What with the Adobe CC subscription fiasco, my company is already looking for alternatives that we can use wherever it makes sense. Adobe, as part of their new subscription model, is trying to force us unto paying 40% more per seat than an individual license would cost. At that price we would be paying significantly more than we did when we just purchased upgrades. (We have upwards of 80+ seats.)
So far I have managed to push back and make Adobe give me the same pricing for new Teams seats as individuals pay. Not sure how long I'm going to manage that, however, as we are already in "special deal" territory.
We are at the point of using CC for nothing but interop with our customers and vendors wherever we can, and pushing our designers into using alternative tools wherever possible. If Adobe doesn't get their head out of their rear end, we will be buying less software from them, not more.
There seem to be a bunch of Mac-only vector apps coming out in recent years.. Not just these direct Illustrator competitors, but HTML5 animation tools too like Hype, Paintcode, etc.. that provide vector drawing and animation tools, and are coming from small teams and cost very little (relatively speaking)...
Is this because there are more powerful native components in OS X that make it easy/easier to build this kind of application now?
Or did the whole Adobe thing just reach a critical mass of disgruntled-ness and this is the result?
When we started out Adobe was still sticking to their Flash guns. As HTML5 was the only method to make animated web content on iOS, it was clear someone needed to make tools aimed at graphic designers, so we decided that someone should be us! Luckily with no other competing apps around, we didn't have to deal with an uphill battle on feature parity unlike these vector editors do with Illustrator. So I wouldn't say we were disgruntled, just trying to fill in a hole. And, on a personal note I had a need for such a tool for a side project I was working on.
OS X is a great platform to develop for generally speaking. We naturally leverage WebKit, and Quartz and CoreImage frameworks I'm sure do a lot of heavy lifting for the vector-based tools. Also keep in mind a larger percent of graphic pros use a Mac than the general population, so if you're building a tool it is a safe bet to start on the Mac.
In my humble opinion, as a 20 year user of vector software, Sketch sucks for drawing. It has very interesting features, mostly for UI/UX design work, but drawing anything mildly complicated is a nightmare. I'm excited to try Affinity (later today, whenever I have a chance) because their example drawings look very complicated and nuanced.
…But maybe I am not a judge of good vector creative tools because I love Corel Draw and I miss it so very much since I switched to Mac.
Sketch is focussed on UI designers. Affinity is focussed on illustrators. Different markets, with some overlap. In many ways, within the Adobe suite, Sketch is closer to Fireworks than Illustrator.
I think part of the reason you're seeing a bit of an explosion in apps, in addition to the general digruntled-ness with Adobe, is that Illustrator is one of those apps that is serving many different markets — not all of them well.
I think a lot of it is that Adobe's UIs have gotten so relentlessly fucked-up. They have their own cross-platform UI toolkit that always feels just a little wrong. And they keep on making things worse; the latest release of AI, for instance, has a truly horrible new font dropdown menu due to their desire to integrate a 'buy fonts on Typekit' button into what once worked quickly and elegantly.
It's Adobe. Illustrator is buggy and inaccurate with UI flaws that have existed for years. Plus the subscription model really messed with pro indies who paid for CS. We're looking for a big change ASAP.
Really interested to see if this works. Most indie vector apps have not been ready for production use.
I'm looking for something with solid EPS import and export. So far, I've found Sketch flakey (some things imported incorrectly, other things cause visual glitches), OmniGraffle great except when I export a document as EPS which has other EPS-imported elements embedded in it, they appear to be rasterised (which defeats the point). And that's pretty much it–Pixelmator, despite becoming more of a vector tool, doesn't support EPS at all. Inkscape works flawlessly except that it's awkward to use on a Mac, especially without retina support (which is somewhat crucial for an graphic editor).
I've just tried Affinity Designer and it seems like it has good EPS import support (all elements editable etc.) and EPS export, but the exported EPS appears rasterised. When I open it up again in Affinity Designer, it's no longer editable. But maybe I'm just doing something wrong...
There is a new experimental build of inkscape for osx which is slightly less awkward. Search for 'inkscape osx menu', it has been stable for me and you don't need to install an x server.
Serif, the company behind this product, was founded in 1987. It's cool to see innovative new products from people who have been around for a while.
In the software business, too many companies older than a decade just end up milking their installed base forever with lame feature upgrades wrapped in an ancient GUI.
