Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review
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The pros and cons mentioned in the comparison may lead to new thoughts about VS.
Inkscape VS Affinity Designer | The Ultimate Comparison (Youtube)
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While i found that this Video and the Article was quite well done.
My views / thoughts have not changed as a result
But has my own findings more or less confirmed.Even though I find it entertaining to read such comparisons.
I generally find such comparisons a bit difficult. Because
even though both fall under the category vector programs,
they fulfill, in my eyes, quite different needs.I know and use many vector programs and so i know also the
(never ending) problem that one program does not fulfill
all wishes. At least that's the case with me. But it is
not a big problem for me to use different programs at the
same time, because that increases the range of tools I
can use and sometimes it sparks creativity.Btw VS still stand quite well in this Line of Vector Tools.
Maybe one day KI-Development will make it possible
that an KI will put together my particular tool of choice
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@Subpath Your respons is also exactly what I hoped for.
- The more I use VS the more I know what I missed in Affinity - the more I know why I need it.
- The more I use AD the more I know what purpose that program was made for (although Serif shamefully tries to market and sell it to everyone) and why VS is no match for AD in several usecases.
- I need both - but AD would benefint hugely from just a few vector features (but their devs are not great at it)
- I have Illustrator CC 2021 and CorelDRAW as well but do not like working in any of them. Use them only when I have to.
What I found interesting about the video was the insights and compariosons of the tools, how they were implemented.
Inkscape is itself is a scary example. I am impressed by the featureset and used it for hobby work for years but is unbearable to use usability wise and performance wise. But some implementations of tools and options are fine in Inkscape. Worth using as inspiration. With a bit of usability experts and performance focus they could head Inkscape directly towards glory. Many need it for its SVG abilities. But no.
Just to clarify. I did not post this comparison to make an A vs B comparison (that fanboys on the Affinity forum would "discuss" like kids in a school yard forever) but because I like to see other peoples opinions about how they actually work. In Affinity Serif was ignorant enough to leave out the hairline width so their otherwise excellent pen tool is not great when you need cutters of some sort. Knowing why some of the details matter so much to people is important.
Personally I never could make the A or B choice. I have the Adobe CC Creative Suite and Affinity Designer and Photo for some bitmap oriented designs. And I pay what they cost to reach my goals. So like you I use several tools but I always share my thoughts on how to improve them with the companies behind. Or videos like this.
Using several programs I am used to. But I curse them when I have to move content back and forth between programs to alter it. It is pointless and is a reoccuring accumulating loss of time. But I guess Serif is okay with that.
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I didn't saw this as a fanboy discussion.
It's also interesting to me what other people like about
programs I know and they often don't say the things
I like or dislikeCoreldraw was my main program when I was working professionally
in digital printing and I still like it still for curves and nodes work.
Still own CorelDraw 2020 and use it from time to time. Btw VS comes
very close to Coreldraw for this kind of work.It's no problem at all for me to switch between different programs as long
as it's done via clipboard. I'm used to that since multitasking exists and
computers are so powerful today that they handle this with ease.
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@Subpath Sending objects back and forth only makes sense when they are simple - when I am half way through a complex design in Affinity is not carried beautifully or identically over to VS or anything else. It is another conversion (to PDF or SVG) just via the clipboard. But again mostly Serifs fault because their software has so few vector features. Sending complex parts of a design to VS to make a distortion effect and back is simply disastrous also via the clipboard.
I also still have a thing for CorelDRAW but I simply have too many tools now. I think they buried themselves in old code and architecture. Corel purchased Gravit Designer instead of making their own webbased version of CorelDRAW. An interesting move. I also use Gravit myself for when I am using other computers than my own and it has the worst gradient editor I have used. A harsh tool if you are using Corel on a desktop. I am not sure where Corel are heading. More or less milking their premium cow for as long as they can.
That is why VS is a fresh breath of air.
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Yes, you are right, the transfer via clipboard is difficult when you
want to move complex designs. Then hopefully the export will work.I know Gravit and have used it too, but it is more of a limited online
application for me.Corel seems to have developed some greedy habits for me, I first had to
turn off their rather intrusive online advertising when I installed CorelDraw.
In the future I will think more than twice about buying an upgrade from
Corel because of this.Vector App development will continue to progress I think and the more
users are dissatisfied with the big companies the more opportunities
the smaller developers will have.
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@Subpath said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
Yes, you are right, the transfer via clipboard is difficult when you
want to move complex designs. Then hopefully the export will work.It won't. Basicly same issues due to same data formats involved. Sometimes smaller differences for some reasons. I often export a TIFF from some programs to make final adjustments in Photoshop or Illustrator before printing in color. Always do that to avoid printing from the amateurishly coded and bug crippled Affinity. But complex vector content... boom.
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@Ingolf said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
Inkscape VS Affinity Designer | The Ultimate Comparison (Youtube)
Interesting comparison! Certainly the remarks about the Inkscape Pen tool will be considered.
I did not see speed being mentioned (maybe I did not notice). I think it is very relevant, and certainly AD has that part working. But of course that does not explain or justify the lack of features.
About color image tracing in Inkscape: did anyone tried that?
And what about Linux? How important is to have it running on Linux also?
