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Merch Makers
114 members • $110/month
HelloCustom Accelerator
2.3k members • Free
6 contributions to Merch Makers
3h •
Alternative to Photoshop
I'd like to share part of my workflow with the community. Instead of using Photoshop, and having to pay a monthly subscription, I use Affinity Studio. Studio essentially offers 90-95% of the functionality of Photoshop, but is FREE. It also has an InDesign and Illustrator competitor built in. There are some really great YouTube videos showing how to use Affinity, but I'm using it to generate Mock collections very quickly using a feature called Symbols, which are like Frames in Photoshop. Masks, transforms etc are easy to apply. I also use it, in conjunction with Kittl, to create designs, as the built in desktop publisher is more powerful at typography. Affinity was created by a British company called Seriff, which was sold to Canva last year. You can get it for Mac, PC and iPad. Here's a screenshot of one of my design templates. I import/drag the design into the template, make a couple of copies of it, place the design into the symbol artboards and all my mocks update. There are 8 symbol artboards in this template, 4 different sizes for the different Mocks, and 1 each for light and dark. I then export the lot to PNG. Takes about 5 minutes in total. Creating the template takes longer, but thats an upfront, one off time cost. Anyway, I hope you find this useful. I'm not an affiliate or anything, but thought it might be helpful to share. Oh, one last thing, you can import Photoshop plugins, but Alek's plug-in isn't recognised, never mind.
1 like • 42m
I'm using Kittl for background removal and AI generation of artwork. They have a 50% off sale on at the moment, use code WORKFLOW, again I'm not an affiliate, just sharing. I use Kittl artboards, using Alek's template, to create my inspirations, and store them on Kittl, along with Affinity to store them locally. Kittl probably works out cheaper than your subs to Google Gemini Pro and Adobe. Once I've set up my templates in Affinity, dropping images into the symbol artboards is really quick, as I have them scaled to match the design size ratios and fit them to my mocks. It's then just a case of a quick look at the mocks, switch to 'Slice' and export as PNG, PDF or whatever format you want.
0 likes • 26m
@Jamie M Here's a close up of the first 2 Symbols and their artboards being used on 2 mocks, one light and one dark. Hopefully it will help you understand how the symbols are added to the mocks.
2h •
21 Day Challange Tracking
Can anybody point me in the direction of how to update the trackers? The 'Daily Actions Checklist' mentions: 'Open the Master Tracker and enter your challenge start date' but I can't find that anywhere. Thanks in advance.
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21h •
Pre-List v Listing View
@Alek Sheffield Is Listing View, replacing Pre-List, as it looks like it has most if not all the same features, with additional features as well? If that's the case, should I just use Listing View and forget Pre-List? Thanks Mike
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1d •
Multiple Stores
I'd like to know the communities feeling about mixing product categories in a single store, for example apparel and home goods, or it is better for a store to specialise in one type of category. This would mean opening multiple stores, but they are then defined in what they sell. Thoughts please. Thanks Mike
0 likes • 24h
That makes sense, thanks for that insight.
0 likes • 23h
Thanks, keeps the stores cleaner and less confusing, in that case.
1d •
Calendar
Hi, I note the calendar for upcoming event eg Mon 11:00. what time zone is that as I am here in the UK ):
1 like • 1d
Actually Terry, I just check my calendar and its showing UK times, 6pm.
1 like • 1d
Have you set your location in your Profile?
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Joined Aug 12, 2026
Cambridgeshire
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