It's smart they going this direction, perhaps a result of them getting some key players in their staff. I haven't played with Serif since probably 2002. Back then the interface didn't seem all that smooth, but they do a lot of work in the education marketing area, so their products are probably evolving reasonably well. It's interesting your mention in the last sentence, because that's how Xara Designer Pro feels in a way for me after yet again buying their latest app. Where as they are adding useful things, some core stuff is still not addressed and GUI is a bit haphazard.
Just tried out the beta. I can't import Adobe Illustrator files yet (their forums says this is coming later). But otherwise it seems like a pretty good replacement. The panning and zooming is much better that AI. You can also use keyboard arrows to scroll through fonts and it shows up immediately, which is another thing about AI that has always annoyed me. I don't see any support for scripting (which I like to use to export icons), but it is a beta.
For myself and other creatives, the only thing really holding us to Mac and PC is Adobe. A complete design suite (illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver, and indesign) would be a complete game-changer for the industry.
Anyone know the leading emulator (or similar) for running OSX programs on linux distros [Kubuntu in my case]? Is there even anything serviceable? I guess I'm after the WINE of OSX.
Looks good, but unfortunately I'm on Ubuntu, may use Win on a VM, but that's it! Such a pitty there's so many new tools like this coming out, but just for Mac. £37 is affordable
I'm very happy to see new alternatives to Illustrator and Photoshop emerge because they are both terrible tools for interface design.
Maybe I'm missing something but basic snapping doesn't seem to be working very well in this beta. With snapping enabled I still can't seem to easily draw rectangles that snap tightly to grid lines. I get locations that are all over the map instead. Sketch used to have this problem as well but they finally fixed it in version 3 and it was extremely frustrating to use for UI design before this was fixed.
So unless I'm missing something this is going to sit on the shelf until they get snapping really nailed down. Looks nice otherwise.
This reminds me of Mischief (for Mac and PC) [1], which is incredibly fast vector drawing application.
The way Mischief handles its details of graphics, speed and huge range of zoom is by using adaptively sampled distance fields (patented technology) [2].
It would be nice to know if Affinity Designer uses some advanced technology to achieve similar properties.
Mischief is a neat program, but it's kind of the opposite of this program — Mischief pretends pixels don't exist, whereas this program has a lot of pixel-centric features.
I am excited to see more application options in this space. Adobe has achieved a monopoly in creative circles with their applications, specifically Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign (and for a long time Flash and Acrobat as well). Flash is a great tool but the format was never really opened to other applications and now it's losing to HTML5. I do credit Adobe for opening up the PDF format, and it would be great if more standard formats could win out regardless of the application that created them.
In the long run, as has been pointed out, the rise of a lot of graphic software packages at this particular juncture has everything to do Adobe's current subscription model. Like many designers, I'm still forced to use Adobe at work because it is being advocated as "the industry standard."
At home, however, I've spent the last year looking for alternatives to InDesign and Illustrator. Ironically, the best two that were found were QuarkXPress (expensive, but had most of the features to equal what was being done in InDesign) and PagePlus, which was the one chosen (granted, it has to be either in a dual boot or in a virtual windows environment, but it does the job).
The problem when the Affinity Suite--most notably Affinity Publisher--finally comes to market is going to be getting commercial print shops to take their native files. Most shops work with hi-res PDFs now anyway, but for that 5-10% of jobs that need to be corrected within the native file(s), the shops are going to need to be able to open the file format. Currently, most professional print shops (in the states) take InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, PDF, QuarkXpress, and sometimes Freehand, Microsoft Publisher and CorelDraw files.
I submit two thoughts:
1) Affinity will need to allow Publisher to import and/or export .idml files so that previous users of InDesign can use their files in Publisher (the open-source program, Scribus, claims to have achieved .idml import currently in version 1.5 which is a developmental build) and export to an interim native file format that the commercial printing world can work with.
2) Affinity will need to go on a massive marketing campaign targeting printing vendors and extolling the virtues of adding Publisher to their armory of tools.
Having said all that--and currently being a PagePlus and DrawPlus customer as well as a proponent of the Designer beta--I can't wait until Affinity kicks Adobe's a$$.
By the way, as a Sketch user, Bohemian Coding's app seems to have been made to compete directly with Fireworks. Although it does work in vector, Sketch does not have the chops to fully compete with Illustrator (which is the territory that Designer fully stands in now). The only app that could have made that claim on OS X is/was Freehand (as DrawPlus, CorelDraw, Canvas, and Xara are all currently Windows-only).
