Here's What Affinity Designer Does Better Than Illustrator...

Рет қаралды 28,234

Күн бұрын

While Adobe Illustrator is certainly a more comprehensive tool for working with vectors, Affinity Designer serves more of an all-in-one role where it can handle both vector and raster image editing tasks. In this video I'll be going over 8 things that I believe Affinity Designer does better than Illustrator.
This video only covers a handful of comparison points. For a complete comparison, check out the article I wrote here: logosbynick.com/affinity-desi...
UPDATE: In the time since this video was published, Serif has released version 2.0 of Affinity Designer, and it's significant enough to change things.
You can learn more about which new feature have been introduced here: • Affinity Just Changed ...
And an updated comparison of Affinity Designer and Illustrator for 2023: • Affinity Designer VS I...
Want to learn more about how Affinity Designer works? Check out my Affinity Designer Master Class - a comprehensive series of over 60 videos where I go over every tool, feature and function and explain what it is, how it works, and why it’s useful: logosbynick.com/affinity-desi...
🔗 RESOURCE LINKS
Official website: logosbynick.com
Get 200+ free design templates: logosbyni.ck.page/join
Get my premium logo templates: logosbynick.com/logo-mega-bun...
🎓 EXPLAINER COURSES
Inkscape: logosbynick.com/inkscape/
Affinity Designer: logosbynick.com/affinity-desi...
GIMP: logosbynick.com/gimp/
Adobe Illustrator: logosbynick.com/illustrator/
Take my logo design workshop: logosbynick.com/learn/
▶️ MY OTHER CHANNELS
Inkscape & GIMP tutorials: / logosbynick
Mobile tutorials: / @make_it_mobile
🎵 MUSIC USED
Kisinger - Gushito
In Da Mood - Combustibles
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
01:05 The Pixel Persona
01:51 Adjustment Layers
02:27 Isometric Grids
03:32 User Interface
04:07 Applying Strokes
04:47 Offsetting Paths
05:44 Anchor Points
07:00 Lesser Hardware Requirements
07:29 No Creative Cloud App
08:17 Closing thoughts
#illustrator #affinitydesigner

Пікірлер: 65

@Smaxx Жыл бұрын

One thing I really like about the Affinity tools you haven't mentioned is the fact that all three tools use one common file format and can use each others' files in a non-destructive and direct way. For example, you can create a document in Publisher, add a logo using Designer, and then polish some embedded photos inside in Photo, all without having multiple files on disc and having to worry about them being in sync - and you always see the results in a WYSIWYG fashion. I'm quite sure that's not possible with Illustrator (although I could be wrong).

@DesignMadeSimple Жыл бұрын

Great point!

@bartekbab1448 Жыл бұрын

Affinity is a software made by designers for designers, illustrator - by programmers for designers, that's why Designer is much easer to work with. Adobe have monopoly for too long and forget why we even started using it. Few years ago I started using it and the day I uninstalled creative cloud was one of the best days in my career

@tia9276 Жыл бұрын

I first started graphic design in 2014 right after affinity dropped. I didn’t know much about vector software but there were no tutorials and without the book that was released yeeears later, I was still able to teach myself how to use it. The UI is so user friendly and I’ve been able to grow with affinity through all the updates. There are a few things ofc that I always wished designer had, but the new version has really satisfied a lot of my gripes. Such a great tool. And for an inexpensive one-off price. This will be my first time purchasing another affinity designer license since 2014. I’d say that’s amazing.

@alexwilkinsgames Жыл бұрын

I currently am a full time designer for a NMO and having the full creative suite is ideal. However prior to working with the NMO I was a freelancing hobbiest and having a cheap, one time purchase, low resource hogging software is something I shouldve done a long time ago. This is a great video! Thanks for posting it!

@fotoreportaze5797 Жыл бұрын

Affinity designer has some new features now, including mesh. Little by little, they are improving.

@Mithferion Жыл бұрын

I like using Affinity Designer, even if it doesn't have all the features I need. I dislike using Adobe Illustrator, even if it does more of what I require...

