Affinity Designer Launches on Mac App Store

MacAffinity said:

Hi All,

After 4 years of intensive development, we're really pleased to let you know that Affinity Designer, our new Professional Graphic Design App for Mac, has just launched on the Mac App Store.

It's the first product we've ever launched on Mac (after 25 years of Windows software), and what a pleasure it's been developing for OS X. Performance is staggering - check our video:

https://vimeo.com/106160806.

It's also available with a 20% discount until 9th October (making the price £27.99 / $39.99) here.

Thanks,
Ash

Click to expand...

Thank you for the update!

Every graphic designer should check out this app, it's really something new. I have always disliked Adobe Illustrator, working with it just doesn't feel natural. Affinity Designer has simple and powerful tools which make designing vector graphics fun and easy again! It somehow reminds me of Micrografx Designer in the early 90's, which was a simple but powerful (for its time) vector graphics software.

It's also very modern and FAST, just check out zooming around the example files with tons of layers and objects.

Adobe really got a rival here, as the company is working on photo editing and publishing software too, and they all share the same file format. It also imports/exports Photoshop/AI files.

The price point is well thought out, I didn't hesitate on buying the app immediately even without trying it out first. And after some twiddling around I feel it's worth much more. No wonder it's #1 on the App store top paid and also Editor's choice.

In my opinion MacRumors should do an article on this software like they did with Pixelmator a few years back. I went out and bought Pixelmator at that time and like it too but in my opinion Affinity is even more revolutionary.

It should be noted also that the company has previously done Windows apps and while this is their first Mac app, it's immediately a success. They are not even building a Windows version at the time being, even though their clients seem to request it a lot.

Bought this yesterday and I'm very impressed so far.
I have Illustrator CS5 and was getting annoyed with not being able to open ai files (due to others using CC). Problem solved with Affinity Designer. It's really amazing how compatible it is with Adobe files.

Not sure it will replace Sketch in my workflow as that's very much focused on UI rather than Illustration, which is 90% of what I do.
Can't wait for Affinity Photo so I can move away from Photoshop CS5.

At first glance this really reminds me of Xara Designer Pro. Which is great news!

Shame I missed the beta but will be looking into this.

Thanks to the developers!

A new beta is out. https://affinity.serif.com/forum/index.php?/topic/2057-affinity-designer-customer-beta-1019721/

Wanted to try beta out, but can't since it requires a purchased version. And there is no trial version. Since I'm happy with sketch, I will stick to it. At least until I can at least try out a trial version.

But anyway, good luck with this product. It looks promising. But please offer a trial version so at least those who are interested can at least try it out

Michaelgtrusa said:

A new beta is out. https://affinity.serif.com/forum/index.php?/topic/2057-affinity-designer-customer-beta-1019721/

Click to expand...

Cheers for the heads up. I've been itching to give it a try!

Rob

Grrrr! You have to have a paid copy to download the beta. It's be great to have a trial version available. :-(

MacAffinity said:

Hi,

Just to let you know we've made the 10 day free trial version of Affinity Designer live today which is available from our website - affinity.serif.com if you want to give it a crack.

Also today we released an update on the Mac App Store, which includes:

- Fully optimised for OS X Yosemite and iMac with Retina 5K display.
- iCloud Drive Support.
- Added Stroke alignment options for Inside and Outside strokes.
- Improved performance for Pencil and Brush Tools
- Introduced ‘Continuous Export’ feature to Export Persona.
- Added automatic @3x export support.
- Clipboard now supports vector copy and paste between other applications.
- Improved SVG and PDF export. Also improved JPEG export quality.
- Lots of other improvements and bug fixes

You might also be interested in our current roadmap of free updates which will come in the next 3-6 months which is here.

Thanks,
Ash

Click to expand...

Thank you for the update.

MacAffinity said:

Just to let you know we've made the 10 day free trial version of Affinity Designer live today which is available from our website - affinity.serif.com if you want to give it a crack.

Click to expand...

Excellent! Looking forward having a go! I think the Pantone/Registration features (which I notice are on your upcoming features list) will be a must-have for pro use. Exciting things to come!

MacAffinity said:

Affinity Designer 1.5 Launched

Hi,

Affinity Designer 1.5 has just been made live on the Mac App Store. It has a huge number of new features including

Click to expand...

Any update on when the ability to move the origin of rulers relative to any point in the artboard will be added?

It is the only thing holding me back from moving completely from Illustrator. There is so much to love about Affinity Designer…

Very tempting..!

How about the addition of more than one style(shadow, etc) for each vector shape layer? In both Affinity apps?

I really miss that option. I have yet to witness any other vector or pixel tool other than Acorn(I have doubts about that one right now) and Sketch that has that feature if we look past Adobe's programs. Pixelmator doesn't sport more than a few layer styles for each vector shape and Affinity only sports 1 of each style when I would like 2 inner shadows or 2 of any other style on the same shape.

MacAffinity said:

Don't have a definite ETA on that, but we will include it in our next update (1.6) so hopefully not too far away...

Click to expand...

Thanks.
I live in hope. It is a lovely app and has massive potential.