[HN Gopher] Affinity Studio now free
___________________________________________________________________
Affinity Studio now free
https://www.affinity.studio/
Author : dagmx
Score : 644 points
Date : 2025-10-30 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.affinity.studio)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.affinity.studio)
| nocoiner wrote:
| This seems ... way better than what I expected following the
| acquisition? What am I missing?
|
| And I assume this is a supplement to (and not a replacement of)
| the existing Affinity applications?
| kitd wrote:
| It looks like the pro version includes all the AI features. The
| free one is for "proper" artists ;)
| pavlov wrote:
| It is a replacement, the old Affinity apps are discontinued:
|
| _" Your Affinity V2 license (via Serif) remains valid and
| Serif will continue to keep activation servers online. But
| please note that these apps won't receive future updates._
|
| _" For the best experience, we recommend using the new
| Affinity by Canva app."_
| tym0 wrote:
| As someone who just bought V2 I am worried that V2 uses an
| activation server at all unlike V1 with its license key.
|
| When this free/premium with AI thing crash and burn in a few
| years I can kiss that license goodbye.
| northrup wrote:
| You should log in and download the offline copy of your
| license key and store it in order to safeguard such things.
| tym0 wrote:
| Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be a thing for V2
| binaryturtle wrote:
| I bought V2 a while ago too when it was offered extra
| cheap. The problem it doesn't run on my rusty machine. I
| bought it to have it as reserve once I upgrade my machine
| someday (who knows if my V1 stuff still runs then?). I
| learned about this weird activation server stuff
| afterwards, so ultimately I had to ask for my money back.
| There was no way to "activate" the software and store the
| key/keyfile in a backup. In no way this is future proof in
| my view.
|
| I want to use my software w/o depending on the availability
| of some random 3rd party server. I guess it just got worse
| with this new app here. I'm not enthusiastic about it at
| all. This has nothing to do with a price point at all (I
| was happy to pay for all my 3 V1 apps separately).
| nocoiner wrote:
| Oh, that's a shame. I liked those programs.
| underlipton wrote:
| New corollary to the maxim, "If it's free, you're the
| product":
|
| _" If the paid version can no longer be purchased, the
| 'free' version WILL be neutered."_
|
| They have to remove the option to compare the free, paid, and
| subscription versions.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Seems much better than was feared, though I haven't yet
| downloaded and tried the new version and there's still plenty of
| room for things to decay in the future.
|
| It requiring an account (and thus, internet connectivity) to use
| is offputting, though. That is a prime enabler of
| enshittification, since it allows Canva to force updates that
| users may not necessarily desire. Hopefully it's easy to reverse
| engineer so old versions can be preserved and remain functional.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I do hope you can still use it without internet. Otherwise the
| program is much less interesting.
| JustSkyfall wrote:
| You can use it without internet after the first signin!
| aquir wrote:
| I'm confused...this is not the same as Affinity Studio from
| Serif? Or it is? Their website shows something new:
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/
| aquir wrote:
| OK, there is a link to the Affinity Serif product on the Canva
| website as Affinity V2. Looks like an acquisition
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Holy shit good for them in that case! Affinity was always a
| great company with a great product.
| jsheard wrote:
| Yeah Canva bought them out over a year ago, but it was
| business as usual until now.
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-
| press-...
| achow wrote:
| This site seems to be the old one - they don't mention their
| acquistion by Canva in 'About Us' section.
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/about/
|
| Also there is no link anywhere for downloading their products.
|
| The current site seems to what OP has posted: affinity.studio
|
| Strange choice to keep the old site up and running, and to
| complicate things the old site is the top result when searched.
| mjmas wrote:
| It looks like that's fixed now. It redirects to affinity.studio
| for me.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| If I have to "sign up" then I don't really consider it free.
| Maybe still a good deal for some who need it, but I won't
| casually try this out like I would if I could just do it
| anonymously.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| This is a good rule of thumb
| turnsout wrote:
| As an Affinity user, I'm interested to try this out (just
| downloaded). I'm surprised they tried to put it all in one app.
| Affinity Publisher is quite different from Affinity Photo for
| example.
|
| _Edit: Just checked out the app. They essentially put Affinity
| Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher together in one
| app, switchable from a tab. Honestly, it 's executed well. I hope
| it stays free--these apps are legitimately useful replacements
| for their Adobe equivalents._
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Combining vector and raster editors makes some amount of sense
| since the raster editor had some vector capabilities anyway,
| but yeah, tossing in layout/desktop publishing feels kind of
| weird. It's a bit like combining a microwave oven and a
| blender.
| mbirth wrote:
| DTP is basically vector editing with an emphasis on text
| boxes.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Combining a microwave oven and a blender, you say? They
| already did that: https://www.thermomix.com
| codeptualize wrote:
| It looks very similar to what they already had. If you had all
| three they all were already integrated, you can just switch
| between the different types of editing modes.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| I was skeptical about the all-in-one but it's executed really
| well, to the point that now I really want Adobe to do the same
| thing for Lightroom (Classic) and Photoshop.
|
| Would be great to be able to switch between them on the same
| photo with tabs in one app. LR already uses ACR as the backend.
| turnsout wrote:
| I 100% agree. It feels so clunky to do the LR -> PS -> LR
| roundtrip!
| skwee357 wrote:
| Kind of a bummer. I paid for Affinity tools some time ago, but I
| guess my license is now worth trash, and if I want to use the new
| Affinity tools, I need to have "Canva account".
|
| I mean, free tools are good. But I smell a road to
| enshittification (for example, by offering Affinity for free so
| you create Canva account, then they push Canva AI or whatever BS
| to you little by little, and in the end deprecate affinity so you
| would move to Canva web Pro Ultra Version with 90% off for the
| first 3 months). Could be wrong, will see I guess.
|
| [Edit] Just to clarify something. It's not like I expect to pay
| for a license and get updates forever, but from what it seems
| like from other comments, the original apps are being removed
| from the App Store, meaning that the "free Affinity" is "Canva
| Flavored" Affinity, rather than the original tools.
| delfinom wrote:
| Absolutely. "free" tier is just to grow a userbase with
| mandatory accounts.
|
| Give it some time and suddenly that free tier shrinks or
| requires a subscription to continue.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The complaining is off the charts! Nothing in your life would
| have changed if you hadn't heard about this free product. Now
| you rest sleepless and grind your teeth because other people
| get to enjoy free high quality software.
| skwee357 wrote:
| Don't worry, I sleep tight and don't grind my teeth (at least
| not over Affinity).
|
| What bothers me, however, is that I bought Affinity tools in
| the first place in order to avoid marrying myself with Adobe
| and their predatory business practices. I, and many people
| here on HN, shared this sentiment of Adobe. However, I'm kind
| of baffled by the amount of people who seems to celebrate
| these free tools, as this is a 101 in predatory business
| making: acquire a good product, make it free but with an
| account, deprecate said good product and force everyone to
| use your SaaS offering with monthly subscription. I might be
| wrong, time will tell.
|
| I wonder when people will learn the real value of "free"
| offering by For Profit Big Corp (c)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I bought Affinity as well. If Affinity remains free now for
| one year, that means that every person who needs them can
| make enough money during one year to pay for Photoshop for
| the next 10 years if they want to.
|
| And if neither free nor paid professional software suits
| you, then program your own or use a physical photo editing
| lab. Or use your old Affinity software. It's not being
| deleted from your computer. That's what I'm going to do.
| ezfe wrote:
| They already were deprecating the original Serif suite,
| since it was clearly in part an acquihire.
|
| You bought those licenses with terms that you preferred and
| those terms are being honored so it seems like everything
| worked well.
| mns wrote:
| Yes, it did change: I want to use the old apps and I don't
| want to use a Canva account. I can still use them, but will
| never get any updates any more.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What you can or cannot get in the future is purely
| hypothetical and nobody owes you anything at all.
| RestartKernel wrote:
| What? How is selling a product with the promise of future
| updates under the same terms not owing us something? This
| is not some FOSS project we're taking about here.
| ezfe wrote:
| Nothing changed: you can still use the apps you purchased,
| as they were when you purchased them? That's the whole
| point of one time purchases.
| nirava wrote:
| bad take. your perpetual license was swapped under your nose
| for a freemium thing designed explicitly and specifically to
| get you to start paying subscription. that's the exact
| opposite of why I bought this software in the first place.
|
| also remember, v2 is now NOT getting all the features people
| have been requesting for years like image trace. it seems
| basically calculated to get people to make an account and get
| the "free" thing instead of sticking with the "perpetual" v2
| ezfe wrote:
| Your perpetual license is still valid for the v2 suite.
| Nothing was swapped - the product you paid for is no longer
| getting updates.
|
| Just because people have been asking for features doesn't
| mean your perpetual license is owed those features???
| That's an incredible amount of entitlement.
| microtonal wrote:
| It seems that the Affinity apps are removed from the Mac App
| Store? That would be a shame, because they are sandboxed. I don't
| want yet another app with unfettered access. Of course, I can
| still download them from my purchases, but I think there will be
| no updates anymore?
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah, I used to use the app store version of Slack because it
| was sandboxed. (I later switched to having Safari run it as a
| web application.) Even if I trusted them, the sandbox would be
| a layer of protection against bugs.
|
| I'd love to have an an easy way to wrap that sandbox around
| non-app-store applications.
| liuliu wrote:
| Developers can still choose to enable sandbox for apps
| delivered outside of App Store. Some of them simply choose to
| not do so: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security
| /hardened-...
| microtonal wrote:
| s/some/most/
|
| Sadly.
|
| For those that don't know, an easy way to check is to
| right-click a column in Activity Monitor and enable the
| _Sandbox_ column.
| osxman wrote:
| This is bad news... I liked the Publisher/Designer/Photo apps on
| my Mac. The presentation of this new 'Canva' acquired product
| feels like a circus, and roadmap is very unclear also. This feels
| like it will be the end of a none adobe solution.
|
| Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.
| odie5533 wrote:
| Now that the basic tools are all free, they no longer make
| money. AI features are the only thing that makes money, so all
| development is going to funneled into the AI features
| exclusively.
| jessep wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. The free part is the marketing, the
| more people like it, the faster it spreads. I run a freemium
| business and all the motivation internally is to increase
| growth by improving the free product. Once you achieve a good
| conversion to pro, any more will slow down growth. At that
| point, all you care about is improving the product for free
| users to generate word of mouth, and building features that
| will do so.
| dannyw wrote:
| Hi, Canva employee & Affinity user+lover for 10+ years (pre-
| acquisition) here.
|
| That's not true. We really do want to make all design,
| including professional design, as widely accessible as
| possible; including those who can't afford it.
|
| I understand this could be interpreted as 'corporate PR', but
| even from a game-theory sense, you'd want to maximize the top
| of your funnel, which is free users.
| meindnoch wrote:
| We don't believe you.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I've used free Canva and premium Canva on and off for
| years. Based on their track record, I'm keeping an open
| mind.
| slig wrote:
| Will we still be able to use our paid license without
| having to connect it to a Canva account?