@suttonsuede Жыл бұрын

The only thing I miss from Adobe Illustrator is the Blob Brush. I wish the Affinity team would add one to Affinity Designer.

@Somtric Жыл бұрын

But isn't that just exactly what the Vector brush is for, though.. it doesn't work like that, because the Vector brush makes a path and not a shape, but in theory.. it should make a shape, because the Affinity vector brush, is misleading, as it doesn't make the brush you use into a vector, that is actually still made from pixesl and will so decrease in quality as you resize. So ye, it would be nice if they added/fixed that.

@woaken Жыл бұрын

I would love to see your take on Affinity Designer 2!

@IreneuszRolnik 5 ай бұрын

for me - someone who has been working in prepress for years - in affinity there is no separation preview, no normal trapping and the brushes, although nice, are not vector and it is not possible to release them as Pantone (unless I don't know something)...

@mekaclaude Жыл бұрын

Great thoughts !

@johnton5656 10 күн бұрын

Using Illustrator and Photoshop for over 25 years now - eager to try this NON-SUBSCRIPTION tool!

@HashebAnzar Жыл бұрын

You don't really have to switch back and forth between direct selection tool and pen tool when dealing with anchor points in illustrator. If you have the pen tool selected you can basically do everything by just using modifier keys. For example, if you want to access the direct selection tool you can press and hold the Ctrl or command key. Similarly, you can access the anchor point tool by holding down the Alt or option key. On the other hand, you don't have to switch to add anchor point tool and delete anchor point tool to add and delete anchor points in a path. If you hover over a path with the pen tool selected it will automatically turn into the add anchor point tool and if you take the cursor to the area where there's already an anchor point, you will get the delete anchor point tool.

@Smaxx Жыл бұрын

Phew, that one point almost had me worried, because I remember using Corel Draw 4 in '96 or so and even back then you didn't have to constantly switch between tools to modify shapes. That felt rather unintutiive. But considering this, it makes me wonder if the UI overcomplicates this, by hiding the more productive workflow behind shortcuts and misleading you with a bloated toolbox list.

@KuttyJoe Жыл бұрын

@@Smaxx Adobe hides an unbelievable amount of great functionality. I can't say why this is the case but after using it for decades, I have stumbled across great functions. This is also true of Coreldraw and Photoshop.

@baldpolnareff7224 Жыл бұрын

Nice! I bought Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for my MacBook Pro, but I still haven't given it a proper look, just did something casually and it's intuitive in most cases. However, I still love going to my Linux workstation and use Inkscape, which I learned from your tutorials btw! Now I'd love to see a video focusing on the things that Inkscape does better than Illustrator

@LuisRdzG10 Жыл бұрын

You might need to update this video, because Affinity Designer 2 is now out and comes with good stuff

@Riceball01 Жыл бұрын

I started doing v3ector graphics using Illuystator but then swqwithced to Designer because of the relatively low one time price, no subscription fees and I haven't regretted it. It was very easy to learn how to us Desinger as the tools and functionality are very similar to Illustrator. I just wish that Photo was that intuitive, it's almost as different from Photoshop as Designer is similar to Illustrator.

@bigman7856 Жыл бұрын

I am writing an article on this actually. My general thesis question is whether Affinity products will become an industry standard. I phrase it specifically like this because I dont believe it will ever become "the" singular industry standard, but I do foresee it being a candidate for "one of several" industry standards. Right now Adobe is the indisputable king of design tools. At the same time, this trend should be alarming to Adobe. 2.0 brought Affinity to the cusp of Illustrator's capabilities. Soon the nit-picky critiques will be addressed and it will be a direct competitor. Figma was able to do this with Adobe XD pretty quickly. In addition, I am seeing more small businesses and freelancers adopt Affinity. As Affinity's customer base grows, so does the demand for new features and software. They might even create Affinity Video, etc...

@007Yasir Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comparison,I have used Affinity Designer for 5 years. But now I have to stick with illustrator because of my work as it requires Adobe products. At least I have either depending on my client,

@BillKeechPiperRacingPhotog Жыл бұрын

Can I design hero cards with this affinity??

