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After 4 years in the making, Serif's Affinity Designer has launched!(affinity.serif.com)

over 8 years ago from David Bachmann, Front-end developer

  • Nathan LongNathan Long, over 8 years ago

    I love all these new tools coming into the market. I'd be interested to know how it compares to Sketch.

    Based just off their positioning it seems to be going mostly after the Adobe Illustrator space?

    8 points
    • Mitch De CastroMitch De Castro, over 8 years ago

      I really hope it can compete strongly against Adobe Illustrator. That's only niche that hasn't quite been filled yet, from what I can tell.

      0 points
    • Moaaz SidatMoaaz Sidat, over 8 years ago

      It seems that they're trying to target the more 'illustration-savvy' folks that have been doing their work using a culmination of Illustrator and Photoshop, would be interesting to see how this bridges that gap into a single product.

      It'd be definitely interesting to see what this tool can do for UI work, being a vector tool, it excites me, and subsequently, curious as to how it stands against Sketch, which has attracted quite a number of UI designers...

      4 points
    • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 8 years ago

      Right, that's my understanding. I don't do a ton of illustration work but from my buddies who do, they sometimes get frustrated that Sketch's tools aren't sophisticated / stable enough. Seems like this would be a perfect candidate for replacing Illustrator.

      Also, Sketch doesn't do high (300+) / print resolution, so you even if it works well, you're not covered all the way. This is perfect for my needs: Illustrator is the only Adobe product I still use precisely because 1) I still need to do print stuff and 2) I don't care for InDesign.

      So the new, modern designer's workflow looks a little like this:

      • Specialty bitmap graphics / editing: Pixelmator
      • Specialty vector graphics / editing: Affinity
      • Specialty UI / screen graphics: Sketch

      Use the first 2 to create and edit the assets, use Sketch to composite for web. I couldn't be happier. (It's a little like how I would use Photoshop + Illustrator to create assets, then Fireworks to composite them for screens / UI).

      3 points
      • Simon Vansintjan, over 8 years ago

        I feel like there's still something missing to take InDesign's place though. A lot of the things I work can end up being large documents that can be hard to get a grip on if just working with something like Sketch or Illustrator.

        Would love to see something fit that space that plays nicely with all of these things.

        0 points
        • Chad Behnke, over 8 years ago

          That's going to be a tougher nut to crack, I think. With a lot of these illustration and design tools, the final version is agnostic toward the means that were used to create it. If you're creating a graphic that will end up as a PNG, JPG, or SVG, the website/PDF file/vendor doesn't really care if you made it in Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, or Affinity. However, especially with large-scale projects, InDesign files require a lot of different logistical points and people to touch and manipulate the documents to get them right, so more standardized software and processes are needed to support those initiatives.

          I do think it would be cool if there were an "InDesign Lite." I find myself not feeling 100% comfortable in any of the tools when you start talking about mixing a lot of photos and illustration and doing layout. I love the idea of linking files and allowing the tools that most easily manipulate each of the file types edit them. I was pumped when Adobe announced Linked Smart Objects in Photoshop! But I don't feel great at doing layout stuff in Photoshop, and InDesign is really big and bulky to me, so a piece of software that is small and good at type and grids, and mixing linked objects in, would definitely be something I'd be interested in.

          2 points
          • Vivek GaniVivek Gani, over 8 years ago

            FWIW, they seem to be working on an indesign competitor called Affinity Publisher.

            2 points
          • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 8 years ago

            iWork Pages == InDesign Lite. Seriously. I know it sounds ridiculous, that's exactly how I use it... Can replicate about 95% of what I need InDesign to do without much effort.

            0 points
        • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 8 years ago

          Honestly, I'm probably going to get a lot of slack for this, but Pages (i.e., iWork) does about 95% of what InDesign does. It's a deceptively powerful page layout app... I used both Quark and InDesign in college when I worked at the Daily Texan (Hook 'em Horns!) so I have a pretty good familiarity with both. And whether it's setting up sections, templates, or text styles, Pages does all that I need.

          Where it falls short is that it doesn't allow arbitrary canvas sizes. Also, the "Capture Pages..." functionality was crippled in the latest update, though I expect that will be re-added (kind of how Final Cut X was missing a bunch of features). It doesn't work for all my needs but it's rare that I even need to open InDesign for basic things like annual reports or catalogs.

          0 points