Excellent alternative to Adobe Illustrator

How not love it?

I have the whole suite working together: Designer, Photo, Publisher and it helps me stay on a competitive level against other businesses offering the same services.

Pros

Affinity Designer is the best Adobe Illustrator alternative that will let you edit SVG, AI, EPS, PDF files with ease. The controls are very intuitive and easy to use, the results are way too good and so far, after all these years there's nothing I regret from using Affinity Designer If you buy a set of tools on the Serif store, you do not have to download them and install them on a certain folder, you just go into the panel, click, that's it. You have it ready to use and installed properly.

Cons

The only thing I cannot do in Affinity Designer so far is to get a PNG and trace it into a vector. For that, I have to use Inkspace but everything else: Affnity Designer. Another thing that you may feel limited is that you see templates for Illustrator everywhere but not for Designer. You can still open them but all the layers groups will be merged into a single giant group making you spend some time rearranging things.

A great vector creation tool for iPad users

It’s been great overall. One purchase and you jump right in without worrying about renewing payment plans. At first it was a bit of a shock having such a high quality app for a table because it does things that you might not expect it to to do while at the same time not behaving exactly how you would expect. However it’s more because it must compromise in some aspects due to the fact that it MUST take into account both touch only controls as well as mouse and keyboad.

Pros

-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

Cons

-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

Adequate for my vector graphics needs, disappointed about lack of features.

It takes some getting used to, switching from Adobe Illustrator. The learning experience was fast for me, although there is not "much to learn" due to the lack of features. But overall, I am satisfied with this software because of all the value it provides.

Pros

I love that this is a one-time purchase software that is really cheap for small studios and freelancers. If you make any amount of money with design, there is no reason why you should not get Affinity Designer. Blazingly fast, you can scroll, zoom, and create designs super quickly and smoothly. I love the fact that you can use it for basic "Photoshop"y things as well.

Cons

The pathfinding options are clunky. Lack of useful features like "blend tool", "shape builder tool" Lack of basic features like a vector-based pattern fill. Edge artifacts when exporting.

A powerful tool for all levels...

It's been stress-free. If ever I get stuck trying to do something I just search for video tutorials and there's always something to help you on your way. I've never had to contact support and to be honest, I don't even think I've had to upgrade more than once, and If I have it was a free upgrade. Affinity is really a great provider and suite of tools. Like I said I used to be all Adobe, but now I haven't looked back. Best workflow decision I've ever made.

Pros

An easy-to-use layout design tool that is capable of absolutely everything I need to do. I've been in the creative industry for over 30 years and Affinity Designer can handle everything I'm throwing at it from logo design and layout to full-blown artwork, and art collections I'm developing. It integrates well with the Affinity family of products (obviously). Essentially it's easy, fast, full-featured, and straightforward to get started. I used to use Illustrator (a little) but now I use Affinity and have never looked back. The transition took me minutes rather than hours. It's very intuitive.

Cons

I haven't hit any limitations with the software yet. I always generally feel the things we don't like about the software is that we've mainly not learned how to use particular features or combinations yet, so really it's on us to work it out and innovate. Sure in any software there can be occasional bugs. But I haven't come across any yet, or anything particularly frustrating about the workflow, tool, or system as a whole.