Quite a few months ago, I bought the full Affinity suite of products. Before you ask, of course they were on sale.
I have used Affinity Designer for a few years now, but up until recently, I haven’t had much reason to use Affinity Photo. I use Krita for most of my painting and image editing, and I still like it, but recently I have been working on my IPad more and more often. Drawing and painting directly on the screen has its advantages. Since Serif offered a single licence for Windows, Mac, and IOS, doing some image editing and painting in Affinity Photo was sort of a no-brainer.
It’s fantastic.
So I was a Photoshop and Illustrator guy. I used them both for almost twenty years. Professionally. I can honestly say that there are a lot of reasons that I prefer the Affinity suite. And no, it’s not just the price.
Having pretty much the full toolset on the iPad is great. That I can use the same file on IPad and desktop is phenomenal. And, for the most part, the non-destructive tools are at least on par with Adobe’s, if not better. Compound masks are a must have for me now.
I think they may have a little way to go with their brush engine, but I have been able to paint most of what I want to with very few issues or problems.
The vector tools are solid, and if I ever find them lacking it’s pretty easy to hop over to Designer and build out a mask or text.
If Photo has some decent vector tools, then it shouldn’t be surprising that Designer has some decent raster tools. Pixel paint brushes and patterns that an Illustrator artist would kill for.
I used to promote Affinity Designer, because I used it nearly every day, but now, after using both Designer and Photo extensively, I can easily say it might be worth it for you to switch from Adobe products.
Until something much better comes along, I will happily continue paying the very low upgrade price for the Affinity suite of products.