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Why did you combine the products into one? Separately, each
| product was focused and capable; each product did one thing
| well, and integrated cleanly with the other products.
|
| There was no need to combine them, even if you wanted to
| add in the AI features.
|
| And I sure as hell can design just fine without a Canva
| account.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Publisher was already the combined version, kind-of. I
| never needed that one but it has the three personas.
| microflash wrote:
| I loved Affinity v1 suite's offline activation model. Sadly
| that changed in v2 and the same thing is happening now.
|
| Is there any hope to enable activating v2 offline? That way
| I can still install and use it when you eventually shutdown
| the activation server.
| dannyw wrote:
| I understand why this is important. I'll try my best to
| see what we can do :) Thank you for the great feedback.
| freeAgent wrote:
| It would be great to patch the v2 apps into an "offline
| mode." Then you don't have to worry about maintaining the
| license servers.
| ryandrake wrote:
| +1, I'm still on v1, partially because it required no
| account, no tether to the developer to activate. Just a
| straightforward purchase. I give them money, they give me
| an activation key, and our relationship is OVER. Why
| companies keep insisting on complicating this with
| accounts and online activations, I'll never know and
| never agree to.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| > We really do want to make all design, including
| professional design, as widely accessible as possible
|
| In the lead up to this launch, for the last month, Serif
| products were unavailable for purchase, leaving me unable
| to open the document that I created while on a free-trial.
| It would be dumb of me to create more documents in the
| proprietary affinity format, because there's nothing
| stopping you from deciding to do some other marketing stunt
| that involves removing my access to open my documents in
| the future.
|
| I'm advocating for open source not as "moving the goal
| post" but as the ONLY thing that guarantees that I have the
| right and ability to continue running the software on my
| own device.
| underlipton wrote:
| >We really do want to make all design, including
| professional design, as widely accessible as possible;
| including those who can't afford it.
|
| Open source it, then.
| turtlebro wrote:
| Circus? And why do you think you payed for nothing?
|
| Looks like they unified Designer/Photo/Publisher into one app,
| will take a bit to to get used to, but overall nice, the split
| between Photo & Designer was always a bit silly I feel. Also
| added GenAI features, for $12/m, not in a hurry to subscribe
| atm, but could come in handy. Cool to see the suite is still
| alive and getting updates.
| alwillis wrote:
| Just a reminder you can keep using your Affinity V2 apps. They
| run just fine on macOS 26.
|
| The real concern... will our V2 apps run on macOS 27 or macOS
| 28?
|
| I know no new features will be added to V2--what about bug
| fixes and security updates?
| bananapub wrote:
| it's fair to be very worried about the future of the apps, but
| this:
|
| > Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.
|
| is ridiculous. you (and I) paid for upgrades for software we
| liked, and then in exchange for that money got upgrades to said
| software.
|
| it's completely ridiculous for you to now whinge about this
| particular thing.
| osxman wrote:
| I can understand your confusion - possible anger - with my
| remark. But you take my answer too literally. I paid for it
| without regret, because I liked the software. But now it
| feels as a dead end so all those efforts for nothing... in
| the end it is a waste of both time investment and money.
| Cheers.
| tym0 wrote:
| Right so people who said they were going to merge the products
| together and release it free where right on the money.
|
| It being free means it'll eventually get enshittified though.
|
| Oh well, I just bought V2. What worries me however is that it
| already used an account instead of a license key like V1...
| mythz wrote:
| Awesome, expected Canva were going to jack up the prices or turn
| it into a subscription after acquisition. A freemium version is
| very welcome for the rare times I need to use it. No plans to
| ever be a paying customer myself (sorry Canva), but nice to know
| it's still being actively developed.
|
| Just noticed the AI feature integrations are locked behind a
| premium sub, makes sense to go for a wide funnel with a premium
| free product then up-sell to people who want the AI integration,
| should turn out to be commercially successful.
|
| Really hoping a Linux version is in the works. Hopefully the
| exodus from Windows picks up so we can accelerate the timeline
| for Linux support. (Currently using the amazing
| https://photopea.com for most image edits on Linux)
| microflash wrote:
| tldr;
|
| It is all apps combined in one. It is free. Requires Canva
| account. AI features require Canva Premium subscription. No iPad
| app (yet). Still missing RTL support.
| moi2388 wrote:
| That is fantastic. Paid for the affinity products when they first
| came out.
|
| Absolutely great product, I hate Adobe with a passion you
| wouldn't believe.
|
| The only problem is in time it will probably become paid, as most
| things do. Oh well, then I'll just uninstall.
| gdulli wrote:
| If you hate Adobe, why feel positively about them starting down
| the same path?
| noduerme wrote:
| Sooo, the main reason we looked at Affinity as an alternative to
| the Adobe suite was the fact that it was a one-time purchase
| without forced updates or all the extra garbage Adobe obsessively
| adds that slows down each new version. Affinity was nice but just
| not quite there, in my opinion, as a daily driver for print
| design and pre-press.
|
| Once they were bought by Canva, whose software I find atrocious,
| I gave up on it.
|
| My problem with this is that it seems like a gateway to being
| forced to pay monthly, Adobe-style. Or else what they're really
| selling are the AI tools. Just sell me a solid piece of software
| I can keep using forever offline. I can still do all my design
| work in Illustrator CS6 if I want to haul out a 15 year old
| laptop. Sell me a version of that for Apple Silicon and I'll
| happily pay for it.
| codeptualize wrote:
| It's a smart approach imo. They had to get a subscription somehow
| to support AI features which they need to compete (just usage
| cost wise you can't do that on a one time fee license).
|
| But since they promised not to go subscription when they got
| acquired by Canva, making it free with AI as the subscription is
| a clever solution to not break their promise while still
| introducing a subscription model.
|
| I think their bet is enough people will want the AI, which I
| think is correct.
|
| As a long time Affinity user, first reaction was: "see, there is
| the subscription", but on second thought, fair enough, well
| played. I'll probably get the AI subscription as well.
|
| I do wonder if over time more features will go into that premium
| plan, but we'll see.
|
| Edit: It seems like some of the AI stuff runs on device, they are
| not very clear about what does or doesn't. That makes me change
| my opinion a bit, as that's just straight up a freemium
| subscription model.
| tensor wrote:
| I think there are a lot of people like me who use it
| occasionally and won't bother with AI nor a subscription. To me
| this is a bad sign, as free is unsustainable. It's only a
| matter of time before they look at their metrics and realize
| "oh look, we have all these casual users who only use the free
| stuff, that's a new source of revenue!" at which point either
| the subscription now covers the app, or worse, they steal your
| shit for "AI training."
|
| Hell, has anyone looked at the EULA for this "free" product?
| Maybe it's already doing that.
| sbarre wrote:
| > Free is unsustainable
|
| This is not necessarily true when the free product is a sales
| funnel.
|
| Canva's business model is not "desktop design application"
| but giving away these tools creates goodwill in the design
| community and gives them exposure and a lower-friction
| conversion funnel towards their actual paid products.
|
| Since they're desktop apps, there's very little cost to them
| for the free users who never convert (unlike Figma or other
| cloud-based products that have operational/bandwidth costs
| for all users).
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I think a lot of the frustration seen here is that while
| Canva's business model is not "desktop design application"
| that Serif's (the previous company) business model _was_.
| Serif was something of the last one standing selling
| "desktop design applications" with that aligned to the
| incentives of "selling desktop design applications". With
| Serif bought by Canva and moving to a subscription model
| like all the other remaining tools, there is no one left
| with "selling desktop design applications" as a business
| model. That seems long-term unsustainable if your interest
| is "desktop design applications" that do their jobs well
| with few upsells to long-term subscriptions. The
| unsustainability that leads to upsells and subscription
| paywalls only generally ever get worse over time, _because_
| users of the free part aren 't the desired customer.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| On the plus side, when they layoff every single person
| that worked on Affinity in order to better align with
| something something market strategy, those people will be
| able to get together and start a new non-subscription
| desktop design applications company... with blackjack...
| and hookers.
| ndiddy wrote:
| I think you can still get Paint Shop Pro and CorelDraw as
| a one-time purchase from Corel. I'm not sure how good the
| current versions are, but I regularly use Paint Shop Pro
| 8 from 2003 and enjoy using it. Of course, it's
| definitely a rug pull if your workflow is Affinity
| focused and you have a ton of Affinity format files
| around.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Today's Corel seems very much a "use at your own
| security/bug risk" license-selling factory. They still
| sell support contracts (because those are lucrative) and
| sometimes patch the software for big security issues, but
| they seem to do that on a staff that is far more
| salespeople and lawyers (to wrangle ancient B2B legal
| contracts and new "minimal effort" security support
| contracts) than software developers. Their business model
| doesn't seem to be as much "selling desktop software" as
| it seems to be "fulfilling old support contracts for the
| zombies of classic desktop software".
|
| That said, yes, maybe PSP and CorelDraw will solve some
| uses of parts of Affinity's stack for people looking for
| an alternative and don't mind paying close to full price
| for code that is mostly frozen in time from the late 90s
| and early 00s.
| carefulfungi wrote:
| > This is not necessarily true when the free product is a
| sales funnel.
|
| In my experience, senior sales/revenue/whatever leaders see
| the free version as competing with the sales motion, not as
| a funnel (regardless of the reality). And argue to limit it
| more and more for short term conversion improvements.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Free is not unsustainable if there is a paid tier.
|
| For people like you who only use it occasionally, you're not
| the kind of person who's going to pay in the first place.
|
| It's sustainable if the professionals people who use it
| daily/weekly find it's worth it to pay for the AI tools. And
| if you're a professional, you'll likely be needing those AI
| tools to keep up.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Is Da Vinci Resolve's free version unsustainable?
|
| No. Because it's part of the cost for Black Magic Design that
| if they want to have their own hardware and not have the
| industry's monopolists (Adobe and Apple) make it difficult to
| maximise their sales, they need to control their own app.
|
| This is what Canva think about their asset marketplace and AI
| tools, I guess. They need their own app to make sure Adobe
| can never so much as tug at the corner of the rug.
| seemaze wrote:
| It looks like it is an offline application (after license
| verification) in he FAQ
|
| >You will need to be online to download and activate your
| license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is
| no requirement to be online, even with extended offline
| periods.
|
| As a long time Adobe "user" (read: hater) I'm curious if this
| decision targets Adobe or Microsoft options more..? Maybe
| both.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _> You will need to be online to download and activate your
| license with your free Canva account. From then on, there
| is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline
| periods._
|
| Until you get a 2am e-mail stating that they've updated
| their terms of service, and by reading the e-mail, you have
| agreed to the updated terms because the chances of you
| challenging this in court are precisely zero, no matter
| what the internet IANALs say.
| alwillis wrote:
| > free is unsustainable
|
| Canva makes $3+ billion (up from $1.5 in 2023) per year; they
| have 21 _million_ paying customers out of 240 million users.
| "Only" 8.75% are paying customers.
|
| They don't _need_ huge uptake in AI subscriptions from
| Affinity.
|
| So yeah, free _is_ sustainable for the foreseeable future.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Would they continue to invest in Affinity development if it
| isn't converting in to paying users?
| dannyw wrote:
| Thank you (long-time Affinity user and fan, and Canva employee
| here :)
|
| Re. on-device AI features: these still have significant
| training costs; and Canva as a whole has paid hundreds of
| millions to date in royalties to creatives, including for AI
| training.
|
| Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes
| sense.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that
| makes sense.
|
| It's free until you guys stop supporting it or go out of
| business, then it disappears.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I don't think it disappears - the copy I have will still be
| on my machine, and free to use as well. Unless they
| implemented something to remotely delete it?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Legally, you can't redistribute it
| matwood wrote:
| Unless you freeze your machine in its current state,
| software that isn't maintained will eventually stop
| working.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| That doesn't mean it disappears though - it still exists,
| just in a non-working state.
