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I've been actively using the Affinity suite for
about 6 months now which makes me confident enough
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to answer the question everyone is asking: How
do the Affinity products compare with their Adobe
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Creative Cloud counterparts? A short insight to
my background. I am a graduated graphic designer
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and graphic design has been an hobby of mine for
10 years. I would also like to add that I'm doing
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freelance jobs most of the time so my experience
might differ from someone in a permanent position
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inside the industry. Let's start with the pricing.
You get an individual license for all of the
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products for €180 I bought it when it was on sale
and additionally using a discount code which made
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me purchase the whole suite for €80 this is a
lifetime license the only disadvantage, you might
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encounter, is that you only get free updates until
they release a completely new version so far this
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only happened once. The first edition of affinity
photo was released in 2015 and the V2 version was
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released in 2022, which means you got 7 years or
free updates. And if you did own the first version
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you were able to purchase the V2 version at a
reduced price! In my opinion that is more than
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fair especially when comparing it to competitors .
And if you don't need the whole suite you can buy
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the indidual products for 75€. Let's take a look at
adobe's pricing: for a single license you can get
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one program for about €26 a month but only if you
subscribe for a whole year. If you were to cancel
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that subscription earlier you would have to pay a...
cancellation fee?? There also are some bundles which
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come at a more attractive price. And of course
you can get the whole Creative Cloud suite, which
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features over 20 applications for about 66€ a
month. Should be no debate who is the winner here, right?
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But what do you actually get for your money?
Let's start with Affinity Photo and Photoshop.
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The biggest advantage of the Affinity products is
how it utilizes your GPU. Everything in Affinity
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Photo is faster and feels smoother. From simply
transforming your assets to utilizing more complex
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effects, Affinity feels so much more responsive in
comparison to Photoshop. Affinity will provide you
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with a smooth 60fps experience, which honestly
helped me having fun in graphic design again.
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This of course will also benefit you when drawing with
the brush tools. I also like Affinity brush-presets
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and they are categorized in a better way than
in Photoshop, in my opinion. Like, who's this Kyle-person
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in Photoshop? Also, if you're coming from
Photoshop you will feel at home with Affinity.
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The general UI looks almost exactly like in Photoshop
and even most of the shortcuts are the same: B for
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brush tool, V for selection tool, control D for
dropping selections and much more. Photoshop's
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biggest advantage and disadvantage is its age. Over
the time it existed, there were so many specific
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tools added into Photoshop, which Affinity doesn't
have at the current time. For me this wasn't a Dealbreaker.
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Because when you're an experienced graphic
designer you will most of the time just use like
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five tools. The biggest disadvantage currently is
probably Affinity's lack of AI tools and some
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smart selection tools (Update: They now exist!). Affinity is working on it
but currently you might be faster in creating
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masks if Photoshop's selection tools work in
your favor. Let's also don't forget the things
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the community added over the whole time existing.
There are much more tutorials and presets for
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Photoshop. Luckily you can import brush presets
from Photoshop into Affinity Photo. You can even
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open .psd's in Affinity and change everything,
even gradients! The tutorials I've watched for
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Affinity products so far were all pretty good. I
really liked that most of them were short or even
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fastpaced. Because as an experienced designer using
a new software, you pretty much know how to do
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something already but struggle to find a specific
tool you're looking for. So you're basically just
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watching a tutorial to find the 10 seconds where
they're showing you the tools you're looking for.
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A cool feature inside every Affinity product
is the Pexels-integration. Without having to use
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any additional account, you can search for stock
photos and drop them into workspace. Which is super
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nice! Whether you're using it as a placeholder
or for your final product. In a conclusion I
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would say that I'm much more motivated opening up
Affinity, especially when doing small tasks. Because
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maybe you just have to edit an image, add text to it or
draw a red circle or something.
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And honestly opening Photoshop for something
like this and waiting for it to launch feels
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like a burden sometimes. This is why I find so
much more joy in doing it with Affinity Photo.
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It's just so much faster and more responsive. You
might lack some very specific Tools in Affinity,
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especially some of the lacking selection tools
are a bummer. But in my opinion the better Hardware
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utilization of Affinity alone, is reason enough for
me to use it instead of Photoshop. I've heard some
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complaints in the community about Affinity Photos
RAW-support that it isn't as good as Photoshop's
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Camera RAW integration. I am not a photographer
I am a graphic designer and a 3D artist so the
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only time I am using the RAW-integration
is when I wender out something as an exr-file.
