Illustrator vs. Gimp

[rjssigns]

I use Flexi in my shop and starting to get into the groove with Affinity. I've put some of my students onto Affinity and they like it. Why? Because they don't want to pay the Adobe subscription after they graduate. Thing is these students have no need for any type of software save for the few that use ProCreate. ProCreate allows them to create their art in a digital format skipping the scanning/rendering aspect.
Truly amazing what some can do. I asked to see a student portfolio. She showed me a portrait of Anthony Bourdain done with nothing more than a No. 2 pencil. She said: " I knocked this out yesterday". If you think you're "all that" these kids will take ya down a peg or two.

 

[Stacey K]

I use Flexi in my shop and starting to get into the groove with Affinity. I've put some of my students onto Affinity and they like it. Why? Because they don't want to pay the Adobe subscription after they graduate. Thing is these students have no need for any type of software save for the few that use ProCreate. ProCreate allows them to create their art in a digital format skipping the scanning/rendering aspect.
Truly amazing what some can do. I asked to see a student portfolio. She showed me a portrait of Anthony Bourdain done with nothing more than a No. 2 pencil. She said: " I knocked this out yesterday". If you think you're "all that" these kids will take ya down a peg or two.

I just checked out the Affinity website. Is that correct it's only $49.99? Does it do the same thing as say, Corel?

 

[Solventinkjet]

As an Illustrator user, making him use Flexi is torture.

 

[rjssigns]

I just checked out the Affinity website. Is that correct it's only $49.99? Does it do the same thing as say, Corel?

Hi Stacey,

I haven't used Corel in a long while so not qualified to answer your specific question. I will however tell you Affinity Designer has a lot of the same functionality as Illustrator. One of my students asked me how Affinity could get away with a many of the exact same functions and hot keys as Illustrator. Told him I didn't know, but I don't think it's possible to patent key strokes.

For less than the cost of a dinner for two give Affinity a shot. Yeah yeah I know you'll have to do some learnin' but it's not difficult to pick up. Also lots of Affinity help on the web.

 

[Bobby H]

Affinity Designer is decent for low cost vector drawing software. I got the Windows version for just $25 and iPad version for something like $10 when Serif was running its 50% off pandemic themed sale. They ran the sale at least one or two other times. The application has all the basics covered for what one would expect in a vector drawing application. But it doesn't match everything from Illustrator or even CorelDRAW for that matter. Still, for $50 it's not bad to have on hand.

Like Inkscape, the user interface can be fairly clunky in some respects. It's a chore to use Affinity Designer on a single monitor, such as a notebook display. The application at least covers the features of the full OpenType standard, but you'll be hunting through the glyphs browser or another sub-palette in the Character palette to access things like alternate characters. CorelDRAW has the best implementation; you can highlight individual characters, multiple characters or more and a drop-down menu under your text object will reveal all the OTF options. CorelDRAW rolled out that feature in CDR X6 when they finally supported the full OTF spec. Then Illustrator copied the idea to a limited extent. As of version 1.9.2 Affinity Designer still doesn't support OTF Variable Fonts (or OTF SVG fonts either). Inkscape supports Variable fonts.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

I've never used gimp but if I was going the bargain route, I'd save the 50 bucks and use inkscape. I started out with it and still use it for auto tracing. For basic vector creation and editing, it does just as good of a job as Corel.

 

[Bobby H]

Funny thing, given Affinity Designer has been mentioned in this thread lately. Serif just released a 1.10 update for their suite of applications. There isn't much in the way of new features, but Serif says their developers did a major code re-write to make rendering of complex documents improve, as much as 10 fold, over version 1.09 of Designer.

 

[rvolkers]

gimp is a free-bee and IS IN NO WAY close to illustrator or it would not be free - spend the money for illustrator - it is about 21$'s per month! - he can learn flexi also BUT if he works in Illustrator
that is the tool he is use too! - illustrator is the universal app of everyone! PERIOD - from working to saving files!