Affinity Designer Software Reviews & Ratings | | Software Advice.

Affinity Designer is an incredibly accurate vector illustrator that feels fast and at home in the hands of creative professionals. It intuitively combines rock solid and crisp vector art with flexible layer management and an impressive range of high quality raster tools for finishing. With accuracy, quality and speed at the heart of every single design task, and the ability to finesse designs without switching apps, this fresh-faced multi-discipline illustrator lets creatives shine.

Discover New Mac Apps. Save money with MacUpdate Shop. Sign in Create account. Affinity Designer. Get from App Store. Affinity Designer for Mac 1. Vector graphic design software. Follow this app Developer website. What is Affinity Designer for Mac Affinity Designer is an incredibly accurate vector illustrator that feels fast and at home in the hands of creative professionals. Version 1. Compatibility and stability improvements. Try our new feature and write a detailed review about Affinity Designer.

All reviews will be posted soon. Write review. Write your thoughts in our old-fashioned comment. MacUpdate Comment Policy. We strongly recommend leaving comments, however comments with abusive words, bullying, personal attacks of any type will be moderated. Email me when someone replies to this comment Post comment. Derekcurrie Mar 31 They are all excellent. Afmac Feb 5 Excellent, great app and cheap! Macmuser Mar 17 I would love to use Affinity products but for one big failing — their interface icons are tiny when viewed on 5K monitors.

Reading their forums you see people have been complaining about this for years and Affinity won’t do anything about it as their interface is based on pixels rather than vectors. The firm has a long history in the Windows world where screen resolutions are not as tight as on Macs so that may explain things.

Goodness knows what happens if Apple moves to 7k monitors. DragonMaster Mar 2 It is time to dump Corel and Adobe. Designer does it all. It is a total Mac app from the ground up. Buy it and you own it. Support remains strong. DragonMaster Sep 6 This is a WOW app. Thanks no more Corel or Adobe. No hidden or blatant subscriptions. Works perfectly even in Catalina. Fast, uses the best of the Mac’s OS features.

Support is quick, responsive, and friendly. The community is very helpful and friendly! And, the price is right. I would suggest buying directly from the Developer rather than the App Store. Updates are quicker and without some of Apple’s peculiar ideas about what is a legitimate update and what an app can do or not do. I don’t get the link, Why? Solid, versatile and fun to work with I have found from early on. Together with their pixel and most recently layout applications the creative trinity for me is complete.

I am happy, and relieved. A great app, for the price. Simple, fast, with CMYK support. Without all the unnecessary things that nobody uses. Macintosh-Sauce Jun 24 Affinity now sells Designer and Photo directly from their website. Try before you buy.

I have all three applications for macOS Derekcurrie Jun 19 Affinity Publisher out as of today, June 19th! Looking great. Teksestro Jun 7 Amazing software, extremely stable, feature-full, rich – the kind of tool you can explore forever, and will always grow with your capabilities. The fact that the company is amazingly responsive and friendly is just icing on the cake!

Still learning it, but it’s clearly very impressive software. Cgntoonartist Aug 1 Wonderwarthog Mar 16 When you work with dual monitors the “everything in one window” paradigm sucks. Yes you can switch that off, but then the panels and windows just behave completely erratically.

So you can essentially use Affinity Designer only on one monitor… Hm. The keyboard modifiers for resizing layers from the center, proportially, etc are rather uncommon and every time it annoys the hell out of me. Just use the same as macOS uses for window resizing, or as Adobe or Sketch, puh-lease! Same for the partially non existing keyboard shortcuts for selecting and resizing text. And that black user interface.? Yes I know black computers are faster and black apps are pro-er. But the contrast is still crap, even when I adjust it in the preferences.

Super hard to read. Ever heard of usability? Having said all that, the overall feature set is pretty amazing and given that it comes subscription free is a big thumbs up for this app still.

Maclover Mar 2 Since no-one answers on your support forums Good product, terrible support.. Other tools do it, such as Gravit designer, Graphic AlexSmith Aug 6 Great replacement for most of the CC apps, without a subscription. Easy to learn interface and great features. Using this for work day by day for some time now, and don’t see any issues! Foulger Mar 22 Brilliant programme as is Affinity Photo but it would be really great if both apps would have a “Check for Updates” in the menu bar.

