50% off also includes individual applications Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher which makes them $59.99 each.
50% Off Everything: Affinity V2 Universal Licence $137.99 @ Serif
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Neatoboy on 08/06/2024 - 07:18 affinity.serif.com (3366 clicks)
Last edited 08/06/2024 - 15:17 by 1 other user
Last edited 08/06/2024 - 15:17 by 1 other user
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Affinity Designer 2 is the best Adobe Illustrator vector alternative on the market in my view, I use it professionally.
I paid A$159.99 for the universal license when it was launched in 2022 and there have been several major feature patches since that time.
The other packages are also top notch, but I use them less so can't comment on the more high end features. The UIs are all consistent though, so easy to pick up, and the packages are all 100% interoperable.
Patch cycle seems to be about every 6-8 weeks, which is pretty impressive. Not that I've experienced any bugs.
Adobe Illustrator is so unstable that it’s honestly hilarious how bad it is and how it hasn’t really improved.
Illustrator is replaceable for me in my work, but InDesign is not. Affinity Publisher isn’t really there yet.
Glad it's not just me. I had it crashing on me when doing very basic stuff
I work on huge files (maps for buildings/venues, outdoor spaces etc) and complex illustrations. I’ve learned to basically save every 5 minutes and also save multiple iterations as separate files just in case.
It’s also worth pointing out they were recently bought by Canva so that also puts a question mark on the product’s future.
The software is very good and what i think is at the same level as Adobe, but without the subscription fees. With this deal it is equivalent to one or so months on Adobes subscription model. So if you were going to buy an Adobe subscription, get Affinity instead and if it doesnt work out, then goto to Adobe, and you have not lost out financially, plus you also get the iPad apps. There has not been any negative changes since Canva purchased Serrif.
You're buying a perpetual license though, so any future changes shouldn't effect the current products in their current form.
Affinity 1 is still an excellent product, and honestly I'd probably still be using that if I wasn't able to claim the upgrade to V2 on my tax. :-)
We can all speculate about the future but who knows what the next AI-driven super app is going to be in two or five years? My guess is that AI generation is going to cause a lot of disruption across the board, most of the implications of which we're not even aware of yet. Odds on we'll all be looking to buy something completely different down the track regardless.
The Canva thing could indeed go a few different ways, but those ways have as much potential upside as they have downside, such as the potential for better interoperability with Canva products.
What's the usual pattern when a product sells out and shanks their clientele base?
Same with adobe and figma.They cancelled that deal though, so that's irrelevant
@compound: Okay, when you mentioned Adobe and Figma I thought you were referring to Adobe's plans to acquire Figma last year. I know nothing about their pricing.
I wouldn't call anything a 'usual' pattern.
You just remember the worse outcomes better than the positive or neutral outcomes because of cognitive negativity bias, conflict being inherently more newsworthy than seamless mergers, and angry people on the internet being much more motivated to rage post on Reddit than happy people.
Regardless, I continued to use an old Adobe Illustrator license for several years after Adobe moved to a subscription model and the product continued to have the same functionality as the day I bought it. Same here, in that the Affinity product that you buy today will continue to be a great product and continue to be usable in its current form regardless of where the company goes in the future.
@AngoraFish: Depends on your interaction with it. There's being negative and there's critical thinking by calling out predatory business practices when they gain monopoly.
Is this going to happen in the future? Adobe has a very large customer base and Affinity has been smart to capitalise on a better value proposition for customers. Adobe will be covered in courses and is promoted at creative University courses and colleges, so i cant see Adobe being affected too much by Affinity products, but it may put a downward pricing pressure on Adobe, or increase the price of affinity if the price difference is large for a long time.
Announcement and commitment was made off the back of the acquisition around this by Canva https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and…
I used the publisher v1 to design almost everything for my previous business. It's simple to use, quite fast.
For a more complex task, I feel like Photoshop is still king
Also king on bloatware, ram & gpu.
For a more complex task, I feel like Photoshop is still king
Affinity Publisher is intended to be a page layout tool and isn’t comparable to Photoshop. Affinity Photo is more akin to Photoshop, whereas Affinity Publisher is more like Adobe InDesign.
Also worth noting if you have v1 and want to upgrade to v2, the upgrade bundle for the same universal bundle + a few digital freebies is a further 25% off.
Total for me came to $103.49.
Awesome. I didn't even have v1 bundle, just the designer and it made me eligible for this deal. Thanks!
thanks a lot for mentioning this! I had just a license for Affinity Photo V1 for Windows I bought ages ago for 20 odd bucks, and was able to claim the $103 AUD for everything V2 offer, too. awesome
Just upgraded from v1 Photo macOS to full v2 suite Windows+Mac+iPad. Not a bad deal! :)
Thanks for the tip, just did that as well!
