Serif updates Affinity Designer for Yosemite and 5K iMac, releases 10-day trial

Affinity Designer, the bargaintastic Mac OS X-only rival to Adobe’s Illutrator graphics package, has just recieved its first major update, adding full support for Mac OS X Yosemite and the newly-launched Retina 5K iMac as well as a host of improvements and additional features. With the £35 software proving seriously popular on the OS X App store, with hundreds of 5-star ratings and topping sales charts in multiple countries, the company has also announced a free 10-day trial to help people decide whether to invest.

The trail version is completely unrestricted, with no usage limits of watermarks for ten days – after which point Serif is convinced designers and graphics professionals will have been swayed away from Adobe. “While we’ve built Affinity Designer for pros from the outset and made it affordable for designers at every level, we’ve been bombarded with requests to make a trial version available.” Serif MD Ashley Hewson said of the launch. “The trial shows just how fast, smooth and precise Designer is, with well thought out processes that give illustrators and designers better results in less time.”

Both the trial and existing copies of Affinity Designer will get the improvements introduced in the update. As well as full optimisation for Yomsemite and the 5K retina iMac, the update also adds iCloud Drive support, letting you save designs to Apple’s web storage for access on other devices. Productivity tweaks that will be welcomed by early adopters include the improved clipboard, which now supports vector copy and paste between other programs, the ability to replace images in-place, and improved SVG and PDF export tools. The Pencil and Brush tools have been upgraded, along with the shapes they create, printing has been overhauled and a Gamut Check has been introduced for soft proof adjustments. 

It’s now possible to only use the integrated GPU on a MacBook Pro with dedicated graphics, to avoid draining the battery when working on the move, and Pen tablet users can now switch to the eraser automatically if their pen has an eraser tip. Naturally, there have been a range of bug fixes and smaller, behind-the-scenes improvements too.

The trial version will be available to download directly from the official Serif website later today, while the full version (complete with the latest update) is available through the Mac App store for £34.99.