Affinity - yay or nay?

[Aurynn]

Hi cartographers,

anyone here using Affinity? I am thinking about buying Affinity Designer as I sometimes do some publishing work for my friends and clients and it seems good value and quite praised. However despite its quite cheap, I would first like to know the opinion of the actual users.

I need it to:
- be able to work with vectors and bitmaps both (but I am guessing it lacks some advanced functions on the latter)
- be able to put crop/bleed, centering marks onto the files
- ideally to be better version of Inkscape and Gimp combined. :-D
- draw beautiful maps
- work on windows

Can someone compare it to Photoshop or Illustrator for me?

Thanks in advance.

[J.Edward]

Hey Aurynn,

I actually just did a trial of Affinity Photo and Designer.
I have had annoying issues between wacom and adobe [photoshop] for years and was wanting some other options.
In my experimenting with the trial versions, I found that for me those two programs would not work.
The brushes were not good for me. I do a lot of really fast short strokes and it looked bad on Affinity.

I do use Manga Studio for some things, as it is just way more pleasant at times than photoshop.
I also mess around with other programs - Mischief, Krita, Sketchbook Pro, and some others.
Will also be testing Artrage for painting, as Chashio has me convinced it is a good app to have.
I also want to try Corel Painter for getting more painterly looks for some maps.

Sometimes using more than one tool is just the best option.
It just depends on your workflow and what works for you.
Definitely try the trial versions of the Affinity apps to see if they work for you.
Remember that Affinity Photo is a bit like Photoshop and Designer is more like Illustrator.

I think i also had some issues with how text labeling was done.
That is one thing that always brings me back to photoshop.
I am just too comfortable with how fats i can do the text work.

Hope that was helpful.

[Pananacakes]

(lol nevermind this post. I accidentally posted about Affinity Photo, not Designer. )

[Mouse]

Hi Aurynn

I've never used Photoshop because I just can't afford that kind of 'buy it all over again every month' software, but I have done the Affinity Photo trial, and was even right on the brink of buying it myself. I was very impressed with the way the programme worked, but I had issues with the time delay that currently exists with some Wacom tablets (and not others), where there is a lag (about half a second in my case) between touching the pen to the pad and AP registering that contact has been made. AP interprets any movement made during that vital half second as a straight line between the starting point, and the point where it picks up the continued movement of the pen.

This may be tablet-specific, but I also tried it with the mouse, and discovered there was a similar lag there

I was a bit disappointed with the lack of concern I experienced on their forum when I raised it as an issue in the tech support department. They have acknowledged the tablet issue, but its bottom of the fix list. That means it could be a couple of years before anything is done about it.

While I was discussing this issue with other users I had to explain what I wanted AP for and link back to a couple of my Guild threads to show them what I did with GIMP, because most of the current users just use it for photo editing, not image creation. One of the comments in that discussion indicated that the only reason AP is being regarded as a 'PS alternative' is the slightly over optimistic hopes of many of its current customers and the things they say about it on social media pages.

The Affinity Team have certainly never promoted AP as being anything but an affordable photo editor, which is what it was always intended to be from the outset. As a photo editor its absolutely perfect, but for drawing maps with a tablet.... hmmmn... The jury is still out on that one!

EDIT:

(lol nevermind this post. I accidentally posted about Affinity Photo, not Designer. )

LOL! Me too Pananacakes, but most people who buy AD would probably also want to have AP to do any additional bitmap work when they've done with the vector part of their drawing, so I've left my comment in

[Aurynn]

Its OK guys, all info is good to have. Even though I am more interested in Designer due to the vectors and publishing, it never hurts to hear stuff that will probably be the same with the Designer since I guess the programms have the same core. I am using a very very old Wacom Volito tablet which has issues of its own :-D But thanks of pointing it out. I have seen reports on that before so it is still a persisting issue.

I will lookup the trials. Thanks.

[Mouse]

Maybe if you trial AD you could let us know if there are also tablet issues with it. I just haven't got time to do it myself at the moment.

The trials are only 10 days long, btw, which means if you have one of those little life issues we all get from time to time, its over before you have time to get back to it.

[Aurynn]

Not sure if a report on that ancient device of mine will be worth anything but, I will report back. :-)

[J.Edward]

Maybe if you trial AD you could let us know if there are also tablet issues with it. I just haven't got time to do it myself at the moment.

The trials are only 10 days long, btw, which means if you have one of those little life issues we all get from time to time, its over before you have time to get back to it.

I use a wacom cintiq and I had the delay with both AP and AD.
That was mainly what cinched it for me.
Text stuff made it easier to say no, as well.

It is wonderful looking software though.

[Mouse]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, John, that the best way to go is to use a whole toolbox of different apps - each according to what they do best. I still use CC3 to do most of my labelling, even if the map is primarily GIMP. I've never found a better app for automatic roof shading than CC3 either, but I can't do linear, radial or any other specific type of gradient fill, or any fancy shadow work in CC3, so I will sometimes take a CC3 map and finish it in GIMP.

I've also used Krita, CorelDraw and Corel Photopaint, and Genetica (the latter to enhance and enrich my personal collection of seamless textures for use in CC3).

Even when Affinity sort out the tablet issue, I will only be buying it to add it to the rest of the toolbox I've already got - to be used according to the best of its qualities.

[J.Edward]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, John, that the best way to go is to use a whole toolbox of different apps - each according to what they do best. I still use CC3 to do most of my labelling, even if the map is primarily GIMP. I've never found a better app for automatic roof shading than CC3 either, but I can't do linear, radial or any other specific type of gradient fill, or any fancy shadow work in CC3, so I will sometimes take a CC3 map and finish it in GIMP.

I've also used Krita, CorelDraw and Corel Photopaint, and Genetica (the latter to enhance and enrich my personal collection of seamless textures for use in CC3).

Even when Affinity sort out the tablet issue, I will only be buying it to add it to the rest of the toolbox I've already got - to be used according to the best of its qualities.

Ah, Genetica is awesome
I used to use it a lot more when I was doing stock 3d model sales [years back - circa 2005 and on].
It was/is a wonderful piece of software.
I will have to go look at the newest version and see what's new.