5 Reasons to Switch to Affinity in 2021

what's up youtube how is it going today have you been wondering what the state of switching to affinity from adobe is in the year 2021 well that's what we're here to talk about today so i've made a couple of videos like this in the past one back quite a while ago when affinity publisher was first put into beta and it really felt like there was a full suite of affinity apps that we could look at and actually use and then i made another one last year in 2020 to talk about how much money a creative could save by switching to affinity and what they would be able to do with those programs now it's 2021 and things have changed a lot since i made that last video you know both in the world and in the state of creative programs so let's talk about today whether or not you can ditch adobe for affinity and specifically i'm talking about people who do design work so i'm talking about people who use photoshop illustrator and indesign from the adobe creative cloud there are lots of other programs and i've addressed many of those in other videos but today we're just focusing on those three that affinity creates programs that are the equivalent of so on the affinity side you have affinity photo to replace photoshop a few designer to replace illustrator and a feed publisher to replace indesign so let's talk about five reasons why you might want to make the switch in 2021 the first one is right now a feed programs are half off in order to help out with the pandemic affinity has made their programs half off so that's the first reason is you can get it right now for a steal and even if it doesn't work out for you to switch your entire workflow over you're only out 75 to have purchased all three programs if you just need one program it's only 25 so with the half off going on right now makes it an ideal time to at least try and switch and if you don't even want to invest the money right off the bat you want to try it out first they are offering a 90 day free trial so that you can use the programs for 90 days and test it out now i don't know how long the deal will go on for so you might get to the end of that 90 days and have to pay full price if you decide that you want them but they're still only 50 a piece so 150 and you'd have the whole suite reason number two is affinity 1.9 just came out so i think just dropped the update which came for free for everybody who'd currently purchased it and of course is the version you will get if you purchase it right now and that 1.9 adds a bunch of new features to the suite really some incredible stuff that we are getting as a free update as existing customers so these are things that we've waited for things like select the same in a fiend designer which is going to make some of my workflows so much faster i'm super excited about that one things like data merge in affinity publisher which will make it easy to do things like create trading cards or tickets or other items that have repeatable elements across them very quickly using an excel spreadsheet into affinity publisher that's one that we've been waiting for it also has things like pdf pass through and adding filters to masks inside of affinity photo there's a ton here and i thought about making a video going over all of it but i know that you guys can read the website and see what they are so i'm not going to go into everything that's in 1.9 but 1.9 really is taking affinity to that next level the other thing about 1.9 is i think 1.9 signals that we are moving towards 2.0 and 2.0 is likely to be another purchase where we need to pay again that's how single purchase software which is what we like that's how it works is you buy a version and then when a new version comes out you can choose whether or not you want to upgrade and buy that new version so i think 2.0 is coming the reason i think now is a great time to do it is affinity is very likely they've always done this when they release new apps to give a discount to existing customers so if they do give a discount to existing customers on 2.0 when that comes out the best thing to do would be to have already purchased 1.9 because i think that's going to save you money in the long run because i expect i don't have any inside information but i expect the price of affinity to go up in 2.0 because they are investing more and more resources into it it's costing them more and so i expect the price to go up but i expect them to reward existing customers with a very steep discount so both to get the features of 1.9 now and to probably get a discount on 2.0 later i think now is the time to buy into affinity all right now reason number three is that the affinity programs are optimized for apple silicon those are those new m1 macs that came out at the end of last year these macs are absolutely incredible but the adobe programs are not optimized for them adobe is taking a long time and moving at a very slow pace to optimize these and we don't have a roadmap for when they will come out and so if you want an m1 mac or if you're thinking you're probably going to upgrade to maybe that 16 inch that will probably come out later this year or the imac that might come out later this year you have no guarantee that adobe is going to work on those machines and a lot of people in the comments of my videos are reporting that they are having problems with adobe programs i've seen them work pretty well in the machine that my wife has in testing but i don't use it a lot and a lot of people are reporting prompts with those adobe programs so if you're thinking about upgrading to an apple silicon mac or you already have affinity is pretty much your choice if you want a reliable suite of graphic programs so that's a great reason to upgrade i think because those new apple silicon macs are so incredible i wouldn't say buy one of the apple silicon max that's out right now but the computers for creatives like us are coming out later this year most likely and so it's a great time to just buy into affinity see if it works for you before switching over to an m1 mac to make sure that you aren't going to ruin your creative workflow by buying a new computer all right reason number four is something that i've talked about a lot and that is studio link studio link is this awesome feature in affinity publisher that allows you to access the tools of affinity photo and a fan designer in it think of it as if you were working in indesign but you had the tools of illustrator and photoshop available to you so you didn't have to go out and open that file inside of another program in order to edit it think you want to make some tweaks to a photo you don't like how it's looking in your layout you can just do that in infinity publisher using studio link as long as you own all three apps and that is one of my all-time favorite features and a major reason to switch from adobe because adobe doesn't have a version of this what they have is their open in feature and that is just incredibly clunky and you have to open up two adobe programs which hog a ton of resources on your computer so i really really think that studio link is one of the killer features that makes it worth it to switch to affinity right now fifth and last reason but perhaps the most important for a lot of people is there is still a pandemic going on and we do not yet know what the economic impact of this pandemic is going to be in total it's already had an impact on many creatives but it is likely to continue to have an impact because there have been some actions taken on the parts of governments that have propped up economies we have not yet felt the full economic impact of this pandemic and we are still uncertain about how the pandemic's going to go so your ability to continue to pay adobe into perpetuity their subscription model may be diminished it may have already been diminished it may be diminishing now or it may diminish in the future because you might lose employment or work because of the pandemic or you might get sick and not be able to work for a while because of the pandemic it's just a very uncertain time and so it's not a great time to be chained to adobe in their subscription model where you can get a very low cost alternative because it's 50 off right now remember reason number one you can get this very low cost alternative that can do many of the same things now there are a couple caveats to mention the first one is really i recommend downloading the free trial and checking out your workflow in the affinity programs because it might not work for you this is especially true for printers and publishers even though affinity publisher is called publisher it really is lacking some of the features that publishers have told me they need in a program like adobe indesign if your work comes as a professional printer or publisher then you really might want to take a look at affinity publisher and see if it has the features that work for you it is lacking some key features still things like right to left text are not supported and endnotes and footnotes have been particularly problematic as well as using scripts so especially if you are an advanced user in the publishing industry especially take a good look at publisher in the free trial before you purchase it and cancel your adobe subscription and i suggest that for anybody because there are features that are missing i did make a video a while ago of the five things that were missing from a fan designer that i would like to see brought in from adobe illustrator i'm also making a video series comparing each tool in each program to see if the tools are there for people so the one for photoshop and effing photo is already out and you can check that out on my channel or by clicking this link right here so you really want to make sure that this is going to work for you because you don't want to cut off what income you do have by losing access to the software that you need but for many many designers this will be a cost saving measure in 2021 because the affinity programs have gotten so good especially with that 1.9 release they really compare very favorably to adobe's programs and they run really fast and really well so they can save you a lot of time in your workflow i do almost all of my work in affiliate publisher because i love having the features of all of them together right now although there are still some things that i do just an infinite designer or just an infinity photo when i'm just working on those specific applications now i want to hear from you what do you think about this are you ready to switch from adobe have you already switched from adobe and how is that going for you if you have i'm very interested to hear your thoughts on this and what features that you hope will come in affinity 2.0 so drop in the comments and let me know we'll chat in the comments and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: ben designs

Views: 27,453

Keywords: Affinity, Adobe, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign

Id: HH_2irXBbUk

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021