How Do You Draw A Straight Line In Affinity Designer

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With Photoshop being the de-facto design software information technology can be tough knowing if any of the Photoshop alternatives are worthy of your time and attending. Affinity Designer is a keen alternative and it'due south specifically made for UI/UX design and graphic design work. Affinity designer is a non-Adobe graphic pattern software designed for professionals to craft their creative works.

But nigh of your existing noesis (based on Adobe software) volition not conduct over to Analogousness. How do you get started using this program with no prior experience?

This beginner'south tutorial will help y'all to acquire Affinity Designer from scratch. If you stick with it and practice on your own y'all can quickly replace Photoshop or Sketch with Affinity Designer in your digital design workflow. There are tons of creative features included in this software that gives you a real hands-on impression and plough your imaginations into reality without any hurdle.

Analogousness Designer: The Basics

Affinity Designer offers a full-featured vector and raster workspace. While Photoshop allows you to open vector files created in Adobe Illustrator or other vector pattern apps, Photoshop does not let you the capabilities to design or edit vectors. In this sense, Affinity Designer is essentially a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator.

I of the reasons we remember you'll honey Affinity Designer is the price. A gratuitous trial is available, but the full software costs only $49.99 for Mac or Windows, or just $19.99 for the iPad. It's of import to annotation that this is a one-time payment, not a subscription. You'll purchase and own the software with no demand to pay again in the hereafter unless you choose to upgrade.

Many Adobe users dislike the Artistic Cloud subscription model, so the pricing alone may convince you to give Affinity Designer a shot.

Getting Started with Affinity Designer

Many ex-Adobe users switched over to Sketch as information technology gained popularity in recent years. However, this is a Mac-just program that is non bachelor for Windows.

Affinity Designer was originally just available for Mac, however, the Windows version has at present been available for a few years. As a consequence, Affinity quickly became a recognized competitor for Photoshop users.

Affinity likewise has some other programs available, like Photo and Publisher. For the purposes of this commodity, we'll be focusing specifically on Designer.

When you showtime open Analogousness Designer you get a GUI much like Photoshop. At the top, you have the main toolbar and along the left-hand side, y'all take the toolbox.

In the very top-left corner, you'll notice three icons chosen personas. These permit you switch between vector blueprint and pixel design within the same interface. You tin build projects that support both vector and pixel graphics in the same file.

Forth the right-paw side, y'all'll find many familiar panels for layers, swatches, brushes, and history.

Nigh of this interface should be fairly intuitive. You tin mess around and even check the Affinity aid carte to become a cursory overview of each tool & panel window.

The Affinity team too has a drove of gratis tutorials recorded and posted to Vimeo. I would highly recommend studying this entire series to learn the basics from scratch. Their video tutorials are crystal clear and they're all taught by Affinity experts.

If you're really serious about learning Affinity Designer so you lot should also check out the Affinity Designer Workbook. This hardcover 450-folio volume of Affinity tips comes straight from the team at Serif with step-by-step guides for every feature.

This book truly is the complete guide to Analogousness Designer for beginners. It will answer all your questions and fix you on the path to become about creating your own work from scratch. You'll larn all the cadre skills & tools inside Analogousness, plus you lot'll move onto more than advanced topics and tutorials every bit you become further in the book.

And since it's published by the creators of Analogousness, you know the material is accurate and the best quality available.

To larn more check out the book page. If y'all have any questions about it you can attain out to the Affinity staff directly.

Web & Mobile Mockups

Affinity Designer was not always meant for UI/UX work. Information technology was mostly a digital painting & graphic design suite. Simply version 1.5 came with brand new features that easily compete with Sketch and Photoshop.

However, merely because you accept the tools at your disposal doesn't mean you'll know how to utilize them. Granted, if you've e'er designed a UI mockup so you should know the fundamental process.

There's an entire page on this topic on the Affinity website talking nigh new features similar symbols. These symbols are like repeat objects that tin can be duplicated across the page, only updated in one location to alter every chemical element.

This means if you create buttons or headers in the mockup y'all tin can change colors or font styles once to update everything. Other features include custom grids and even resizable features to blueprint mockups for responsive layouts.

