draw digital paintings , and I was looking for a good alternative to photoshop, but unfortunately I'm confused about which of the two products to take between precisely Aff. Photo, or Aff. Designer? Given that I tried a preview Aff. Photo, I wanted to know if moving to A. Designer was a better idea, since it seems to be more 'focused on digital design, even if I'm not interested in using vector drawings.

Photo.

Designer is much more about managing vector layers and pages with control over vector objects (assets and symbols)

Photo has 95% of the drawing features and 200% of the image manipulation features. It also works much more like Photoshop, which you are used to.

[gdenby]

You might want to look at the forum section "Show your work," and see what other users are producing. 

Also, both are available for a free 10 day evaluation. Each one has enough features that it could take most of 10 days to become well acquainted, so try them in sequence.

[timlt]

I had a similar question, as a new Photo user.   I am interested in vector art, and learning to do some digital drawing and painting as an amateur.  It looks like you can create vector art and refine it quite a bit even in Photo.   Is there any call for me to try out Designer too at this point, if I don't have a specific need for it?   Or is Photo really the primary workhorse app, and Designer is more of a niche app for designers?

 

[gdenby]

8 minutes ago, timlt said:

I had a similar question, as a new Photo user.   I am interested in vector art, and learning to do some digital drawing and painting as an amateur.  It looks like you can create vector art and refine it quite a bit even in Photo.   Is there any call for me to try out Designer too at this point, if I don't have a specific need for it?   Or is Photo really the primary workhorse app, and Designer is more of a niche app for designers?

 

Hi, timlt,

Look at it the other way around. Photo is the niche app for people doing digital photo developing and image manipulation. Photo does have many of the vector tool Designer has. In terms of making vector graphics, it does not have the vector brush tool, or symbols. The vector brush is remarkable, because one can create a curve, and stretch or repeat a paint brush along it. If the vector isn't positioned quite right, one can continue to adjust it. Or assign another of many brushes to it. 

Symbols are great for making patterns whose elements can all change simultaneously. For instance, if one made a generic conifer tree shape, duplicated it several times, and made them symbols, one might then place many symbol instances to make tree lines on ridges. Then, by adjusting a single one in a row, all could be faded, or darkened to indicate distance. And, one can place symbols inside symbols, so a vector brush gesture can be nested inside another symbol, and the brush changed across all the instance.

You might not want to look into it just now, but keep it in mind for the future.

 

 

[v_kyr]

Hard to tell since it depends on what you want to do primary here vector or bitmap drawing and photo manipulation. You can download a Designer trial version and look into that and play around with it. - Both apps offer slightly some of the others feature here, meaning Photo can do a little bit vector too and Designer can do a little bit bitmap manipulation too, thus as said before, it depends on your main (bitmap or vector) interests here!

[timlt]

I guess on the plus side:  they're both surprisingly affordable for high-powered graphics apps, so one would hardly go wrong getting both!  :-)

One more question.  With a tool like Designer, is there any big value in buying a bunch of add-on brushes, such as those offered on the Affinity store, or the Corel Particleshop dynamic brushes (I already have a few of the latter) that can run as a plugin to PS, PSP 2019, and Affinity (I confirmed this)?  Or do you just use the 'vector brush tool' mentioned above, and kind of roll your own?   

[v_kyr]

There are a bunch of ready to use brushes people created in the forums resources section. You can also make your own or import brushes available for PS etc. The Internet is full of these, you just need the time to check and try them out.

[timlt]

Well an update:  used the Designer trial for a few days, and liked it so much I went ahead and bought Designer.  I'm loving how easy it makes it to create vector graphics for the web.  So I guess I'm an official Affinity fanboi now that I own 2 of their apps. :-) 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, timlt said:

So I guess I'm an official Affinity fanboi now that I own 2 of their apps. :-) 

Sorry, but to get your Official Affinity Fanboi Membership Card & the free Secret Decoder Ring, you must have at least four of these five Affinity apps installed on your desktop computer:

• Affinity Photo 1.6
• Affinity Designer 1.6
• Affinity Photo 1.7 customer beta
• Affinity Designer 1.7 customer beta
• Affinity Publisher 1.7 beta

To qualify for Elite status, you must also own the two iPad apps. (Owning an iPad that can run them is optional but recommended.)

[toltec]

45 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Sorry, but to get your Official Affinity Fanboi Membership Card & the free Secret Decoder Ring, you must have at least four of these five Affinity apps installed on your desktop computer:

• Affinity Photo 1.6
• Affinity Designer 1.6
• Affinity Photo 1.7 customer beta
• Affinity Designer 1.7 customer beta
• Affinity Publisher 1.7 beta

To qualify for Elite status, you must also own the two iPad apps. (Owning an iPad that can run them is optional but recommended.)

I have Mac and Windows versions, Windows beta versions and both iPad apps.

What do I get ?

 

[toltec]

Divorced, probably 

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, toltec said:

I have Mac and Windows versions, Windows beta versions and both iPad apps.

What do I get ?

Congratulations! You now qualify for free shipping on all future software downloads at the Affinity Store!

[Old Bruce]

15 hours ago, R C-R said:

Congratulations! You now qualify for free shipping on all future software downloads at the Affinity Store!

Actually it is only a 60% discount on the shipping costs of software downloads, not to be sneezed at for sure but not 100% free. Sorry for being a pedant.

[R C-R]

21 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Actually it is only a 60% discount on the shipping costs of software downloads, not to be sneezed at for sure but not 100% free. Sorry for being a pedant.

No, it is a 100% discount. It is easy to show that it is with any calculator in just a few steps: 

1. Enter the shipping cost
2. Press the minus key
3. Enter 100
4. Press the % key
5. Press the = key

The result will be zero, thus proving the discount is the full 100%.

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

No, it is a 100% discount. It is easy to show that it is with any calculator in just a few steps: 

1. Enter the shipping cost
2. Press the minus key
3. Enter 100
4. Press the % key
5. Press the = key

The result will be zero, thus proving the discount is the full 100%.

Such a silly mistake, you have to multiply by the difference.

1. Enter the shipping cost.

2. Press the multiplication key.

3 Enter 40 (100% - 60% discount).

4 Press the % key.

5 Press the = key.

 

Post Script: I am glad you are no longer doing my tax returns. [smiley face emoticon]