affinity serif

bici · 2016-01-16 08:06:32

Hello Peeps. Dose anyone have any experience with the Affinity suite of products?

I am ready to move on from Adobe and it’s stupid cloud offerings.

I have CS5 and i understand that Adobe is no longer going to support it and will not be offering upgrade fixes.

So I am now looking around and the Affinity apps look promising

phiw13 · 2016-01-16 08:46:51

I’ve heard positive comments about both their products. They offer a mostly functional demo, so give it a try (I was going to do that over the new years holiday, but haven’t gotten around it… yet!).

For image editing, I use Acorn nowadays, which is a fantastic application. Took awhile to get into it, after 15 years of poposhop.

From a fellow CS 5 holdout – :-)

bici · 2016-01-16 17:34:49

Thanks for the feedback. I do have Acorn and i should use it more by learning it more. I am not sure if Acorn can convert from RGB to CMYK. at least i have never found that function.

I am going to do as you suggest and download their current two apps. i am also keen to see if the page layout app due sometime this year can be an indesign killer.

I have pretty well decided not to continue with Adobe after my CS5 no longer runs.
( and it will be a relief to no longer have to deal with adobe’s flash ui …. awful)

jstubbs · 2016-01-17 03:40:22

As a Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, am looking forward to further feedback from others on alternative apps!

phiw13 · 2016-01-17 08:37:46

bici wrote #297450:

I am not sure if Acorn can convert from RGB to CMYK

Unfortunately, Acorn doesn’t support conversion to CMYK, afaik. That is not something I’ve need for quite a while though. For my last few “print” projects, the client asked for Illustrator files in untagged RGB with the images embedded. But those are few and far between, most of my graphics work is either “web” (sRGB images, SVG images) or icons for apps (SVG, PNG or PDF, all sRGB)

I have pretty well decided not to continue with Adobe after my CS5 no longer runs.
( and it will be a relief to no longer have to deal with adobe’s flash ui …. awful)

Ditto that. I wish I could make some more, quick, faster progress of weeding myself off Illustrator.

That is one problems I have by avoiding the Adobe suite, or not hooking up to the latest (and not so great) release — when subcontracting for commercial shops, they often ask for files in a format compatible with the Adobe suite.

jstubbs wrote #297457:

As a Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, am looking forward to further feedback from others on alternative apps!

For more vector oriented work, there is also Sketch, which is widely praised by among others web designers. I have a love/hate relation with that application, I’m not clear why (OK, more that 15 years doing things the Adobe way doesn’t help easing a transition).

There is a recentish interview with the lead person behind Sketch, on Medium, worth the time to read.

jakob · 2016-01-17 11:05:17

Acorn 4.1 August 12th, 2013.
New: When exporting an image as JPEG, you can now choose an option to save it as a CMYK image.

…as detailed in the release notes and described in the docs, it looks like Acorn can save to CMYK in jpeg format but only at the save/export stage.

Pixelmator can also preview and work in CMYK colours.

Affinity Photo, the counterpart to Photoshop, says you can “work in any color space” and has “unsurpassed file compatibility. Affinity Designer, the Illustrator counterpart, touts the same abilities.

more that 15 years doing things the Adobe way doesn’t help easing a transition

Totally agree!

BTW: Adobe’s flash-style interfaces have been dropped from later versions and overall much has improved, although the programs are successively more complex.

phiw13 · 2016-01-17 12:06:53

jakob wrote #297460:

…as detailed in the release notes and described in the docs, it looks like Acorn can save to CMYK in jpeg format but only at the save/export stage.

Oh, That is right: File > Export choose TIFF as format, and then you have a checkbox for CMYK.
I had forgotten about that option.

phiw13 · 2016-01-22 02:23:11

Yesterday, I spent some time with Affinity designer (their Illustrator counterpart). So far, the experience was pretty good. I’m not a big fan of the dark UI (there is a setting to “lighten it up” a bit, which helps a little; and a setting to use larger text in the UI — great!). Importing my .ai and .psd files was very good so far. For the rest, it is like Illustrator, with its own character, and probably quirks and all — and yeah, RTFM…

PS – It is currently on sale on the App store (¥3,000-, ~USD 29.99 , half price)

bici · 2016-01-22 04:36:21

I am i n the process of finishing doing a 200 page book in InDesign CS5. once this is done i’ll be trying out the suite of apps from Affinity. The printer is no longer able to accept C5 application files.

tye · 2016-01-22 04:54:21

How strange… I just bought Affinity Designer this week for all the reasons above & have been using Sketch for a while now…. I grew up on Adobe… but enough is enough.

I don’t think that there will be anything close to inDesign though, in the near future or probably ever – and even if there is – does anyone remember the nightmares moving from Quark – you have to recreate everything… wish there was though

jakob · 2016-01-22 08:44:20

bici wrote #297534:

I am in the process of finishing doing a 200 page book in InDesign CS5. once this is done i’ll be trying out the suite of apps from Affinity. The printer is no longer able to accept C5 application files.

Can you not give them print-ready PDF files? Then it doesn’t matter which version of InDesign you’re using as long as you have the correct colour profile from the printer. In this part of the world, the printer invariably does their own imposition too, so it’s generally not too complicated (for typical uses). I only ever share the indd files with clients or colleagues if I’m working with others on their documents or creating documents for their later use.

tye wrote #297535:

I don’t think that there will be anything close to inDesign though, in the near future

I don’t think so either. Quark is reportedly much better than it was, but InDesign is powerful and flexible and IMHO pretty good too – I like using it.

philwareham · 2016-01-22 09:54:48

jakob wrote #297536:

Can you not give them print-ready PDF files? Then it doesn’t matter which version of InDesign you’re using as long as you have the correct colour profile from the printer.

This, basically. And if you decide to go with another DTP app then you are going to have to supply PDFs to the printers anyway. Adobe’s apps are pretty much industry standard, which is good or bad depending on your stance. We do a lot of packaging design so Illustrator is essential to our workflow, I also use InDesign pretty much every day after converting from QuarkXpress about 10 years ago, so the £37 a month per user is fairly good value for us (given you also get the whole Adobe app suite and TypeKit too).

You can stick with CS5 indefinitely if you save PDFs to the Pass4Press or GWG specs depending on target media. Or even just saving as PDF/X-1a:2001 setting built into InDesign is good enough, as every printer I’ve dealt with will accept that format.

If your printers have the luxury of a Colorsync workflow then you can ask them for a profile or full PDF settings file. From experience though, using the specs mentioned above is good enough, because they can append profiles to a supplied PDF in their RIP anyway.

Also, keep all your images as RGB where possible and let the printers do the colour conversion in-RIP to get the correct black levels and ink saturations.

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#1 2016-01-16 08:06:32

affinity serif

#2 2016-01-16 08:46:51

Re: affinity serif

#3 2016-01-16 17:34:49

Re: affinity serif

#4 2016-01-17 03:40:22

Re: affinity serif

#5 2016-01-17 08:37:46

Re: affinity serif

bici wrote #297450:

jstubbs wrote #297457:

#6 2016-01-17 11:05:17

Re: affinity serif

#7 2016-01-17 12:06:53

Re: affinity serif

jakob wrote #297460:

#8 2016-01-22 02:23:11

Re: affinity serif

#9 2016-01-22 04:36:21

Re: affinity serif

#10 2016-01-22 04:54:21

Re: affinity serif

#11 2016-01-22 08:44:20

Re: affinity serif

bici wrote #297534:

tye wrote #297535:

#12 2016-01-22 09:54:48

Re: affinity serif

jakob wrote #297536:

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