Affinity Designer Reviews

I was an avid user of Adobe Illustrator before they changed into a subscription model. When I learned about Affinity Designer, I grabbed it immediately without second thoughts. It works great and has all the features and tools I need for my work and business.

You just have to pay once and you get all future updates for life! Also, their mobile app comes free after your purchase. How cool is that? The app can be used on desktops and/or tablets. I have tried it on my iPad Pro and it's really fun to use, though I'd still prefer working on a computer. The price is so cheap and hard to beat. I will never look back after using this software for almost 5 years. I am now a fan and I highly recommend this app.

There is nothing to dislike with this software. I never had any issues or crashes so far. I love it!

Feature rich, One time payment (vs subscription), easy to use (coming from Adobe Illustrator)

Missing integration with Adobe fonts, text distortion tools, vector tracing

It's cheap, although it still remains less powerful that some free apps

Development seems to have ground to a halt on this app. Investing time and energy learning could be a waste of time as it may not be around in the future.

Great set of features and sensible pricing, updated regularly

Sometimes doesn't export how you'd expect in all formats

It allows you to do all the advanced stuff you need to do. Of course, there are some industry-standards out there this software will be compared to. Affinity Designer will for sure save you money after you spend some time in the initial adaptation translating all your knowledge from other tools to it. It sounds scary but it isn't. Things are just called differently and some others just have a different shortcut, but all what you know should still apply. A very cool thing I saw is that the developers are always interacting with users and they do listen to the requests! It's very, very lightweight (v. 1.8.5 is less than 500mb). Updates happen frequently but it's up to you to install them. Also it's equally lightweight in terms of resources used when running. The industry standards require everytime more and more ram and cpu while Affinity Designer runs very smoothly on all low-mid range pcs.

The documentation isn't always super super clear. As it's an evolving sofware and features are being added or changed, this is really important. A couple of times i had to rely on youtubers to find how to do certain things.

-Purchase once and use forever. You don’t need a monthly subscription fee to access every feature
-Accesible price, you don’t need to break the bank to purchase this app
-Rich interface and tools

-Interface and interactions may be hit or miss since it’s software built for tablets and may not always play nice when using mouse and keyboard
- Slight learning curve when coming from other options

Designer is an incredibly deep application that can satisfy just about everyone's demands for digital illustration. It has a phenomenal feature set and works on multiple devices, thus enabling the user to maximize their output and enhance their workflow. The accompanying Workbook is a brilliant way to familiarize the user to the capabilities of the software, and as the only viable alternative to Adobe Illustrator, anyone making the transition will feel right at home - you can even open up your Illustrator projects in Designer! Another great function is the seamless integration with Affinity's other applications - Publisher and Photo.

I have only scratched the surface of this application but am astonished at what can be achieved. I can't recommend it highly enough and think that there is nothing on the market than can compete at this price range. Five stars! 🏆

Since making the transition from Illustrator, I've honestly not looked back once. There is nothing in my workflow that Designer isn't capable of performing. As such, I have no cons and can't think of any reason not explore Designer and its capabilities.

Coming from Illustrator, it's very easy to adapt to, just minor differences in some workflows, but mostly it's intuitive. It can open and edit Illustrator files if they are pdf compatible, even deal with complex things like knockout groups correctly. It's also has some great ideas that I was pleasantly surprised by that made the workflow better and faster. Affinity devs listen to user feedback and regularly update their apps, so any features that it lacks it will probably get soon.

Lack of a good font manager, it just takes the fonts you have installed in your OS. No Google fonts integration or anything like Adobe Fonts, so if you're missing fonts you have to manually find them online and (buy or) download them the old-fashioned way.

Some odd workflow choices, minor things that can slow you down. Like no native way to permanently reset the bounding box of an object after it has been rotated, they have a toggle that works for 1 operation and switches back to the (skewed or rotated) original. The align UI and the order of actions to chose what to align to what is strange and can waste time. Other minor things like that that I ran into, but all in all it works well and gets the job done.

Real-time changes during designing and editing.
Ability to work in vector or raster in the same application.
NO SUBSCRIPTIONS
Convert files into anything you need even for other design programs of other brands.
Quick exporting with a preview and many options.
Works amazingly on tablets and desktops.
Easy to download more brushes, typefaces, and anything else you need.
Now integrated with copyright-free photo services like pixabay, pexles, and unsplash.
Everything is fantastic and I cannot recommend this enough.

Doesn't like the corner tool at times.
Wish Affinity had a cloud-like service that could download and keep files you're working on available when you switch devices.