| t-writescode wrote:
| And proton and the community do well to keep old things
| working.
|
| Dosbox is a testament to that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is only true for very badly written software, and/or
| on platforms that maintain very bad backward
| compatibility. It's not some natural law of software--
| it's choices that (IMO) bad developers choose to make
| over and over.
| pikewood wrote:
| This already happened with Affinity Photo v1 on iOS; a
| lot of functionality did not work after an iOS update. It
| feels like Apple changed something in their libraries, so
| it doesn't even matter how robust your software is if the
| underlying OS doesn't honor compatibility.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Unfortunately there's also security people who work day
| and night to break old software and hardware that cannot
| keep up with the latest security standards.
| tiltowait wrote:
| This is how things have worked since programmable
| software was invented.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| your gripe is valid but misdirected. I also own a copy but,
| the one-time validation requires a validation server. Once
| that server goes offline, i can no longer install Affinity
| on a new machine.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| It's not free, it's a lure. There is a hook hiding somewhere.
|
| The real cost of tools like these is not the upfront price,
| but the time invested learning the tool and incorporating it
| into your workflow.
|
| Krita is clunky, but good enough for me, and it really is
| free.
|
| Update: Changed my analogy to lure.
| bebna wrote:
| What changes for me as iPad user?
|
| Does the account required mean I can't use it offline
| anymore?
|
| So can I finally import krita files? Especially those with
| vector layers?
| prox wrote:
| I am sorry, but for me the app just died. That may sound
| dramatic but the promise at acquisition was that nothing
| would change. The picture that was drawn is that we would get
| a v3. Sure I would suspect some canva integration, but again,
| not a whole redo and relaunch that seems at first glance
| nothing like what we had, and completely taken over into the
| Canva system.
|
| Also free is never free.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > They had to get a subscription somehow to support AI features
| which they need to compete
|
| I assumed the jury was still out in that one.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| It's smart only if their business goal is to lose every single
| customer they had specifically because it wasn't subscription
| software and didn't have the AI junk that their customers
| specifically did not want.
| spiderice wrote:
| Yeah I'm not sure throwing away their single advantage
| (that's not hyperbole) over Adobe is a smart play
| fortran77 wrote:
| I have a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (I was a
| long-time, early employee and negotiated this as a perk). One
| reason I paid for and use Affinity is that it DOESN'T have AI.
| I want to be completely sure the photos I edit don't go up to a
| "cloud" somewhere, etc.
| Inityx wrote:
| If you're not paying, you are the product.
| codeptualize wrote:
| There is a premium plan for the AI features, so that's the
| strategy, which does make some sense, I bet a lot of people
| will want to have those features.
| okanat wrote:
| Good software is never freemium. It is either paid upfront or
| it is a timebomb. I am okay with keeping things proprietary
| and asking for a fair price. Once free-to-play is introduced,
| the software is gone for good.
|
| I thought about buying Affinity a couple of months ago since
| they offered a perpetual license. Now I won't even think
| installing it
| dtagames wrote:
| I must say this is a welcome relief from the overpriced Adobe
| monopoly which I, as a solo dev, simply can no longer justify.
|
| The last suite with this name had a terrible UI. Canva also owns
| Leonardo which is pretty great so perhaps this will have a decent
| UI now that they've bought and revamped it.
| sarreph wrote:
| After the V2 suite was released a few years ago, I realised I
| would never get the "old" Affinity product experience back -- the
| same experience and price-point that made me a great and
| productive self-taught illustrator / designer.
|
| C'est la vie, all good things must come to an end. I'm glad the
| original team made it out with a financial reward (from Canva
| sale)...
|
| Time for someone else to pick up the mantle! [and for everyone
| else to stop moaning]
| stavros wrote:
| What was the difference between v1 and v2?
| sarreph wrote:
| V1 felt polished to a degree that implied the developers had
| thought a lot about how their product should provide a
| compelling user experience. It was also very performant and
| rarely crashed.
|
| V2 was buggy from the off -- for me -- and crashed
| frequently. It felt palpably slower and the changes to the
| featureset IMO were perfunctory (I don't have concrete
| examples to mind but I remember feeling that way at the
| time).
| stavros wrote:
| Ah, that's too bad. Thanks for the background!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Version 2 has been fine. FWIW though, I don't use Affinity
| Photo (but bought it too because I like the company). I'm
| Pixelmator Pro when it comes to pixels (but love Affinity
| Designer and Publisher).
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Interesting move by this company to expand into the creative
| suite space...
|
| BUT I'm curious how they'll handle interoperability with existing
| workflows... Are there import/export paths for PSD, Sketch,
| Figma... Without that it's just another silo...
|
| ALSO for freelancers and small teams licensing models matter... a
| subscription tied to an account can be a hurdle if you need to
| collaborate with clients outside the ecosystem...
|
| Would love to see more clarity on offline use, local file formats
| and plugin APIs... those details make or break a creative
| suite...
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I think for now, they will be fine with solo. for small
| businesses
| ryeights wrote:
| >Your PSDs are welcome here
|
| >Import PSDs, AIs, IDMLs, DWGs, and other file types into
| Affinity, with structure, layers, and creative intent
| preserved.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| kind of fun that their fonts are Affinity Serif and Canva Sans
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| They seem to have removed Affinity from the Mac App Store.
|
| For those who want a lifetime license instead of freemium,
| Amandine* is similar to Affinity ($30 on Mac Store).
|
| (I have no connection to either app).
|
| * Edit: It's Amadine, not Amandine (my typo)
| osxman wrote:
| Great tip, will give that a try! To find it in the Mac Appstore
| it is called 'Amadine' (without the 'n') It seems alright at
| first glance, thanks again for this tip.
|
| Feels also more European since it is from Ukraine, supporting
| them feels good!
| presbyterian wrote:
| And if you want just a photo editor, not a vector software, I
| really recommend Pixelmator Pro. I've had it and Affinity Photo
| for years, but I find myself sticking with Pixelmator more
| often than not.
| p_ing wrote:
| Apple bought Pixelmator. What is it's future?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Possibly free also.
| latexr wrote:
| I got interested in Pixelmator Pro after Canva acquired
| Affinity, and then lost interest again when Apple bought
| them. They aren't exactly good stewards of their own pro
| apps.
| latexr wrote:
| I have been curious about Amadine for a few years, but honestly
| at this point it feels that if I'm going to invest any time in
| learning a new vector drawing tool (for like the fourth or
| fifth time), it's probably a good idea to try Inkscape first.
| They were working on Affinity Designer file imports a few
| versions back.
| glimshe wrote:
| Nooooooo!
|
| I'm a loyal Serif customer and paid for their software. I LOVE
| Affinity. And I HATE "free" commercial products because they need
| to extract revenue from subscription services, ads, data selling
| etc.
|
| This is the first step toward making Affinity become another
| rental application like Photoshop. Escaping Adobe's predatory
| business model is exactly why I became a Serif customer in the
| first place.
| achow wrote:
| Look at it this way, this could challenge Adobe to make
| Creative Suite free and charge only for AI in their product
| (one can dream at least).
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Not a chance - Adobe is too much of an industry standard.
| criddell wrote:
| Lotus 1-2-3 was once an industry standard.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| One could dream.
|
| But hey, anything that puts pressure on Adobe and makes them
| sweat a little is a win in my book. Fuck them.
|
| Now, if maybe Apple would actually do something with their
| Pixelmator acquisition and re-release aperture, both Apple
| and Canva/Affinity can start going after Adobe.
| dannyw wrote:
| I'm also a loyal Serif customer, love Affinity, and I work at
| Canva.
|
| This is not the first step in that. It's not anywhere close to
| our plan.
|
| We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the default
| tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever.
|
| AI features; like generative fill, have COGS and incremental
| inference costs. Hence that's an _optional_ subscription.
|
| I understand why you feel that way. Having being involved, the
| biggest factor to acquisition & joining forces was our shared
| mission and beliefs; not things like financial engineering.
|
| I hope you can judge us by our actions. It's you, who we try to
| build the product for <3
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| I understand where y'all are coming from and this is not a
| judgement against Canva specifically. But you can't be
| surprised that people are concerned after so many years of
| anti-consumer anti-patterns in software that start _exactly
| like this_. This has nothing to do with Canva or Serif but
| the industry as a whole has squandered goodwill for so many
| years that actions like this no longer get the benefit of the
| doubt.
|
| So unfortunately due to the rug pulls of many bad actors
| y'all will have to explain exactly how this doesn't end
| poorly because damn near every other time a company has
| followed this trajectory it is not in the consumer's best
| interest.
| bbatha wrote:
| > explain exactly how this doesn't end poorly
|
| Explanations aren't sufficient either. The industry has
| burned that bridge. Strong contractual guarantees. Ceasing
| personal data collection operations, etc. etc. Concrete
| steps only. Thus far we have one concrete step that is
| proof of the opposite direction.
| dannyw wrote:
| I know, I hear you. We want to prove to be the exception to
| the rule. If you think about this from a macro and game-
| theory perspective, I hope you can see why _genuinely_
| "free, forever." is in our best commercial interests, long-
| term.
|
| On a personal level, I hope we don't let cynicism prevent
| mission-driven companies trying to do good and customer-
| positive things from succeeding.
| starkparker wrote:
| > a macro and game-theory perspective
|
| bro you _need_ to log off
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| > I hope you can see why _genuinely_ "free, forever." is
| in our best commercial interests, long-term.
|
| I actually can't but I'd welcome hearing more about the
| strategy. I suspect what you're alluding to is maybe an
| open-core model? Generate free value for the entire
| ecosystem and then capture a portion of it with value-
| adding paid features? I'd be interested in that but I
| don't see where the FOSS layer is here.
|
| > I hope we don't let cynicism prevent mission-driven
| companies trying to do good and customer-positive things
| from succeeding
|
| I also want to do mission-driven and moral work in the
| tech industry but I think there may be a disconnect
| between how the general population sees the tech industry
| and how it sees itself. This is my motivation to make
| these comments; not to be antagonistic and unpleasant for
| no reason but to attempt to hold up a mirror and show the
| tech industry the crisis of confidence that it faces. It
| would be like Philip Morris - after decades of subverting
| science and pushing cigarettes - launching a vape and
| expecting to receive the benefit of the doubt that the
| product has no downsides. Gone are the days of Silicon
| Valley being the warm and cuddly companies saving the
| world from their beanbags and open concept offices.
| crowcroft wrote:
| You lay out an impossible challenge for Canva, there is no
| way they can prove that they will never add a subscription
| service or different charges in the future.
|
| What exactly do you expect from them? Would you prefer they
| just kept charging you for the product? That still isn't a
| guarantee that they wouldn't move towards more paid
| features and subscriptions in the future.
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" What exactly do you expect from them?"_
|
| Nothing. No one asked for Canva. The acquisition is an
| imposition by a company that has not earned the trust we
| had in Serif.
| crowcroft wrote:
| You can only please some of the people some of the time I
| guess.
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| > Would you prefer they just kept charging you for the
| product?
|
| Yes, exactly. Knowing that my interests, my consumer
| spending choices, are the direct feedback path to their
| profitability is one of the only ways to provide some
| concrete assurances that they'll be building for the
| customer's needs and not for data collection, AI
| shovelware, or some other play.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Did that stop Adobe moving towards a subscription model?
