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Is Affinity Designer Good For Beginners?

Affinity Designer is a raster and graphics software developed by Serif in 2014 to offer an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator.

Is Affinity Designer a good place to start out? Is it viable enough to sway users from its Adobe Counterpart?

Let’s answer some questions below and see.

Is Affinity Designer good for beginners?

Yes, Affinity Designer is an excellent graphic design tool for beginners. Compared to other professional designing tools, Affinity Designer is much easier to learn and master. It’s also quite affordable, even for freelance creative artists on a budget.

Unlike Adobe’s Creative Cloud which requires a monthly subscription per product, Affinity Design is available as a one-time purchase. No more worrying about monthly fees.

Affinity Designer has a set of advanced tools that professional designers can use to deliver outstanding graphics, especially from a Mac environment. Its tools aren’t as comprehensive as those from their Adobe counterparts, but they’ll do just fine if you’re starting out.

Read Does After Effects work on MacBook?

This application also features an intuitive and user-friendly interface you can navigate effortlessly.

If you’re migrating from Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, you’ll feel right at home with Affinity’s workspace.

All the tools on Affinity Designer are organized and categorized in a natural and accessible way, making it easy for users to access them on demand.

Sharing and exporting files is quite seamless with this application. Besides Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps, Affinity Designer can also open and edit PSD, AI, and EPS files. Few other software can do this.

Although this app is a vector editor, it can still export files to PSD. That’s quite a feat. It also supports other file formats like PDF, PNG, JPG and TIFF.

Although initially built for mac, Affinity Designer is also available for Windows. You can also download an iPad version and edit your images and graphics on the go or from remote locations.

Check 7 Online Courses for Concept Art

What is Affinity Designer used for?

Affinity Designer allows you to work with vectors and raster images to create concept art, logos, icons, branding, infographics, web graphics, mock-ups, social media graphics, and banners.

Many game developers, web designers and creative artists use it to develop outstanding images and graphics for various projects.

Also, this app can develop, retouch, or manipulate digital images. This, however, is one of its secondary functions.

Is Affinity Photo good for digital art?

Because of feature and tool limitations, Affinity Designer is not the most ideal option for digital art. Its core purpose is to edit images.

For reference, you can equate this app to Adobe Photoshop or Autodesk Sketch. If you want to create any form of digital art with still images, Affinity Photo will do the job just fine.

On the other hand, if you need to add some sort of calligraphy for your artwork or design animation, 2D, and 3D virtual sculptures, this app won’t give you desirable results.

Affinity Photo still has some features and tools you can use to create those designs. 

Consider checking How hard is it to learn Figma?

Where to find free online tutorials?

You’ll find tutorials for Affinity Designer in several places. 

First, their website has a tutorial section where they post recorded content. Their tutorial videos are quite comprehensive, and they’ll give you a detailed insight into the workings of the app. All these videos are free to watch, and they’ll answer many of your questions.

Also available among their resources is a desktop workbook and other printable resources in PDF Format. You can download and read them to learn more.

In case these tutorials don’t suit you, you’ll also find plenty of tutorials from independent creators on YouTube.

You can also get more in-depth training on Skillshare. They offer 7 days free trial.

Should you get Affinity Photo or Designer?

It entirely depends on your needs. If you’re a designer or artist, both applications may come in handy. Each application serves a specific purpose that the other isn’t suited for.

However, understanding how to use both applications will help you understand what tools to use for different projects. You can also use both tools together to create breathtaking designs and graphics.

For instance, if you’re designing a birthday card, you can use both applications to get impressive results.

You’ll use Affinity Design to create the card from scratch, choosing things like its preferred color, outlook, and fonts.

Thereafter, You can import images into Affinity Photo and give them an artistic touch before you export them into Affinity Designer to add them to your card design.

Can you draw in Affinity Photo?

No, you can’t. Affinity Photo doesn’t have the vector tools required to draw. Instead, Affinity Photo comes with tools that only allow you to develop and manipulate digital images.

Affinity Photo does not have a vector brush, which helps you design curves and lines. You also won’t do much stretching or repeating brushes with this app. Any designer application that lacks these features can’t draw.

Can you draw in Affinity Designer?

Affinity Designer is an excellent drawing tool. It has vector graphic tools and symbols which make creative tasks easier. You can access these tools at the top left section of your workspace. These tools are known as “personas”, and you can use them to draw, pixel, and export.

Affinity Designer, by default, is set to the draw persona. You can easily switch from one persona to the other as you work on each design.

All three icons give you a set of unique features and options that you can use to improve your drawings and designs. 

How much does Affinity designer cost?

Affinity Designer is available for a one-time fee of $49.99. At the time of this writing, you could purchase it for up to 50% off.

Affinity Designer also gives you a 14-day money-back guarantee if you’re less than impressed by their software.

You can test out their free trial before you purchase the app to determine if it will meet your expectations.

Also, iPad owners can make a one-off purchase of this product at about $9.99.

There are some other sets of optional add-ons you can purchase from their store to give your designs a better look. These features range from $9- $15, depending on their use.

Does affinity designer ever go on sale?

Currently, their software is available at a 50% discount. If you make your purchase now, you’ll not only get the software at half-off, you’ll also get some bonus features at no extra cost to you. This offer also applies to other digital content available in Affinity’s Store.

Affinity also gives prospective customers some enticing offers. As a new user, you can get a 90-day free trial on either your mac or Windows laptop.

Even if you’ve used a free trial before, you can still get another one.

Final thoughts

If you’re looking for an easy application to start out with. Affinity Design is the perfect place to go. Don’t worry. Once you’re up to speed and need to switch to something more advanced, you can do so with ease.