Serif Affinity Designer 2

Overview

Affinity Designer's central idea is that the split between vector and raster work is artificial. A document holds both, and a switch at the top of the window changes the toolset without changing the file, so a logo can be drawn as clean curves and then have a texture brushed over it on a pixel layer in the same artboard. Everything is non destructive where it can be, and the whole application is built around staying responsive on very large documents.

It runs fast because it was written recently and without a decade of accumulated compatibility layers. Pan and zoom stay smooth at any zoom level on documents with thousands of objects, effects render live rather than after a pause, and the history is unlimited and can be saved into the document so an undo stack survives closing the file. This build is licensed already, with no account prompt, no trial period and no update component.

The vector side

Drawing runs through the pen and node tools with the full set of node types, plus a pencil for freehand curves that fit as you draw. Boolean operations are live, so a subtraction can be adjusted afterwards by moving either shape. The corner tool rounds and chamfers corners individually on any shape, including ones built from booleans, which is far more useful than it sounds the first time you need it.

Strokes support pressure profiles along their length, dashed patterns with cap and join control, and vector brushes with textured edges. Fills cover solid, linear, radial, conical and bitmap, plus a gradient mesh style fill for soft blends. Text sets on a path or in a frame with the full OpenType feature set exposed, and artistic text scales as an object while frame text reflows.

The pixel and export sides

Switching to the pixel toolset gives brushes, erasers, selection tools, dodge and burn and the retouching set, all working on raster layers inside the same document. Brushes are pressure and tilt sensitive with a proper engine behind them, and raster layers can be clipped or masked to vector shapes so a texture stays inside a drawn form.

The export toolset is the third persona and it is what makes this practical for interface and icon work. Slices are defined over regions or objects, each with its own set of output formats, sizes and scale factors, and a single export writes all of them. Continuous export watches the document and rewrites the slices whenever it is saved, which removes an entire step from an iteration loop.

Documents, colour and performance

Documents support multiple artboards of different sizes, which is how a full identity set or a screen flow lives in one file. Layers can be grouped, masked, adjusted with non destructive adjustment layers and given live effects, and the layer stack handles blend ranges per layer rather than only per group.

Colour management is real, with document profiles, soft proofing and output in the print and screen colour spaces, including a proper spot colour workflow with overprint preview. Documents can be set up in 8, 16 or 32 bit per channel, and the 32 bit mode with linear light is there for the people compositing renders. Performance comes from a rendering engine that uses the graphics card, and it holds up on documents that make older applications stutter.

What you get

• Vector and raster tools on the same document through a persona switch
• Live boolean operations that stay editable after the fact
• Per corner rounding and chamfering on any shape including boolean results
• Pressure profiled strokes, textured vector brushes and gradient mesh style fills
• Pixel layers with a pressure and tilt sensitive brush engine
• Export persona with slices, multiple formats per slice and continuous export
• Multiple artboards of differing sizes in one document
• Colour management with soft proofing, spot colours and overprint preview
• Unlimited history that can be saved inside the document

Inside the archive

• Affinity Designer 2 application, offline installer
• Default brush, texture and asset libraries
• Colour profile set for print and screen work
• Sample documents demonstrating the persona workflow
• Language packs for the interface list shown above
• Install notes for this repack

System requirements

Installing it

1. Unpack the archive to a local folder.
2. Turn off real time protection while the licence module is written.
3. Run setup as administrator.
4. Launch the application. No account prompt or trial dialog appears.
5. If the canvas draws slowly, switch the renderer to hardware in preferences.

Mirrors

Release history

Questions about this release

Comments

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