@KuttyJoe Жыл бұрын

Editing anchor points in Illustrator requires 1 tool. There's no need for a single trip back to the toolbox to switch tools.

@KuttyJoe Жыл бұрын

In Illustrator, you can hover your pointer over the stroke dialog, and many other dialogs and roll the scroll wheel to smoothly adjust the size of the stroke. You can also hold Control, Shift, or alt to make great, or fine adjustments of the stroke size and man of the other things such as font sizes or kerning, etc. You can also place the cursor in the dialog and then use the up or down arrows on your keyboard, and of course, use a modifier key to make greater or finer adjustments of everything that can be adjusted in Illustrator. So, its not just a matter of typing numbers, but that's an option as well. The same is true of offset. Hover mouse, roll scroll wheel with choice of modifier keys to move it faster or slower. It can also be done destructively, or non-destructively. The other thing that I would say about Illustrator's offsets is that if you're doing a destructive offset, when you finish it, the new offset is selected and the original is deselected. I've applied that to an automation which has been a part of my work for decades. There was one time when Adobe broke this little detail where when the offset is done, it deselects the original. I complained, and they fixed it within a couple months. That is something that you can never expect of Serif. They're never going to respond to a single user with what even I would call an obscure complaint.

@timz9862 Жыл бұрын

You can use the scroll wheel to adjust stuff like that in Designer, as well. Also, Adobe might have fixed your bug, but I’ve been submitting feature requests to them for about 20 years now (since they bought Macromedia Freehand) to add some of the better functionality from Freehand to Illustrator and the still have not done it. Particularly, Freehand’s text on a path implementation ran circles (pun intended) around Illustrator’s, even today. Also the Graphic Find & Replace panel in Freehand was essential to my workflow as an illustrator. Nothing comes close to it in any other software.

@KuttyJoe Жыл бұрын

@@timz9862 The attention to detail in these things is just a whole lot better in Illustrator, but a lot of people who make these videos have limited experience with Illustrator don't know it, then go on to misinform everybody. The result is a generation of people who actually think that Illustrator and Affinity Designer are "more or less the same, except Adobe is a big ole' mean company". LOL A lot of wishful thinking goes into that as well. I've been hearing about how Freehand had so many great things for decades, literally. I had a copy of Freehand version 7 back in the mid 90's I think. I never warmed up to it, or Illustrator at that time. I met a guy who was a wizard with Freehand but it was Coreldraw that caught my eye back then. I fell in love with it, but it was really, really poor quality software and that has never changed to this day. It's still trash. It's really a shame that Adobe bought a killed Freehand though. It would have been a 3rd major option on the level of Illustrator and Coreldraw. What we have now is software like Affinity Designer with clever marketing convincing a younger generation that it's competing with Illustrator for a fraction of the cost. In the meantime, there are many things in Illustrator that are critical to my own workflow but I always like having options. But for now, I don't see anything that is threatening to trouble Adobe Illustrator. It sure isn't Affinity Designer. And yes, text on a path in Illustrator is really, really bad. For sure, the implementation of text on a path that I saw in Coreldraw from 1993 is better than the way Illustrator is still doing it today. It is hard to understand why they won't do anything about it because in the meantime they're adding some really great features.

@timz9862 Жыл бұрын

@@KuttyJoe There is another app called Amadine that is decent (if you use a Mac), but it's also a fairly young app.

@KuttyJoe Жыл бұрын

@@timz9862 Interesting. There are probably 10 or more vector softwares like this one. I guess the more the merrier, but as they say, "nothing superfluous". Meaning, it doesn't have much features.

@louwramarais5196 4 ай бұрын

Never heard of Amadine

@tetmayer2015 7 ай бұрын

What I really miss in affinity is the "Width Tool" that can be found in AI. The situation here is quite opposite to what you've shown in the video. Here Illustrator gives you that option of more freedom and affinity is limited to the pressure profile.

