What does it do?
Serif’s Affinity Version 2 is a suite of three very low cost but professionally featured graphics programs. They can be purchased separately, but will share editing tools if used together.
They cover the main functions needed for design for print. Affinity Photo is a bitmap image editor/painter, Designer is for vector design, and Publisher is for layouts. They are analogous to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. If you have all three, the StudioLink feature lets users edit placed graphics by accessing the Photo and Designer tools from within Publisher.
Serif introduced the original Affinity Photo in 2014 and Designer in 2015, then Publisher in 2019. There have been updates since, but the new Version 2 is a major upgrade for all three and introduces an iPad version for Publisher for the first time.
When was it introduced and what markets is it aimed at?
Serif announced and shipped Affinity Version 2 in October 2022. Target markets are professional designers, but the price is suitable for more casual users too. According to Serif’s PR manager John Atkin: “Affinity apps are used by some of the world’s biggest names in sectors like automotive, publishing, architecture and movie production.”
In the Printweek Best of British profile of Serif in 2018, Atkin said that the expectation is that most users will already use at least one of the main alternatives, with Adobe Creative Cloud dominating the market.
How does it work?
Assuming you’re familiar with Adobe Creative Cloud apps, there are few surprises in Affinity. It’s not a feature-for-feature match, but there’s not much you can’t do in Affinity just as well, one way or another. There are several Affinity features not available from Adobe.
Third-party add-ons are sold via the Affinity website. These include sets of templates, brushes, palettes and the like, with most sets priced at £30 or less.
Designer 2’s new features include: vector warp; a shape builder tool; knife tool (to split up objects); distance and area measure tools; DXF and DWG file import (maintaining properties); and X-ray view (to help selections in complex images). As before there’s a decent range of export formats and Illustrator EPS can be imported.
New features in Photo 2 include non-destructive Raw processing (allowing initial settings to be changed while keeping subsequent adjustments); compound masks (to combine separate masks into new ones); live masks; hue or luminosity based masks; live mesh warp (non-destructive distortions); normal adjustment (lighting effects); saved mask states (groups of different visibility can be saved); and new JPEG XL export (with lossy or lossless compression and other new features). It can open and save Photoshop’s native PSD files, as well as many other formats.
The iPad version of Photo 2 has the full function set: according to Serif this is “the first professional photo editing application to have 100% file format compatibility across Windows, Mac and iPad”.
Publisher 2’s new features include: books (to combine separate documents as chapters in a book, automatically syncing page numbers, table of contents, indexes and styles; footnotes, endnotes and sidenotes); place auto-flow (a single layout is automatically repeated to accommodate a set of images); linked file layer visibility override (switching on or off layers in placed files); a style picker tool; and DXF/DWG file placement. Memory handling for very large documents has been revised to boost performance. InDesign IDML files can be imported and edited but not exported. PDF/X up to PDF/X-4 can be exported.
The iPad versions get most of the new features, plus some refinements to controls and menus.
Last year Adobe and Pantone announced that Pantone libraries were being removed from Creative Cloud applications. Affinity Version 2 includes Pantone 4 libraries (Adobe only had the 2005 Pantone 2 set) and Atkin says there will be an update to the latest version 5 soon.
What’s the USP?
According to Serif, it’s a combination of the professional level features at very low cost, perpetual licences, StudioLink editing in Publisher, full-featured iPad apps and real-time rendering and viewing of edits.
What training and support is there?
Serif offers downloadable and online manuals and YouTube training videos. There are demo and training facilities at its Nottingham HQ.
A user forum on the website has self-help discussions and some user-created tutorials.
What is the price?
Version 2 application perpetual licenses cost £59.99 each for Windows or MacOS, or £17.99 each for the iPadOS versions. The new Universal licence gives you all three on all platforms (Windows, MacOS, iPad) and costs £144.99. Volume licenses are available for business and education users.
Version 1 users get a discount on the Universal License, paying £108.74. This also includes a free bundle of fonts and add-ons that would cost £223.98 separately.
SPECIFICATIONS
Serif Affinity Version 2
Apps Designer, Photo, Publisher
Platforms Windows 10 2020 or later, MacOS Catalina 10.15 or later, iPadOS 15 or later
Price £59.99 (Windows or MacOS), £19.99 (iPad), £144.99 (all three)
Contact Serif Software 0115 914 2000 affinity.serif.com
ALTERNATIVES
Adobe Creative Cloud
The dominant suite of programs across the creative world, covering design for print, web, video and other applications. There’s a vast number of applications in the full Master suite, which is subscription-only and costs £61.99 per month. Updates are automatic, but that sometimes means losing features that you actually wanted. The main design-for-print apps are Photoshop (image editing), Illustrator (vector design), InDesign (layout) and Acrobat (PDF editing and preflight). They can be rented separately, but if you choose all four it costs more than the whole suite. iPad apps tend to be simplified.
Print apps Illustrator, Photoshop/Raw, InDesign, Acrobat
Platforms Windows 11 or 10 (V21H1/V20H2 or later), MacOS 10.15 or later, iPadOS 14 or later (Photoshop and Illustrator)
Price £61.99/month (full Creative Cloud suite), or £9.98/month (Photoshop, Lightroom, Raw), £19.97/month (Illustrator), £19.97/month (InDesign), £19.97/month (Acrobat Pro)
Contact Adobe 0800 389 2041 www.adobe.com
CorelDraw Graphic Suite 2022
Corel has been developing graphics programs for as long as Adobe and Serif. In recent years it has been bundling CorelDraw (vector illustration and layout) with Photo-Paint (image editing) as the CorelDraw Graphic Suite. It’s offered a subscription version alongside a perpetual license version for a while, but the 2022 version has been subscription-only – you can still buy 2021 if you want perpetual. A 2023 version is likely to come in March/April and we haven’t heard yet if it will again be subscription-only. CorelDraw remains popular in some design sectors, particularly signage, vehicle graphics and textiles/apparel, partly because of healthy bundles of relevant clipart and fonts.
Print apps CorelDraw, Photo-Paint, Font Manager
Platforms Windows 11 or 10 (21H1 or later), MacOS 10.15 or later
Price CorelDraw GS 2022 £26.59/month (£319/year), or 2021 perpetual license for £659
Contact Corel Corp +1 877 582 6735 www.corel.com
CadLink SignLab
Acquired last year by EFI, CadLink is a long-established developer of the SignLab series of design and workflow software aimed at wide-format print for signage, vehicle wraps, direct-to-garment and related applications. SignLab DesignPro allows the creation of both bitmap and vector design elements. SignLab Print and Cut is a combined design, workflow and printer driver. There are also variations for vinyl cutters, contour cutters and modules to link to Mimaki or Roland’s own RIP-workflows. All include a full set of design tools, typesetting and font creation features.
Print apps SignLab DesignPro, Print and Cut, VinylPro, CutPro, RasterLink Edition(for Mimaki), VersaWorks Edition (for Roland)
Platform Windows 7 or later
Price from £495 (DesignPro) to £1,995 (Print and Cut)
Contact CadLink Europe 01462 420222 www.cadlink.com
USER REVIEW
“When it comes to creating and preparing documents, Affinity Publisher has become my go-to tool. The Windows and Mac apps make working with clients and other suppliers a doddle. And when it comes to commercial printing, Publisher’s colour profile tools ensure prints are spot-on every time” Sam Hutchings, freelance designer, UK