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And I am not really facing an issue with
Affinity's tonemapping Persona. And when editing
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photos I am most of the time just fixing things
up with the stamp-tool and similar things. So I had
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no issues with this but I still wanted to mention
it, to give you a better overview of what you can
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expect. When people talk about whether they prefer
designer or illustrator they're usually is a lot
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of discord. Of course, Affinity again shines with
better performance by making use of your GPU.
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I also find things like alignment tools and the
Pathfinder easier to reach in Affinity Designer
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I also like that Designer comes with more
shapes to create you can choose from. When
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doing Vector-drawing, I would also say that
Affinity Designer feels more intuitive to use.
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With many brush presets to choose from and being
easier to access than in Illustrator. What Designer
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currently is lacking, apart from AI tools, is the
image-tracing from Illustrator. The image-Tracer
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can be used to convert pixel based content
into vectors. And currently there is nothing
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like that in Affinity Designer. Only thing you
could do, is to use another software or browser
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based solutions to convert images into vectors and
then export it into Designer. Also Illustrator has
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some 3D tools that Designer is lacking. Again,
the hot keys are mostly the same in Designer
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and the most crucial tools like Pathfinder, pen-tool and shapebuilder are fully usable and come
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with a better performance than in Illustrator.
Designer also comes with a few pre-made Vector
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based icons, which can speed up your workflow
in some cases. I also like the Color Picker a
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lot more in Affinity Designer. Let's not forget
the Adobe fonts integration, which can definitely
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assist you when concepting. Especially when you
have to find a fitting font for a logo you're
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creating. Affinity doesn't have anything similar to
it, so you will have to rely on the fonts installed
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on your system. Designer is probably the weakest
competitor from Affinity in my opinion. Again the
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biggest advantage of the Affinity products is the overall
performance and the integration of the basic tools.
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On the other hand, Illustrator has some very
useful tools like image-tracing and the Adobe
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Font integration, that Affinity Designer is
lacking. The lack of Adobe-Fonts might also be a
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deal breaker for some people. I would say you would
have to test Affinity Designer to see if the lack
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of the mentioned features is compatible with your
workflow. In my opinion there is no clear winner in
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this case. But tighten your seatbelts, because the
next entry might be Affinity's strongest product.
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Have you ever layouted something using InDesign
and then felt the need to create
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something Vector based, like an icon, to add to
your layout? Well, in most cases you would have
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to launch Illustrator and create it there. Or
you've added a photo to your layout and want
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to edit something out or do a color correction?
Well someone's on their way to launch Photoshop ;)
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This is where you can really tell that Affinity
Publisher was made by designers for designers,
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because inside Affinity Publisher, you can
seamlessly switch between smaller version
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of the other Affinity programs. Those versions are
called personas in Publisher. This integration is
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what makes Affinity Publisher a no-brainer
alternative to InDesign. I really don't see
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any advantage on InDesign's side other than the
integration of Adobe-Fonts. The integration is
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seamless in a way I've never seen before in any
other program. Like, doesn't even matter in which
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Persona you created something, you can move and
scale it around in every other persona with no
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problems at all. Again, the Pexels integration is
present and makes it possible to quickly add
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stock photos to your project which you can then
edit in the Photo Persona. Like I've said I really
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don't see any reason to use InDesign instead of
Publisher. Sure, you might miss the Adobe Fonts
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integration, but in this case I don't see it as
a deal breaker considering all the advantages
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you get in Publisher. Being able to switch between
all of the program seamlessly, offers a much better
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workflow to your projects. Of course you will also
experience a smoother performance in Publisher
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due to the utilization of your GPU. So this was
my comparison between Affinity and their Adobe
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equivalents. In my opinion the Affinity Products
offer an overall better experience, except for maybe
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Designer in comparison to illustrator, but of
course you have to evaluate whether the lacking
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of the few tools that exclusive to illustrator, are
worth the price you pay. For hobbyists and content
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creators, it is pretty much a no-brainer to go
for Affinity. Freelancers might stick to Adobe
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because of the year-long experience they have
with Adobe products. But of course Freelancers also
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pay their licenses themselves in many cases which
makes Affinity's pricing a really attractive option to
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boost your profits. If you're unsure about whether
Affinity will fit your workflow, you can test their
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software for free! Personally, I don't use Photoshop,
Illustrator or InDesign anymore, as long as I'm
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not forced to use it. For example if I have to
work on a job that includes other designers
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that use a Adobe. The only Adobe product that is
hard to replace is After Effects. But even for
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that there are many Alternatives I found. Just not
one product that combines everything After Effects
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can into one software. if you are interested
in me doing a video on what After Effects
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Alternatives exist out there, cancel your Adobe
subscription and subscribe to this channel instead!
