I don’t really use this software for much in my filmmaking business, just the occasional logo design, so it’s no problem for me to rearrange my toolbars. Designer is actually the persona you’ll need for pattern cutting, so it’s helpful that it’s the default. The default persona is Designer, which is for working with vector shapes, then you also have Pixel (digital painting) and Export (for choosing isolated areas of artwork to export). Affinity Designer has three “personas” – essentially workspaces – which are set up for slightly different types of working. One of the major differences between Illustrator and Designer, however, is that you can’t save a separate workspace just for pattern cutting. The few tools that are missing are minor inconveniences for pattern design, though I’ve seen the developers confirming they’re working on several tools which have been asked for. For people new to design software, £20 a month might sound appealing, but £50 forever is a far better deal.ĭesigner has most (but not quite all) of the same tools as Illustrator, though some have different names. For just £50 per application (they also have Photo and Publisher), you get lifetime updates – bargain! These updates do actually improve and add things to the software, plus the developers listen to feedback about bugs and tools you want – and, for those of us jumping ship from Adobe, Affinity opens Illustrator and Photoshop files natively. So I set about looking for alternatives to Adobe and discovered Affinity. I was also shocked when I discovered hundreds and hundreds of “temporary” files created by Adobe had been stored indefinitely on my computer – it was little wonder I kept running out of storage space! Most of the time, it just looked as though Adobe threw a new interface on top of the old one to make it prettier and that would be about it. For that amount I didn’t feel as though I was getting all that much in terms of bug fixing and upgrades to previous versions of the software. My bill went up each year to the point where I was spending well in excess of £600 per year on software (I had the full suite of software for my filmmaking business, though Illustrator by itself will set you back around £240 per year). While it’s true that Adobe are the market leaders for many types of creative software, I’d simply had enough of them.

Affinity designer import illustrator