Affinity Publisher is too new to have garnered such recognition, but has gotten high marks in trade publication reviews.Įach application is available for purchase for $49.99, but tentative new users can download a 10-day free trial for each application. Affinity Photo was named Best Mac App of 2015. Affinity Designer earned Apple’s Best of 2014 in both the Mac App Store and iTunes Store, and the 2015 Apple Design Award. The entire suite of Affinity programs has been well received by reviewers. Editing options are limited if the document is opened in other than the native program. However, for quick fixes, for example, edits to typos, that capability is welcome. One of the most exciting features about the three programs is that documents created in one can be opened in the other two. Designer and Photo were also developed for Mac iOS and work on iPads an iOS version of Publisher is due to be released sometime in 2020. Microsoft versions of all three applications have also been released. During that time Serif ceased development on their legacy products (although licenses and a support forum are still available on their website). In June of 2019, the third program in Affinity’s suite, Affinity Publisher, launched. Affinity Designer launched in 2014, followed in 2015 by Affinity Plus. The company scrapped the old code and invested five years into developing a new vector graphics application specifically for the MacOS. But, by Serif’s own admission, the software became bloated and outdated, and was locked into the Window’s operating system. Their applications, PagePlus, PhotoPlus, MoviePlus, and WebPlus, had about a 20-year run. Serif got its start in the mid 1980s developing low-cost desktop publishing software for the Microsoft Windows environment. Today and over the next two months, we’ll be looking at a paid alternative to Creative Suite, and one that’s been getting a lot of attention: Affinity, and its suite of programs, Designer, Photo, and Publisher.Īffinity is owned by Serif (Europe), Ltd, a privately owned company located in the United Kingdom. While the price was right on those options, each had serious concerns reported by professional users. Last month we covered a number of free options to Adobe’s powerful suit of creative software most commonly used by graphic artists: Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.

Affinity designers