The history can even be saved with the document so that undos can be performed on a previously saved drawing. History is presented as a slider, so you can easily scrub backward to perform multiple undo, or slide forward to redo the previous undo. PANTONE colours for spot colour selection.Īnother feature that I really appreciate is the History panel. These include options for RGB, CMYK, LAB and Grayscale. The use of guides, along with object snapping, is really helpful when creating precise shapes or sizes.Īffinity also has support for multiple colour models. This tool allows for precise placement of multiple guides in both a horizontal and vertical configuration. There is a Guides Manager to assist with document construction. There is even a dedicated transparency tool for applying advanced transparency blends. Transparency effects can then be applied to individual layers or grouped layers. Object layers can be organized in groups. Each object is automatically created as an individual layer. Providing special effects like Outer Shadow, Inner Glow, and Bevel/Emboss with precision opacity and radius controls. Affinity Designer sports a healthy set of options here, Transparency has also become a standard for any modern drawing or design program.
I was pleasantly surprised that the fields accepted basic math such as /2 to divide the width in half, or using the plus, minus, and multiply operators as an effective way to control the shape of the object.Įxample shapes with gradients and drop shadows The width and height can also be specified, along with rotation and skew values. X and Y coordinates can be entered for exact locations. I found the Transform panel to be useful for this. It is great to freehand objects, but often precision is needed to make sure objects are the same size. Precise measurements are also an important element when creating objects. Using these keys in combination, the object can be centred, constrained, and rotated seamlessly, all while drawing the object. Using the control key, the shape was rotated 45 degrees. This makes it simple to create a rectangle or constrain for a square. Holding the shift constrained the proportions. Holding the command key immediately sets the orientation of the object to the centre. With a little experimentation, while drawing shapes, it was easy to see that the drawing experience had been well thought out. Geometry tools to Add and Subtract shapes Use the Subtract tool to minus one shape from another, or to cut holes in or slice off portions of an object to create a new shape. These tools allow for shapes to be combined to make more complicated shapes. These shapes can all be combined in unique ways using the various Rectangles, ovals, boxes with rounded corners, along with more complicated shapes like starbursts, pies, polygons, and even donuts.
Along with the pencil tool, the Designer includes a selection of basic shapes to get started. As with other programs, Designer includes a pencil tool for freehand drawing. Here are features of Affinity Designer that I think are necessary to be considered as a contender in the illustration space.įor illustration, the basic toolset begins with drawing and shape tools. Serif released Affinity Designer in October of 2014. The Affinity Suite, which includes Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Publisher, is uniquely positioned to change the desktop publishing landscape. I believe a new player has emerged with a great suite of tools that uses a purchase pricing model rather than the subscription model that has become so pervasive today. To shake up the market today, a new program would need to compete in the combined photo, illustration, and page layout space at an exceptional price point. Since Adobe has moved to the subscription model, I now see Adobe in much the same light as Quark when InDesign first came to market. The perfect combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign at an irresistible price point proved to be too much to maintain the dominance of QuarkXPress. Rather, it was the licensing and pricing model of the Creative Suite that was the driving factor. Today, having the luxury of looking back through history, I do not think it was the feature set of InDesign that brought about the migration away from QuarkXPress. I still enjoy a discussion on the rise and fall of the titans in the industry as I think back to the sheer dominance of QuarkXPress version 4Īnd how Adobe was able to wrestle away the bulk of the market share with a new player in this space in the form of InDesign. Then came the drawing program turf wars between Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.
PageMaker 4 was my first exposure to desktop publishing software.
#Affinity designer text on path software
An area that has always fascinated me is the variety of software packages that I have had the opportunity to work with. Having worked at Friesens since the beginning of the desktop publishing era, I have seen many changes develop.
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