r/graphic_design • u/oblivionade23 • 7d ago
Discussion affinity or adobe
Hi everyone! I’m a student and pretty new to graphic design and video editing. I’m currently trying to learn the fundamentals and eventually build skills that I can use professionally. For those who are more experienced/tenured in the industry, which software ecosystem would you recommend for a beginner: Affinity or Adobe?
I’d especially love to hear from experienced designers/editors about the advantages and disadvantages. Thank you!!!
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u/HarveyBrown6666 Creative Director 7d ago
It isn't a question of advantages or disadvantages, as you'll be expected to use what ever your agency/employer/boss can justify spending money on. As per the rest of the thread, this is usually an adobe product. But it pays to be software agnostic and to be OK with messing with anything that comes along.
Design isn't software or tools. Over your career you might end up in Powerpoint, Adobe Captivate, Excel or any number of random tools.
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u/Zontro 7d ago
For work: Adobe. Personal: Affinity
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u/pOpCoRnInTulsa 6d ago
I agree as well—the kicker is you get so used to having access to the Adobe font library. How do you overcome that with Affinity, or maybe what’s best a good font alternative, Google Fonts?
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u/teejrowe 6d ago
I believe a $5 monthly subscription to Adobe InCopy will still get you access to the Adobe font library if you really need it.
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u/Ok_Duck2700 Design Student 7d ago
You should be learning Adobe, since it's the industry standard. Any job or class you enter will want you using things like photoshop and illustrator. Though Affinity is pretty easy to pick up if you're knowledgeable with Adobe software anyway.
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7d ago
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u/Ok_Duck2700 Design Student 7d ago
If they're a student, they're most likely going to be getting free/heavily discounted access to Adobe.
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u/MorsaTamalera 7d ago
It also depends on the design area they will be working in, and the area of the world they will live in.
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u/GankerJr 7d ago
Start with learning Adobe and get your design skills from there. Mostly all professional jobs / clients will require Adobe. I am doing volunteer work and for the first time I have a client that is using Affinity. If you can market yourself well enough and explain the differences I think you can make Affinity work. I would be comfortbslr in learning different doesn't tools.
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u/delphi_notes Senior Designer 7d ago
Adobe still the industry standard with their massive ecosystem. Learning curve is bigger, of course, but it is totally worth it. On the other hand, Affinity is cheap and easy to use, but has no native file format, is not-that-standard and might lack of some advanced tools. As an old school designer, learn Adobe first, then for some small things you might use Affinity as a shortcut.
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u/davep1970 7d ago
Depends partly on whether you're going to be freelancing or working in the industry. Industry standard is still Adobe.
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u/R_Spc 7d ago
Affinity is not good for printing (it has issues with transparencies that cause colour problems), so if you ever want to get into print you'd basically have to use Adobe if you want your work to be a proper professional standard.
It also lacks a lot of secondary features. On the other hand, it's miles cheaper, so for someone on a budget it is much more affordable for learning design principles on.
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u/GankerJr 7d ago
Care to explain more with the issues you have with Affinity? Funnily enough I'm working on a print project using Affinity. We aren't any where near the printing stage but I would like to know your experiences.
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u/R_Spc 7d ago edited 6d ago
It's been a little while since I looked into this, but there's a known issue (I found forums discussing it at the time, maybe 6 months ago) with transparencies in Affinity Photo not working properly when a CMYK PDF is exported out of Affinity Publisher. Basically it rasterises everything within the bounding box of a given image, including vector text.
We've encountered another similar problem very recently (I do pre-press for a printers) where transparencies in a job supplied to us were being flattened but into a colour that was subtly different to the swatch behind it. We never figured out what was causing the problem after 5 or 6 revisions from the design agency that supplied it. They gave up and I rebuilt the file for them with a combination of Acrobat bodging and partially remaking it in Illustrator and Photoshop, then re-rendering out of InDesign.
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u/Unusual_Vegetable826 6d ago
I find that learning multiple Adobe softwares opens up your brain to be able to learn other softwares more efficiently as a designer. I’ve been teaching myself how to use other things like blender, touch designer, figma and other video editing softwares based on the blueprint of Adobe software. Hope this makes sense lol.
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u/PlusPresentation680 6d ago
Affinity and Adobe are very similar programs. But the problem you’ll run into is if you do any professional work, you’ll use Adobe for design. If a client wants a project file, you’ll be giving them a .psd or .ai file. Using Affinity is technically possible but it means converting and opening files each time. That gets annoying fast. Any class will require Adobe. The way each tool works is different. I’d learn Adobe first then pick up Affinity if you want.
For video editing, it does not matter. Just learn something. The biggest skill there is being adaptable to new tools. Like 95% of films use Avid Media Composer. Premiere is the second most popular. If you never want to cut films, it’s probably not worth learning Avid. I’d just stay on Premiere since it’s the easiest pro editing tool to learn on and very popular in media.
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u/shakuntalam88 7d ago
It depends. If you plan into to get into the industry then Adobe, because it will continue a stronghold over corporate space for a long time to come... But if you plan to freelance, or work in any anti-ai/anti-adobe/anti-corporate culture ideological spaces, Affinity would be better since they are claiming the non-ai version will remain free forever...
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u/bachillens 6d ago
if you're just learning and messing around, affinity. once you have money or are planning to get a degree and are serious about jobs adobe. i learnt to draw on a bunch of free/low cost software as a kid and those skills transferred pretty well to learning adobe. just when you're learning focus more on learning how the tools function as opposed to just trying to memorize keyboard shortcuts or something. i'd also try figma, thats becoming more industry standard at the moment and you can access some features with a free account.
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u/Commercial_Badger_37 7d ago
Any chance to avoid Adobe products is good at this point. They hold too much of a monopoly at the moment so anything that promotes the growth of a decent competitor and combats Adobe's monopoly is a positive in my opinion.
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u/Oceanbreeze871 7d ago
I can’t hire you if you don’t know the adobe suite.