The Truth About Affinity 2.0: What You Need to Know

Get weekly digital assets and exclusive content (7-day free trial):

Check out my 2nd channel

Download my FREE GUIDE - The 7-Day Art Shop

See my art posters and originals

Get a free, 14-day trial to Shopify

Printify makes all my prints and merch

=== === === ===
Where to find me:
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok
Twitter

Some of the links above are affiliate links. None of them require additional cost or purchase from you. They merely give me credit when you use them. Be assured that I only share links to products and services that I fully endorse and use myself.

[TreadStepping]

I love the Affinity suite. Thank you so much Serif. I’m an amateur designer. I don’t publish anything, I just love playing with text, winding up my friends and sending birthday, christmas and celebration greetings. The affinity suite has enabled me to do all of this. Keep going guys and gals. I’m not saying that your software couldn’t be better but what in the whole of life can we say couldn’t be better? Your single pricing structure enables me to be able to afford to tickle the small amount of creativity I have. Thank you so much.

[bgtubber]

You're spot on. And the price reflects their software's capabilities. Does anyone think that the Affinity apps will be that cheap if they had all the bells and whistles? That being said, the fact that we have an Adobe alternative with 90% of the features which is good enough for 90% of the people out there for a fraction of the price is awesome! For my work, I've found that the Affinity apps do that job perfectly well so I don't need any of Adobe's apps. So I happily upgraded to V2. I think that Affinity is still growing. They are a small team, not a corporate giant like Adobe. It will take some time to catch up to them on the innovation front. This takes a lot of time and money.

[stephenroberts]

When I saw the mesh warp filter, I immediately upgraded. The ability to edit text after applying the warp sold me. Then seeing the displace filter in Photo after that felt like validation. Image trace would be nice for some things, but I really don't have a huge need for it. Plus, there is always so much clean up to do after an auto trace that just using the pen and pencil tools are much quicker in the long run.

[gillianmcmurray]

Great quick review, Dave. Thanks! I'm a traditional artist, not a graphic designer, but I have been using Affinity Designer to create embroidery patterns from my sketches. I love it. However I won't be in a rush to upgrade simply because there is no vector trace. I love that they have a way to warp in the new version (it's about time!) but vector trace would have been the thing that swung it for me. Hopefully they will bring that along soon.

[GavinParsons]

Thanks for the honest opinion Dave. As a photographer and graphic designer there's only one tool I was hoping for and that was auto trace. Illustrator has had it for years and I feel it would be the actual game changer people were looking for. I have to seriously think about whether the upgrade is worth it now.

[craigozancin]

The new live masks really do go beyond what Photoshop can do. The luminosity range mask is an excellent example. In photoshop you have to play with the apply image tool to get a static mask. Typically you will repeat this to get a refined mask. In affinity, you add a luminosity rage mask, adjust the curve whatching the image update in real time or the preview. And it is a live mask. It will update if anything changes. You can even readjust it anytime.

[dbreardon]

Content aware and AI aside, I think the majority of professional design work can be done in Affinity.
One thing not mentioned was the ability to share assets, brushes and palettes seamlessly among all three Affinity products. I think that is a major step in the right direction and something I will definitely use. I have yet to do the upgrade but it will be interesting to see how well it works and if you can identify the harddrive location for these shared resources. It's great for a single user on a single computer but if you have a design team working on multiple computers then I think you need to be able to point your computer to a server that stores the shared resources (brushes, assets, palettes, etc). This would allow teams to work more effectively rather than having to export the assets and palettes and brushes.

[Mithferion]

When Affinity tries to innovate on something, people still says (yeah, but they lack on A, B, C...". So, it's a never ending struggle for them (or any other small company that does something associated with big corporations)

[ComicStripArtist]

I think what a lot of folks don't consider is that Affinity products are a work in progress. This is only their second version of their software. There have been 20something versions of Photoshop, each with a handful of major changes. Adding a new feature requires a lot of work, so in Affinity's case, they have to pick and choose which new features to add. I'm sure they could add a ton of new features, most of which would have mediocre functionality, at best. Better to add a few new features that work they way they are supposed to than a lot of new features that sort of work. It will take more than a couple of new versions to get close to being on equal ground with Adobe. I think you'll see more and more innovation as time goes on, but right now they are still playing catch up.

[dawnjohnson]

I’m not a designer, but when it came to pass that I had to create covers for my books and meditations, it was a nightmare. Couldn’t get anything going in any of the old programs. Nothing. Could make nothing happen. Then I found Serif (this was many years ago), and I could make something happen right away. It was really easy to learn for someone who knew nothing about graphic design and book layout. And it was affordable. Really glad I found them. And it took some research because way back then no one had heard of Serif. I’m glad they’ve grown and continue to grow.

[nexusfxcc]

I was being promoted to the new graphic design job at the casino I work at, replacing a company we paid a lot of money to do for us, and the general manager had mentioned that he hates subscriptions when asking me about what software to buy. Looking at what they did, which is print ads, postcards, mailers, and digital signage; I told him I could use Affinity. So since May I have been doing an entire casino's design work and it gets the job done very well. I already put in a requisition for v2 for its improved productivity and the Shape builder and Vector Warp tools will help so much for more complicated graphics. I have Apples Final Cut, and Motion for our video projects as needed....avoiding subscriptions has made him very happy thus far.

