For those who may be interested, after using Intaglio for many years and following the discussion about Intaglio’s future for many months, I finally decided to move to Affinity Designer. Although it doesn’t include automatic dimension lines for dimensioned drawings, it’s other capabilities are impressive (yes, it’s more complex than Intaglio). It handles both vector and raster drawing nicely. You do have to learn its mindset, such as every graphic element being on its own layer (its layers are very different than Intaglio layers). There are many YouTube videos provided by users, and Affinity has many videos of their own about how to use the software. I watched quite a few of them before deciding to buy the software. I’m now in the process of converting some of my most important Intaglio files to Affinity Designer files via copy/paste/clean-up. As with many things in the world today, “Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.”
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Make sure Affinity can’t read svg. You can export from Intaglio and then read. I was able to do this with EazyDraw.
Affinity is on a totally different track with layers. More like Photoshop or Pixelmator.
EazyDraw is like Intaglio with respect to layers. Depends on how you are using layers. EasyDraw is better for say a house drawing. You can show or hide say the electrical or notes or whatever.
Sounds like Affinity is good for your needs. And lower cost than EazyDraw.
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Thanks for this. I have been literally terrified I might lose Intaglio when my el Capitan runnng 2009 Mac Mini dies
I just watched a YouTube video that talks about opening and 'releasing" SVG files so they can be edited. Phew. I have FreePik and use a lot of their SVG files as a basis for designs.
I am wondering if AD uses “wells” like Intaglio for colours? No video I watched addresses that (I think I saw there was a “swatch” button under colours?) and I would very much miss that if it were gone.
I would love to hear a little bit more about your conversion of Intaglio files to AD - can you open .intaglio files in AD or do you have to open them and copy them over? I am pretty close to pulling the trigger on a purchase here so the more info I can get about the process of moving over the better!
cheers
Mary Anne
Maybe it’s me and my inexperience, but there are a number of things I do with ease in Intaglio that I can’t figure out how to do in AD. Can you help?
Filling text with a pattern. I often fill a word with a pattern, usually of straight lines, and can’t see a way to do that.
Likewise filling a shape with a pattern.
This is an example - these would be used for book folding (folding the pages of a book so the text stands out across the front of the book:
First off, everything I do is in vector space which is called ‘Designer Persona’ in AD, so I can’t talk about the ‘Pixel Persona’ (bitmap/painting). In Intaglio (IG) you can export to SVG files with options to crop to content, and embed images or export them to separate files. Alternatively, you can select everything in IG, Copy, move to your AD document, and Paste. The results are about the same, however, by using copy/paste you can select specific objects in IG and paste them into AD then immediately identify them as a Group in AD which will make it easier to manage them.
All objects in AD are ‘curves’. Each object is on its own layer (these are different than IG layers), but as in IG you can lock or turn on/off each object/layer. You can also rearrange an object/layer in the ‘Layers’ list to move it above (which will put it in front of) the next item, or below (which puts it behind). It’s very helpful to organize AD objects/layers into groups that can be locked/displayed. You can nest groups inside groups. Objects such as circles and squares come across complete. Lines with arrows come across as multiple individual curves.
Text blocks come across as individual lines of text. After converting to AD, I select the individual lines, delete them, go to IG, select all the text in the block, move to AD, insert a ‘frame text’, then paste the entire block of text into the frame. If you want to do fancy things with text (special fills, etc.) then you would use ‘Artistic Text’.
From AD Help: The Fill Tool allows you to adjust the fill and line colors applied to vector and text objects. Although you can use the Fill Tool to apply solid colors to an object’s fill or stroke, its true power lies in its ability to apply and modify gradients. You can also apply bitmap fills to objects, allowing you to add a bitmap image from an external source (like a pattern or texture) which can then be transformed on the object.
Also from AD Help: You can create and store your own swatches as custom color palettes either for the document, application or system-wide, as well as import any exported Affinity .afpalette from other users or import Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) palettes.
I found watching these videos very helpful in understanding AD’s capabilities:
Yes, thank you - I did watch a couple of videos before downloading the trial - overall I think it is powerful in ways I don’t need and it doesn’t do things I so pretty much daily. I really hate the way it handles text in particular. I’m going to have a look at Eazydraw but I might look for an older Mac Mini that I can upgrade to just under Big Sur and hope that will work with Intaglio until I die LOL! I had the same problem with AppleWorks when it stopped working Why am I so addicted to old technology…? Thanks for the input
Not having vector fill is a deal breaker for me but I will have a look at the link. This whole process only makes me realize even more clearly how unique Intaglio is!