This is the easiest to learn in graphic design software. I like that I can edit parts of a design and link or embed the update. I have created book covers (for print), e-book templates, and recently a sticker series (convention logo sticker items for event items). It has helped me save time (revising templates instead of building from scratch with each one), and I was able to create exactly what the client wanted.

I've also created marketing graphics for social and launches of books and media (for clients). I can create custom templates to save time with each project (and there are a lot of built in custom templates already).

The main thing I like the least is that the Affinity software is not 'one' integration. It is three different programs. This is not my favorite thing for a few reasons, but, mostly I wish they were one, because I have started at least three projects in the wrong one (of the three I have).

The interface felt so easy to handle, uncluttered, and user-friendly after Illustrator. Even though Affinity Designer lacked some features that Illustrator has, it became my favorite drawing app very quickly and is still after using it for more than a year daily.

I'm hoping that Affinity will introduce an image trace feature soon. This feature is not only important for tracing images (which I don't really do) but also for using some custom vector brushes. For example, I bought some lovely watercolor vector brushes for Affinity Designer from a website just to realize that what I draw with them in Affinity Designer doesn't become a real vector image. When I tried the Illustrator version of the same brushes in Illustrator, I could get true vector drawings. Then I realized how important image tracing actually is.

Very powerful and well rounded design software.
Inexpensive, yet a great alternative to Illustrator

Not many collaboration and no good perspective tools.

I love that Affinity Designer has most of the essential graphic design features of Adobe Illustrator, for a fraction of the price. You can buy Designer outright with a one-time purchase for the price of just ONE month of an Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps subscription. The software is intuitive and easy to use, and is starting to become more popular amongst designers. If you come from Illustrator, there is only a small learning curve, and new features are constantly being added to bring it up to par with AI.

Some features are frustratingly similar to Adobe Illustrator, but slightly different, which can take time to figure them out, and slow down your workflow. Minor annoyances include not being able to trace a PNG into a vector, and not being able to merge vectors into one layer. Also, there aren't as many YouTube tutorials as AI, and Affinity only has videos for each function rather than a full course from beginner to pro, which makes it difficult to learn.

These major pros of the affinity designer I found
1. The software is an only one-time payment which makes the Affinity designer much more relevant than other subscription-based Softwares out there.
2. It consists of a lot of tools required for vector illustrations to UI/UX design to even web designs.
3. User Interface is very good compared to other Softwares out there in the market.
4. And at last, the cross-platform support from other software like adobe creative cloud suite makes it relevant for the price you pay.

There are not many cons you will get from this software actually one major con is
1. It lacks many tools compared to other competitive software in the industry

It is super affordable! Affinity even lowered their prices 50% at the start of the pandemic and offered a three month free trial. It has all the options Illustrator has, and is as clean and usable as Illustrator.

There is nothing I could find so far that I didn't like! Affinity Designer is the way to go!

It's almost impossible to judge any vector illustration software without drawing comparisons (excuse the pun) to Adobe Illustrator, and in many ways Affinity Designer compares very well. It certainly feels fast, as a modern, native Mac app should. And unlike Illustrator, you can buy the app for a very affordable one-time purchase—no monthly subscriptions. Affinity has done a great job of unifying (mostly) all their apps, and this has to be mentioned too—Designer exists as part of an ecosystem, which for many designers, makes it the first genuine alternative to Adobe's Creative Cloud.

I have not found the transition from Adobe apps to be an altogether easy one. In some part, that is just the nature of switching from tools that one has grown very familiar with over many years. But some of it goes beyond that. The Affinity apps (and Designer is no exception) exhibit some *interesting* UI behaviours. Some of the more frustrating ones:

- poor windows management, making Separated Mode almost unusable
- strange intermittent bugs like a background window somehow having focus (and receiving commands)
- working with colour swatches (especially Pantone swatches and spot colours) is cumbersome
- some non-destructive actions, like deselecting an object, are added to the undo/redo stack (making it impossible to redo other commands)
- no option to globally turn off antialiasing of exported artwork
- no info panel
- no ability to save your workspaces
- lots of other 'little' interface oddities, which aren't big in and of themselves, but which can contribute to a somewhat frustrating experience overall.

Some of these issues have been raised over and over again on the user forums, but Affinity seems very slow to address them.

-Affinity Designer is an intuitive and powerful vector design software that is easy to use.-It has an efficient workflow and allows for the creation of complex designs quickly and accurately.-It offers a wide range of tools to help create professional-looking designs.-It is compatible with both Mac and Windows.-It has a great user interface and is well organized.-It offers support for vector and raster images.-It can be used to create illustrations, logos, icons, diagrams, and web page layouts.

-The learning curve can be a bit steep for those who are new to vector design.-It lacks some of the advanced features found in other vector design software.-It does not have a built-in library of templates and shapes.