Serif Affinity Designer arrives on Windows

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Professional-grade design and graphics software Serif Affinity Designer is now available for Windows.

The vector drawing app – formerly restricted to Mac owners – is a budget-friendly alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It’s available for a special launch price of £29.99/US$39.99 (about AU$55) until 24 November.

That’s compared to £17.25/US$19.99/AU$22.99 per month for an Illustrator license through Adobe Creative Cloud.

Design for life

The PC edition of Affinity Designer has all the same features as its Mac counterpart, including unlimited artboards with device presets; non-destructive effects and adjustment layers; RGB, CYMK, LAB, Pantone and ICC color management; and 10 million+ per cent zoom.

Its launch comes hot on the heels of the release of Serif Affinity Photo for Windows as a public beta. The Photoshop-alike is available to download free – though bear in mind that there may still be a few rough edges. You can report any issues you discover on Serif’s beta forum.

The third part of Serif’s creative trinity – Affinity Publisher – is due for release on Windows next year.

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The best free photo editor 2016

Whatever your level of expertise, there's a free photo editor that will give you all the tools you need to make your pictures look amazing. These are our three favorite free tools for optimizing your images.

For more details, see our complete guide to the best free photo editors

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1. GIMP

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The most fully-featured free photo editor around, GIMP is powerful enough for just about any task.

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2. Paint.NET

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Not quite as feature-packed as GIMP, but Paint.NET's streamlined interface makes everyday photo editing a breeze.

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3. PhotoScape

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PhotoScape appears simple, but delve a little deeper and you'll find RAW conversion, photo splitting and merging, and animated GIF creation.

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