@DirkTeucher Жыл бұрын

8:02 - I feel attacked ;) .. Keep in mind that Epic games store charges indie developers like me 0% - 12% fee to launch games on their platform or anywhere else for that matter. Steam charges 30% . And I get just as many annoying notifications from Steam (if I don't disable them). Great video too, I would just add that if you buy Affinity designer, photo and publisher that you can access all the features of all three apps in one application which is one of my favourite features that Adobe does not have.

@lennydotdotdot5580 Жыл бұрын

gonna be honest I think you just sold me on Affinity

@rogerrtewwr4723 2 сағат бұрын

used both heavily and recently switched back to illustrator and I'm thinking the switch won't be permanent: the UX is just not as good as AD and illustrator seems to export "uglier" assets

@matrizx-diseno-grafico Жыл бұрын

Tu vídeo es excelente, me gustó mucho. Soy experto en Corel Draw e Illustrator, hace unos pocos meses compré Affinity Designer, al principio me costó un poco aprenderlo debido a la costumbre del ambiente gráfico de Adobe, pero si, reconozco que tiene cosas mejores, pero recordemos que affinity es nuevo, apenas lleva 2 versiones, esperemos que nos trae las futuras versiones. Otra cosa, sería bueno que lo compararas con Corel Draw que no debemos negar es un veterano y también es muy profesional. Cordial saludo.

@andrewdebaron2761 Жыл бұрын

Illustrator has an isometric grid tool !!!

@neelamansari2958 Жыл бұрын

amazing...can I download it free??

@JamesWilliam70 Жыл бұрын

illustrator cripples my 1st gen iPad Pro where as affinity designer runs like a dream. I do miss illustrators blob brush though.

@timz9862 Жыл бұрын

I’ll add another one. Affinity Designer can open and edit PDF files better than Illustrator. If you attempt to open a PDF in Illustrator (even one that was created USING Illustrator) it will open with every single element contained within a clipping mask and you have to release everything and delete them to get rid of them. Also, paragraphs of text will be broken up into separate text elements in seemingly random fashion. Affinity Designer opens PDFs without any clipping masks at all and all text remains as editable, paragraph blocks. Even Affinity Publisher can do this, while Adobe InDesign cannot. I’m not sure why Adobe apps cannot reliably open a file format that they themselves created? Boggles my mind.

@shirazigs Жыл бұрын

Adobe Illustrator is full of bugs and sloooooooooow. At times doing a simple task becomes the most difficult task in the world becasue of those problems, and no one in the world don't know how to fix that. There is no connections between Adobe apps. I've been so happy woring with Affinity Designer for more than 3 monthes. The support team is amazing too. If you face any problem just ask them. 🤪

@user-uj3qb9ql6x Жыл бұрын

A Affinity sí le importan. ¿Ya viste la V2.1?

@AD-Dom Жыл бұрын

Everything? I have to use illustrator at work and it’s such a chore. Designer is perfect.

@hassanmohammad8092 Жыл бұрын

Corel has MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE

@KuttyJoe Жыл бұрын

....CRRASHHEESSSSSSS. lol Coreldraw is the buggiest software known to man. It has always been this way, for decades. It has a lot of interesting features, but it's very buggy. And the latest version is super slow. I feel sorry for anybody who's work depends on Coreldraw.

@f.d.6667 Жыл бұрын

*Affinity Designer:* No tween/morph function No spiral tool No perspective tool No global deformation tool No boolean functionality that really WORKS No array tool No distribute along curve tool No quick&reliable way to make shapes watertight No pixel-to-vector conversion tool No "trough-point" snap for basic shapes No shape-to-guideline function No ghosting of layers ... And that's only the problems with the most basic functions... and that's the thing: there is TONS of well thought-out workflow ideas, a great interface etc.- but the basic shape creation tools are incomplete and just not on par with the legacy applications out there. ... Currently using AI & AD in parallel - but my patience with AD is starting to run low - the AD developers pile tons of flashy features on a software that's currently still not delivering on the most fundamental basics. *Used to recommend the Affinity Suite of tools to my students and our interns - not any more.*

