Full version of affinity designer now released - 40 GBP or 30 GBP offer, plus freebie brushes and stuff if you have been on the beta list...
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/des...-feature-list/
no web stuff to get in the way...
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Full version of affinity designer now released - 40 GBP or 30 GBP offer, plus freebie brushes and stuff if you have been on the beta list...
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/des...-feature-list/
no web stuff to get in the way...
:D Got mine, Steve €40.00 less 1 cent here. (no Simpliclean to remember to uncheck, either!)Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Bob.
Just got a copy! Less than half the price of DPX upgrade and no subscription either :D
bought! I like some of the tools and how they work for that price, BUT in Xara there are many small and terribly convenient things that are not in Affinity. Finally - Xara is still my favorite! In any case, good that there is competition. This will contribute to the emergence of new things in Xara!
:DQuote:
Got mine, Steve €40.00 less 1 cent here. (no Simpliclean to remember to uncheck, either!)
Bob.
its not a replacement for XDPX - for instance it does not have brush fidelity [smoothing] - but it does have good typography and colour management, and the custom brushes render a lot faster on zoom [without the hack of having to group first]
plus it is not a CPU hog like xara is: xara hogs 15-20% of my CPU even with a completely blank document :eek:
and the pixel persona is very nice for colouring/painting in raster - but it won't replace SAI completely either, just complement it
The extent to which WEB has taken over from DRAWING in XDPX is understandable from the moneymaking point of view, but really the way it has gone is so skewed that other tools are becoming more and more attractive...
Quoted for agreement!Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
For me the clincher is the Open Type support that is pathetically lacking in Xara.Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Not that I would rush back to join the fold now, given the monumental cock-up that is their subscription method.
To be honest, I would rather stick with Xtreme 5 as my Xara tool of choice, there really isn't that much that has been added since then that has excited me in terms of vector tools.
I paid my money as well and I am quite happy now using it for some of the simple work that I still do. It still has a lot of missing tools mind you and some things are just a pain. Still think that Xara tops Affinity in useable vector tools and don't agree with your statement on the not much being added since Xtreme 5. I think the import and export of PDF's hugely more reliable now since Pro5 and if your a hobbyist the Art Brushes are great.
I bought it too, it will never replace Xara for me but I do like the Open Type support
Also, using Xara interface nowadays feels like being Cypher watching Matrix world through the console... I mean... it's so old style!
...and I thought that was one of the things in its favour!Quote:
Originally Posted by Giovanni
Bob.
@ Peter, that's not exactly what I wrote, as I was talking about vector tools. The Shape Painter Tool is the stand-out addition for me.
I wouldn't cross the street to use most of the rest of the later additions to the non-vector tools, with the exception of the Photo Heal Tool.
If that is the rate of progress since Xtreme 5, then the new subscription wheeze certainly isn't for me.
I can honestly say that since its inception (subscription) I have seen nothing to get excited about whatsoever.
Bob.
In regards to brushes while affinity has the ability to create your own vector profile strokes the rest of their brushes are just as bitmap as Xara. But I don't mind that in either program. Until Xara finishes their brushes (they really are an unfinshed work) and I can set heads and tails and exactly how much of a brush repeats and they work on the awful pulling in tight corners Affinity will give me a way to create some nice borders. (mind you Affinity's brushes aren't perfect either) Also I'll use affinity when I need to work with Open type fonts. As others have said Affinity will be an addition to my tool box but XDP will remain my main tool.
I purchased all the affinity products and I am very happy with them. I had to move away from Xara due to the lack of support for Mac OSX. I got tired of using windows emulators just to use xara software. I was a big fan of Xara, but I had to get away and on to affinity.Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Really? I just had a look at mine and even when it was exporting a multi-page website to preview, the CPU only went up to about 40%. When it is just sitting there with a document open, CPU is zero. If I do something like move objects or make copies, CPU might go up to 5% but that's all. Memory usage seems tied to the documents I have open. With a simple one colour T-shirt design, it was showing about 140Mb of RAM but when I opened the big website it jumped to 320Mb. Affinity Designer shows similar CPU and RAM usage to Xara here on my XPS 13 with Skylake Core i7.Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
I only discovered Affinity Designer a couple of weeks ago. I spent a few hours with the beta and then decided to spend the money when I got my special offer. I think it does some things really well but, overall, it can't really compare to the very mature feature set of XDPro. The way it clips to the edge of the artboard is brilliant for TV work. I can just set up an HD frame and go for it. The grid system is also very impressive and quite user-friendly.