I've been looking for an affordable Adobe Illustrator version for quite a while. I really hope this app will fill the gap that Adobe neglected (why is there a Photoshop Elements and no Illustrator Elements?)
As others have noted, tools like Pixelmater, Sketch and Inkscape each have their own problems, making them an unsuitable Illustrator replacement.
Serif has had a solid Windows vector drawing app (DrawPlus) for a long time. If I remember correctly, a group of ex-Xara developers moved to Serif to write it. Affinity looks similar, I would be surprised if they aren't based on the same codebase.
Zero shared code (am not a programmer but work at Serif). The Affinity stuff is brand new from the ground up developed over the last 4 yrs by a dedicated team.
You're right that some Xara devs added to DrawPlus over the years, but the Affinity titles are fr fr fresh and have different goals and philosophy.
Played with the beta for only 10 min but I was impressed with it. Easier and faster than Illustrator. Felt much less buggy than Sketch 3. AI file compatibility is a concern but looks very promising.
Pretty neat. I just tested it and feels quite smooth (less buggy and resource-hungry than illustrator). I'll stick to my CS, but I'll give it ago for some new projects...
Illustrator needs disruption, true. But Photoshop needs disrupt even more!
(And don't get me started on only two computers for the full subscription install!)
Yes sir. I thought Krita was going to be a good new alternative for Photoshop, being open source but sadly it's got basic things missing. You can't even nudge a layer using arrow keys you have to drag layer content with the mouse. Laggy too. GIMP is well, always GIMP. Paintshop Pro, Corel Draw, Painter those don't really hit the mark. UI is always just odd. I feel lost honestly. I'm glad I have cs6 master collection and plan on squeezing it for all I can over the next few years. I hate mucking around with Illustrator, though it's got some cool things it uniquely does. I use Xara Designer Pro for a lot of work. It's awesome and flexible but it's not gonna replace Photoshop.
Photoshop's seeing some serious disruption in the comics scene; a LOT of people I know have been switching to Manga Studio 5ex and raving about how much better it is for basic painting/drawing, never mind extra domain-specific features PS will probably never have.
Also there are a fuckton of people trying to disrupt PS but very few stabs at Illustrator.
[+] [-] teilo|11 years ago|reply
So far I have managed to push back and make Adobe give me the same pricing for new Teams seats as individuals pay. Not sure how long I'm going to manage that, however, as we are already in "special deal" territory.
We are at the point of using CC for nothing but interop with our customers and vendors wherever we can, and pushing our designers into using alternative tools wherever possible. If Adobe doesn't get their head out of their rear end, we will be buying less software from them, not more.
[+] [-] hnha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbarre|11 years ago|reply
There seem to be a bunch of Mac-only vector apps coming out in recent years.. Not just these direct Illustrator competitors, but HTML5 animation tools too like Hype, Paintcode, etc.. that provide vector drawing and animation tools, and are coming from small teams and cost very little (relatively speaking)...
Is this because there are more powerful native components in OS X that make it easy/easier to build this kind of application now?
Or did the whole Adobe thing just reach a critical mass of disgruntled-ness and this is the result?
[+] [-] tumultco|11 years ago|reply
When we started out Adobe was still sticking to their Flash guns. As HTML5 was the only method to make animated web content on iOS, it was clear someone needed to make tools aimed at graphic designers, so we decided that someone should be us! Luckily with no other competing apps around, we didn't have to deal with an uphill battle on feature parity unlike these vector editors do with Illustrator. So I wouldn't say we were disgruntled, just trying to fill in a hole. And, on a personal note I had a need for such a tool for a side project I was working on.
OS X is a great platform to develop for generally speaking. We naturally leverage WebKit, and Quartz and CoreImage frameworks I'm sure do a lot of heavy lifting for the vector-based tools. Also keep in mind a larger percent of graphic pros use a Mac than the general population, so if you're building a tool it is a safe bet to start on the Mac.
[+] [-] armandososa|11 years ago|reply
…But maybe I am not a judge of good vector creative tools because I love Corel Draw and I miss it so very much since I switched to Mac.
