Affinity v2 is already a reality from Adobe's great competitor

One of Adobe's great competitors returns to the fray. Affinity v2 is already a reality and it comes to make even more difference. As we know, Adobe has been the giant that has taken over all the space in terms of design and editing tools. But it does not mean that it was the only one. In fact, more and more companies are choosing other types of software due to the high price of Adobe. And it is that alternatives such as Corel Draw or Gimp (which is free open source software) cover the needs of small businesses. And although these tools are not equally adapted to all environments, nor are the tools equally effective, they are sufficient for many less complex jobs.

Affinity is in a better position, where its tools already go head-to-head with the Photoshop giant, Illustrator… among others. And although it is more limited, because it does not have the wide variety of creative cloud applications, it does have the most used applications. That is, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. In the case of Affinity, their names are Photo, Designer, and Publisher respectively.

Affinity expands its tools

And it is that Affinity has launched this new version to expand all the tools it already had. But, as they themselves say, there were many others that users requested and missed when migrating to the Serif company's software. Now added to increase the user's ability to create their designs and let their creativity fly. One of the novelties is having added its version to the iPadOS system, since it is something essential today. Many of the designers telework and move from one city to another, which makes having a tablet essential to work. Adapting a full version to this has become a necessity. which can make many decide to switch from one software to another.

Many tools that were already in Illustrator have been augmented for Affinity Designer. As an example, any of the designers using illustrator will know what the 'knife' tool is. Something that Designer lacked and that has already been resolved with this new version. But it is not the only tool added 'from scratch'. The following tools have also been added or modified to improve the user experience:

• measure and area: We will be able to measure lengths of lines, segments and all kinds of areas at any scale.
• X-Ray View: A new view mode to be able to work on your composition. This is very useful for specifically selecting an object or curve in a more complicated design.
• DXF/DWG import: Import and edit documents from other programs such as AutoCAD and DXF with greater speed and precision, without changing the structure of the layers or their scale in the original document.
• shape generator: Add and subtract shapes and segments more easily and intuitively. You can create the most complicated shapes by dragging segments to combine or we can subtract them by modifying them.
• vector warp: Something that had been highly requested by the community. You can apply a vector warp without destroying the shape over any vector illustration or text.

For Affinity Photo they have also added several new features:

• pitch range: We can create a mask in a specific color and apply different adjustments to the mask that we have previously generated or paint directly with the tone we choose.
• Band Pass: With this utility you can create a mask that is centered on the edge of each of the images.
• Luminosity: Brightness range to mask; for example, we can isolate some layers to give light or remove it depending on each area of ​​the image.
• brush engine: More interactive, you will no longer have to order it through names or saving one before another. Now you can drag and drop to have them better organized.

The following news are from Publisher:

• Books: Now we can combine the separate documents as if they were chapters and create a longer publication
• Footnotes, endnotes and margins.
• style picker: A copy and paste, but also styles, where you can copy color, typography or the effects of the objects you want.
• automatic flow placement: With this functionality, we can create a single design that is automatically repeated throughout the document with all the images we want.

The price difference with your competitors

It is true that some of the software is open source and free. This makes them not have any kind of competition, if you can not afford to buy one of these paid software, you go directly to the 'Open Source'. those free tools they tend to be more limited, the workflow is not the same and the tools are not as efficient, that's true. That is why many people who start and want to try, look for different ways to obtain paid software for free. There are even tutorials for it, but with Affinity this could change.

Paying a monthly subscription, as is the case with Adobe's Creative Cloud, is unaffordable for many. Even more so if we take into account that there are students or people who are dedicated to it for entertainment from which they do not get any benefit. A viable alternative would be a one-time payment or a limited subscription to the ephemeral entertainment of someone watching some YouTube video to learn how to do basic things. youIt is also difficult for small companies that do not generate as much money and that are just starting out in the world of design.

The alternative offered by Affinity seems to break all this. And it is that, at least, you make a single payment for each version of the software. And each version is not annual, but takes many years to come out. In fact, the company was born in 1987 and in 2022 they have released the second version of their definitive software. The price of Affinity for its complete software package is €199 (single payment). If we compare it with that of Adobe (includes Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) it would be €72,57 per month. In fact, as an exit promotion, Affinity has decided to set a price of €119. But you can also buy each of these versions separately with a substantial discount between the prices for Mac and Windows and those of iPad.