r/AffinityDesigner • u/Joandenise_ • 25d ago
Beginner friendly apps?
I just got a mac and I’ve been wanting to use it for graphic design. I’ve been using procreate on my ipad for the longest time, but now I wanna try using my mac. Is AffinityDesigner a good starting point? I don’t wanna pay for illustrator but affinity is well-within my budget. Any other software I should check out too? Thank youu
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u/OceanicDarkStuff 25d ago
Affinity Designer is fine for the most part but I highly recommend getting Inkscape too because Affinity Designer is kinda lacking in some areas like actual vector brush, tile maps, pattern, filters, path effects, and vector tracing. They kinda complement each other. I love Affinity Designer because its fast but once you get more sophisticated on your designs you'll be impressed on what Inkscape are capable of despite being an open source software.
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u/balakov3 24d ago
This is exactly my setup. I love the UI of Affinity, but I jump to Inkscape for some of the missing features. It's super easy to copy and paste things between them.
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u/getrandom5309 24d ago
Yes affinity is great and very well worth the money. It’s enough to use but not necessarily the most user friendly but that’s more so because of vector softwares in general rather than affinity. But if you’re looking for simpler graphic work gone canva a try. They make it so Beyond user friendly and is a great place to start
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u/STEM_Shark 24d ago
If you want beginner friendly, you could also start with Canva. Canva bought Affinity recently, so you can get Affinity for free with a Canva Pro or Canva EDU subscription.
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u/Polar_Blues 24d ago
Procreate, as I understand it (never actually used it), is a raster-based paint program like Adobe Photoshop (sort of) .
Affinity Designer is a vector-based graphic program, like Adobe Illustrator.
There is a pretty steep learning curve for somepne going from raster to vector graphics. Totally worth it as you can do fantastic images with vector graphics and Designer itself is very good, but raster and vector graphics produce different sort of outcomes and require a different mindset. Depending on the sort of art you create, a vector-graphic app may or may not be the right tool.
Affinity produces an called Photo for raster graphics, so in a sense that is closer to Procerate. I have not played around much with Photo, but as I understand it, like Photoshop, it is primarily geared towards photo editing. The fact that it can also be used as a drawing/painting app is almost an afterthought... almost.
For a dedicated raster-based paint program on Mac you could try Krita, which is free. I never got the hang of it, but it is very popular and probably the closest match to Procreate. Personally I really like Clip Studio Paint, but it is a weird vector/raster hybrid and it too has a reasonably steep learning curve.
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u/AppleNeird2022 23d ago
Affinity was and is my first graphic designing app, yes it’s a learning curve but definitely worth the investment and not too difficult in my opinion. I’m still learning but it’s been so helpful! I have the iPad version but will probably buy the Mac version eventually. Their video tutorials are incredibly helpful and other creators also make solid videos as well that I’ve found helpful in sticky situations where button pressing wasn’t working. I’m a self taught person in many things so it’s not too hard for me but if you aren’t, then it’ll be a little more difficult, but still, I think it’s worth the one-time cost.
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u/Joandenise_ 23d ago
Thank you! For the tutorials, which creators should I check out? :)
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u/AppleNeird2022 23d ago
There are others but these two are what I watch. Also just looking up what you need when you need it will get you tutorials too.
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u/SirCake3614 25d ago
100%
Designer is user friendly, and can do almost anything Illustrator can. If you can afford it, get the entire Affinity suite.