Adobe Illustrator to Affinity Designer

Environment and Navigation

• Interface – A look at the overall environment
• Tools
  • new tools where Illustrator doesn’t have them, eg for shapes
  • missing tools that are either elsewhere or there is no equivalent – mesh tool, symbols, shape builder, shaper)
• Menus – Understanding the new setup – no Effects or Object menu
• Panels – a slightly different arrangement:
  • a look at the things that are the very similar (eg Layers, Stroke, Styles, Text etc)
  • a look at some of the things that are new or different (eg History, Isometrics )
  • a look at some panels that have different functionality (Effects, Graphic styles)
  • missing panels – patterns, blends, live paint
• Keyboard shortcuts

Colour

• Making sense of Designer’s different approach to Swatches and Swatch Libraries, adding and removing Palettes, Recent Colours, Global Palettes
• Fill and Stroke

Objects

• Vector controls, pen tool differences, transform, stacking, layers
• Type – typographic controls and panels
• Alignment, Pathfinder, Locking, Grouping

Document Management

• Document Setup
• Artboards
• Grids, Guides, Rulers, Preview Mode
• Assets
• File formats, exporting
• Managers – fonts, resources/images, sections, guides

Miscellaneous

• Personas – jumping to Affinity Publisher and Affinity Photo from within Designer
• Preferences and Help
• Templates
• What’s missing – (eg Creative Cloud Libraries, Graphing, Blends, Live Paint, Symbol Spraying, Perspective, 3D)
• Changing Defaults