There are also some alternative features available that can be used for unproblematic and complex projects to do all the things simply and efficiently.

Hither are some great UI-oriented tutorials to get you started:

Create a Fitness App Blueprint in Analogousness Designer
Affinity Designer & Marvel App – Web Blueprint & Prototype

Vectors & Icon Design

Affinity relies on the same tools for vector design as every other major plan, including Adobe Illustrator. You'll observe plenty of shape tools that come with properties for the drop shadow, background gradients, and other predefined styles.

But you too accept the pen tool which carries over from Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. Here's a brief intro if you're brand new and I as well like this clip if you can tolerate the odd jazz/fusion background music (or just put it on mute).

If y'all're new to Analogousness for graphic design, then the best way to learn is to practice. Only at that place's so much to acquire, so it'due south really all-time to focus on one particular subject area.

For example, icon pattern is useful for everything from graphic design to web pattern and motion graphics. Great intro tuts tin teach you how to make a apartment castle icon and how to create nifty retro icons.

But yous can go so much further with vector piece of work. Consider this tutorial for a scrolling vector background design. And at that place's something else for repeating blueprint icons which both teach you how to blueprint from scratch.

First, I recommend figuring out exactly what you lot desire to do. Are you more of a impress designer? Logo designer? Web/icon designer?

Option 1 area and then follow a couple of tutorials on that subject. Yous'll learn Affinity's interface forth the way and past the cease, you'll have a real sense of accomplishment having completed a project with Affinity.

Here are some of the best tutorials for icon design and vector graphics with Affinity Designer:

How to Create a Detailed Katana in Affinity Designer
How to Create Cinderella'due south Pumpkin Railroad vehicle in Affinity Designer
Create a Friendly, Futuristic Robot in Affinity Designer
Pattern a "Match Three" Game Screen in Analogousness Designer
How to Create a Set up of Apartment Hiking Icons in Affinity Designer

Each tutorial is completely gratuitous and easy to follow. These are very long tutorials and then you'll exist guided every footstep of the way. A complete beginner could pick up any of these tutorials and larn a lot about Affinity'due south workflow.

But if you lot're more of a visual learner so you lot'll prefer video tutorials. Hither's a minor list to get you lot going:

Create a Cartoon Graphic symbol in Affinity Designer
Create Complex Shapes with the Corner and Pen Tool
How to Create an App Icon Template

Analogousness Resource

Where should you go for support? Where can to find answers to your questions and assist you lot solve problems forth the way?

My first and biggest recommendation is the Analogousness back up forum. There are already thousands of threads solving many common issues with new questions posted every 24-hour interval. You may consider collaborating with other graphic designers who are using this software besides.

But if y'all hit a wall and just don't know how to move forward and so sign up for a gratuitous account and feel gratis to ask. The customs is super helpful and there's even a tutorials section if you want more learning resources.

Simply there are two other communities you can effort for Affinity help. The first is Graphic Design Substitution powered by the Stack Exchange network.

GD Exchange isn't every bit popular as other sites like Stack Overflow. But the GD Substitution community is large enough to help if yous post very specific questions. You should take as many screenshots as possible and provide lots of detail to brand your questions easy to answer. Help others help you!

Secondly, you might too like the /r/Affinity subreddit, which has grown a lot in the by few years.

Every bit the popularity of the software grows, I take a feeling it'll garner mainstream adoption and a much wider user base of operations. But for now, your all-time back up resource is the Affinity Forum since it's active and full of knowledgeable users.

Moving Forward

If you demand a cheaper and simpler Photoshop replacement, Affinity Designer might be the perfect solution. Information technology's surpassing Sketch with better UI design features Windows compatibility. It is a light-weight and inexpensive software that tin can exist used to gain experience before using the more expensive Adobe software packages. This software has been designed as a ameliorate culling for the Adobe software packages and you will be comfortable with all of its bones and essential features.

Use these free tutorials and resource to help y'all get started with Affinity for digital design. It'due south one of the best unsung design programs and information technology'south but gaining more momentum.

Jake is a writer and user experience designer on the spider web. He currently publishes articles related to user experience and user interface design. Find out more on his website or you tin can follow his updates on Twitter @jakerocheleau