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.

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