Website mentions it will soon be free for nonprofits and schools. Probably best to wait and get it for free if you have an edu email.
Nice pick up, although they say only for K-12, and the implication of that post is per-school licensing only rather than them giving out free keys to anyone with a .edu email address.
Damn, I was getting excited about seeing affinity photo traffic accident diagrams in the forums, with everyone levelling up from MS Paint.
You don't "level up" from MS Paint. MS Paint is the end game.
Yep I would imagine it works like it does for Canva Education currently. You just need to have the organisation set up an account or you can apply directly as a K-12 staff member.
Perfect timing with my Lebanon Adobe subscription ending, thanks.
As a casual user of it, a lifetime licence that includes iPadOS apps is awesome.I have been using Designer and more recently Publisher. These two products alone are VERY much worth the asking price, even at RRP. I use them for business and it has saved my $1000 over the years. For 99% of people who dont do design as a full time job, you do not need adobe.
Who kows whats going to happen with the Canva aquisition, so get these prices now, while you still can.
Nice!!! I was so close to buying this full price the other day.
Is this better than Inkscape?
I would say yes, personally.
Inkscape is in my experience a bit clunky, not always intuitive, less easy on the eyes and less beginner friendly. Affinity runs smooth as butter and has the finish that one would expect of a commercial-grade product.
If you're familiar with Inkscape and it's doing everything you need it to, however, then there's no specific reason you would need to change to something else.
1000% yes.
If you were to compare them to cars, Affinity Designer is a Rolls Royce, and Inkscape is a Camry.
Inkscape is awesome, powerful, free and open source, available on linux, and does everything you need. But it can be clunky at times and some UI choices can be questioned.
Affinity Designer is very good, stable and fast.
It lacks the path trace stuff in Inkscape to turn a raster image into a vector, but for that you can just use Inkscape (I do).
It doesn't have the path effects, pattern on path stuff that Inkscape has.
I find a few very minor things that seem to be harder in Affinity Designer, but most things are very easy.
It imports and exports SVG and this can transfer to and from Inkscape, but some things like blurs may not make it across, but it's the same either way.
It is not on Linux, but then again Inkscape is not on iPad.
Thanks. I’ve found stability to be a weak point in Inkscape (at times).
Love affinity designer. Such an great application. This is an amazing price for this suite. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the deal, seeing the comments here and yt, I reckon it's finally time to ditch adobe and the VPN :)
Heavily, heavily recommend buying this if you are an Adobe addict like I was. Especially if you have an M-chip Mac. These guys actually care about performance, the UI is modern, and it’s very good software.
RAW development in Photo V2 is unbelievable. Photoshop doesn’t touch it IMO
Almost every workflow is more non-destructive than the Adobe counterpart, in Designer and Photo.
Needs to be used for a few projects, then you will believe haha
I just bought this. So far I am pretty impressed.
I have Affinity Photo V1, and while I agree that it works well for simple individual RAW conversions, the major downside is that you can only develop one RAW file at a time. I used to use Photoshop CS6 with the Adobe Camera RAW plug-in, which let me open up multiple RAW files all at the same time for batch editing and adjustments. I can't do this in Affinity Photo V1, can this be done in Affinity Photo V2?
Ah yea - not entirely I believe. I think I have a slightly different use case - I never used Adobe Camera RAW for multiple photos at once. When I’m doing a lot of photos with similar edits (such as personal photography), I tend to use darktable. I used Lightroom years ago but weaned myself off it slowly, Darktable is actually extremely good IMO.
Affinity Photo (previously I used photoshop) is the tool I reach for to replace darktable for more sophisticated edits. Usually my litmus test is whenever I reach for some luminance masking, frequency separation or touch ups, I fire up Affinity.
I can see how this would be annoying if you’re doing heaps of shots like that at the same time though. I believe it can batch apply raw develops non destructively, but that’s not really the same thing.
