You Can Now Try Affinity Apps 6 Months For Free
You really should try it out if you haven’t already.
Recently, design software developer Serif announced that they will be extending the free trial period for their suite of Affinity apps to a 6 month trial. There’s no requirement to share any payment details, or pay for a license to join the trial. You can simply sign up, and test it out for 6 months to see if the Affinity apps are a good fit for your workflow.
I’ve been using the Affinity apps for my graphic design and digital art projects for probably at least around 4-5 years. I first tried the Mac version of Affinity when I switched to the Mac and was looking for a software to replace my old non-subscription copy of Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to try a newer software that would not require a subscription. As I review apps, you’ll probably notice that I tend to gravitate towards apps that don’t require a subscription. That’s not to say that I don’t use any subscription apps, or that I wouldn’t consider a subscription, but Adobe’s subscription pricing at the time seemed pretty high. So I figured I would give some alternatives a try before I decided to purchase a subscription from Adobe.
And I am so glad that I did! I tried out the free trial for Affinity Photo, and after testing it with some projects, I found it had all of the features I used on a regular basis, and had several extra benefits and improvements. The learning curve moving from my older license of Photoshop wasn’t very steep for me, a lot of things are very similar to Photoshop in Affinity Photo. One of the aspects of Affinity that I appreciated from the beginning was Affinity’s approach to the UI layout with the “persona” concept. “Personas” are different workspaces with different tool selections for specific tasks. This helps to reduce clutter in the workspace, and also makes tools more discoverable by organizing them into categories based on functionality.
Another aspect of Affinity that I find useful is the Assets panel. This allows me to save objects, graphics, logos, etc. I’ve designed into an Assets Library. If I want to use this asset in a new project, instead of having to open up the file I created the logo in originally and copy it, I can open the Assets Panel and drag it into my workspace. This streamlines my workflow, because I don’t have to hunt through my project folders as often in order to dig up designs or logos I created that I need to add to a new project. While this is hardly unique to the Affinity apps (Adobe apps offer a similar feature as well), this isn’t something that every Photoshop alternative offers.
Now that I’ve switched to using an iPad as my primary computer for the past 3-4 years, I’ve found that I prefer the iPad versions of the Affinity apps over the desktop ones. Both are great, and offer essentially the same range of features. I haven’t ever noticed any features missing in the iPad versions vs the Mac ones, though there could be some minor features that I don’t use that are missing. Overall, having used both, I think the feature support in Affinity apps between the two platforms is very consistent. So if you’re on either platform, I don’t think you’ll see much of a difference in terms of features. The bigger differences are in the UI optimizations of the apps for the respective platforms.
Many UI elements are consistent between the two, such as the left-hand toolbar options, and the “Personas”. The right hand toolbar is a bit different on the iPad version to condense it and save screen real estate, and many of the options that would be housed in the macOS Menu Bar (File, Edit, View, etc.) are accessed via a couple of buttons along the top of the UI. One of the main reasons I prefer the iPad versions of Affinity (aside from the iPad being my primary device) is that the UI layout feels more efficient in a number of ways which streamlines my workflow. For instance, I often will keep multiple projects open at once in Affinity, and switch between separate variations of the same project. With the Mac version of Affinity, separate projects are switched through like web browser tabs with a tab interface near the top of the app UI. The downside of this design is that I can’t see a quick preview of the project I’m about to open. With macOS, there is a way to solve this by using App Expose, a system feature that shows a preview of each window within an app which allows you to select the project you want to open. This works pretty well, and is probably why they didn’t bother incorporating a ribbon view or gallery view on the desktop version. But on the iPad version, a gallery view is built into the Affinity apps, which makes it easier for me to switch between projects.
The Affinity apps are essential to my graphic design and digital art workflows. And the Affinity apps on the iPad offer a powerful desktop-class suite of design softwares that really makes the iPad a graphic design powerhouse. I would definitely recommend trying the free trial versions of the apps to see how they could fit in your workflow. You can find more details at their website here.