Thanks Hank , I'll go to the link, download it and try it.
Even though their - trying too hard to be trendy - Affinity Designer's beta's
black hole black interface pained my poor eyes terribly.
''We will be starting a free public beta before the end of August. ''
umm..
finally (ˈfaɪnəlɪ) adv
After a long time, typically when there has been difficulty and delay it finally arrives...
Or in this case hasn't..
Anyway, can any marketing expert explain how Serif's DrawPlus, and PagePlus can go from billy no mates to something achingly desirable
![Not Worthy :notworthy: :notworthy:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
just by changing its name to Affinity Designer?
I jumped the gun and got excited, but you can sign up to get news on the Beta relase.
They actually rebuilt the programmes from the ground up. What I like about them; compared to Adobe, only rival worth mentioning; is that there is no bloat in the programmes.
Illustrator has a lot of bloat - tools added that nobody really uses. Pop up information and difficult navigation for easy tasks.
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Photoshop has a lot of bloat - I can't navigate the tool panel in PS anymore, it's a complete mess. And has a lot of bloat added to it.
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InDesign - which I am most familiar with - has a lot of bloat. There's still Flash export, there's HTML export, there's interactivity, Web Overlays, defunct interactive and loads loads more.
Yet, the core of the programme, what it was designed to do hasn't been updated in years!
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What you're getting with Affinity is a streamlined, built from the ground up software to do what it needs to do.
I know for a fact that Adobe's model for expanding the functions in their programmes goes a little something like this:
They go into big corporations and bandy around key words that they want to hear. Because if a big corporation, e.g, a global newspaper, buys the software, that's a mega-bucks deal.
So they bandy around words they want to hear. Like, do you want us to concentrate on making footnotes span columns, or we could work on making your InDesign files a live online fully functioning all juggling singing dancing interactive wonder!
Remember, they talk to the head guys, not the people on ground level, using the software. So if someone says to you, I can improve your car by putting new tires on it, or I can put a jet engine on it and send you to the moon, you'd pick the latter option, every time. Although, new tires would be a much more practical improvement.
Affinity software is quite cheap - for now. They don't have a subscription model - you buy it and use it and update it as you go along. Seems pretty sweet.
You can actually buy their entire suite of Designer, Photo, and Publisher for about £150 flat fee - which compared to a monthly subscription of Adobe which costs upwards of £600 a year.
So yes - it's very interesting software - rebuilt and reimagined to do all the things we wished Adobe to do for over a decade.
Finally it's here - a competitor. And I, for one, am excited!