Having developed software exclusively for Windows for 25 years, Serif has announced it will imminently release its first ever product for Mac – Affinity Designer. A vector drawing application, Affinity Designer is the first in a new range of professional creative software for the Mac. Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher will complete the suite over the next 12 months.
Developed by a dedicated development team over the last 4 years, the Affinity suite takes full advantage of native OS X technologies such as OpenGL, Grand Central Dispatch, Core Graphics and is fully optimized for 64-bit and multi-core processors to squeeze every ounce of available performance from the Mac platform – so it promises to be fast.
“Real time is everything,” says Tony Brightman, head of the Affinity development team. “Working in Affinity products is always live. Whether it’s a 100 megapixel image or the most complex vector drawing with thousands of curves, you still pan and zoom at 60fps, move objects in correct z-order and see live views of all adjustments, brushes and effects as you’re working with no compromise. Considering the strength of Apple’s hardware nowadays there’s no excuse for software developers to achieve anything less, but until Affinity these fundamentals have been sadly lacking in creative software.”
With all products in the Affinity range sharing the same core engine and file format, it allows for something else never seen in a creative suite of products – complete integration. “This doesn’t just mean seamless switching between apps,” explains Brightman. “It opens up a truly mixed-discipline creative suite with no boundaries between vector, raster, text, or page layout tasks to offer complete freedom to graphic designers.”
When it launches in October, Affinity Designer will be available exclusively on the Mac App store for US$34.99/$49.99. “With no credible alternative, large groups of users feel they’re being forced into costly monthly subscriptions,” says Ashley Hewson, Serif’s Managing Director. “As well as all the power, functionality and stability that professionals demand, when you buy an Affinity product you pay for it once and that’s it. The ongoing expense of software as a service just isn’t what most people really want.”
Affinity Designer is currently in beta and available to download for free. More info here.
MacDailyNews Take: Welcome, finally, to the world’s best platform, Serif!
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GOOD!
Hope it will replace PSE.
I’m currently with GraphicConverter, which looks better than ever before.
Hate Pixelmator, their front page, both on their website and the application, is too sleazy, too many colors. Getting tired after 5 seconds on their website.
Professional color conversion profiles and CMYK black undercolor removal are the only things holding back Pixelmator. Photoshop is still the only game in town for that. And if this product can at least meet Adobe 80% of the way, I’ll swear off Photoshop forever (but damn! Adobe has been adding cool features to Photoshop…)
So far I like what I see in this app. Will it displace Sketch in my workflow? Possibly, but probably not in the version 1 release. Needs things like symbols, graphic styles, text styles, etc.
i wonder when it’s going to be out on PC, can’t wait
Amazing post! Affinity Designer. A vector drawing application, Affinity Designer looks cool!
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