It takes a great deal of time to hunt around the web site and even then its not easy. Iztoubade Nov 26 I really enjoy the great capabilities of this affordable piece of software. And it only gets better and better with new functionality at a remarkable pace. Quite a few bugs, though, with the app evolving all the time, but most get squized timely with the frequent updates.

Teksestro Oct 10 Incredible value for money. Ervins Strauhmanis Oct 7 Affinity Designer is truly an amazing achievement on several interconnected levels. Visually, Affinity Designer with its black, smooth viscous—like user interface and beautifully crafted icons—is a delight to look at.

Affinity Designer for iPad: [Review] – Paperlike – What is Affinity Designer for Mac

Those who cannot invest anymore in the Adobe CC suite can step down easily and embrace Affinity Photo, as workflows are very similar and learning curve is very smooth. According to my experience, compatibility with PSD format is good, and layers structure is generally well respected. Even if tools are all present, their performance is somewhat less impressive ex. No photo catalogue features are included. Affinity Photo claims to be fully compatible with plugins and brushes from Photoshop but, according to my experience, this compatibility doesn’t work properly or I was just unlucky.

Import operations are either impossible to be completed or imported items work differently from expected. Those who have heavily invested in that must think twice before making the jump. I tried this software for a short time. I was very impressed all round with it. I am still searching for a good software to create images for publishing books, covers for books and printable images.

I may still reconsider Affinity but just not sure it will satisfy my desires. I have been using PS Elements 13 and it did not meet my needs, no nodes or cymk colour.

I want fine art as well as backgrounds. I have been trying Clip studio Pro as well. DragonMaster Sep 6 One fine app!!! Great support. Unbelievable price. Regular updates. This is a gotta have for any Mac user. Price is incorrect. Macintosh-Sauce Jun 24 Affinity now sells Designer and Photo directly from their website. Try before you buy.

I have all three applications for macOS Derekcurrie Jun 19 Affinity Publisher is out today, June 19th! Looking great. Wonderwarthog Jun 8 Best of the best. Adobe is gone from my Harddisk, good riddance. Affinity Photo is way zippier anyway. Teksestro Jun 7 Amazing software, by a fantastic company that deserves support. WordWeaver Jun 6 Not CS 5. Yes, that long ago. However, with CS6 being dead in the water with the release of macOS Aside from the fact that I have an established workflow and years of experience using Adobe Photo — which makes it hard to want to switch to another app — one of my biggest concerns with switching to a different graphics editor, is its compatibility with my current plugins.

So, I am just wondering how many of the aforementioned plugins are fully compatible with Affinity Photo without any hiccups or bugs. Can someone here please let me know? Also, given my current experience with Adobe Photoshop, what kind of a learning curve should I expect with Affinity Photo, were I to decide to switch to it?

Thanks in advance. DonkeyKong Dec 16 I tried about any other image editor and those are out of bounds for me for several reasons.

So, which to choose. It is pretty simple. If you need a PhotoShop alternative, then by all means go for Affinity Photo. It is on par on features and plugin support. But keep in mind you are facing a steep learning curve. Ones mastered, it is the uber image app! If you need a very good and fast image editor doing the basics, you can choose Pixelmator Pro. You learn to use it in minutes and you never get lost. Zx81 Nov 10 Jumping ship from Lightroom, I have been experementing with a few possible replacements and opened the same Sony Raw file without any adjustment I know this is tricky, and that every app does a little ajustement of its own, but I did my best ; and this is how they work in real life.

Of all the softwares I tried, the best cleanest, sharpest file were Capture One and, not far from it but not as clean, On1. Affinity, Pixelmator, Luminar, Acorn did not match the exported files from those two. Gary30 Sep 25 It a good app until you need to start selecting areas or mask.

Then, it seems pretty primitive compared to Photoshop. Have been looking for a best App for a large number of product shots which need full color correction, perspective straightening, and deep etching. After looking through all the other Apps, including Photoshop, I thought I’d check Affinity Photo to see what it could do.