There are things I definitely don't like about it, too. I don't like the way the UI apes Adobe. I've always hated Adobe UIs, they are highly inefficient and force you to learn as many hotkeys as you can cram into your head in order to get things done. It has tools down the left side, tools across the top and more tools down the right side, so you are constantly having to shift your attention (and your cursor) all over the screen, and you can't do anything about that. At least in XDPro I have all my tools across the top and I can mostly ignore the panels on the right side unless I need something specific. But with Affinity, the Layers palette is central to the workflow, which means you are stuck with it. At least it has a proper dark UI, though, unlike XDPro's half-hearted attempt. A lot of the tools, too, are straight out of Adobe CC. e.g. They use the same selection tools, right down to the Refine Edge options. Which is fine, except Adobe recently replaced all that with infinitely better Select & Mask, so Affinity suddenly seems out of date. Mind you, so does XDPro's masking workflow, the new stuff in Photoshop is incredible (and that's the first time anyone has heard me say that in a very, very long time).
Great to hear from you Bones, and very good review.
Why didn't you just get rid of your Mac? I spend eight or nine hours a day on a MacPro at work and I can't wait to get home to my PC and be productive for a change. Every new version of OS X/macOS makes my job harder. e.g. We finally upgraded to Sierra last week and it has completely screwed up what was once a simple task that I have to do half-a-dozen times a day. When we finish a job, we send links to the finished files to the producer who made the request. In all previous versions of OS X, all you had to do was select all the files, copy them and paste them into the email. Instead of copying the files, it would just copy the paths to them, which was quick and easy. Now that's broken. Now we have to select the files, right-click, hold down the OPT key to change the right-click option to "Copy files path names" (or something), then copy that into a text editor (because if you try and copy straight into Outlook it will only copy the path of the first file), then select all that text and copy/paste it into the email. It's a royal PITA and on top of dropping support for the Quicktime Animation codec a few releases ago has basically eliminated the only things that made OS X bearable. On top of that, because we are on Mac we have to use Cinema 4d instead of 3DS Max, which means all our 3D takes twice as long as it should.Quote:
Originally Posted by WilliamHere
I used to have an open mind about Macs until I started using them. OS X was a huge improvement over MacOS 9.x but it hasn't really got any better over the years. In fact, since the upgrade my MacPro is noticeably slower than it was on Mavericks. OTOH, the last few versions of Windows have been getting leaner and faster. I remember when I first installed a Windows 8 preview build onto an old netbook that had been running XP, it went from being all but unusable to actually working well enough to use for web surfing and other light duty tasks. I even got Photoshop CS4 running on it. Today, moving from Window s10 to Sierra feels like stepping back a decade. Final Cut Pro and Logic Audio used to be legitimate reasons to stick with OS X but since Apple turned FCP into a consumer product and allowed Logic to stagnate, everyone would be better off on PC.
Attachment 115238Quote:
Originally Posted by BONES
indeed....
With my main PC I get 0%. with my laptop, I sometimes get 35%.Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Bizarre,
Acorn
the screen shot is from 6 core AMD FX PC - on i3 INTEL laptop, its a bit less, but still 12% ish
With my main PCs I get 0% always ). On laptops (x3 with 2 of XD 365, 2 XWD 365, and 1 XPGD) and on notebook. CPU load is always normal.
PS: After studying more - I realized that Affinity is not for me). NOT now. Got a refund for Affinity.
Attachment 115240
I purchased all the affinity products and I am very happy with them. I had to move away from Xara due to the lack of support for Mac OSX.
Bought it - Like it enough - Great potential - But, Xara is still (for me), the most intuitive, fastest and easiest way to get a huge variety of projects done.
Yes, it has some features the could/should be it Xara but, not nearly enough for me to make a switch... Xara is just too versatile.
But I'm glad I bought it as I am a long time supporter of Serif due to the years and years of allowing me to work in excellent apps at prices I could afford.
Yes I agree Affinity Designer is nice but Xara will remain my main workhorse.