[+] [-] adrianhoward|11 years ago|reply
Sketch is focussed on UI designers. Affinity is focussed on illustrators. Different markets, with some overlap. In many ways, within the Adobe suite, Sketch is closer to Fireworks than Illustrator.
I think part of the reason you're seeing a bit of an explosion in apps, in addition to the general digruntled-ness with Adobe, is that Illustrator is one of those apps that is serving many different markets — not all of them well.
[+] [-] egypturnash|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radley|11 years ago|reply
Really interested to see if this works. Most indie vector apps have not been ready for production use.
[+] [-] Osmium|11 years ago|reply
I've just tried Affinity Designer and it seems like it has good EPS import support (all elements editable etc.) and EPS export, but the exported EPS appears rasterised. When I open it up again in Affinity Designer, it's no longer editable. But maybe I'm just doing something wrong...
[+] [-] ou812|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] err4nt|11 years ago|reply
Does ElementaryOS support retina? It works well as a dual boot!
[+] [-] pavlov|11 years ago|reply
In the software business, too many companies older than a decade just end up milking their installed base forever with lame feature upgrades wrapped in an ancient GUI.
[+] [-] michaelbuddy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airlocksoftware|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buro9|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevewillows|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamredwoods|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heldrida|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NickPollard|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|11 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm missing something but basic snapping doesn't seem to be working very well in this beta. With snapping enabled I still can't seem to easily draw rectangles that snap tightly to grid lines. I get locations that are all over the map instead. Sketch used to have this problem as well but they finally fixed it in version 3 and it was extremely frustrating to use for UI design before this was fixed.
So unless I'm missing something this is going to sit on the shelf until they get snapping really nailed down. Looks nice otherwise.
[+] [-] gulpahum|11 years ago|reply
The way Mischief handles its details of graphics, speed and huge range of zoom is by using adaptively sampled distance fields (patented technology) [2].
It would be nice to know if Affinity Designer uses some advanced technology to achieve similar properties.
[1] http://www.madewithmischief.com [2] http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~frisken/frisken.html
[+] [-] Tloewald|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danboarder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graphixgeek|11 years ago|reply
At home, however, I've spent the last year looking for alternatives to InDesign and Illustrator. Ironically, the best two that were found were QuarkXPress (expensive, but had most of the features to equal what was being done in InDesign) and PagePlus, which was the one chosen (granted, it has to be either in a dual boot or in a virtual windows environment, but it does the job).
The problem when the Affinity Suite--most notably Affinity Publisher--finally comes to market is going to be getting commercial print shops to take their native files. Most shops work with hi-res PDFs now anyway, but for that 5-10% of jobs that need to be corrected within the native file(s), the shops are going to need to be able to open the file format. Currently, most professional print shops (in the states) take InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, PDF, QuarkXpress, and sometimes Freehand, Microsoft Publisher and CorelDraw files.
I submit two thoughts:
1) Affinity will need to allow Publisher to import and/or export .idml files so that previous users of InDesign can use their files in Publisher (the open-source program, Scribus, claims to have achieved .idml import currently in version 1.5 which is a developmental build) and export to an interim native file format that the commercial printing world can work with.
2) Affinity will need to go on a massive marketing campaign targeting printing vendors and extolling the virtues of adding Publisher to their armory of tools.
Having said all that--and currently being a PagePlus and DrawPlus customer as well as a proponent of the Designer beta--I can't wait until Affinity kicks Adobe's a$$.
By the way, as a Sketch user, Bohemian Coding's app seems to have been made to compete directly with Fireworks. Although it does work in vector, Sketch does not have the chops to fully compete with Illustrator (which is the territory that Designer fully stands in now). The only app that could have made that claim on OS X is/was Freehand (as DrawPlus, CorelDraw, Canvas, and Xara are all currently Windows-only).
[+] [-] _random_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callumprentice|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fineline|11 years ago|reply
http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/plugins/
[+] [-] wsc981|11 years ago|reply
As others have noted, tools like Pixelmater, Sketch and Inkscape each have their own problems, making them an unsuitable Illustrator replacement.
[+] [-] safetydank|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] authordale|11 years ago|reply
You're right that some Xara devs added to DrawPlus over the years, but the Affinity titles are fr fr fresh and have different goals and philosophy.
[+] [-] donpark|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8bithero|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeyspn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teilo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwatte|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbuddy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|11 years ago|reply
Also there are a fuckton of people trying to disrupt PS but very few stabs at Illustrator.