Boy I am glad I did. This is amazing! I can even correct subtle lens distortion and as I get the hang of AP’s interface it’s different – in a good way I am growing more and more impressed. I really like how you apply all the Layers and Filters live and get to see it all previewed before committing, and there are lots of hints in the Inspector sidebar as to what the options do. This could be the end of Photoshop for me.

It’s been a long innings. AnTu Jul 14 As good as Photoshop. Liam- Jul 6 One of the best photo editors available. Powerful and easy to use. Must have app. Ali-Egypt May 18 Wonderful image editor that equals the now overpriced PS.

Thanks to the devs for keeping this low-budget AND making it worth using for pro summers. VERY highly recommended. We are a publicity agency that have 8 employees using PhotoShop for over 16 years now. We traveled about any iteration of PS and we do amazing things with it. Recently we had to look at our budgets because of tight economic reasons.

We could easily choose to let go amazing talented people but we first made an exercise how we could keep budget lower at all level without losing integrity and the quality we deliver to our customers.

At some point we got in touch with Affinity Photo. It looked interesting and we settled for two licenses and put two people on it for 2 months to evaluate. After the evaluation we were very excited about Affinity Photo that we now have chosen to make it available to all our people. They all loving it. We are not going to renewal our other PS licenses anymore. It perfectly matched our strict budget and we do not have to cut on quality for our customers. Noted: Mac version is faster though.

The only question we have to Affinity, how did you produce such a high quality tool for such a low price? Affinity Photo is a major contender for being the best image processing tool on planet earth. It is very professional, highly productive and a joy to use. WisdomL0RD Mar 26 It even supports PS plugins too. It is a bit difficult to learn though, but the online video tutorials are great and makes the steep learning curve bearable.

Ones you now your way, all other comparable tools are obsolete :. And take a peek at the price?!? Actually, let me rephrase that. SweetP Productions Mar 23 Theres a couple small things i wish it had like export presets, but only a very minor issue with a super great priced app.

Foulger Mar 22 Brilliant programme as is Affinity Designer but it would be really great if both apps would have a “Check for Updates” in the menu bar. It takes a great deal of time to hunt around the web site and even then its not easy. Id-Ego-SuperEgo Feb 19 Levelbest Jan 11 I want this to be under comment and not a review as it does seem to be a nice product which unfortunately, many will not have access too. I wont use the app store so I am unwilling to try Affinity Photo.

That is too bad as it seems promising. I am getting back into photography and I will likely have to reevaluate Lightroom as they are still selling a stand alone version. The neanderthal thinking on the Affinity team about not allowing direct purchase of their products gives me pause, leaning towards caution about software companies that find that doing things their way is more important than listening to their customer base.

I have seen it too many times where an otherwise good product is held too tightly by those too busy congratulating themselves to pay attention to their customer base. If Affinity photo still has bugs but is basically a good product as many others have said, why should I trust them that they are going to continue to improve the product if they are already refusing customer input?

And yes, if they allowed purchase though their web store I would probably still get a license. I would still be using Pixelmator if they had not cut off existing customers by going app store only. I loved version one of Pixelmator. But then, Pixelmator did the same thing and only sold out of the App store. Now I use Acorn. Savo33bravo-The-Liar Dec 29 Awesome application with HUGE potential!!! Old-guy Dec 27 It is time to dump Corel and Adobe.

Designer does it all. It is a total Mac app from the ground up. Buy it and you own it. Support remains strong. DragonMaster Sep 6 This is a WOW app. Thanks no more Corel or Adobe. No hidden or blatant subscriptions. Works perfectly even in Catalina. Fast, uses the best of the Mac’s OS features.

Support is quick, responsive, and friendly. The community is very helpful and friendly! And, the price is right. I would suggest buying directly from the Developer rather than the App Store. Updates are quicker and without some of Apple’s peculiar ideas about what is a legitimate update and what an app can do or not do. I don’t get the link, Why? Solid, versatile and fun to work with I have found from early on. Together with their pixel and most recently layout applications the creative trinity for me is complete.

I am happy, and relieved. A great app, for the price. Simple, fast, with CMYK support. Without all the unnecessary things that nobody uses. Macintosh-Sauce Jun 24 Affinity now sells Designer and Photo directly from their website. Try before you buy. I have all three applications for macOS Derekcurrie Jun 19 Affinity Publisher out as of today, June 19th!