@timz9862 Жыл бұрын

The trace feature in Illustrator (or pixel-to-vector conversion, as you put it) leaves a lot to be desired, still to this day. I always end up drawing something by manually tracing because, well, I’m better at it than Illustrator is. I have yet to see any app do a good job at it. Same thing with cutting out objects in Photoshop. I always end up just using the pen tool, because while Photoshop’s masking features are better than they were 20 years ago, they are still not great. I can do a MUCH better and more accurate job just doing it manually. Some of your terminology here is odd. What do you mean by ghosting of layers? Also, what do you mean by tween/morph? Are you talking about the blend tool? What do you mean by “make shapes watertight”? These are vector graphics on a computer, not windows on a house.

@winstonsmith3703 Жыл бұрын

Know it's pretty minor given your many other problems but affinity designer now does have a perspective tool.

@kabardinka1 Жыл бұрын

Yeah, yeah... all well and good. But try to apply a dashed border around a rectangular object in Designer. Even in 2.0, it will create wonky corners that don't line up. Nor does Designer have any blending function, or the ability to create gradients to correctly bend on curved objects, nor autotracing. Their new warp function in 2.0 is so much less intuitive and limited than what's in Illustrator. Designer is the weakest of the Affinity apps and Serif needs to step up their game if they want their program to be taken seriously.

@f.d.6667 Жыл бұрын

Could not agree more. I sometimes sketch stuff in crappy PowerPoint because it's equally cumbersome to use like AD but I have it already open...

@timz9862 Жыл бұрын

They are fixing dashed borders in 2.1, coming out soon. Autotracing sucks in Illustrator and every other app I’ve tried. I always end up tracing things myself because I do a better job. Super Vectorizer is better than Illustrator’s built-in trace feature.

@user-uj3qb9ql6x Жыл бұрын

En la 2.1 corrigieron casi todo lo que dijiste.

@yb2111 Жыл бұрын

However the purchase is a little misleading. They say you pay one time and you never pay again. However I purchased affinity photo and when they upgraded to affinity 2 I had to pay.

@tomschuelke7955 Жыл бұрын

Yeah.... 118 Euro at the moment for three very strong perfectly integrated apps, that will get reegulary updates for the next 3 or so years.. its totaly cheap... and you own it for ever...

@yb2111 Жыл бұрын

@@tomschuelke7955 that’s correct for the first version. But now they’ve come out with version two so I had to purchase it again.

@tomschuelke7955 Жыл бұрын

@@yb2111 I know but its still nothing compard to adobe

@Mediaright Жыл бұрын

@@yb2111 You didn't HAVE to purchase anything. Your first version would have continued to work just fine.

@yb2111 Жыл бұрын

@@Mediaright I know but you don’t get the new features.

@pearlray9062 Жыл бұрын

affinity literally pirated Coerel Draw it appears...

@mob-g5259 Жыл бұрын

Affinity designer is >>>> Adobe illustrator.

@pawnt8001 Жыл бұрын

The affinity designer team does not know how to make a curved text…

@torinux4980 Жыл бұрын

They do now on V2. They had to hold on the new features to make users pay again. That's how they will do things. You can quote me on this that they will add more Illustrator like tools by V3. They pay model will be holding on features. But still way better than what we have to pay for Adobe apps.

@timz9862 Жыл бұрын

@@torinux4980 You realize how long it was before Serif charged money for an Affinity upgrade from version 1 to 2 and how many updates and feature came between them? It’s going to be at least 5 years before we see another paid upgrade from version 2 to 3. Contrast that to paying every month for Adobe stuff.

@ilyalead4blade897 14 күн бұрын

never liked Illustrator one bit. but it's the industry standard, so you have to know to use it anyway. I always considered its shape building tools inconvenient and overcomplicated. while CorelDraw has limited coloring features building shapes in it is much easier and faster. I just tried Affinity Designer 2 and I can say that now Illustrator feels like some clunky stupid piece of garbage