Affinity Designer Review
by Perry Merrity
Description
Affinity Designer is a tool that can be used to create graphics for marketing materials, websites, icons, UI design, and much more on Mac OS.
Access
Affinity Designer is $50, though sometimes it goes on sale for $20 - $30.
Sample Usage
Tips, tricks, and tutorials
- You can set up your work space to reflect the device or screen size you're designing for. It takes it a step further than Photoshop/Illustrator by also factoring in the DPI (resolution) automatically.
- An icon in the bottom left corner of the layers panel makes everything better. When it's off, layers are semi-locked, preventing you from interacting with them while you have another layer selected. You can toggle it to select any object on any layer.
- You can switch between two "personas", that provide the right tools at the right time: Draw Persona and Pixel Persona. Draw Persona allows you to work in vectors, while the latter lets you work with pixels (i.e. the "vector brush" and normal brush can be used on the same work, allowing you to do paint-like raster work on vector objects without the hassle (unlike Illustrator)).
What the Tool Does Well
It takes a lot of familiar features from Illustrator (and Photoshop to some level) and reimagines them in a more user-friendly way. One thing that can be appreciated is how selecting a layer highlights the layer with an outline and anchor points, but when changing the layer's color or altering it in some other way, the border disappears so that you can clearly see what the layer will look like without distraction. Another example is when you're selecting blend modes, you don't have to go through each one to preview. Instead, you can click and drag the mouse up and down and the layer shows an instant preview in the workspace!
What it Does Poorly
When working with layers, it's a little different. The keys config isn't set up to easily duplicate layers, and some key combinations (i.e. alt+shift+click/drag) don't function the way you'd expect them to in most applications.
What happens when you...
Affinity Designer is meant to replace Illustrator, however, it can potentially replace Photoshop as well if you know what you're doing. Work in vector, but rasterize and use brushes when you need to. One nifty thing is an "assistant" that completes a middle-steps automatically that make some of your actions possible. For example, if you're working on a vector in Draw Persona, switch to Pixel Persona and begin to use a brush on the vector, the assistant will automatically rasterize the vector for you.
Additional Resources
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