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| People complain about Adobe's subscription model but it's
| superior to free-to-play consumer software because it
| still keeps an alignment between the consumer interest
| and the company's income. Despite its other faults, you
| could even argue that a consumer subscription model can
| be better aligned than single purchase software because
| the customer needs to continually choose to pay the
| company for its use and it incentivizes continually
| improvement and competition.
| bakugo wrote:
| > This is not the first step in that. It's not anywhere close
| to our plan.
|
| That's what they all say, right before they go ahead and do
| it anyway.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| It might be the plan now - but it only takes one Product
| Manager in 18 months who is looking to push a metric
|
| It's also concerning that you have to be logged in to use a
| free native app
| exasperaited wrote:
| You have to log in at first download -- how else would you
| make a free app generate any business?
|
| You evidently do not need to be logged in to subsequently
| start it up. You don't even have to be on the network.
|
| (I have tested this)
| mopsi wrote:
| > We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the
| default tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever.
|
| Then please release it without any DRM or mandatory accounts,
| so that the binary will remain usable even when all the
| network infrastructure goes down.
|
| This is the main reason for me to prefer old school offline
| desktop software. Once I've invested time and energy into
| learning something as complex as a photo editor, I really
| don't want it taken from me on a whim.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Is there any chance of offering a local mode for AI features?
| It's fine if that's pay-gated, but an increasing number of
| mass market machines (Macs, mainly, but also workstations
| with Nvidia cards and AMD boxes like the Framework desktop)
| have inference capabilities sitting somewhere between
| competent and excellent and it'd be a shame if all that power
| just sat unusued. It'd be a nice boost for privacy, too.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| Affinity Photo 2 has a few offline AI features already. You
| download a model for offline use.
| Maxious wrote:
| There is an on device background remover included for free
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Respect the love and the vision, yet don't forget Pournelle's
| Iron Law of Bureaucracy <3 Available to consult with mgmt on
| how to fight the law ;)
| poisonborz wrote:
| Why is an account necessary then? Stop saying it's free when
| it's not.
| 65 wrote:
| We are probably devastated because free commercial products
| have to extract revenue from the user somehow. Maybe not
| today, but most likely tomorrow. And this will always be a
| subscription, which was what Affinity was trying to stay away
| from.
|
| I'd like to be proven wrong, but there is no way some KPI
| obessed manager isn't going to go... what about locking the
| Pen tool behind the subscription? What about ads, with an ad-
| free subscription? And on and on.
|
| Enshittification always sounds like a really good deal in the
| beginning.
| Kye wrote:
| This is like when a dog is harassing me and the owner yells
| "he won't bite! I know my dog!"
|
| I don't know _you_.
| viraptor wrote:
| > This is not the first step in that. It's not anywhere close
| to our plan.
|
| ... for the current management. Unless there's some binding
| contract that prevents this change it's just a matter of
| enough people in management changing. Enshitification became
| too common to just believe some company is different.
| pier25 wrote:
| Maybe today but what about 12-24 months from now?
|
| You will need to build a lot of trust in the next couple of
| years.
|
| Personally I lost faith in Affinity after waiting for a
| decade for a feature requested dozena of times in the forum
| (group isolation in Designer).
| daft_pink wrote:
| When somethings free, I'm suspicious.
| tomrod wrote:
| If its a local-first app, that could be very good! Even if
| browser+WASM with local storage that is a step up from web
| apps.
|
| I don't like companies hoovering all data.
| duiker101 wrote:
| How long before that's no longer the case?
| brookst wrote:
| Only way to be sure it will never change is to build it
| yourself and make it free for everyone forever!
| radiator wrote:
| Though even if you build it, someone might eventually
| make you an offer you cannot refuse.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| so basically there's no more incentive to maintain or improve the
| affinity suite..
| alt227 wrote:
| Yep, the design side of the software will rot and die.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| Except their competitors? Why do you think Canva bought them?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| what people actually want: to pay the ridiculously cheap $20/mo
| or whatever it is for Photoshop, but to use whichever backend
| they want for generative AI, not the other way around.
| brookst wrote:
| I think you made a typo spelling "I"
| vasilzhigilei wrote:
| Linux version when
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| Indeed. Although I suspect Wine or proton could be an option -
| not checked.
| akpa1 wrote:
| Older versions historically haven't worked very well, but
| I've not tried with newer copies.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| There's a custom patched wine that can run version 1
| reasonably well, and efforts were ongoing for version 2.
| Haven't really tried it since I'm not a artist.
| https://codeberg.org/Wanesty/affinity-wine-docs
| Maxious wrote:
| https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux is being updated
| to reflect the v3 but it does work
| tym0 wrote:
| Yeah I use this.
|
| - V1 has some rendering issue on my work machine (haven't
| updated it in a bit, could have been fixed)
|
| - V2 mostly works well on my home machine, some crashes
|
| Overall wouldn't use it for work but for small edits it's
| fine.
| meindnoch wrote:
| >Sign up to download
|
| Into the trash it goes.
| slig wrote:
| You really like to say that, don't you?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45707186
| latexr wrote:
| Doesn't even make sense. If you need an account to download,
| then before you make the account there is nothing to trash.
| KaiMagnus wrote:
| Wow, completely free? I wonder how the team plans look like,
| seems like you need to contact them even for single digit seat
| counts.
|
| An UI design tab next please, some more players in that space
| would be nice.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Yeah I can actually cancel my pro plan now, dont think I need
| the AI Feature, let's see
| indiantinker wrote:
| So did they buy Affinity and all their tools and gave it for
| free?
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/about/
| alt227 wrote:
| Yep, but dont expect the level of quality development that was
| there before. These'free' tools are to attract you to buy ai.
| They are now only selling tools. Serif were pushing to beat
| Adobe at their own game and make the best designer tools
| available. Canva are just trying to sell you ai.
| indiantinker wrote:
| Interesting. Yes, the pro features seem to be just about ai
| these days. I used affinity's indesign equivalent while at
| work and it was quite good. I wonder what the business model
| is? Same as figma a while back?
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| So why has Canva been giving massive amounts of their quality
| development away for free for over 10 years?
| thijsvandien wrote:
| Mixed feelings about this. The apps were great and it's always
| uncomfortable when the future becomes uncertain due to a big
| acquisition. So far, it seems it could've gone worse. Their
| business model makes sense. I like that everything got integrated
| now, because Photo, Designer and Publisher being separate with so
| much overlap didn't feel natural. Hate the new logo, though...
| Some elegance was definitely lost.
| dzonga wrote:
| can't believe this. once paid $50 - but still a steal at that
| price.
|
| now glad people can unleash their creativity.
| TechRemarker wrote:
| Been curious what the Oct 10 announcement would be. It seemed
| most likely an acquisition since they wanted enough time of not
| selling existing products to avoid dealing with a month of
| refunds. Appears Canva bought with it now being a single app that
| is "free" but paid for premium features. While many may rejoice
| at a solid free options it's certainly an unfortunate day for
| those who rely on it. As Canva makes money on people using the
| paid version so attention will be at making that version more
| enticing over time and free less. If people all just used the
| free and not the premium for AI, then they would either start
| charging for the "free" version or take away features from the
| free version to make the "choice" easier to upgrade. All in all
| good for Canva, and good for more casual users who can jump ship
| any time to free options but would be quite worrisome for those
| who have looked towards Affinity as the alternative to Adobe.
| achow wrote:
| Canva acquired Affinity year and half back - Mar 2024.
|
| https://www.canva.com/en_in/newsroom/news/affinity/
| lousken wrote:
| so this means that the linux-wine version will not stop working
| after some random update i assume?
| oliviergg wrote:
| On Mac, the app size when installed is 3.5GB!?? How can we get
| such a size?
| dchest wrote:
| I have:
|
| - Affinity Designer 2 -- 2.88 GB
|
| - Affinity Photo 2 -- 2.81 GB
|
| + publisher (don't have it)
|
| So... smaller than both of them :)
| johnhamlin wrote:
| Love to see this the day Adobe emailed to say it's hiking my
| Photoshop/Lightroom subscription by 50% ($10/mo -> $15/mo)
| quchen wrote:
| One of the reasons I stopped doing photography was that I
| realized I'm locked to using Lightroom where all my previous
| pictures are, and without a subscription it's such a hassle to
| gain access to them again. I miss the days when I just bought
| Lightroom and that was it. :-(
| stavros wrote:
| Capture One is fantastic, though.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Yes but settings for any existing photos are non-
| transferable between different RAW editing systems, by
| design. Even different versions of the same software have
| to keep around all old code for compatibility.
| Computer0 wrote:
| One of the last 2 pieces of perpetual license pieces of
| photo software I have left. This software segment has
| almost entirely been consumed by subscriptions.
| hughes wrote:
| Did your email offer you the chance to pay yearly for $11/mo?
| Mine did, but I don't think the option to pay yearly exists.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I get this every single year. Just go on to their web site,
| call up a human agent on their chat and tell them it's too
| expensive. They have a ton of offers to get it back down to
| what you were paying before.
| skeaker wrote:
| Better yet, don't ever pay for their software in the first
| place.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| For sure. But "less shitty than Adobe" isn't a life goal.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The entire popularity of Affinity was licenses you could buy once
| and use forever and not have subscriptions or anything over you.
|
| Now it's "free" with an account and an optional subscription.
| Basically the opposite of why everyone supported them. Good luck,
| folks.
| Lapra wrote:
| I just want to buy a product and not have it constantly upsell
| me. Like what Affinity was before. Please.
| skwee357 wrote:
| But how will the company "maximize shareholder value" then?
| mwkaufma wrote:
| Many comments here that this "makes sense." Free does not make
| sense! If I'm not paying for it I'm not the customer anymore.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Yep. Your art is now their training data. Their AI subscription
| today comes at the cost of your job tomorrow.
| nicce wrote:
| Does this read in ToS somewhere? I know many professional
| artists and if they would find out that their work is used
| for training, the app is uninstalled faster than it takes
| time for you to read this text.
| mwkaufma wrote:
| It requires a Canva login now, so they'll smuggle it in
| through there. If it not already in the language it's
| inevitable because it's set up for enshittification now.
| exasperaited wrote:
| It says, on the actual website, the absolute opposite:
|
| "Your content in Affinity isn't used to train AI features
| -- we can't access local files. For content you choose to
| upload to Canva, you're in control. You can review and
| update your preferences any time in Canva settings."
|
| The only nuance I can think of here is that if you are
| using the cloud AI tools, you are uploading content. But
| it's largely hypocritical to complain about AI tools being
| trained on your content. They were trained on everyone
| else's.
| nicce wrote:
| Professionals I know don't want to use AI at all. So if
| Affinity is really not using the produced art for
| training, many artists will get a good tool for free.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >2025
|
| >believing anything a corporation says
| donmcronald wrote:
| > For content you choose to upload to Canva, you're in
| control.
|
| IE: You're in control of what you upload. What happens
| after it's on their servers? What happens when they send
| it to a partner for processing?
|
| The AI industry is filled with liars. It's basically
| "we're not using you data for training, that was a
| partner we pay that trained using your data." Good luck
| finding out who actually used your data for training when
| more than one company had access to it.
| exasperaited wrote:
| No, by "you're in control" they _don 't_ just mean that
| the control is whether or not you upload it. You've
| elided the other bit of that quote: "You can review and
| update your preferences any time in Canva settings."
|
| They mean there are two privacy toggles that control it.
| They ask, you can change your answer.
|
| > AI-powered features can learn and improve with your
| general usage
|
| > When this setting is on, Canva and our trusted partners
| will use information about your general usage to help AI-
| powered features learn and improve. This includes how you
| interact and create with Canva products, but not your
| content.