I have heard of Darktable, but have not gotten around to giving it a try. Photoshop + Adobe Camera RAW was the best photo editing software combination for my workflow. I much preferred it over Lightroom, as I wasn't much of a fan of the catalogue system that Lightroom uses. I prefer to store my photos with my own file structure in Finder on my Mac, rather than having to import my photos into a catalogue. I loved being able to do everything in the one app. My RAW conversions would be done in Camera RAW, and any extra editing in Photoshop. If Affinity had the ability to batch edit RAW files, it would be the perfect replacement for Photoshop + Camera RAW IMO.
for batch edits I use Luminar Neo, also one-off payment, no subscription required. it's been great, including the fact that it comes native for M1 apple chips. it's a direct Lightroom rival in the sense that it combines catalogue and editing, and it's easy to just apply all changes from one image to, say, 20. when shooting with studio light, everything is the same, so I develop one photo, get all colours right, sync to other images on the same scene, and then individually pick and tweak to perfection
it's got a lot of "smart" adjustments that allow me to quickly get the job done where the same thing would take me forever in other applications, but it lacks advanced manipulation techniques, like the one Affinity Photo has
Thanks for the tip. I have tried some of Skylum's previous software in the past, and I didn't really like it all that much. I was never a big fan of Lightroom either because I didn't like the whole catalogue thing. I prefer to do my own file organisation in Finder rather than import everything into a catalogue. This is why I really liked using Photoshop + Adobe Camera RAW. This workflow allowed me to do my RAW conversions and any further editing seamlessly all in the one app. It was the best combination for my needs. If Affinity Photo could do batch RAW editing it would be the perfect replacement for me. I haven't been doing as much photography as I used to, and I refuse to play the Adobe subscription game, so I've been making do with a combination of Affinity Photo and an app called RAW Power for batch RAW editing. It's not an ideal solution, but it's better than being extorted by Adobe.
Luminar used to choke and crash on large libraries (20 GB+ of images). That was a while ago, it probably has improved.
If only Affinity also had an After Effects alternative 😔
DaVinci Resolve?
AE is an incredibly versatile tool, and what to use as an alternative kinda boils do to what you do with it, in my opinion.
Some tools don't have an exact replica in other software, but you can get close.
Some options;
DaVinci Resolve (Fusion) Free, but one very useful paid feature (Magic Mask). Studio is $300
This is the most powerful alternative, but the learning curve will be steep if you have not used a node-based compositor before. In my opinion, this rules it out as a direct competitor to After Effects.
However, if you already use Resolve this is definitely worth learning, and I'd even argue it's inevitable at some point… so why not.
HitFilm Free, Subscription provides 4k video export and 3D features
If you are only doing basic motion graphics using the UI and no scripting, this will serve your needs well. For more heavy compositing, this won't cut it. Granted, I did try it 5 years ago so something may have changed.
Seems to be focused more at VFX than motion graphics, which is a shot in the dark considering its simple toolset. It's easy to use, but I'm actually not entirely sure who the product is for. It still only supported 8-bit colour properly in the viewport when I tried it 5 years ago, which was another very strange limitation.
For the VFX work it seems to be focused at, the fact 3D tracking is only included in the higher tiers is almost unforgivable.
The 'Express' version for free is limited to 1080p, which basically rules it out in my opinion.
Apple Motion Provided with Final Cut Pro ($499.99)
If you already use Final Cut Pro, I'm going against the grain and saying I love this tool. It's quite basic, but in my opinion the majority of After Effects users would be well served by this tool. Fantastic for motion graphics and simple replacement-style VFX shots.
Blender Free and Open Source
Again, not really a direct After Effects alternative because of how deep the software is and fact it uses a 3D concept instead of 2.5D.
However, this software is powerful. Between the node-based compositor and compositing directly in the viewport in 3D, it can do any compositing task After Effects can do. The keying node in the compositor is pretty good, slightly worse than the ancient version of Keylight (from The Foundry, the Nuke guys) that AE ships with.
An extremely powerful combination is using Magic Mask in DaVinci Resolve Studio to key out a subject, then importing the result as *.exr into blender to perform VFX composition.
For motion graphics, this is the tool if you're making 3D titles, there's just a steep learning curve. For 2D, you could make it work, but the experience would be more jumbled than AE
Cavalry Free for basic use
I have not tried this one, but my friends in Economics tell me it's better than AE for the sort of corporate-churn sales figure generating motion graphics. This makes me think that if that's all you do, probably best to go with this one.
Nuke Very Expensive
I've only used Nuke about 10 years ago. My impression was that it's the best tool for compositing, with nothing coming close, as the price would suggest.
For the price and functionality it enables, is it an AE alternative? Not likely.
If you work in a VFX house and already have access to it, you'd definitely use it. But why would you be reading this then?
Moho Starts at 59.99
Never used it. But if you only use AE for character animation with the rigging or puppet tool, then this seems like a more specific tool to solve these cases.
Damn, Thank you for this insifht
I'd highly recommend Moho for anyone looking to do 2.5D character rigs, it's a far better experience than using Duik in Ae and previewing at ¼ res 👎
Would also super duper recommend Rive!
Hitfilm got bought out a few years ago and hasn't gone anywhere since in my opinion. It started out as something that might have shaken things up a lot but then lost a lot of momentum at that point.
