Bought it and I’m not even a designer. It is an amazing app. I’m about 8 videos into the 62 tutorials.
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Graphic Design App 'Affinity Designer' Launches for iPad With Apple Pencil Support
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Instant buy for me too. Serif is such an outstanding company. They make stellar products at insanely fair prices. They've earned my long-term business!
The shear quality of Affinity apps on the Mac and the great reviews of Photo on the iPad last year should make this an easy purchase for anyone interested in vector design...amateur or pro. High quality stuff here. I love that they go all-in on native development by taking advantage of all of the latest Apple API’s and dev tools for macOS and iOS. Serif is the poster child for what Apple hopes developers will create on their platforms.
I misread the headline and thought they finally released Affinity Publisher. Please please Serif, keep on it! I will buy that the second it comes out so I can finally dump my Adobe subscription that I barely use... but unfortunately need because the kind of work I do requires me to do light snacking across a bevy of apps. Once I can dump InDesign, the CC subscription won't make any sense for me anymore.
You and me both in regard to Lightroom. Their website years ago mentioned they were working on Publisher and a DAM (lightroom alternative), they eventually removed that from their website but you still see it in on archive sites. On Twitter the company also mentioned they were working on the DAM program. Though then later on they said they were never working on such an app. When faced with their previous tweets (that they didn't delete) and their old website, they admitted they were at a time, but currently not and or currently no news. So while I imagine development was going well, other priorities took over and they had to shelf it to presumably publisher which took longer than they thought as well as changing focus to the iPad since those are the main things holding people from leaving Adobe still, since one can simply buy a lightroom only subscription unlike the other apps in their repertoire.
I bought it last night, and this morning also bought Affinity Photo and Designer for macOS.
Now I have them all.
I really hope they live to my expectations.
Now I have them all.
I really hope they live to my expectations.
Was thrilled to hear this but still does not appear meant for UX/UI. Aka it's not a sketch alternative. Rather it's an illustrator alternative. Sketch is great, but they have said they have no plans for an iPad app. Adobe XD and Invision may eventually have a full support iPad App but both of those lag behind Sketch. Designer is much more powerful than those apps in other aspects, but for people focusing on web and app design, wireframing and prototyping, designer doest not seem to be the best fit which is why 99% of the demos are for illustrations. When googling Affinity Design for UX there was a dedicated page on Serif's website saying why it was a good tool for that that many sites linked to but it seems they have recently removed that page, though it still available on archive sites including google search results cache. I assume Serif removed it since they want to double down on the illustrator features and back away from the UX features. Perhaps that's because they plan on building a dedicated app for that, but that seems very doubtful since there are so many in that space, and people probably want Publisher and the lightroom alternative a lot more first.
Yeah I saw them announce the beta for that the other day as well! I think it's smart for them to lock down those three apps because that will get the most graphic designers using their software. Most designers don't need the motion and video apps and you can still use Affinity Photo to edit RAW files. I haven't really tested yet how well their algorithms work. I know going back over my old Lightroom photos that I can push them a lot further today with the newer software and make them look a lot better, so Adobe has come a long way over the years and that level of image processing can be rather advanced. Maybe I'll do a shootout between the two someday.
I'm thinking I might stick with these apps and then only pay for the Lightroom subscription. I don't do as much with video any more though I was starting to get back into it after buying my Sony a7R III which does pretty good video. Maybe I'll just buy Final Cut X instead and learn that. I learned Premiere Pro early on in high school so that's what I stuck with. I'm kind of interested in the cloud storage component of Lightroom, though any time I speak with a representative they're horrible. They can't even tell me if I can store files in the cloud and on my hard drive at the same time. I've got limited cloud storage now with my CC and it only stores proxies, but with this other plan I can store full resolution. What I want is to only pay for 1TB and only store my photos from the last couple years in there and have those and older photos archived to my drive that I take local backups of. I like the idea of importing to iPad and having the full resolution sync up to the cloud and then the next time I'm at my desktop I want those photos to pull back down to my drive. Seems straightforward enough but nobody can answer my question. I might just have to buy it and ask for a refund if it doesn't work as expected. Also kind of worried about WiFi when traveling taking days to safely sync and store that data.
Thanks for the write up. The Sketch replacement / UX designer focus was what I was hoping for the most. Being able to do work seamless on the iPad or Mac would of been epic. Oh well.
I am not planning to edit or design on my iPad. However, as the 30% discount is for all Affinity softwares, it may be time to try Affinity Designer and Photo on macOS.
Got in on the discount. Looks like a great app, but the performance on the 2018 iPad is not so great. There's a significant lag. The less powerful vector program, Graphic is instantaneous. I'll certainly keep Affinity Designer in case I ever get another iPad Pro.