Hello Affinity Designer, goodbye Inkscape?

Our quick review of the v1.0 beta release of Inkscape showed that the new version made a huge leap forward, especially for Mac users. It can now run as a standalone application on macOS for the first time. It no longer needs XQuartz, an extra program Mac users had to install first. See the review for more details.

However, the beta also had some issues. There were random errors with some of the panels, but the most noticeable problems all had to do with performance. In some cases, just a couple of layers with paths could cause the program to become sluggish. You could still work with it, but it just didn't feel smooth at all. As far as we can remember, the previous version didn't have issues of this magnitude.

Not long after our review, the beta was finished and the official version 1.0 of the popular open-source vector drawing software was released. This was around the first of May 2020. We figured the issues in the beta were just early kinks that would be ironed out by the official release. Sadly, that wasn't the case, and the issues were still there. That's what made us look at the competition to see what else is out there.

When you think of vector graphics, Adobe Illustrator is probably the first thing that comes to mind. It's the market leader, but with a monthly fee of around 25 euros, it's also pretty damn expensive. Luckily, there are other options out there that still offer a one-time license and don't require a subscription of any kind. And if you need a program that runs on both Mac and Windows and is as feature-rich as Illustrator, Affinity Designer comes out on top.

Affinity Designer has a free demo version you can try for 90 days. We installed the Mac version and gave it a try. The software looks and feels great, and the difference in smoothness compared to Inkscape is noticeable right away. It takes some time to get used to the new panels and shortcuts, but after a few hours of drawing you'll be up and running for sure.

Aside from performance, there's another key difference. In Affinity Designer, every shape is a layer, and any layer can act as a mask for other layers. In the Layers panel, drag one layer onto another, and the first one is only visible inside the shape of the second. This might sound simple, but it's a huge help with things like shadows and highlights. Draw a rough shadow, drag it onto the main object, and the shadow gets clipped to the object's outline. You no longer have to match the curves of the shadow to the shape of the main object. This saves you so much time and trouble, and it even makes your work look better, because you're much less likely to make a mistake.

After a few days with the demo version, it was clear that Affinity Designer is a major upgrade over Inkscape in so many ways. Right now it's on sale, so it'll only cost you around 30 euros. We personally think it's the best money we've spent this year. And it sure beats paying for an Illustrator subscription every month.

So here's our somewhat sad conclusion. For a couple of years, we were big Inkscape fans, but with the official v1.0 still containing most of the bugs from the beta, we had to move on. It's a bit sad, and we still want to thank Inkscape for all the fun we had.

After the tragic breakup, we started drawing our tears away, and this desert landscape is what we came up with. Goodbye Inkscape, hello Affinity!