Affinity Designer vs VectorStyler
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@gotanidea But AD can after all these years still not do RTL text. It is laughable. Just think how much of the world population they exclude as potential users by not having this solved.
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I was always a little surprised that AD was advertised as a
vector graphics software and still think thats a bit misleading.On the other hand, I found the pixel/vector mix quite ok. Although it was a
little strange that there were no real vector brushes. But an isometric studio that
I still love to this day. I also liked experimenting with the symbols too.But I stopped supporting AD when I realized that user are already
waiting years for desired improvements.That's when I looked around and discovered VectorStyler, downloaded
the test version, started the program and suddenly found myself in
a vector graphics candy store. Where everything around me was
full of vector graphics sweets
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@fde101 Agree. What I learned from this week's Serif's betrayal of their community to stay independent, is that actually the Studio Link (and same goes for Adobe Suite), we should NOT use only ONE company as our source for all our work/flows. That said, I am completely switching to tools that are independent of each other and will work, as I started 25 years ago. Back than, I used PageMaker and Quark for dtp, Freehand and Illustrator for Vector, Photoshop for editing.
Curious about your take on QX. You said, you use it still to this day. I am just testing it and considering purchasing the license tomorrow. It feels like home, kind of. Mature. Pro. Very complex. But full of features for details and no BS functionalities.
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@michaelokraj said in Affinity Designer vs VectorStyler:
Curious about your take on QX. You said, you use it still to this day. I am just testing it and considering purchasing the license tomorrow
I also use QuarkXPress as my DTP program. About 10 years ago I was able to upgrade an old 3.32 QuarkXpress license to 9 at a reasonable price and got 10 for free. QuarkXPress 10 has been running very stable for almost 9 years on my macMini under OS X 10.11 together with Illustrator CS4 and Photoshop CS5. I access it via JumpDestop from my current Macbook, which often has a 32" display attached. And VertorStyler ist running too on the old macMini as a backup. The Quark installers are usually running 30 days without activation: https://www.quark.com/support/installers
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As for my research, I only read positive opinions about QX. Furthermore, the fact, it has been here since my days at my university in the 90s is mind-blowing. The lack of public success (kind of) I view as a positive thing. It is not about being loud and vocal and beloved by the masses, but about professionalism. I am so tired of gamification and making software gimmicky, too easy to use as it has to be addressed to the masses, lack of complexity as people are intimidated by it and so on. This is also what I like about VS. It is complex as it is not a toy.
The version 2024 of QX is very stable and so smart. I like it a lot. The last time I tested it, was exactly to this day in March 2018. That version was not my cup of tea. I just cancelled Adobe and wanted to switch to something else. I feel, NOW is a good time to jump into the cold water.
Btw, I started with 3.32, I guess, as everybody did
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@michaelokraj said in Affinity Designer vs VectorStyler:
Btw, I started with 3.32, I guess, as everybody did
Back then, there was really only QuarkXPress, Freehand and Photoshop on Mac. PC's and the upcoming InDesign 1.0 were not taken seriously by professionals. The decline of QuarkXpress began with the spread of Windows in the professional sector. It was also said that Quark was not as stable on Windows.
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@creative There was PageMaker. Which I used to the max. But it was in the shadows of QX to be fair. And for some, Freehand
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@michaelokraj said in Affinity Designer vs VectorStyler:
Curious about your take on QX. You said, you use it still to this day. I am just testing it and considering purchasing the license tomorrow. It feels like home, kind of. Mature. Pro. Very complex. But full of features for details and no BS functionalities.
Pros and cons, like anything else. It is pricy, particularly compared to Affinity Publisher, and the updates come on a subscription so if you stop paying you keep the version you have but might need to start over with a new license to get any further updates later (if you wait too long in between) as they don't just sell outright updates otherwise.
For simpler projects I tend to prefer working in Affinity Publisher or some other suitable application because I find the interface more natural, better designed overall, and easier to navigate. When doing more advanced projects that require features that are still lacking in the Affinity suite, then I have QXP to fall back on, because it can do the job.
I didn't "grow up" with Quark the way some users may have, so if you spent more time using it in the past, you may find the [dis]organization of its pull-down menus to be easier to manage, but from my perspective, things seem to be semi-randomly placed in locations where I would not expect to find them (ex. there are ten items in the Edit menu with names that end "Styles..." even though there is a Style menu right next to the Edit menu; it is a macOS standard that spell checking should be in the Edit menu, but in QXP it is in the Utilities menu, along with word/line counts and the ability to set up Hyphenation Exceptions - even though hyphenation styles are defined using the "H&Js..." command in the Edit menu - a very clear and descriptive name for a menu item...), which is one of the bigger reasons I tend to prefer using something else when the project is less demanding.
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Tables and graphs are necessary for my infographic work. Affinity Suite (Publisher) comes to rescue for tables. I copy and paste graphs from Excel and process them as per the client's requirements. Canva can do both, but I doubt they will bring the graphs feature to AD. I am looking forward to VS adding these features one day.
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Because you mentioned tables and graphs, I had a vague
thought of referring you to “cavalry.” I wanted to at least
mention it.Here the Link
https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/ -
@Subpath Thank you for the link. I will check this app.
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@syllie said in Affinity Designer vs VectorStyler:
@gotanidea But AD can after all these years still not do RTL text. It is laughable. Just think how much of the world population they exclude as potential users by not having this solved.
AD is disappointing in terms of advanced vector illustration features, but its stability, performance and graphic design tools are on a par with Adobe Illustrator's. AD/ VS have their own strengths and weaknesses.
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@syllie Agree. Language support is a mess in AD. I really struggle when adapting artwork to South Indian languages. I use Amandine (https://amadine.com) by Belight Software, which is hardly a 40mb size app and handles it very well.
M1 MacBook Air, 16GB, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1
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just like to add, that "cavalry" is made for procedural vector animation
( sometimes called Mograph for vector animation )its file saving is a bit unique, instead of saving a file you render it
to save it. But its also possible to copy a Result as .SVG to the
Clipboard to use it in a another app. btw you can also render a
vector animation in lets say 20 single vector filesits for animation but renders also stills, there is a free version
its a offline app (but you need a online account) and some
versions are subscription based -
@Kumr We are more limited on Windows but our options have improved from what they were before, thankfully.
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@Subpath Its interesting app and have potential. With a little patience, it may be possible to accomplish some (or most) of those effects using VS.
@debraspicher Yes, VS is evolving.
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@Kumr said in Affinity Designer vs VectorStyler:
With a little patience, it may be possible to accomplish some (or most) of those effects using VS.
of course
VS offers many possibilities to do things, thats is why it is my
favorite and main program for vector graphics.The interesting thing about Cavalry was, for me, the way
how different parameters can be linked to each other. -
@Subpath For all my new projects I'm using VS, slowly moving away from AD. For image editing I am using Pixelmator/Photomator.
Cavalry is definitely interesting in that aspect. One more app may be worth checking out in this context is 'Paragraphic' (still in development) by Lostmids, the same company that developed Vectoraster.
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thanks for the tip, also interesting but its Mac only
In the next few days I will post a possible solution
for Windows users, there is still a bit of work to be done -
They mentioned that it will be a cross platform app. (https://paragraphic.design)
In the next few days I will post a possible solution
for Windows users, there is still a bit of work to be doneI am on Mac but curious about it.
