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[gmoffatt]

I've started looking for a replacement to my venerable Freehand, something I started using in 1989, and have been looking at Affinity Designer. Anyone care to comment about this application and its compatibility with Freehand.

[FFH Mark]

I've been using Affinity Designer for a while and there is a lot to like about it. It can open FreeHand files as long as you use the .fh11 extension but watch for layers either missing or all in one layer. Small things like delete an anchor point by using Delete key or dragging a swatch color onto a shape fill are nice reminder of FH.

Magnify tool works opposite of FH; zooms automatically from point of placement rather than the area hilighted. I love stroke alignment to inside-center-outside which was missing from FH.

Text controls are better than FH but text does not come close to FreeHand's formatting; Affinity is more like Illustrator's type tools. It does have a nice feature of "live" font appearances on your text as you scroll through the font list. No Glyph panel but FreeHand didn't have one either.

Lastly Layers panel doesn't work like FreeHand. It lists all items as a new layer and you have to combine or order them. Overall, AD beats Illustrator but still missing FreeHand-like features. I'm also keeping an eye on Gravit Pro which should bring more FreeHand-like features since it was started as the FH-replacement.