Sadly, I've given up on Xara and I am switching to Affinity Designer for Mac

[omegaman]

Since switching to Mac many years ago I have been running Xara in a virtual environment using Parallels. A few weeks ago I came across Affinity Designer (by Serif) for Mac and have been wowed by it's performance and Xara like usability. The program has a lot of features that will make it my replacement for Adobe Illustrator. I recommend anyone who has been wanting to have a dedicated Mac program similar to Xara to check it out. I really wish Xara had been ported to Mac, but alas that has not happened. Affinity have just moved from beta to release candidate 1, so that's great news and it's cheap as chips at £34.99 or around $56.00 US.

[mwenz]

Hey, Omega...I understand comepletly. Affinity Designer is almost enough to make me wanna buy a Macbook to run it. Maybe once Affinity Publisher comes out, I will.

See you on the Quark forum...

[Blackkat]

Please let us know how you get on

[omegaman]

Will do.

[Rik]

Just tried the beta version of Afinity Designer.
Please bear in mind that it's for Mac only.

It's a pretty intuitive programme.
Without looking at any instructions about the tool, I was able to do, what I sort of tried to do when I started with Xara.

I made a simple button. With a linear fill, highlight and transparency.
All the tools were reasonable easy to find and use.
I'm not sure if a 'Feather' tool exists, so I used their Gausian Blur option.

The export process (of the button) was a bit tricky though!

I'm very used to Xara's Shape Tool. In fact, I use nothing but that for all my drawings.
Afinity's Pen Tool, is not bad though. It's much easier to use than Illustrator's Pen Tool.
I'm also very used to having many tools as buttons, whereas in Afinity, things like shadow are hidden within the 'Effects' tab where the Layers are.

But, Afinity is a mere £34.99.

[handrawn]

does it have bitmap trace or calligraphy pen [freehand touch-sensitive] Rik?

[bshand1]

I'm not sure if a 'Feather' tool exists, so I used their Gausian Blur option.

Hi Rik

How are you using the Gaussian Blur to feather an image? When I try it blurs the whole image rather than just the outside edge as 'feather' does.

Brett

Edit: I have just discovered in AD 1.3.5 that there are all kinds of ways to refine a selection, including feather. Now I just need to find out how to use it :-)

[omegaman]

Hi Mike

Waiting to see what they do with Affinity Publisher as well. Be nice to have a third alternative to QuarkXpress and Indesign.

[handrawn]

thanks for the video

[JoeSilmon-M]

Hi Omegaman, I'm JoeSilmon-M, new here. I would really appreciate help with layers in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9. I realise that you've changed to Mac, and are using Affinity. However, your knowledge of layers, transparencies, masks, etc., must be infinitely more advanced than mine, after only a few months with this program. My biggest problem is trying to draw and retain a graphic image. I don't fully understand how to merge layers to produce a final image. Can you help, please? Basically, at the moment, I'm drawing items to go on heraldic shields, for a book I'm hoping to publish soon. A basic background (e.g.: all red); an image (e.g.: three lions of England - as if walking over each other [Plantagenet lions]). I need to fill the background with red, and the lions with yellow [imitating gold]). Would the lions be the only transparency? Thanks for your kind attention. I'll look in again soon. BW. JoeSilmon-M