Affinity Photo is a great programme if you are doing astrophotography. It has modules specifically designed for stacking related to astro
How’s about acrobat? Looked thru there is no support though
They don't have an Acrobat Pro equivalent stand-alone product, no.
I have, however, edited multi page PDFs in Affinity Designer to correct typos, add signatures to documents and the like. Initially after the launch of V2 importing was easy, but on export you could get weird formatting in the output file. My more recent efforts have been pretty much spot on.
You can also export work as a PDF with no issues at all.
It's harder to do things like combining files and deleting or adding pages, but there are plenty of free apps that can do that anyhow.
I would think that Publisher would likely handle PDFs better, but that's the product I use the least. Still, now that you've mentioned it, I might try it out next time.
Seems cheaper to purchase in USD despite conversion. Any downside to doing this?
Note: Haven't tried, but assume VPN would work.
I set the billing address to an overseas address and it changed to USD. No vpn.
Could you tell me how to set the billing address to an overseas address?
Could you give me an example of the overseas address?
Thank youI can't remember exactly but on payment page I think they'd set your country to "Australia" by default which you can click to change to a different country.
What's their price is USD? and is it only cheaper if you use a 28 Degrees card or similar?
Plan to use ING if I end up buying for no currency conversion fees.
I think $83 USD -> ~$125 AUD. Approx $13 savings pending currency conversion, so not a huge amount, but something.
Thanks Wool.
I followed snivy's advice and used a US address and somehow just ended up getting the upgrade package for USD $66.91 including taxes (AUD $100)
I tried a few online Serif promo codes but the Serif website said they weren't valid but think this one META20 must have worked.@alidli: Ooh nice! Unfortunately picked it up already, but appreciate the update. Hopefully someone might see this and save some money!
Biggest sale ever?
They go half price often. Definitely worth it at full price though, but with constant discounts, is paying full price really the OzBargain way? :)
Not a replacement for Lightroom is it? More of a photoshop alternative?
I got a good deal ($139 AUD) on Luminar Neo, it's a direct competitor I think. one off payment, no subscription required
ATM it's $179, but you can try ant hit them up in sales support and see if you can get a better deal
Seperate cost for the iPad app.
Guess that’s me out!
Sadly no. Affinity photo is very much a photoshop replacement. Affinity's raw development is on par with lightroom, but if you need library management, this isn't the software for you.
Does anyone have problems creating an account? Mine wouldn't proceed after clicking "Create Account" so it won't go to the billing stage.
If I've never owned a v1 product before, do I get the free plug-ins for buying the v2 universal suite?
These versions may keep getting updates, but they won't get the cloud features or other advanced features that Canva will spin off into a subscription service one day yeah?
I went to tell my wife about it.. Turns out she bought it already. 😂
You can also get a bit more of a discount if you proxy to Pakistan - you'll pay 83 USD (or around 126 AUD). Just use a fake billing address. Not sure if there are any cheaper countries.
Damn - I bought this and then realized that I already owned Affinity Photo V1 but never linked it to an account - so I missed out on the upgrade discount and freebies.
I've emailled Affinity - hopefully their support refunds the difference without me needing to refund and re-buyUpdate - they refunded me and I purchased the upgrade bundle.
EasyThat's good service!
Can you still use V1 after upgrading to V2 with the upgrade offer?
Can confirm you can.
@Guybrush57: Probably for people being used to V1 and not ready to learn the new interface/features that may impact their existing workflow
AS a photographer I ended up buying the suite mainly for designer and Publisher as my old Adobe CS6 versions are way old.
Photo doesnt seem to be able to replace Lightrooms functionality with batch editing which is my main editing suite although I'll have a play with it.
It's definitely not a LR replacement unfortunately for the single editing processing limitation you've stated.
There are other perpetual paid equivalents to LR such as:
1. DxO PhotoLab 7 - https://au.pcmag.com/photo-editing/9063/dxo-photolab
2. Capture One Pro - https://au.pcmag.com/photo-editing/12616/phase-one-capture-o…Free/open source alternatives (youtube them for an overview):
1. Darkroom
2. Rawtherapee
It's a great piece of software. It could do some some "migrating from Photoshop" docs imo. The selection tools for example are behind. No good smart selections like in PS (select a person and mask out the eyes from a list for example). Using lasso to crop out a background colour has aliasing effects on the edges, little things like that.
Still great though.
Code: THEO10 – 10% off
You can get a cheap v1 key off kinguin ($1~ for photo) and then buy the upgrade suite to v2 to save around $30.
This worked for me, thanks for the tip! Key was around $2.40 with service fee.
Having had v1 (which is ongoing) this is highly recommended and so easy to pick up from adobe