Mark your calendars. Chase is going to show a couple of us Adobe Illustrator online starting next Wednesday Dec 6 in the evenings. Please join if interested! I believe it will take place on zoom
Free
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I have used AI for years. Sure it’s very powerful. But it also costs a lot in the monthly subscription fee. I think it was low $20’s. More recently I’ve found AI crashed my computer or the program crashed. That led me to believe it uses a lot of memory. It is slow to load too.
A friend, fellow maker, and really great videographer, Moly introduced me to Affinity. Affinity Designer 2 is also a great vector based graphics program and I have to say that after a purchasing it, I found it more intuitive using it. Like any new software there is a learning curve, but the layout of the different palletes and how they work puts more relevant controls at your fingertips in each pallette.
I just Googled it and there is a Black Friday sale going on. Biggest differences is not just that it is good, and also intuitive, but that is a one time purchase that lives in your computer - not a subscription based online program like AI.
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This is great, so many projects waiting on a little bit of Illustrator knowledge. Thanks for doing this, calendar blocked!
Thanks for the info David!
What version of Illustrator will you be using? Adobe made CS2 free almost a decade ago, so I still use it. It has 90+% of the functionality of modern versions. (One thing it lacks is full and correct SVG file reading and writing, which has become enough of a liability that I’ve been using Inkscape more and more.)
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@mgmoore I don’t use any of the fancy tooling that’s available in Illustrator. A person with any version of Illustrator will be able to follow along.
I do use smart guides quite a bit. I can’t remember which version of Illustrator those were introduced. But they’re only a convenience.
I’m primarily showing how to trace things and draw parts.
@David78737 Affinity looks great. It’s been some time since I looked at it last, but it appears to have come a long way since then.
I might need to make the effort to learn it’s workflow.
I picked up Affinity Designer just to support their business model. I don’t want to rent my software, Adobe!
Mainly I use it to open .AI files on machines where I don’t have access to an Adobe account.
I’ve used Illustrator since before the CS days (version 11 I think is when I started)
With that much muscle memory it takes a lot of getting used to the way Affinity does things, but they try to cater to Adobe users in a lot of ways. At least you can create keyboard shortcuts and stuff to make the transition smoother.
I haven’t checked out their version 2 yet, but I might upgrade just to support the company and “vote with my dollars”
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I picked up some Affinity licenses during the black friday sale - it was a better price when we approached them about a nonprofit discount earlier this year. In the next few days, we’ll install Designer on the Blue, Pearl, and vinyl cutter PCs and the full suite on the two general purpose PCs in textiles.
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That’s awesome! I’ve always wished that Dorian’s machine had Illustrator on it so I can make last minute edits to my cut files, but usually there’s no one at the Blue laser, so I just hop over there with a thumb drive.
Awesome. Thanks.
I use Affinity Designer - we ought to consider a virtual class, I’d love to attend (and contribute!)
// JRO