• Affinity Designer Adobe Illustrator Alternative
• Is Affinity Designer Like Adobe Illustrator
• Affinity Designer Vs Photoshop

Written by Echo Rivera and Jason Rivera

So you’re an academic, researcher, scientist, or evaluator interested in learning how to create your own visuals and you’re wondering what application to use?

Chances are you already know about Adobe Illustrator, and maybe you’ve even heard of Inkscape. But have you heard about Affinity Designer?

• So, if you have a hard time wrapping your head around Adobe Illustrator or just want to add another tool to your arsenal, Affinity Designer could be for you. At the end of the day, the thing that I like the most about Affinity Designer is that it allows me to think more creatively and less technically.
• Affinity Designer vs. Adobe Illustrator: Which Is Better? Makeuseof.com - Anthony Enticknap. 18d. Adobe Illustrator is hands-down one of the best design apps you'll find. Since being released over 30 years ago, it's become the industry standard Read more on makeuseof.com.

I mean…we’ve only been talking about it for the last few blog posts 🤣, starting with this one about why you should learn how to make your own visuals. And then there’s this post which shows examples of how researchers, academics, and researchers could use it in their work.

So maybe the real question you’re wondering is: Why do we talk so much about Affinity Designer and not Adobe Illustrator?

We ditched Adobe Illustrator for Affinity Designer and are thrilled with this decision. In this blog post, we’ll provide the 4 reasons that we love Affinity Designer and not Adobe Illustrator.

And while you definitely need graphic design software, you don’t necessarily need Adobe Illustrator. Affinity Designer is a great choice for you, since it’s a low-cost way to experience virtually all the features of an app like Illustrator, but at a fraction of the cost. Affinity Designer is normally available for $49.99.

Adobe Illustrator used to be something you could pay for upfront and then use it for years and years.

LOL not anymore! Sorry, suckers, you’ll now need to pay EVERY SINGLE MONTH FOR ALL OF ETERNITY 💸💸💸, even if you don’t use any of the new features they add or if they remove features you already use.

So, if you want to start learning how to make your own illustrations, and you choose Adobe Illustrator, you could be locked into paying $31.50 EVERY month…FOREVER 💸💸💸. Well, no … actually not forever because they’ll raise their prices so it’ll be even more than that over time.

In contrast, Affinity Designer (cue angelic choir song 🙌) charges a ONE TIME fee for their product. Plus you get free updates (which includes bug and feature updates).

Just in case you think subscription is better for something like Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator, you probably won’t benefit from a subscription model because you’re not a graphic design professional. You only need these to do things like make visuals for your PowerPoint or Keynote presentations, visual abstracts, or other materials related to your research or teaching.

Let’s do the maths: in TWO months, you’ve already saved money by choosing Affinity Designer over Adobe Illustrator. Plus if you take our Affinity Designer course, you get 20% off Affinity apps, so you can save even more money. #JustSayin

How much could you save in 1 year by choosing Affinity over Adobe?

COST OF ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR AFTER 12 MOS: $378

COST OF FULL-PRICE AFFINITY DESIGNER AFTER 12 MOS: $50

SAVINGS AFTER 1 YEAR = $328 ($338 for our online course students)

How much could you save in 2 years by choosing Affinity over Adobe?

COST OF ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR AFTER 24 MOS: $756+

COST OF FULL-PRICE AFFINITY DESIGNER AFTER 24 MOS: $50

SAVINGS AFTER 2 YEARS = $706+ ($716+ for our online course students)

Yes, you do need to buy a license for each type of operating system, but even if you have to buy every version of Affinity Designer (Windows, Mac, iPad), you don’t have to endlessly pay a subscription fee, so you will still come out ahead.

Maybe you think Affinity Designer is cheaper because it comes with less features?

Nope.

Affinity Designer Adobe Illustrator Alternative

We check in with the Illustrator updates just to see if we’re missing anything that Affinity Designer doesn’t have and have never felt like we were missing out. To us, it’s not worth the monthly price and we actually do graphic design work(e.g., comics, custom illustrations and visuals) for academics, researchers, evaluators, and scientists. If we don’t feel the need to have it, then you—someone who will probably use it mostly for your own work—probably won’t either.

We use Affinity Designer almost every day for things like infographics, web graphics, social media graphics, theoretical models, and more. It has everything we need. Plus, just like Illustrator, you can add things like brushes, fonts, textures, etc. to Affinity Designer if you ever want to make more advanced images.

Affinity has done things like make a full-featured version of their software for the iPad before Adobe did. So a smaller company like Affinity is just as able to innovate and include features as the big, industry-dominating one.

Maybe you think Affinity Designer is cheaper because it’s harder to use?

Nope.

We totally get why you might be worried about this. Have you ever tried using Inkscape? It’s a free, open-source alternative to Adobe Illustrator. When we went looking for Illustrator alternatives, we started there. Jason, who hadn’t used Illustrator very much, found it kinda annoying but okay. Echo, who had used Illustrator for a few years, had a really difficult time figuring it out. Especially after coming from something so easy to use, Inkscape was a frustrating nightmare.