|
| > AI-powered features can learn and improve with your
| content
|
| > We want to develop better AI features to help improve
| the way you create it in Canva. We have strict controls
| and policies in place to protect yours and your Team's
| content when building AI, but we still won't use it
| without your consent.
|
| Beyond these, I don't know. Or really care, since I won't
| be using those tools.
| exasperaited wrote:
| That depends on whether they have anything to sell you. Like Da
| Vinci Resolve's free version, for example; they have something
| pro to sell you (and hardware).
|
| Canva presumably see it the same way
| mwkaufma wrote:
| "presumably" doing a lot of heavy lifting
| exasperaited wrote:
| Is it? It's just saying I presume it. Is there another word
| that I can use that does less heavy lifting? Or did you
| just say that because it's the done thing to say?
| latexr wrote:
| It's not all free. It gets you in the door to then pay for the
| subscription to the AI features.
|
| Also, that idea of "if you don't pay, you're the product" was a
| nice slogan but it isn't true. Open-source software is free and
| respects you, while streaming services these days charge you
| money while serving you ads.
| mwkaufma wrote:
| The open-source comparison is confused. Lots of open-source
| projects do offer optional commercial licenses or support
| contracts. And the truly free-as-in-beer projects either have
| some kind of grant financing or else the maintainer shoulders
| the costs until they burn out.
|
| That "nice slogan" is emphatically true.
| nkq2g wrote:
| Makes sense to whom, exactly?
|
| Free makes business sense when monetizing through business
| customers and AI subscriptions.
|
| Conflating "this doesn't align with my preferences" with "this
| is objectively bad business strategy" assumes personal consumer
| expectations should dictate corporate viability. Those are
| different frames of reference.
| 1023bytes wrote:
| So basically "Canva Desktop"?
| TechPlasma wrote:
| _IF_ the new app truly has all the features of V1 and V2 of the
| affinity apps. And _IF_ it 's truly free. Would it would damn
| sure be nice of them remove the license requirement from the V1
| and V2 versions which I both bought and loved. And let users
| continue to enjoy these pieces of software for years to come
| without having to sign up for this new program which I don't
| trust at all. I've used and loved it for close to 10 years now.
| And it's fantastic software. But I just can't trust software
| without a proper non-subscription business model. I'm not going
| back to fucking Adobe and it's ilk.
| nalekberov wrote:
| https://downloads.affinity.studio/Affinity.dmg
|
| thank me later.
| latexr wrote:
| You still need an account to start the app, so the direct
| download doesn't really save any effort.
| nalekberov wrote:
| That's right, thanks for pointing this out.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Side/relevant (?) note, earlier this month, serif had made
| affinity free (at least for iPad if not for others as well). Many
| had speculated a v3 or something coming up... but I suppose
| "everything is free" is pretty nice too?
|
| (Idk why everyone's disappointed, it seems clear that canvas
| hopes the AI is good enough to get people to fork over their
| money. That's... alright, as of now?)
| nirava wrote:
| disappointed because a "best we offer, forever" paid software
| got swapped under our nose for "free for all after you login
| but we'll beg you to pay monthly by dangling features in the UI
| but locking them behind a trial or subscription" software.
|
| There are many many free and amazing software tools in this
| space I could have made a workflow out of. I explicitly BOUGHT
| this thing because it promised to be simple and "the best
| experience we can offer" software.
|
| I think that distinction matters.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > ...we'll beg you to pay monthly by dangling features in the
| UI but locking them behind a trial or subscription" software.
|
| The features appear to only be things that affinity already
| didn't have, right?
|
| I agree it might involve annoying ads or pop ups, but if
| canva really does what they're saying (which, of course, is a
| pretty big if), then it's functionally identical to affinity
| v2?
|
| (I also had considered the software but for some reason
| thought it was Apple only and never bought it for windows.)
| nirava wrote:
| not just identical, the new "free" thing will have more.
| popular requests like image trace and vector blend go to
| the "free" but not v2 (which, on its own is understandable
| tbh, no one expects a one time purchase of v2 to improve
| for eternity)
|
| thing is, functionality wise, the affinity software suite
| wasn't unique in the first place. there's a million
| different tools, many free and some open source, that you
| can use to create and edit and view.
|
| I think many people bought it because it stood for
| something more than what it's frankly mediocre feature-set
| might have implied. We bought it because we refuse pop-ups
| and ads on principle (specially on a paid, professional
| software system), and thought that feeling itself was worth
| the money paid.
| scblock wrote:
| I'm done with this. Open source only from here on out. You can't
| trust anyone in this day and age to turn not their products into
| AI pushing garbage.
| viraptor wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no realistic vector drawing open source
| app for MacOS. Inkscape is still basically unusable with
| extreme lag. LibreDraw is ok for very basic things. But that's
| about it.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, if Apple did something about it... We would at least
| have some half-assed thing that would look good in
| commercials.
| spiderice wrote:
| Pixelmator somewhat fits that (minus the half-assed part).
| Pixelmator is, at least for now, pay once. And given
| Apple's size I don't see them trying to squeeze customers
| for Pixelmator subscriptions. It definitely isn't a full
| vector program at the level of Illustrator/Affinity. But
| for a lot of people it probably has powerful enough vector
| editing.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I see that there is Pixelmator ($50) and Photomator
| ($120), both from Apple.
|
| Any idea what the difference is? The cheaper one looks
| more capable.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Pixelmator = Photoshop
|
| Photomator = Lightroom, but without the library
| management
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| > Inkscape is still basically unusable with extreme lag.
|
| ?? I use Inkscape every day on macOS and it runs just fine,
| equivalent to on Windows/Linux. It was pretty bad a few years
| back but has caught up.
| sgt wrote:
| Same here.. I don't use it often, but it is fairly quick on
| my M2. It did have some mouse focus issues, you have to
| click around a bit more but that's okay-ish.
| viraptor wrote:
| With anything remotely complicated I get lag on any clicks.
| Like 2s between a click and seeing anything get selected.
| Panning is unusable.
| raincole wrote:
| You can try Inkscape on Windows! It's the most crashy
| software I've used. It's crazy because I use Houdini and
| Blender, both _far_ more complicated apps than Inkscape and
| they crash less.
|
| (Houdini is the second-most crashy app I've seen, and it's
| nothing compared to Inkscape at least on Windows.)
| timeon wrote:
| I'm going to hold on my Affinity as long as I can and try to
| integrate as much of my workflow to Inkscape as possible
| (even if UI feels like CorelDraw). Also keeping eye on:
| https://graphite.rs/
| gspencley wrote:
| I switched to Affinity as part an ongoing effort to "de-Adobe-
| ize." I had no idea that they were owned by Canva.
|
| This could be good news, but as someone who paid for a perpetual
| license, I'm worried that some of the features I paid a one-time
| license for will eventually move to a Canva subscription model :(
|
| The reason that worries me is that when I look at the feature
| chart, you've got "Affinity" compared with "Affinity + Canva
| Premium Plans."
|
| Subscriptions make sense for certain services. I'm not opposed to
| a subscription model in general. But for creative tools, I LOATHE
| subscriptions. It means that my creative work is now held hostage
| by rent-seekers who require me to pay them monthly fees to be
| able to access my art work. NO!
|
| So if I ever need a Canva Premium plan in the future to be able
| to use certain Affinity features that I've PAID FOR then fuck
| them, I'm abandoning them as fast I abandoned Adobe after being
| an Adobe user/customer for 30+ years.
| t-writescode wrote:
| What client-side features do you use that you think will get
| ripped out and paywalled from an old version?
| gspencley wrote:
| Thyat's a fair question and the honest answer is I don't know
| and I'd have to sift through the feature comparison chart to
| see if there's anything I actively use today with my paid
| license that is moving to a Canva Premium subscription.
|
| My real point is that Affinity had two selling points that
| "converted me:"
|
| - Artist word of mouth. Photo & Design were becoming popular
| as an alternative to Photoshop & Illustrator so when artists
| started recommending it as an alternative I listened and
| checked them out.
|
| - Perpetual license / no subscription model. That was THE
| NUMBER ONE SELLING POINT that got me on board as a customer.
| The second I even need to login to an account to be able to
| use the thing I paid a one time fee for, it's going to rub me
| the wrong way. It feels like a bait and switch.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Do you find CD-Keys that round-trip one time, ever to be a
| violation of a perpetual license? That's effectively what
| "login to an account" means - especially if it works
| offline forever, afterward. (I haven't checked if it does,
| in this case)
| gspencley wrote:
| If it's a one-time license validation, no. That's fine.
| If it's "login every time to be able to use the app" then
| that is something that, while is not necessarily a deal
| breaker in all cases, really annoys me.
| latexr wrote:
| > I'm worried that some of the features I paid a one-time
| license for will eventually move to a Canva subscription model
|
| They explicitly promised they wouldn't switch to a subscription
| model, during the acquisition.
|
| https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/
|
| Whether that is true is another thing altogether.
| Kye wrote:
| Stopping development of the thing you paid for to launch a
| subscription app is the same thing. V2 launched with
| basically no new features or improvements and everyone
| expected it to improve over time like V1 did.
| ezfe wrote:
| > I'm worried that some of the features I paid a one-time
| license for will eventually move to a Canva subscription model
|
| > to be able to use certain Affinity features that I've PAID
| FOR then fuck them
|
| Your license is perpetual for V2, so I wouldn't worry that
| you'll lose access to it?
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| wow, if they add Good Enough(tm) video editing I can probably
| cancel my Adobe CC subscription
| mns wrote:
| Devastated about this. Good for them for making money on the sale
| to Canva, but still, this is a sad day. Studio is now freemium,
| in the future probably more and more features (outside of AI)
| will be added in the subscription, and you will end up with an
| app full of disabled features and pop-ups encouraging you to
| subscribe and unlock the new and shiny thing.
|
| There is absolutely nothing in the world that anyone can say to
| convince me that this is not the end for Affinity. Every single
| product that went through this ended up being an ad data
| gathering subscription pushing unusable app for anything useful.
|
| I have both a V1 and V2 license. V2 is probably now useless
| considering that it will never get any updates. This marks the
| death of one of the last popular pay once and use forever apps
| (in the sense that a V3 with new features will never exist).
| t-writescode wrote:
| Useless? My guy, it's a photo editing program. You don't
| constantly need the new hotness. They don't break old versions
| of their files every update like Substance Painter. I bought v2
| more because I support Affinity not because I needed new
| features.
|
| It'll keep working for decades to come because you own the
| software, and png, jpeg and standard camera raw formats aren't
| going away.
| mns wrote:
| Any type of updates (bugs, security, OS support) will go only
| to the Canva version, no part of my comment was about the new
| hotness or that being the reason I bought any of the
| licenses.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I admit I'm not that worried about a virus or exploit in a
| jpeg that specifically targets the less-popular image
| editing application, when I have a solid virus scanner.
|
| And I'll be switching to Proton for this soon enough, so OS
| support stops mattering for the most part.
|
| And most bugs you just work around when they're in a large
| and stable enough product like Affinity Photo
| slig wrote:
| >It'll keep working for decades to come because you own the
| software
|
| Only if you don't update the OS and/or the drivers.