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@vectoradmin said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
@Ingolf said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
Inkscape VS Affinity Designer | The Ultimate Comparison (Youtube)
And what about Linux? How important is to have it running on Linux also?Don't go there. I have a few machines running Linux but just to keep older machines running. I have 20 years of Linux experience and it is support and workaround hell. Linux enthusiasts tried to persuade Serif to make Linux ports for years but Serif is not that dumb. The money territory is Windows, macOS and tablets. There are endless debates about Linux market share that are simply not based on facts. I heard about the forthcoming "year of desktop Linux" since 1994. It is a fantsy.
Never heard an amatuer or professional mention Affinity. Never saw anyone use Linux either. As a new company with a new excellent product I would focus on building a solid professional product plus economy and building a brand before even considering Linux.
I would focus on making the software work in Asia and other markets with a huge population. CorelDRAW is still big in those regions. And support for right-to-left and vertical text and chinese characters is rarely built in in many programs.
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@vectoradmin said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
@Ingolf said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
Inkscape VS Affinity Designer | The Ultimate Comparison (Youtube)
Interesting comparison! Certainly the remarks about the Inkscape Pen tool will be considered.Great! I knew you would notice
I did not see speed being mentioned (maybe I did not notice).
Inkscape is famous for its lack of speed. The more you throw at it the worse it gets. Affinity is amazingly fast but I think they also built the architecture on hardware and software possibilities of the present. I certainly never would say something bad about some of their architects that really made some great internal design decisions.
About color image tracing in Inkscape: did anyone tried that?
Just a bit. It is build on the same open source component used by everyone else, I think.
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@Ingolf , @vectoradmin
They explain the lack of features in Affinity Designer always
with the small developer team. As far as I can see they have
several versions to manage. Designer, Photo, Publisher
on the Mac, PC and iPad.That the programs also run on the iPad makes itself surely also paid
they are also quite a good alternative to what is otherwise offered.In a statistic from 2022 they spoke of 2.2% Linux users.
No idea if this number will increase significantly.
even if Windows 11 now comes with online account compulsion.
Windows users are supposed to be around 74% by the way.
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@Subpath said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
@Ingolf , @vectoradmin
They explain the lack of features in Affinity Designer always
with the small developer team. As far as I can see they have
several versions to manage. Designer, Photo, Publisher
on the Mac, PC and iPad.Haha yes that is indeed their official explanation. The more obvious reasons goes deeper. They could do tons of stuff to mitigate their issues but rarely do. I have known the company since they made software for Windows, the Plus products. Also developed painfully slow but I wasn't following them from their birth.
They also cannot attract new devs to their headquarter in the middle of nowhere. Their current job offers have been open for half a year or more. But no one wants to relocate to Nottingham… meanwhile I have been part of projects with dev teams from Asia, Europe and USA manager via and over teams. Complex app and products. It worked fine.
Serif doesn’t want offices or dev teams elsewhere. They are slow because of business decisions. The result is a small team and few specialists. Bad specialists. Look at their vector algorithms. All of them. No trace of many years in the business. On top of that they try to release even more products on several platforms further crippling the development of all of their products.Worse still is that I don’t think they are part of any business network. Their decisions often make me think they do not get feedback from professionals. Their forum is almost proof of that.
But enough about Serif.
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@Ingolf Tell me how you really feel about Serif!
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@vectoradmin said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
@Ingolf said in Inspiration: Inkscape vs Affinity Designer review:
Inkscape VS Affinity Designer | The Ultimate Comparison (Youtube)
Interesting comparison! Certainly the remarks about the Inkscape Pen tool will be considered.
B-spline for example:
Inkscape Bspline (YouTube)
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I always appreciate videos discussing the pros and cons of different software. I never used inkscape so it was interesting to learn more about it. The whole time I was watching it I kept thinking to myself, "yeah but VS can already do this or that!"
The expectation of only using one program for all your vector design needs is a relatively recent one .
We easily forget that 18 or so years ago before the infamous Adobe purchase of Macromedia, people using multiple professional apps that overlapped in functionality was the norm. I remember owning both macromedia and adobe back in those days. Even years after, the art director at the first screen print shop I worked in preferred Macromedia Freehand over Illustrator and only used it when necessary.I use VS for almost all my vector designing right now, but I still use Affinity occasionally , I keep CS6 around for emergencies and I have several specific function vector apps like Vectoraster and Vector Magic and Patternodes, etc... that do a specific task well.
The pen tool functions in Inkscape look cool - I'd have to go play around with them more to gain an opinion on how well it fits within VS.
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@vectoradmin I took the chance and downloaded the alpha version of Inkscape 1.2 for macOS to retry and re-evaluate the pen modes in Inkscape. B-spline is actually a helpful tool and Spiro too if one learns to use them.
Examples (Imgur)
Spiro spline tool for Illustrator (Pixeology website)
b-spline in CorelDRAW (YouTube)
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All the feature and functionality of pen/bezier tool explain here in detail. Some of its features are very good.
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Also related when speaking of b-spline and spiro, the good old Bezigon tool from Macromedia Freehand:
Bezigon demo (YouTube)Can also be found in the free to try Gravit Designer that as I understand is created by former Freehand users:
Perhaps the bezigon tool is better explained here:
Gravit Designer basics. Bezigon tool (YouTube)
Explained in documentation (Gravit Designer homepage)
Bezigon tool in Gravit Designer (Facebook video)
