Adobe Illustrator CC is a vector-based graphic design software.
$20.99
per month
Affinity Photo
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Affinity Photo is a software solution for photography and creative professionals, a fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iOS, from Serif Ltd.
Indicated and suitable for companies and agencies that work with the creation of materials for social media, digital graphics and printed materials. Suitable for any scenario and for those who want to produce high quality material without image pixelation. A scenario not very suitable would be the use without proper knowledge of the tool, it would be interesting to see the tutorials and guides available by Adobe
For small, fast-changing design/photo editing teams, it's a no brainer. More seats for less cost and an almost unnoticeable difference in the feature set. For older, more established or antiquated teams, you almost have to stick with Adobe. I know which side we're on. Innovation, a.k.a. Affinity. If you or your clients require specific formats like .psd, .ai, or .eps, Affinity can give you an alternative or more robust options to manipulate those files.
Illustrator Files can get large/cumbersome when you begin to incorporate high resolution photography, especially if you 'place' the photo instead of linking to it's source file
Typography can sometimes be a challenge, especially if you working on different machines that may not always have the font you need installed or sending the file to a commercial printer
OLDER versions of Illustrator can be a bit temperamental about being backward compatible though this issue has been greatly reduced with Adobe's move the Cloud Based subscription model
Not great for large print layouts (books, magazine etc) you're better off to move the project to Adobe InDesign in that case.
If you're a long time Adobe user of Photoshop or Illustrator, there is a learning curve, but it's not too major. This learning curve was well worth the cost of admissions for our organization.
I'd like to see them use the same names for certain features as Adobe's products, but feel like licensing/copyright concerns as the reasoning behind this. Overall, the transition has been smooth from Adobe to Affinity.
They just recently released their Publisher program for print designs, similar to InDesign. They're a little late to the game in this arena, but I'm very interested in a low-cost alternative to Adobe. I wonder how they'll compare to other competitors like Canva in the space?
While Adobe Illustrator CC is one of the only true design software out there, it really stands heads above the other products. It's clean UI and menu structure is easy to navigate.
There's a bit of a learning curve to this software vs other similar tools that can take some time to learn and get familiar with but the amount of functionality that Adobe Illustrator CC offers is quite large compared to simpler tools.
For a regular user of Photoshop, Affinity is a very easy transition. It has all the same features and once you adapt to it, and it provides a quick return on investment.
I normally already know how to do whatever I'm trying out, but the documentation (as well as a simple Google search) makes any question quick to resolve. The Adobe boards themselves are a fantastic resource, especially for resolving questions between new programs and iterative releases.
I don't have direct experience with a member of Affinity's support, but their forum and YouTube videos that other users have made make it relatively easy to find similar features in Affinity that are available in Photoshop or Illustrator. The differences are negligible for our small, yet experienced team.
I chose Rhinoceros 3D because it is accurate to make drawings in it and it is better to make drawings in Rhinoceros 3D and then put them in Adobe Illustrator. But while printing or scaling it is much easier to put it in Adobe Illustrator. This makes the whole printing aspect of it much easier.
I think Affinity Photo is on par with Adobe PhotoShop. They are very similar products with both bringing many features users need. The main reason I picked Affinity Photo was its pricing of it. I didn't require Adobe products all the time. And felt they weren't offering me as much value.