1.6 version of Affinity Designer now in the works, and it includes a light UI mode :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmLvfIiDCwE
Another new feature they are working on...
https://youtu.be/G9prknV4X2Q
hope brush stabilisation is implemented in affinity photo as well as designer, it's turning out that I'm using photo more :)
I think the light UI will be a good too
I'm interested in AD but I did not try it because I read that it doesn't support boolean operations on groups. The next two things I'd insist on are ClipView or any handling of intersections that is just as fast, and I cannot work with software that needs me to hold shift/alt/ctrl while doing something with the mouse. I'm pretty sure Affinity and Inkscape are not easy to use for me.
Your impressions are incorrect as regards Boolean operations and clipping objects into another as regards AD. There are more options for Boolean operations in AD than in XDP and clipping one or more objects into another is as easy as dragging one into another using the layer panel or creating a shortcut.
AD also has the best OpenType support of nearly any other application, CorelDraw being the lone exception (and I like CD's in-context alternates and stylistic sets method above all other applications).
Now, you also mention InkScape. While it is quite capable and worthwhile if generating SVG files (I run XDP, AD and Illy SVGs through it), I find it a pig to use.
Oh, really on groups, too? Here someone said in december 2016 they would need to repeat the operation. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/ind...admap/&page=36Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
I've created a little picture to show what I mean:Quote:
To bring my work on AD 100% I would ask 3 main features.
. Boolean with groups and not only with a sngle object.
Now I have to repeat the Boolean a lot of times.
...
Attachment 119037
It looks like I should test AD. What you say sounds really cool.
My experience with buying and using DrawPlus has been "okay", though, it crashed actually at the parts that were left out in the demo.
Gotta admit, I hadn't ever tried doing what you described in, well, anything for real work. (That is, the work I do in anything.)
There is a bit of clean-up in AD required after doing one of the Boolean operations, but it ends up the same...
Attachment 119038
The clean-up is some stray pieces left over from the intersection operation of the oval I used. Not that clean-up should be required, it shouldn't. The issue revolves around the creation of new curves of the shape(s). It's gotten better and likely will improve more as Serif is aware of the issue.
And I should point out that for certain things XDP does better--and it is my chosen promary vector design application--AD does other things that XDP cannot do and or it does it better. Whether this has utility for what you do I cannot say.
And I will say that Serif has worked out where and what format Xara applications put on the clipboard and one can copy from XDP and paste into AD just fine.
Attachment 119039
Cannot say the same for XDP. AD copied objects paste as a transparent bitmap. Though PDF to AD (or vice versa) works as well. I often use two or more vector editors in conjunction, so that isn't an issue for myself.
Mike
Thanks for testing this!
I've just bought it, because they say I can return it. What I see so far is - for my narrow world of its usage - it is on par with Inkscape. The nondestructive part is good, but they simply left it out at "divide" where it would more or less reflect Xara's "ClipView". And boolean ops on groups seem not to exist.
Xara misses these nondestructive booleans, but destructing is less of a problem, I usually keep a copy or draw something again. In contrast, I think repeating a task is a bit harder to do, e.g. when you want to cut something away from a group that has lots of shapes in it.
So.. for my case it's unfortunately a bit more like DrawPlus. And I wish they would not have switched to a dark interface. Why did everyone switch to dark interfaces? I get depressed. I'm no vampire. Same with Xara (I forgot that command line switch).
Clipping can be done by using the layers panel. Look up Clipping in the help.Quote:
Originally Posted by me2
Attachment 119040
The 1.6 release will have the option for a light interface. And no issues with it like in Xara products.
Attachment 119041
In any case, AD will be a useful application. It does need to mature and it will. But not bad for a 1.x application.
Thanks for pointing me to this, I've looked it up, it works, one can do quite a lot with the layers, it's better than I thought.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
(though, clipping without using the (layer) organizer panel and looking more at the drawing would be nice)
Serif seem also to be working on a envelope warping (mould) tool, at the moment. In DrawPlus there was one, but it had a slight tendency to crash, I think.
I think Affinity Designer could become great. They are developing at the core features, something like this.
Photo Clipping - This should be obvious but maybe not to everyone. It is not the software as the artist using it. If you look at this gallery you will see some very impressive art created by some very impressive Xara users. These users have picked Xara because of the interface and because it allows them to express themselves quickly and powerfully.Quote:
xara is also good but its kinda old fashioned. If xara improve there interface then i will be back on xara .
We look forward to seeing what you have created. With any software.
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by gwpriester