[macd]

I think in the majority of cases comparing Adobe and Affinity isn't really sensible--at least not in the way that many people do. With Affinity (insert program) we have a program that costs $40 one time (and has perhaps around 8 years of support given the initial release); with Adobe (insert program) we have a program that costs probably on average about $240/year. So even if we only compare 5 year costs there's a massive difference, i.e. $40 vs. around $1200. (No need to attack me on the math if it's off because regardless the difference will remain percentage-wise massive.) I think it's unreasonable to expect the same level of performance from Affinity. Adobe has a lot more revenue which translates to more personnel resources that can make things happen (including innovate). Affinity may never "catch up" with Adobe, but I'd argue that they have sure made up massive ground. Affinity is for those of us that don't see the value in an absurdly expensive subscription. Adobe is for those that do. For many professionals, $700/year for the suite is absolutely justified and worthwhile.

[joakimsvensson]

I think you make a good point! If you can’t design without all of Adobe’s bells and whistles, perhaps you don’t know how to design. Sure I miss a couple of tools from time to time (especially warp mesh that has arrived in 2.0) but I still prefer Affinity’s workflow before Adobe’s heavily bloated software. I’m a bit disappointed that Serif didn’t develop at least one feature that did not only catch up but went beyond what Adobe offer. I still wonder what thing Ashley Hewson were unable to tell us about in the Something Big is Coming-teaser, “I can’t say that yet *smug laugh*”. No feature Serif has added matches that smugness.

[GrootsieTheDog]

Your point about not needing highly innovative tools to be a good designer is even more evident in the music world. Today everybody can have a professional music studio in their tiny little bedroom. Yet, great albums were made with 1/100th of the technology we have today. And the point really, is that having all that technology can actually be more of a hinderance to productivity.

[takongren]

Hi Dave,

I'm a small publisher. I need layers-accross-the-PDF functionality, so that PDF customers can disable graphics layer accross the document with one click. Sort of a deal-breaker for me and it's not about my ability; I need this for my customers. The app is called "publisher" so... I would think there would be tools for digital publishers. No epub export either. For collaboration, I really would like to have PDF pass-through, so that an edited (forms and mark-up) PDF can be placed in a document.

I'm working on Photoshop and inDesign right now with a borrowed account. The ability of Photoshop to select a subject and select out the sky is an amazing time saver. The built in artistic filters just are incredible.

[Revenant]

The biggest thing I took away was the price for value is there. To me the new productivity tools and new features are really great for the equivalent of a couple of "payments" to Adobe I was able to outright buy 3 products I use to create. * _If you go ahead and take advantage of the 40% off for the Affinity V2 Universal License._

[codywlsmith]

Something that people need to realize is that Adobe launched Illustrator back in the mid 80s. Serif released Affinity Designer in 2014. There are at least 30 years of development time between these. Adobe has been working on refining their tools for DECADES. Serif has been working on their current offerings for maybe 10 years. Why do people think that just because Adobe has specific features that Affinity should be able to have those same ones in less time? Adobe also has SIGNIFICANTLY more money. Hell, they literally just bought Figma for $20 billion. BILLION. Now of course, there is probably some debt financing done there for that, but they have the means to make a $20 billion acquisition. Serif likely hasn't even cracked a quarter billion in profit, so what are they going to use to fund all of the hiring and R&D required to build the same features that Adobe has?

It's asinine to think that Affinity will be 100% on par with Adobe anytime soon. And anyone complaining about that is either ignorant or just plain idiotic. Give Serif the time to develop these features. We are still getting these amazing programs at 1/6 of the cost that it would be to have an Adobe CC sub for a year. The fact that we have a low cost alternative to the predatory model that Adobe has is great. Any designer who refuses to support a company like this and instead continues to spend money every month for Adobe is part of the problem. (Obviously, there are some caveats here including niche features in Adobe products as well as access to things like Premiere and AE). Everyone has their preferences, and I am not trying to say that designers NEED to use one thing over another. But designers have for too long been held hostage by Adobe because it's the standard and it works really well. We should be pushing Adobe to make changes that benefit US, not the other way around. In my opinion, Serif is doing what benefits designers as a collective. Giving us affordable, really great software that we can use to realize our dreams and make a living.

[delightfulsquirtle]

I instantly bought the complete package, tbh it is a steal for that price. The things they added to Designer are enough to justify the purchase for me personally. If they only added mesh gradients, image trace and something like the blend tool I couldnt even ask for more tbh. At least when it comes to my workflow. The best thing about affinity is that it is more fun to use than adobe. And I dont expect them to catch up or overtake them. Adobe getting 50 bucks a month from millions of designers. While affinity asks for a one time payment for a lifetime purchase per version. And at a reasonable price at that! 120 bucks for the full package including win/mac and ipad version... damn.

[bodean]

Im not a professional Designer, but I do design a ton of logos for fun and Affinity is to me what a video game is to a basement dwelling kid. The one thing I appreciate most about Affinity is the one time payment and not a huge monthly fee like the other guys. The new improvements are HUGE for me but again, Im no pro. I hope they continue to add great features which I personally dont mind paying a small fee for as long as they dont lock me out and force me to pay big bucks every month. If the program was paying my bills every month it would be a different story. There was a time back in the day when you could buy Adobe off the shelf and you were good to go but times change and everyone wants to get on that credit card and make you pay their rent to live there. Thanks Affinity for being a better solution for the little guy like me. Great video!

[disruptive_innovator]

Innovation, yep you nailed that. It seems like they are still trying to catch up to some basic adobe features. Shape builder, knife and warp do look nice but I was hopping for some stuff in Designer we didn't get like vector trace, better vector brushes, scattering and controlling many vector objects with parent objects. And I've been looking over the release notes and I'm not sure if 2.0 has objects/text along a path or a true vector erase brush but I don't think it does. Anyway, I think I will hold off on buying 2 unless they drop more of those features in a later release.
Thanks for the excellent work covering Affinity, art, business and design!