So, we were both skeptical that Affinity Designer would be much better. We’ve never been more happy to be proven wrong.

If you’re worried about the learning curve for digital illustration software, then you’ll be pleased to know that we both find Affinity Designer significantly easier to use than Adobe Illustrator (and a million times easier than Inkscape). Compared to Illustrator, Affinity Designer has a much more user friendly setup that will be easy for beginners to learn.

And get this: If you’ve used Adobe Illustrator in the past, there will be very little learning curve and adjustment for you. Echo used Adobe Illustrator for something like 3-4 years before switching to Affinity Designer, and was able to pick up almost everything in Affinity without even looking up how to do it. And yes, Affinity Designer can open .ai files (and .eps files, obvi) just fine.

Affinity is great because they aren’t overcharging for their software or trying to lock you into a never-ending subscription. They are also great because they don’t do things that Adobe does which we find…disagreeable.

Adobe has done things like “testing” higher pricing for customers even though they didn’t officially raise the price of their subscriptions, so some new customers paid a higher price than they had to. They’ve also tried to scare customers that still use their older, non-subscription software into thinking they could have legal trouble if they keep using their old software. Adobe has also been known to try to make it difficult and annoying to cancel your subscription, kind of like cable companies.

Given these actions you would think Adobe is strapped for cash and selling their products at a loss, but no. These actions are coming from a company that made about $2.5 billion in profit in 2018. And a great way for them to make more money is to just keep increasing their subscription prices without a corresponding increase in features. A quick internet search will lead you to plenty more critiques of Adobe’s business model and practices. (See also: Additional Reading below)

(No, Affinity hasn’t paid us a dime or given me a free license. After a year of publicly telling everyone how much we love Affinity Designer, we were finally able to secure a discount on their apps for our Affinity Course students. We don’t make any money off that, the savings are passed directly onto you. We really just love this program and think it’s a perfect fit for academics, scientists, evaluators, researchers, and educators).

Additional Reading:

Affinity Designer vs Illustrator are graphic design tools that are two hot choices for debate for professional designers. When it comes to creating professional and beautiful vector designs Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator are the two reliable alternatives. This Affinity Designer vs Illustrator comparison guide will give you complete information about how compelling and impressive these tools are.

Affinity Designer vs Illustrator: What are they ?

I am sure by the end of this guide you will be able to make your choice between Affinity Designer vs Adobe Illustrator web design software. Let’s begin the comparison and learn the differences and similarities if they have any. When you want to create a website make sure you choose the best things.

What is Affinity Designer?

Affinity Designer is a robust vector graphic design program to cater to all your professional design needs. Various designers, creatives, artists use this tool to create their own innovative piece. It was developed by UK-based Serif labs. Affinity Designer is an ideal solution to create UI designs, web graphics, icons, vector illustrations, mock-ups, typography, logos, and more.

Furthermore, Affinity Designer comes with an asset management feature that eases the process of organizing your projects. It is compatible with Windows, macOS, and iOS. This software has a plethora of features along with an impressive zoom of over 1,000,000% for smooth and quick effects without losing the image quality.

What is Adobe Illustrator?

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphic software developed and distributed by Adobe. It was originally built for Apple Macintosh. And the recent release of Illustrator CC 2020 was released in October 2019. You can easily run this software on both Windows as well as macOS platforms. It comes with a great set of drawing tools.

It can be effortlessly used in several areas of printing, advertising, illustrations, logo design, photography, graphs, charts, web design, and more. Adobe Illustrator has an amazingly simple interface with superb features and functionality.

When to Use Affinity Designer?

Many professional designers use this vector graphic design software because of the fact that it combines Illustrator and Photoshop into one single program. It comes with plenty of features and various useful shortcuts to help you get started quickly.

• You can use shape and pen tools to create vector pixel designs.
• When you want to create professional logos for your business.
• When you want natural and responsive brushes for painting.
• It is 300 % faster than Adobe Illustrator.
• If you want to make use of both raster and vector graphic tools under one place.
• You may consider Illustrator vs Photoshop for better understanding.
• When you want to include various impressive effects in your project.

When to Use Illustrator?

Adobe Illustrator is a versatile vector-based graphic design software to help you create graphic designs, logos, and many other basic to complex creative designs for your business. You can easily create and scale them as and when required. Even if you want to create anything small or large scale design elements.

• It lets you create multi-page documents such as brochures, banners, annual reports.
• You can easily create innovative and unique web designs using Adobe Illustrator.
• When you wish to create professional vector designs for your business.
• It gives pixel-perfect results effortlessly.
• When you need to craft complex design and you need to alter it, resize things repeatedly.
• When you need to design images with creative text.
• If you wish to work on pixel photographs.
• If you are working on print documents and multiple documents at a time.

Key Features of Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is a powerful tool that enables you to create and edit web design. It allows users to create designs with precision. While using the on-screen dynamic feature you can quickly create graphics and designs with ease. However, below are some of its top features.