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| The FOMO created by online games. You need the latest DLC to
| get the latest armour you know...
| latexr wrote:
| > It'll keep working for decades to come
|
| "Decades" is probably a stretch. Especially on macOS, updates
| to the OS may eventually break them. And the apps were
| removed from the App Store.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If you are dependent on certain software you don't upgrade
| your OS until you are 100% sure that the software will
| continue to work. Especially money-making software like pro
| photo editing tools. If needed, you keep old machines
| around especially for that software.
| timeon wrote:
| This is the reason I kept 32bit mbp/macos around in order
| to use old pre-CCloud Adobe. Then I've found Affinity and
| was able to move on... Should have started already with
| Inkscape at that time I guess.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Ah, the good ol' "run it on Windows 95 in a VM" approach.
| It's pretty common in industrial applications and
| adjacent small businesses, which often rely on decades
| old software that has no modern alternative, or (more
| often) suffered from extensive enshittification. You keep
| running the software on old hardware, and once you run
| out of options for old hardware, you virtualize it and
| continue indefinitely.
|
| Of course, this is only workable if you can live with
| using your program through a special machine that's
| dedicated only to it, and/or are willing to pay the price
| of increasingly sophisticated hacks needed to integrate
| it to the rest of your workflow, because the security
| world never sleeps and keeps inventing ways to break
| things that used to work perfectly fine.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Historically, Windows versions had an excellent backwards
| compatibility, so at least in the past, this was much
| less of a problem in the Windows world than in the macOS
| world.
|
| This is also the reason why so many Windows users are so
| angry that in particular since Windows 10 (but partly
| already in previous Windows versions) Microsoft made it
| so hard to have some "stable" Windows version on a
| computer that only gets security updated. Similarly for
| the forced Windows 11 upgrade where Windows 11
| (officially) does not even work on many computers that
| Windows 10 supported.
| sedivy94 wrote:
| The Affinity apps are great but there are some critical
| missing features that have been on the back burner for years.
|
| Most impactful example that comes to mind is the vector blend
| tool. You can take, say, a circle and create step-wise
| transformations to another shape like a square.This is found
| in Illustrator and a few others, but absent from Affinity
| Designer.[0] I share the concern that a new feature like this
| will be paywalled.
|
| Additionally, Serif was very transparent with detailed
| changelogs and a community to submit bug reports and request
| new features. I have doubts that Canva will do the same.
|
| [0] https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/tool-
| techniques/bl...
| t-writescode wrote:
| I primarily use Affinity Photo, not Designer, so my
| knowledge of what a vector art tool should be able to do is
| quite limited, so I can't speak to that.
| pndy wrote:
| My friend was using Photoshop 7 up until she couldn't install
| it for whatever reason under W10. It was always enough for
| her to do what she was doing with her digitalized drawings.
|
| Not sure if she found a replacement but she certainly didn't
| want to use GIMP - interface was way too convoluted and
| layers management weird, according to her IIRC.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Learning GIMP as a PS user is like changing operating
| systems.
|
| ... but it has always been worth it for any normal person,
| IMO.
|
| That said... PS's new AI tools might make GIMP no longer a
| viable option even for normies like me.
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| Raw formats arent going away but new cameras and lenses do
| keep coming out which at minimum need correction profiles.
|
| Also the DNG spec does continue to be iterated on, not that
| users will be forced into the latest features like jpeg-xl
| compression, but some of the changes can be very breaking to
| older apps.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Very true, this is an area that could have a major miss.
| Thankfully, I believe most camera companies have a RAW to
| JPEG converter with some basic level of UX. "Is it good
| enough" is a very real question where the answer is
| probably "No."
| microtonal wrote:
| I haven't checked, do they use Apple's RAW library on
| macOS? If so, at least support might evolve with macOS
| updates for the time being.
| shrinks99 wrote:
| Serif (I guess Canva now) maintains their own which uses
| the Lensfun database.
| starkparker wrote:
| Especially with v2's lack of real plugin or scripting
| options, and with no cross-version interchange format like
| IDML or apparently even partial backward-compatiblity
| support in v3, it's also less possible to drag v2 even
| slightly forward than it was with Adobe CS4/5.
|
| If you're a freelancer using v2 and someone gives you v3
| files, you can't work.
| HumanOstrich wrote:
| That sounds like ongoing work that you should pay for if
| you want to benefit.
| shrinks99 wrote:
| Yeah, but Lensfun (the library they use for this) doesn't
| have anywhere to donate.
| HumanOstrich wrote:
| That does make things a bit more complicated.
| Gigachad wrote:
| If you need a constant stream of updates for the software
| to be useful, this seems like a reasonable fit for a
| subscription.
| pikewood wrote:
| There's already precedence for app deterioration in their iOS
| apps. Affinity Photo V1 for iPad lost a lot of functionality
| in brushes and other features with later versions of iOS
| (e.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/AffinityPhoto/comments/1725da
| f/what...)
|
| It was never updated.
| qingcharles wrote:
| You don't _need_ the new features, but they sure do help. The
| AI features in Photoshop easily cut my editing time in half.
| Doing denoise, color grading, object selections, object
| removals. Like magic.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| I hate to say it but some of the newer PS features have
| become indispensable in my usage - mainly smart objects.
| nondestructive layer effects are a godsend when you want to
| tweak and retweak stuff that would otherwise require a ton
| of time and effort to undo/redo or duplicate layers/groups
| to A/B changes.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Nondestructive changes, in Affinity, Photoshop and
| Substance Painter are all amazing, yeah. They also exist
| on all 3 of those software :)
|
| In Affinity, they're adjustment / live adjustment layers,
| and support masks.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Photoshop has that (adjustment layers in adobe world) but
| smart objects lets you use any layer effect non
| destructively, not just the predefined adjustment layers
| (which also apply downward by default, not just as a per-
| layer thing). It's like a layer group on steroids. Pretty
| hard for me to live without now or id just have an intel
| hackintosh running CS5/CS6 :)
| kilpikaarna wrote:
| Smart objects and smart filters were present in early CS
| versions I think. CS5/CS6 had them for sure, though I
| don't doubt that new filters and features have been added
| in CC.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, I've been using Affinity apps since they appeared. Paid
| up for the 2.0 versions when they launched. I didn't know if I
| would need Publisher but bought it too simply because I liked
| the company (and in fact use it all the time now).
|
| Nothing is broken with their apps or sales model. There was
| nothing to "fix" there.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| They seemed to disagree with you.
| asmor wrote:
| They being Canva. I can't imagine most people who worked on
| Affinity are thrilled about this either.
| grishka wrote:
| For personal use, piracy is always an option.
| timeon wrote:
| How does that work with SaaS?
| rapfaria wrote:
| timeon_affinity_001@gmail.com
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You have to board a container ship hauling containers full
| of modern smartphones, capable of passing remote
| attestation so you can work with passkeys and app push
| notification based auth and whatever other bullshit
| "security" measures get popular in the next decade.
|
| Then you have to find out when some C-suite from the SaaS
| of interest goes on a cruise, board that ship, and extort
| lifetime accounts hard-wired to charge some cost center
| inside of the SaaS. Then you can sell those accounts along
| with the phones as something resembling "pay once use
| forever" box software.
|
| Nobody said sailing the high seas in the 21st century is
| easy.
| grishka wrote:
| It doesn't. But Affinity Studio works locally (I assume no
| one needs the AI features).
| donmcronald wrote:
| I've been thinking about this lately. It's really difficult
| to understand where your dependencies are with modern
| software.
|
| I might built myself a full blown piracy machine that never
| gets to access the internet so I have access to an
| environment that can't get taken away. At the very least,
| it'll be a good way to learn how much dependence there is
| on internet connectivity, which we all know the answer to -
| way too much.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| I feel similarly and I hope you're wrong about the
| enshitification of Affinity, but experience tells me it's where
| you end up when you start walking down the freemium path. Even
| if the current leadership at Canva means well, all it takes is
| a financial squeeze or change in leadership and that all goes
| out the window.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Yep, this is the first step of enshittification. It's all
| downhill from here. It will probably be ad-supported by this
| time next year.
| spiderice wrote:
| > It will probably be ad-supported by this time next year
|
| It already is. It's an ad for Canva Premium.
|
| I know you mean something different than that. But it
| literally already only exists to push people to pay for
| Canva. And they will only get more aggressive with that.
| pmkary wrote:
| I was so in love with the idea of "purchase and own for life" I
| thought every now and then I will buy the license and have a
| piece of mind. What started after SaaS is now at its closing
| days to have fully ruined software and from now on there will
| be hell like we have never seen before. Free Software is dead,
| Indie software as we used to is dead, and great businesses like
| Serif are down the road of being dead. I'm so sad.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I mean, what's the problem? You wanted a pay once use forever
| and you got that with v2. So keep using v2. No one is going
| to charge your credit card.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| I paid for v1 and v2, and would have happily paid for v3.
|
| The reason I'm not using Adobe is to avoid their onerous
| subscription.
|
| If Affinity has moved to a subscription model then why
| bother not using the incumbent?
| karel-3d wrote:
| I think the price points will be different.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Okay so you wanted a different kind of subscription
| (based on major versions). That's different from the guy
| I'm replying to who wants to Buy Software And Just Use
| It. He can do that with v2. Never needs to pay a penny
| again.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Because Adobe in design costs a minimum of $430AUD while
| this is free.
| archagon wrote:
| Free software is dead? Free software is still there, same as
| it ever was. And it will be there forever. The more people
| flee to it from SAAS shittification, the better it will get.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's not dead, but a lot of it is stagnant. How much has
| Gimp improved in the last 10 years vs photoshop.
| archagon wrote:
| Gimp, maybe not so much[1], but I understand that Krita
| has improved quite a bit. And regardless of stagnancy,
| both of these applications will continue to exist long
| after Affinity gets our-incredible-journeyed.
|
| [1]: (FWIW, I don't know one way or the other. Apologies
| to any Gimp developers here.)
| bigyabai wrote:
| This seems fatalist. Free software isn't dead, and indie
| software hasn't died because the notion of "purchase and own
| for life" isn't a sustainable business model.
|
| In the 1980s, buying a new computer often meant buying
| compatible copies of software you already owned. It was a
| treadmill of support that _did_ keep computing alive, but
| also prevented ordinary people from investing into the hobby
| as fully as they liked. Many of the boutique developers from
| the 80s would go out of business in the 1990s, when home
| computing proliferated to the point that they couldn 't
| profit. Both FOSS and commercial software development
| persisted, despite the predictions of unfathomable hellscapes
| by the advocates of _Franklin Computer_ et. al.
|
| In my opinion, what changed was customer sentiment. 15 years
| ago, in the halcyon early days of the iPhone, paying $5/month
| for a SaaS or $10 for a novelty app was exciting. There was a
| (naive) belief that spending "the cost of a cup of coffee"
| would contribute to the betterment of society once Apple and
| Mastercard had taken their cut. But it never panned out.
| Brand loyalty is as foolish in software as it is in hardware.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > In my opinion, what changed was customer sentiment. 15
| years ago, in the halcyon early days of the iPhone, paying
| $5/month for a SaaS or $10 for a novelty app was exciting.
|
| I don't know anybody who found paying a monthly fee
| exicing. On the other hand, I know people who found $10 for
| a novelty app perfectly reasonable. But these people to my
| knowledge have not changed in their stances here. In other
| words: _I see no change in customer sentiment._
| tavavex wrote:
| > indie software hasn't died because the notion of
| "purchase and own for life" isn't a sustainable business
| model
|
| The worst thing is that it can totally be a sustainable
| business model. Many software giants of today grew to their
| size by offering "buy to own" products through the 90s and
| 2000s. Lots of software can still be bought through that
| model, especially games, and it seems to be going pretty
| well for the developers.
