Calvinator

Yeah, right.

foregoneconclusion said:

Calvinator said:

Listen, I'm as disgusted with Adobe as anybody, but to say Affinity Designer is comparable is just lunacy. Designer's handling of layers is its worst bugaboo. Everything is placed on a new layer, including each letter of text. How can you find or manage anything if you've got hundreds of layers?? Designer doesn't even have a way of moving an object a specified number of pixels. That's great if you don't need precision in your designs. I could go on and on. How do I know all this? I tried Designer for over three years, hoping with each release (including v2) they would wake up and make obvious improvements. Sorry, Designer is one big turd.

???? Affinity Designer does not put each individual letter of text on a separate layer. Click the canvas with either the Artistic or Frame text tools and type away. It will all be on the same layer until you stop typing and select another tool. You can also select 'Pixels' as the measurement for your file under Document Setup and then use the X,Y coordinates in the Transform panel to place items in exact pixel positions. 

I should have clarified. When you create text and convert to curves, each character is placed on its own layer. And the reason for this would be…? As far as moving elements a specified distance (like Illustrator's Move dialog), Designer makes you take the long way around by going to Transform and calculating exact pixel position instead of simply entering something like *move or copy 100 pixels on the X axis and 30 pixels on the Y axis*. Illustrator also lets you see a preview of the transformation here, just as it does with so many other transformations. Designer is rudimentary and unsophisticated. And largely unimproved. I wish it weren't so.

Listen, I'm as disgusted with Adobe as anybody, but to say Affinity Designer is comparable is just lunacy. Designer's handling of layers is its worst bugaboo. Everything is placed on a new layer, including each letter of text. How can you find or manage anything if you've got hundreds of layers?? Designer doesn't even have a way of moving an object a specified number of pixels. That's great if you don't need precision in your designs. I could go on and on. How do I know all this? I tried Designer for over three years, hoping with each release (including v2) they would wake up and make obvious improvements. Sorry, Designer is one big turd.

I began using Illustrator when it was known as Illustrator 88, and Photoshop since before it had layers. So you could say I've been around the block with these Adobe products.

After retiring, it no longer made sense for me to pay a monthly subscription to Adobe, so I decided to try the Affinity Photo and Designer software. That was a few years ago. I even upgraded to the 2.0 versions less than a year ago, setting myself up for more disappointment.

I wanted to love the Affinity products —I really did— hanging in there year after year and hoping for the addition of meaningful features. But no, everything accomplished so elegantly by Adobe was a jury-rigged workaround with Affinity. I came to the conclusion that Affinity simply gave up on making its software even moderately competitive with Adobe. With this recent announcement, I can speculate that Affinity was hanging around hoping to be acquired.

What an ugly mess of promises and potential.

And by the way, is that Eddie Cue's college graduation photo? C'mon, Ed…