Affinity Designer Is A Future Threat To Adobe Illustrator CC

Summary

Serif's $50 Affinity Designer is a competent alternative to Adobe's vector illustrator software.

Affinity Designer is very lightweight and it does perform faster than Illustrator CC.

Affinity Designer is Mac-only but many digital illustrators are Mac addicts. There is nothing preventing Serif from porting it to Windows soon.

I previously dismissed Affinity Photo as an unworthy alternative for Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) Photoshop professionals. However, I cannot say the same thing about Serif's other $50 Mac-only program, Affinity Designer. After two days of testing the trial version, I decided to get the full Affinity Designer program.

I am convinced this cheap graphic illustration software is a worthy replacement for Adobe's flagship $19.99/month Illustrator CC vector illustration software. Even professional digital illustrators will agree with my assessment that Affinity Designer is great for heavy-duty print and web graphic/User Interface design.

Affinity Designer offers the same advanced features of Illustrator CC. It has a comprehensive set of tools, complex layer effects, Boolean object operations, support for 5K Retina displays, easy-to-use path drawing and freehand drawing, smart shapes, gradients, and GPU acceleration.

The thing that really sold me on Affinity Designer is that it can now do text-on-a-path, which is an absolute necessity for creating logos. I made 400 pesos ($8.60) creating the simple logo for a walk-in client using Affinity Designer.

(click to enlarge)

(Source: Alcaraz Research)

It took me less than 20 minutes to create the said logo (and two variations of it), thanks to the Cog Shape tool of Affinity Designer. Affinity Designer also has little learning curve for artists already accustomed to Illustrator CC. Serif gave it the same keyboard shortcuts that are almost similar to that of Illustrator.

Like Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer does not have the same third-party plugins support of Illustrator CC. However, Serif's software touts faster performance while being much cheaper. Even on an ancient 2009 MacBook with only 2GB of RAM, Affinity Designer can be comfortably used while Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 and 12 tabs of the Firefox browser are running in the background.

I cannot run Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC at the same time without noticeably degraded performance. I can now confirm Serif's claim that Affinity Designer is faster than Illustrator CC. It uses less CPU/RAM resources than Adobe's vector illustration program.

Enabling OpenGL GPU acceleration on Macs with discreet 1GB or higher GPU cards makes Affinity Designer even faster. The latest Illustrator CC 2015 from Adobe has GPU acceleration that has messed up previews so I do not use it.

On the other hand, Serif's implementation of GPU acceleration on Affinity Designer has no such preview problems.

(click to enlarge)

(Source: Alcaraz Research)

This cheap $50 program even renders Illustrator files better than Illustrator CC 2015. Budget-constrained freelance graphic designers may also find that owning both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer is also ideal. Affinity Photo and Designer can open (not just import) and manipulate the native files created by each other.

As you can see from the screenshot below, I'm able to directly edit the text-on-a-path object of the Affinity Designer file of the logo I created inside Affinity Photo.

(click to enlarge)

(Source: Alcaraz Research)

Affinity Designer also imports and exports Adobe proprietary formats like PDF and PSD. Photoshop CC 2014 can correctly open up multi-layered PSD files created by Affinity Designer. The multi-layed CMYK mode PSD file (10 cm x 9.9cm size, 300dpi resolution) logo I created on Affinity designer was only 1.5MB - a lot smaller than I expected.

(click to enlarge)

(Source: Alcaraz Research)

Why It Matters

Many logo artists, web designers, and UI/UX designers may decide to go Adobe Photoshop CC+Affinity Designer, instead of Photoshop CC+Illustrator CC. Photoshop CC at $9.99 a month is reasonable. However, the $19.99/month subscription fee of Illustrator CC is unattractive compared to the one-time $49.99 payment needed to get the Photoshop-compatible Affinity Designer.

Even without extensive native third-party plugins available, Affinity Designer already offers what Illustrator CC can do for digital illustrators. Making Affinity Designer-created PSD files perfectly compatible with Photoshop's vast library of third-party plugins, gives graphic designers access to almost-unlimited specials effects.

The obvious risk now is that Adobe's subscriptions on Illustrator CC might eventually decline on the Mac platform once more graphic artists learns about the low learning curve to master Affinity Designer.

The Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Mac OS X platform dominates the all-important creative industry. There is also the obvious reality that Serif might port Affinity Designer to the Linux and Windows platforms in the future.

Affinity Designer, unlike Affinity Photo, has proven itself worthy of professional usage. Serif's vector illustration software has consistently remain among the top-grossing software on the Mac platform since it was released last year. This should indicate that many people are buying it instead of them subscribing to the $19.99/month Illustrator CC product of Adobe.

My Takeaway

I do not plan to subscribe to Adobe Illustrator CC though. I'm sticking with my $50 Affinity Designer+Photoshop CC combo for now. Illustrator CC is just a small part of Adobe's revenue stream. However, retaining the loyalty of Mac-based addicts is important toward the future of Adobe.

The real danger now is that Serif would eventually be able to upgrade Affinity Photo with better RAW image processing and third-party plug-ins compatibility so it could complement the impressive professional quality of Affinity Designer.

The subscription-only Photoshop CC+Illustrator CC tandem that currently rules the professional mobile/ web/print graphic design industry might suffer from a Affinity Photo+Affinity Designer (which costs only $100 to permanently own both) tag team.

Rather than only suggesting Adobe lower the monthly fee of Illustrator CC to $9.99, I would prefer that Adobe buys out Serif and kill its products before its too late. Adobe previously bought out Macromedia and then killed its Freehand vector illustration program. Some artists still consider 2004-era Freehand as superior to much newer Adobe's Illustrator CS4.

My point is that it is better to eliminate the threat before it becomes too successful. Yes, it will take some time before book writers and tutorial creators to teach millions of Mac-based artists to really learn the one-year-old-only Affinity Designer.

There are few online tutorials to learn the advanced features of Affinity designer and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) still doesn't sell any print/digital training book for Serif's amazing vector illustration program. I am therefore still endorsing a Buy for ADBE.

The majority of PC and Mac-based artists will remain dependent on Illustrator CC for a few more years because it is what they have learned and used for decades now.

Disclosure: I am/we are long ADBE, AMZN. (More...)I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Source: Affinity Designer Is A Future Threat To Adobe Illustrator CC