• It’s blazing fast.
• Never underestimate the zoom power. It provides you pan and zoom at 60fps
• It provides you real-time gradients, blend mode, and various effects.
• You can switch between light to dark modes.
• It comes with great file compatibility such as HDR, EXR, PNG, JPEG, PDF, SVG, TIFF, EPS, GIF format.
• Affinity Designer comprises both vector and pixel tools in one single tool.
• This software is available for both macOS and Windows.
• It constantly provides important updates and improvements.
• You can add scalable text for impressive headlines and other graphic design projects.
• It comes with live OpenType feature previews.
• You can use different color palettes as per your project needs.
• It automatically scales your content once you resize the document.
• Affinity Designer has 16-bit per channel support.
• You can enjoy various live effects such as
  • Inner shadow
  • Outer shadow
  • Inner glow
  • Outline
  • Gaussian blur
  • Color overlay
  • Gradient overlay and many more
• You can get access to many blend modes
  • Reflect
  • Glow
  • Subtract
  • Hue
  • Hard light
  • Vivid light
  • Normal
  • Multiply and many more
• It lets you manage stroke stabilization for smooth effects.
• Seamlessly resize documents with or without resizing the artwork.

Key Features of Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator contains vibrant advancements. Anybody from professionals to novices can use Adobe Illustrator without a hitch. The latest version of Illustrator contains amazing features and enhanced tools for greater productivity. You can easily use this software to create small to larger designs. And below are some of the top features of Adobe Illustrator.

• Adobe Illustrator enables you to make use of real-time editing and drawing.
• You can scale the objects and all the scaling effects will not be shown as outlines.
• You can easily drag & drop artboards between two open documents.
• The cut, copy, and paste features can be applied via keyboard shortcuts.
• The facility to use the drag & drop tools between the toolbar and the drawer.
• A newly added auto-spell-check feature helps you to create the correct brochure, resume, posters, and other artworks.
• All the files are saved and exported in the background.
• Various newly improved effects such as blur, drop shadow, inner & outer glow will give you amazing results.
• Adobe Illustrator enables you a faster rendering of feather effects, gaussian effects in preview mode.
• You can easily create color blends to create innovative web design with ease.
• It comes with color synchronization and file packaging.
• Various built-in templates are there to choose from.

Affinity Designer vs Illustrator Comparison Table (2020)

Advantages of Affinity Designer

Is Affinity Designer Like Adobe Illustrator

• Affinity Designer lets you create artboards of any size with a lot of details.
• It’s a great collaboration of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
• It perfectly works with both Mac and Windows.
• You can easily create professional illustrations, vector designs, and many other projects that need a zooming feature.
• It’s an ideal choice to make isometric video game graphics.
• You can have correctly aligned and measured designs with Affinity Designer.
• It lets you create precise objects with ease.
• You can easily create both pixel and vector graphics with Affinity Designer.
• A wide selection of colors helps you craft beautiful designs.
• The advanced creative tools can help you handle complex jobs with ease.
• It also includes vector creation tools and image editing tools.
• You can flawlessly create dynamic symbols and responsive items with Affinity Designer.

Disadvantages of Affinity Designer

• Affinity Designer does not have any free trial for iPad.
• It doesn’t offer any plugin capability. Thus, it can not be tailored to specific purposes.
• Some users may find it difficult while selecting objects and layering.
• It treats all objects as filled.
• It has a steep learning curve.
• At times it gets complicated to use it, especially for beginners.

Advantages of Illustrator

• Adobe Illustrator has a user-friendly interface.
• The in-panel editing feature of Illustrator makes the designing process smooth.
• It is also one of the best logo design software out there.
• Adobe Illustrator is highly scalable.
• It perfectly integrates with other Adobe products.
• There are various options for sizes such as pixel, point, and inches.
• It is a highly flexible tool.
• Anybody related to print marketing can benefit from this software.
• You can smoothly scale your vector files without losing any detail.
• It is one of the lightweight vector design software.
• If you want to try your hands on type combo then, nothing can beat Adobe Illustrator.
• While creating any two-dimensional design, you can thoroughly enjoy the incredible precision.
• It comes with a wide range of tools to use.
• You can head to tutorials and how-to guides for a quick understanding of the flow.
• Creating animations with Adobe Illustrator is a breeze.
• It lets you change or alter existing images seamlessly.

Disadvantages of Illustrator

• Adobe Illustrator has a steep learning curve.
• The limited support for raster graphics.
• It requires an enormous amount of patience to work with Illustrator.
• Getting started with Adobe Illustrator can be a little challenging for beginners.
• Some users may find the interface a little clunky.
• The snap-to feature needs improvements.
• It lacks the backward compatibility of files.

Affinity Designer vs Illustrator – Which is Better For You?

Certainly, there is no doubt that both Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator are powerful choices for creating vector graphic designs. But Adobe Illustrator is taking the first place. However, even the Affinity Designer also has an array of features to offer you. The fact that Affinity Designer is a little cheaper than Adobe Illustrator.

It is suitable for beginners to create their first easy and beautiful designs. But this by no means confirms that you should not use Adobe Illustrator for your projects. However, Affinity designer vs Illustrator which platform can serve your business needs better boil downs to your requirements. So, it totally is a personal pick and that may vary with your project’s objective. And don’t forget to share with me in the comments below.

Affinity Designer Vs Photoshop

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