|
| No, it's not that this model isn't good. It's that it's not
| _enough_. For nearly any large business today, the thought
| of not endlessly maximizing the profit for the immediate
| next quarter is appalling. The world-leading analysts have
| done their research, and the results are in: just like you
| said, brand loyalty doesn 't actually matter for anything,
| and neither does brand perception or consistency. What
| makes the most money is using any means imaginable to hook
| people into a recurring payment, so that's what everyone
| will do once they get big enough. Nothing else actually
| matters in terms of money.
| Gigachad wrote:
| If the competition is making more money on subscriptions,
| they can hire more people to improve the product,
| ultimately beating the non subscription options.
| karel-3d wrote:
| yeah I liked it too but then, I realize how little I pay for
| this type of software vs how much I pay for subscription for
| services that I honestly barely use.
|
| financially, subscriptions just make more sense sadly. People
| vote with their wallets, and they vote subscription.
|
| It's sad, I loooooved Affinity and their licensing schemes,
| but honestly... I can see why they are moving.
|
| The AI stuff though makes no sense to me? How many people
| will actually use it? But then I am mostly programmer and I
| use these tools only time to time.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get
| any updates.
|
| What are you talking about? I plan to use it for at least 5-10
| years more. Excellent software that takes care of all my needs.
| Melanie Perkins is not going to visit you in your house and
| force you to uninstall it.
| nirava wrote:
| sure. however, it will begin to feel "second class" after
| some os updates, some chip updates and other goings-on in the
| software world.
|
| still fine, really. I've seen people use the original
| pagemaker 9 on an internet-disconnected XP machine to hand-
| make circuit masks (ok it is just this one awesome old person
| who still etches his circuits with FeCl3, but I digress).
|
| It's just that I paid for a first class, "this is the best we
| offer, for a price you're gonna pay upfront" software 6
| months ago, and now that feeling gone.
|
| nothing really tangible was lost, but seriously, if the
| entirety of the Affinity suite was deleted, nothing would be
| lost anyway. You could still use figma, photopea and the like
| to get all your work done just like before. just not with the
| same cohesion and confidence and security maybe, and that's
| what serif had sold before this.
| julianz wrote:
| I paid for V1, it had incompatibilities with graphics drivers
| that mean it stopped working properly shortly after V2 came
| out and is now useless. Any hardware assisted graphics
| operation corrupts the image. Who knows if V2 will suffer
| something similar?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get
| any updates._
|
| Is it really?
|
| People on HN are always talking about how they use pre-Creative
| Cloud versions of Adobe products years and years later.
|
| My firewall already blocks Affinity programs from accessing the
| internet without my permission. I guess I'll set it to an
| automatic deny so I don't lose any features, or have to deal
| with any nagging.
| tredre3 wrote:
| People on HN also tend to use Apple hardware so it's no
| surprise that for them unmaintained software is dead
| software, because it will likely break 2 or 3 macOS versions
| from now.
| pentagrama wrote:
| I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background
| here:
|
| Serif is the company that originally built this software.
|
| --------
|
| 2014-2024
|
| Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three
| independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model:
|
| - Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator
| equivalent)
|
| - Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop
| equivalent)
|
| - Affinity Publisher: print and layout design (Adobe InDesign
| equivalent)
|
| They were solid, professional tools without subscriptions like
| Adobe, a big reason why many designers loved them.
|
| -------
|
| 2024
|
| Canva acquired Serif.
|
| -------
|
| 2025 (today)
|
| The product has been relaunched. The three apps are now merged
| into a single app, simply called Affinity, and it follows a
| freemium model.
|
| From what I've tested, you need a Canva account to download and
| open the app (you can opt out of some telemetry during setup).
|
| The new app has four tabs:
|
| - Vector: formerly Affinity Designer
|
| - Pixel: formerly Affinity Photo
|
| - Layout: formerly Affinity Publisher
|
| - Canva AI: a new, paid AI-powered section
|
| Screenshot https://imgur.com/a/h1S6fcK
|
| Hope can help!
| davedx wrote:
| I worked at Serif during the early years of their pivot from
| boxed desktop software in C++ for Windows to an internet
| company making modern design software. It was a nice place to
| work, had some good friends there. Been interesting watching
| their journey.
| junon wrote:
| I got the impression there was a disconnect between product
| and eng teams based on quite a few spicy responses from Serif
| on the forums. Was that the case?
| alt227 wrote:
| This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used
| to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch
| to serif.
|
| Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you
| to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other
| people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No
| longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they
| are just chasing AI money like everyone else.
| derefr wrote:
| To push back against this sentiment: "chasing AI money" isn't
| _necessarily_ their thought process here; i.e. it's not the
| only reason they would "switch to a freemium model trying to
| get you to subscribe to AI."
|
| Keeping in mind that:
|
| 1. "AI" (i.e. large ML model) -driven features are in demand
| (if not by existing users, then by not-yet-users, serving as
| a TAM-expansion strategy)
|
| 2. Large ML models require a lot of resources to run. Not
| just GPU power (which, if you have less of it, just
| translates to slower runs) but VRAM (which, if you have not-
| enough of it, multiplies runtime of these models by 10-100x;
| and if you also don't have enough main memory, you can't run
| the model at all); and also plain-old storage space, which
| can add up if there are a lot of different models involved.
| (Remember that the Affinity apps have mobile versions!)
|
| 3. Many users will be sold on the feature-set of the app, and
| want to use it / pay for it, but won't have local hardware
| powerful enough to run the ML models -- and if you just let
| them install the app but then reveal that they can't actually
| run the models, they'll feel ripped off. And those users
| either _won 't_ find the offering compelling enough to buy
| better hardware; or they'll be stuck with the hardware they
| have for whatever reason (e.g. because it's their company-
| assigned workstation and they're not allowed to use anything
| else for work.)
|
| Together, these factors mean that the "obvious" way to design
| these features in a product intended for mass-market appeal
| (rather than a product designed only "for professionals" with
| corporate backing, like VFX or CAD software) is to put the ML
| models on a backend cluster, and have the apps act as network
| clients for said cluster.
|
| Which means that, rather than just shipping an app, you're
| now operating a software _service_ , which has monthly costs
| for you, scaled to aggregate usage, for the lifetime of that
| cluster.
|
| Which in turn means that you now need to recoup those OpEx
| costs to stay profitable.
|
| You _could_ do this by pricing the predicted per-user average
| lifetime OpEx cost into the purchase price of the product...
| but because you expect to add _more_ ML-driven features as
| your apps evolve, which might drive increases usage,
| calculating an actual price here is hard. (Your best chance
| is probably to break each AI feature into its own "plugin"
| and cost + sell each plugin separately.)
|
| Much easier to avoid trying to set a one-time price based on
| lifetime OpEx, by just passing on OpEx _as_ OpEx (i.e. a
| subscription); and much friendlier to customers to avoid
| pricing in things customers don't actually want, by only
| charging that subscription to people who actually want the
| features that require the backend cluster to work.
| derefr wrote:
| That being said, my line of argument here would be a bit
| more compelling if Canva were still charging for the app.
|
| The fact that the apps are now _free_ , suggests that they
| expect the subscriptions to pay not just for the backend-
| cluster OpEx, but also for all the developers' salaries and
| so forth.
|
| ---
|
| Honestly, I think Canva here _are_ copying Adobe 's
| playbook, but with a more honest approach than Adobe ever
| had; one reflecting a much more aware/cynical take on how
| the software market works in 2025.
|
| Adobe essentially charges a continuing fee just to continue
| to run the software they coded and shipped to you, on your
| own computer -- regardless of whether you even care about
| any further software updates. (Sure, the subscription pays
| for other things, like Adobe Bridge cloud storage and so
| forth, but if you _don 't_ pay the subscription, you don't
| even get to just run the apps.)
|
| But this also means that people quite often _crack_ Adobe
| 's apps -- because there's something there of value to run
| on your own computer, if you just strip off the DRM.
|
| Canva here are taking a much more pragmatic approach:
|
| * Anything that is given to the user to run is free,
| because ultimately, if you charged for it, people would
| just crack it. They aren't bothering with DRM or even
| _trying_ to treat the app itself as a revenue stream. The
| juice just isn 't worth the squeeze. Especially if you're
| not in a market position where you think you can win the
| big enterprise customers over from Adobe.
|
| * Anything that is run on your backend is charged for.
| Because users _can 't_ force your cloud services to do
| anything without a subscription. There's no "cracking" a
| cloud service.
|
| * But also, crucially -- if a feature is a "fake cloud"
| feature, where it could be "pulled down from the cloud"
| back into the client by writing a compatible implementation
| of the server backend that does some simple thing, and
| patching the software to speak to that server (either over
| the Internet, or to a local-on-the-machine background
| service that ships with the patch) -- then users will do
| _that_. So you can only really charge for features that can
| 't be "pulled down" in this way. Like, for example,
| features relying on some kind of secret-sauce ML model that
| you never expose to the client.
|
| (And that last bit actually makes me _less_ wary of their
| approach here: it suggests that they likely won 't be
| charging for anything _other than_ inherently "cloudy"
| features: these large-ML-model-driven features, cloud
| storage/collaboration features, etc. Which might mean that
| non-"cloudy" features get ignored... but likely not. For
| the same reason that Apple doesn't ignore macOS/iOS
| features in favor of iCloud features: _new_ users won 't be
| interested switching _to_ the platform [and then
| potentially subscribing] if the base platform itself isn 't
| competitive / doesn't serve their needs.)
| squigz wrote:
| It's been a long time since I looked into it, but is
| pirating Adobe's products viable these days? I thought it
| was pretty much impossible, and the last piratable
| release is quite old.
| secabeen wrote:
| Pricing in most businesses has little relation to the
| cost of developing and making the product. Most
| businesses price relative to the value that their product
| delivers to the customer. If there is robust competition,
| then the price is often driven down towards the cost, but
| it's not driven by the cost. In Adobe's case, they see
| that there is an entire industry of creative people using
| their products as their primary tool(s). Those employees
| are often paid well, with salaries from 50k-100k per year
| as common. Is it not reasonable (from Adobe's
| perspective) that employers pay 1/50th of the employee's
| salary for their primary and most useful tool? No one
| complains when the plumber requires a work truck and
| thousands of dollars worth of tools.
| derefr wrote:
| The price _ceiling_ has little relation to cost, sure.
| But COGS sets an effective _price floor_ -- you 'll be
| revenue-negative unless you do the math to ensure you're
| charging customers ( _especially_ your _largest_
| customers) at least COGS. COGS is the most critical
| number your enterprise salespeople will ask you for in
| order to backstop their negotiations.
|
| For some companies, COGS and customer LTV are numbers
| with such different orders of magnitude that they don't
| even have to think about the COGS side.
|
| But "software you charge a one-time fee for" generally
| produces a very low customer LTV; and "renting compute on
| someone else's GPU IaaS" generally produces a very high
| (customer-lifetime-integrated) COGS; so if they _were_
| sticking to the "just charge for the software" model,
| "COGS rising faster than CLTV" would be a direct threat
| to their business model. Which is... why they don't want
| to do that.
| shrinks99 wrote:
| I'd buy some of these explinations, except the depth
| estimation, colorization, and super-resolution ML models
| they use in the app DO run locally and are still
| subscription-gated.
|
| Apple has been doing on-device machine learning for
| portrait blurs and depth estimation for years now, though
| based on the UI, this might use cloud inference as well.