Looking great. Teksestro Jun 7 Amazing software, extremely stable, feature-full, rich – the kind of tool you can explore forever, and will always grow with your capabilities. The fact that the company is amazingly responsive and friendly is just icing on the cake! Still learning it, but it’s clearly very impressive software. Cgntoonartist Aug 1 Wonderwarthog Mar 16 When you work with dual monitors the “everything in one window” paradigm sucks.

Yes you can switch that off, but then the panels and windows just behave completely erratically. So you can essentially use Affinity Designer only on one monitor… Hm. The keyboard modifiers for resizing layers from the center, proportially, etc are rather uncommon and every time it annoys the hell out of me. Just use the same as macOS uses for window resizing, or as Adobe or Sketch, puh-lease!

Same for the partially non existing keyboard shortcuts for selecting and resizing text. And that black user interface.? Yes I know black computers are faster and black apps are pro-er. But the contrast is still crap, even when I adjust it in the preferences. Super hard to read. Ever heard of usability?

Having said all that, the overall feature set is pretty amazing and given that it comes subscription free is a big thumbs up for this app still. Maclover Mar 2 Since no-one answers on your support forums Good product, terrible support.. Other tools do it, such as Gravit designer, Graphic AlexSmith Aug 6 Great replacement for most of the CC apps, without a subscription. Easy to learn interface and great features.

Using this for work day by day for some time now, and don’t see any issues! Foulger Mar 22 Brilliant programme as is Affinity Photo but it would be really great if both apps would have a “Check for Updates” in the menu bar. It takes a great deal of time to hunt around the web site and even then its not easy. Iztoubade Nov 26 I really enjoy the great capabilities of this affordable piece of software. And it only gets better and better with new functionality at a remarkable pace.

Quite a few bugs, though, with the app evolving all the time, but most get squized timely with the frequent updates. Teksestro Oct 10 Incredible value for money. Ervins Strauhmanis Oct 7 Affinity Designer is truly an amazing achievement on several interconnected levels.

Visually, Affinity Designer with its black, smooth viscous—like user interface and beautifully crafted icons—is a delight to look at. Technically, Affinity Designer is a friendly guide, leading you to begin experience its deep potential, partly covered by just the right amount of dark silk, swiftly and intuitively.

The same swiftness is felt working with large documents. Technical excellence both inner and outer! Conceptually, Affinity Designer is a majestic vision of a remarkable team of individuals who love what they do so much—they radiate it by allowing as much people as possible to use a highest quality professional application.

For what this app gives, its developers ask little in return. Advanced file support is at the core of the back-end technology behind Affinity Designer. The design revolution Optimized for the latest tech on Mac, Windows and iPad, Affinity Designer is setting the new industry standard in the world of design. Serious business No bloat, no gimmicks, just all the tools you need, implemented how you always dreamed.

Fast and glorious Affinity Designer was created to thrive on the electric pace of the latest computing hardware. As complex as you like The engine behind Affinity Designer is built to handle huge documents so you can be confident in adding all those tiny details without any compromise to performance. Built for your workflow Thousands of designers around the world told us how they need their graphic design app to behave.

Timesaving functions The UI has been created to give you the best user experience possible so you can spend more time creating. Any device, anywhere Whether on Windows, Mac or iPad, the file format is exactly the same. Rock solid vector tools Affinity Designer is full of tools meticulously developed for achieving high productivity, while maintaining percent accurate geometry. Powerful contour tool Effortlessly add a contour to any object or increase the width of single open curves.

Advanced grids and guides The options you have for setting up grids and guides is almost unlimited. Unlimited artboards Layout all your screens, pages, menus and other items in a single project across any number of artboards.

Linked symbols Symbols allow you to include unlimited instances of the same base object across your project. Live pixel preview Pixel perfect designs are assured by viewing your work in pixel preview mode. Sophisticated typography Whether working with artistic text for headlines, or frames of text for body copy, you can add advanced styling and ligatures with full control over leading, kerning, tracking and more.

Professional output for print, screen or collaboration Advanced file support is at the core of the back-end technology behind Affinity Designer.