My Own Experience with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, with Art as a Hobby

I ditched Adobe because of that ridiculous subscription model. Fortunately, I was able to get Affinity Photo. I decided to get the whole package of Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher--all replacements of Adobe applications that once made up my childhood. I'm not willing to pay an expensive fee for nostalgia's sake. I want to save my work on my PC, not in Adobe Cloud! Anyway, it was something when I decided to experiment with both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.

Back then, I ditched Microsoft Paint for Adobe Photoshop. It was back when I could borrow someone's CD and install it on my PC. Right now, I'm using Affinity Photo over Microsoft Paint for the same reasons why I used Adobe Photoshop over Microsoft Paint. The incorporation of layers and the easy movability of objects made it ideal for artwork. In college, I learned to use CorelDRAW. However, I think I'll use Affinity Designer since I'm not a professional graphic artist!

One needs to take a look at what Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are for. Affinity Photo is primarily for pixel-based drawings. Affinity Designer is for vector-based drawings. Vector graphics have an infinite scaling ability. That means I can stretch it much more than I could pixel-based photos. However, vector graphics can lack detail, something that pixels can only do.

I tried Affinity Designer and found it trickier. For one, the Vector Cropping tool doesn't remove unwated spaces in the workplace. Instead, it's all about removing unwanted spaces in the vector art, not the workspace. That means I should only use Affinity Designer if I intend to use the entire workspace.

Here's a picture I made of Lake Sohoton from Surigao. Sure, I can make this in Affinity Photo but there are some features Affinity Designer can do that Affinity Photo couldn't. I could actually use the AFDesign file version (the above photo is already converted to raster, sorry in advance) to have it stretched to bigger lengths. Affinity Photo would be more ideal for painting--such as using it in a similar way as one would draw in MS Paint.

However, if I just want to draw a jellyfish (above), I might as well Affinity Photo like I would use MS Paint. Well, except that Affinity Photo can make me do much more in making raster graphics than MS Paint ever would! I would want to make my jellyfish with an adjustable size, remove any unwanted space, and just make a pixel version. Why would I use Affinity Designer just to make that one jellyfish? It would be a huge waste of space IMHO.

Affinity Designer would be more ideal if one were drawing an isometric design. I drew some of these isometric designs simply for fun. I would use Affinity Photo IF I just wanted to draw a crab. However, drawing crabs on the rice field would be more ideal to use Affinity Designer. The same goes for the rice terraces formation that I also drew. Affinity Photo's grid wasn't working for me, when I'm trying to make isometric designs. It could be possible with Affinity Photo, but Affinity Designer can handle isometric better.

As I explored both applications, I say it all depends on the needs and wants. If I want to draw more complex isometric art, I would go for Affinity Designer, all before creating the raster version. Affinity Photo would be more ideal for playing with photographs, such as if I want to make a collage or some arts, like the 3D-looking jellyfish I presented earlier on. However, it seems Affinity Designer is forcing me to use the whole canvas or make much bigger art. I end up using the whole space, only being able to adjust the canvas size, but not trim out the whole document!

Pretty much, I've had fun with these Adobe replacements. Both products have professionals and non-professionals, in mind.

"Will #SahodItaasPresyoIbaba Economics Lower Philippine Gas Prices?

Inquirer Gasoline prices have increased again, haven't they? A few days ago, I wrote why #SahodItaasPresyoIbaba's view of gas prices is questionable . Today, I feel like writing this after several complaints on Facebook. I would like to create a follow-up post. People are complaining too much without understanding the real reason why some countries have lower prices of gasoline. Real talk. We need to talk about economic policies, and of course, please do a study on supply-demand analysis on supply chain management . Let's examine the complaints made by Bulatlat Bulatlat Here's a chart from Bulatlat that compares the increase in prices of gasoline between the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. It's always problematic when people ignore simple economics. It's funny, but Bulatlat mentions this on their website: Note also how expensive our diesel and gasoline products are compared to those of our ASEAN neighbors. The estimated common price today of diesel in...

The Good Old Days when Gasoline was Cheaper Under the Late Noynoy Aquino

Millennials' Voice I would like to clarify first and foremost that this post isn't an attempt to say that the late Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III's legacy was all bad. Some good things happened. However, let me be clear that it's stupid to say, " We don't need economic cha-cha because of the late Noynoy. " However, let me clear that I decided to write this because of a Facebook post called Millennials' Voice , which wrote this: Did you know that during President Noynoy Aquino's time, the price of oil in the world market was high, between $100 and $110 per barrel. But even with those high prices, gasoline and diesel at local pumps in the country were still relatively affordable. Under President Duterte, world oil prices went up and down, from a low of $41 to a high of $101 per barrel. The big jump to $101 in 2022 happened because of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Now, under the current president, world oil prices have gone up again to around $...

#SahodItaasPresyoIbaba Economics' Understanding of How Gasoline Prices Work

International State College of the Philippines Today is Flor Contempacion Day , and rallies are expected. However, whether it's Flor's death anniversary or not, rallies are expected for the wrongest of reasons. I would like to address this photo from the International State College of the Philippines' Facebook page. The demands here are rather clunky and stupid. We have the following demands that would naturally clash with each other, such as: No to the oil deregulation law while demanding lower oil prices. This is simply ignoring the basic fundamentals of economics, namely the law of supply and demand . They say that oil companies are greedy for gain. These rallyists probably don't really understand the difference between revenues and profits . Let's understand the Oil Deregulation Law The Oil Deregulation Law, or the Republic Act No. 8479 , passed on February 10, 1998, under the late Fidel Valdez Ramos. Here's how the liberalization works: CHAPTER II LIBERAL...

The Myth of "Invading" Other Countries Through Foreign Investors and Overseas Filipino Workers

BoardGameGeek Years ago, I could remember how "Filipino pride" seems to be required by the DECS. Some songs in the Filipino subject (or called Tagalog) tend to glorify it. One of the songs was called "Ako'y Isang Pinoy" (or "I'm Pinoy") feels ironic since it was played on an imported music player. We had discussions for years about how Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are often the unsung heroes or the new heroes. The mentality kept going on with how people desired to take a particular course not because they wanted to--it's because they wanted to go abroad. Why I wanted to take Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSIT) was not just to impress people but also to go abroad . However, more people shifted away from BSIT either because they were eliminated (common cause) or because it was too hard for them. Some of them flat out admitted that they took BSIT in hopes of going abroad. Some were taking nursing in hopes of again-- going abro...

Learning from the Late Lee Kuan Yew's Proving Protectionist-Driven Economists Wrong About Multinational Corporations

Reading the book From Third World to First is really a must. The late Lee Kuan Yew was faced with the mentality of the development economists of his day. Here's an excerpt from "Chapter 4--Surviving Without a Hinterland" which I'd like to share from Pages 57-58: After several years of disheartening trial and error, we concluded that Singapore's best hope lay with the American multinational corporations (MNCs). When the Taiwanese and Hong Kong entrepreneurs came in the 1960s, they brought low technology such as textile and toy manufacturing, labor-intensive but not large-scale. American MNCs brought higher technology in large-scale operations, creating many jobs. They had weight and confidence. They believed that their government was going to stay in Southeast Asia and their businesses were safe from confiscation or war loss. I gradually crystallized my thoughts and settled on a two-pronged strategy to overcome our disadvantages. The first was to leapfrog the reg...

Business & Economics Perspective Blogger

Search This Blog