I avoided the bad puns in the last post but today is Valentine’s Day and I can’t let this opportunity pass me by. You may be officially anti-Valentine but if you’re also someone who needs graphic design tools on a budget, you’re about to fall in love.
Affinity is a suite of tools from a company called Serif out of the UK. The “Affinity trinity” (alliteration joy!) includes Affinity Designer, a vector graphic tool, Affinity Photo for photo editing, and Affinity Publisher, a desktop publishing application. All three are available for MacOS (including an iPad version) and Windows and – while I can only vouch for Designer and Photo personally – they’re amazing. The UI is very well done and anyone with Adobe experience is going to be able to make the transition without issue.
Affinity Version 2 was released for all three applications last fall. The tools on their own are reasonably priced: $69.99. But if you decide to take the plunge, a “Universal” license for all three apps on all platforms is only $169.99. In case you’re not already sold, try out the 30-day trial.
Tips & Tools
Continuing on the design theme, Black Shrimp is a Chrome extension for identifying colors on your webpage.
Love that specific shade of pink? Black Shrimp will let you figure out what it is, and save it for later. You can also create color groups for reference so all the shades of your logo can be available at your fingertips.
Wanna Connect?
And finally, a quick reminder that I will be at Blush Cowork in Cary TOMORROW, Wednesday, February 15. Swing by and share your tech troubles! <3 And if that time doesn’t work, sign up anytime for a chat or troubleshooting.
Hope to see you there!