Throughout the pandemic, one of the most asked question I get is “what is a more affordable tool to Adobe?” This comes from students looking to use one of the main quartet of apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere) perhaps for a single quarter or assignment. Or even faculty thinking about adapting their curriculum to something more accessible to their classes (maybe even assessing teaching skills over software). Out of the main Adobe trio of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, I’ve often recommended Serif’s Affinity series for the causal user or for the adaptive faculty.
Today, Serif announced their 1.9 update and with it their already strong Photoshop alternative, Photo, their Illustrator alternative, Designer, got performance updates along with a rounding roster of additional functionality. The focus within the updates for Photo and Designer tools seems to be towards helping bringing their workflow to something familiar to power-users of Adobe.
The updates I’ve been monitoring the most is the InDesign alternative Publisher. Even at launch it showed a lot of promise for desktop publishers looking to produce both digital and print productions without InDesign. However, it lacked some of the fundamental tools to print layout prep. But with 1.9, those deficiencies are being addressed especially now with the addition of a proper ‘packaging’ function, and “configurable bleed and margin guide colors”:
Again, none of these functions are revolutionary or innovative; just essential. And yes, to my Illustrator and vector illustration aficionados; there is still no live-trace tool alternative built into Designer yet. But the fact that Serif is listening to their community of users and adding these features is great to see.
If you want the full 1.9 rundown of features, you can see it from Serif’s post here, and the press release here. Serif also has been offering discounts and longer trials during Covid-19 to help creatives (and educators by proxy) which details can be found here; affin.co/WeWantToHelp
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