|
| Granted, these aren't the super heavy ones like generative
| fill / editing, and I understand that cloud inference isn't
| cheap. A subscription for cloud-based ML features is
| something I'd find acceptable, and today that's what has
| launched... The real question is what they plan to do with
| this in 2-5 years. Will more non-"AI" features make their
| way into the pro tier? Only time will tell!
| isodev wrote:
| > 1. "AI" (i.e. large ML model) -driven features are in
| demand
|
| No, there're not. People with influence or who have
| invested in the space say that these features are in
| demand/the next big thing. In reality, I haven't seen a
| single user interview where the person actively wanted or
| was even excited about AI.
| fsloth wrote:
| The image generation models have been super useful for
| anyone wanting to deliver any sort of production content
| for years. Ofc nobody _promotes_ that. Using ai images is
| like taking photos as reference for collages. Anyone with
| a subscription to an image bank is likely happy enough to
| minibanana some generic references.
| curioussquirrel wrote:
| Photoshop now has a bunch of features that get used in
| professional environments. And in the end user space,
| facial recognition or magic eraser are features in apps
| like Google Photos that people actively use and like.
| People probably don't care that it's AI under the hood,
| in fact they probably don't even realize.
|
| There is a lot of unchecked hype, but that doesn't mean
| there is no substance.
| derefr wrote:
| I didn't make any assertion about AI, only about "AI" --
| i.e. the same old machine-learning-based features like
| super-resolution upscaling, patch-match, etc, that people
| have been adding to image-editing software for more than
| a decade now, but which now get branded as "AI" because
| people recognize them by this highly-saturated marketing
| term.
|
| Few artists want generative-AI diffusion models in their
| paint program; but most artists appreciate "classical"
| ML-based tools and effects -- many of which they might
| not even think of as being ML-based. Because, until
| recently, "classical ML" tools and effects have been
| things run client-side on the system, and so necessarily
| small and lightweight, only being shipped if they'll work
| on the lowest-common-denominator GPU (esp. "amount of
| VRAM") that artists might be using.
|
| The interesting thing is that, _due to_ the genAI craze,
| GPU training and inference clusters have been highly
| commoditized / brought into reach for the developers of
| these "classical ML" models. You don't need to invest in
| your own hyperscale on-prem GPU cluster to train models
| bigger than fit on a gaming PC any more. And this has led
| to increased interest in, and development of, _larger_
| "classical ML" models, because now they're _not_ so
| tightly-bounded by running client-side on lowest-common-
| denominator hardware. They can instead throw (time on) a
| cloud GPU cluster to train their model; and then expect
| the downstream consumer of that model (= a company like
| Canva) to solve the problem of running the resulting
| model not by pushing back for something size-optimized to
| be run locally on user machines, but rather by standing
| up an model-inference-API backend running it on the same
| kind of GPU IaaS infra that was used to train it.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think it's really cool they can get AI money from the
| people who want to pay that, to give away the core for free.
| I can empathize with feeling their focus will be elsewhere
| (whatever increases revenue) but I figure AI isn't magic,
| they need to have the rest of the creative suite work well
| to, yaknow, synergize
|
| Edit: I'll add that I much prefer purchasing perpetual
| licenses for software that can work without a cloud
| component. Opus, Sublime, Mathematica, totally agree that
| paying for software aligns incentives. But if it is online,
| it's a SaaS, and they can't very well offer you cloud
| services forever at a one time cost. (Rsync.net has a deal to
| prepay ~4 years worth upfront and they'll let you use it for
| life but it's capped at 1TB)
| nightski wrote:
| I'm guessing they are giving the core away for free to
| collect training data.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| You can opt out of the telemetry sharing
| zarmin wrote:
| They claim not to, but I am extremely suspicious.
|
| >No, your content in Affinity is not used to train AI-
| powered features, or to help AI features learn and
| improve in other ways, such as model evaluation or
| quality assurance. In Affinity, your content is stored
| locally on your device and we don't have access to it. If
| you choose to upload or export content to Canva, you
| remain in control of whether it can be used to train AI
| features -- you can review and update your privacy
| preferences any time in your Canva settings.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| I mean, be suspicious, that's always good. But have proof
| before being certain of something you don't have facts to
| back up.
| zarmin wrote:
| That is why I said I'm suspicious, and did not make a
| claim that they are doing it. Thanks for your input.
| WD-42 wrote:
| That's what suspicion means.
| guelo wrote:
| I've been using ByteDance's CapCut video editor that has
| this business model and I've been blown away by the top
| quality tool you get for free. It really doesn't feel
| scammy when they ask for money for fancy features that cost
| them extra GPU cycles to run the AI models.
| wizzzzzy wrote:
| To add to this, Davinci Resolve is also great freemium
| software IMO
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Once AI blows up in a spectacular unprofitable mess (as it
| will for 90% of the companies in this space), then what
| though?
| rubyfan wrote:
| Well all have bigger problems when that happens
| 9dev wrote:
| Given that it's the only thing keeping the US economy
| afloat right now? Then many of us are loosing our jobs,
| and no longer having access to drawing tools will matter
| little.
| Razengan wrote:
| Man. This is another case in favor of open source. OSS may
| take years to get there but it doesn't go poof in one sudden
| day either.
| unreal37 wrote:
| Open Source absolutely stops being maintained. And worse.
| fsloth wrote:
| Yup, source code does not stay maintainable
| automatically. Just that code is open does not mean
| anyone can or wants to do any reasonable development.
|
| The only "safer" bets are the biggest projects providing
| critical infra for segments of economy like python for
| example.
| reppap wrote:
| Personally I think it's great I both get the app for free and
| they remove all the AI from it. Couldn't get any better!
| bambax wrote:
| I still use the Affinity desktop apps (before the move to the
| store) and they're fine.
| raincole wrote:
| Is "Affinity Studio" the version that is online-only and was
| down with AWS a week ago? Or that's a different thing?
|
| (I don't know much about Affinity suite)
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| No. It didn't exist a week ago and doesn't require Internet,
| apart from an initial login.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Why do you need to login into something that doesn't
| require Internet?
| booi wrote:
| you know why...
| fidotron wrote:
| It's definitely a sad end, though I still think that what
| happened with Xara was the real tragedy. (A friend of mine is
| still bitter about Freehand too).
|
| Someone should investigate why the 2D vector graphics space is
| such a repeated dumpster fire.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| A sad end because of why? What has happened to make it a sad
| end?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| > Someone should investigate why the 2D vector graphics space
| is such a repeated dumpster fire.
|
| It's interesting that none of the independent tools survive
| for long. I wonder if Adobe Illustrator is so dominant that
| there is little room left for the competitors.
| dangus wrote:
| I realize that money rules everything but I find it so
| confusing that so many companies will spend a decade building a
| great product and then just exit with full knowledge that it
| will be the inevitable end of the relevance of their work.
|
| You might think that some founders somewhere out there would be
| motivated by some level of ego to say "no, I won't sell out, I
| built this amazing thing and the highest bidder owner will milk
| it dry."
|
| But no, in technology the cult of the exit rules all. The end
| goal isn't to build something great that last, putting food on
| the table for the long term. the end goal is to sell to the
| highest possible bid capitalist leech and move on to the next
| one.
| truncate wrote:
| >> technology the cult of the exit rules all
|
| Technology also moves fast, highly competitive and expensive.
| I'm definitely sad about this, but I can't blame founders for
| this. I've never founded any company myself, but I can
| imagine after decade of working on same product as a
| relatively small shop, it can be tiring, exhausting and
| probably new priorities (personal life, health etc ...).
| dangus wrote:
| You can have controlling ownership in a company that you
| don't manage on a day-to-day basis.
| wat10000 wrote:
| How much of this is just getting a skewed view because you
| don't typically hear about the acquisitions that don't
| happen?
|
| Beyond that, overcoming bias is really hard. An acquirer is
| probably going to talk a good game about how the acquisition
| is going to benefit the product and the customers from more
| resources, better integration, etc. Hearing that, we know
| it's probably BS, or sincere but incorrect. But when an eight
| or nine figure pile of money is on the line, you have a very
| strong subconscious motivation to believe it.
| turnsout wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Sometimes after 15 years,
| the founders want to move on and do something else. Or they
| want to build a dream house. Or their cofounder wants to get
| out. Or they hear the long-term vision of the acquiring
| company, and want to be a part of it.
|
| Although it's an uphill battle, not every acquisition ends
| with the product being destroyed. Just look at what Apple did
| with NeXT and PA Semi...
| dangus wrote:
| You can have controlling stake in a company without working
| there day to day.
|
| Apple literally destroyed those companies. After Apple
| acquired NeXT there was one less operating system on the
| market. PA Semi now doesn't have a product that is sold to
| the open market.
| gazook89 wrote:
| Perhaps they know that a large buyout will help their
| employees for various reasons, and they set aside their ego
| to take care of them.
|
| A company that hasn't sold out is Adobe-- are we in love with
| Adobe?
| dangus wrote:
| Adobe is a public company, so they exited.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| Because it's not inevitable. I know it's the fashion on HN to
| _say_ it's inevitable, but it's not, and if it _were,_ then
| it would be inevitable for _all companies,_ including those
| who didn't exit, which would mean those companies would fold,
| which would make it a capitalism problem, not a "founders
| exit" problem.
|
| Either way, trying to place blame on individual people is
| kind of silly.
| dangus wrote:
| Maybe not inevitable but "most likely outcome by far."
|
| It's not like your median founder hasn't heard of
| enshittification. They just don't care. They're by and
| large out for a quick buck, not much different than a day
| trader or a gambler. And the VC system enables that rather
| than being focused on building companies that are
| generational and customer focused.
| shmichael wrote:
| It's a lesson as old as history: You either exit a hero, or
| live long enough to become the villain.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Thank you for the context. I was an Affinity Suite user for a
| long time after I dropped Adobe.
|
| I now use a mixture of GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape for visual
| things. I don't have a good alternative for InDesign - even
| Affinity Publisher wasn't one. Since my tabletop RPG business
| closed, I haven't had a need for a powerful layout application.
| I just use Typst or LaTeX for my personal projects that need a
| layout engine.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| How is modern gimp compared to ps or affinity wrt photo
| editing? Thinking things like color correction, shadow
| highlights, maybe generative fill?
| bovermyer wrote:
| I haven't used it for that purpose much, but it seems to
| lag pretty far behind Photoshop/Affinity Photo.
| pwatsonwailes wrote:
| Nowhere even close
| iamphilrae wrote:
| And so the enshittification begins. Such a shame to lose
| another set of solid, non-subscription-based desktop apps.
| gazook89 wrote:
| Gathered from the FAQ, you only pay if you want Canva AI
| features. Yes, you create a Canva account, which is free, so
| that you can get your license. With old affinity, you also
| needed an account to receive the license.
|
| In the new UI the ai features are tucked into an additional
| "studio" like how layout, raster, and vector are individual
| studios. You can choose which studios have a visible toggle,
| so you can hide the Canva AI toggle if you don't want to see
| it.
|
| Perhaps it gets worse over time. But right now, they've just
| made it free.
| sngz wrote:
| > Perhaps it gets worse over time. But right now, they've
| just made it free.
|
| they always do
| girvo wrote:
| > Perhaps it gets worse over time.
|
| It quite literally always always does.
| reddalo wrote:
| Yeah, 100% sure it will get worse, especially after the
| AI bubble pops.
| bdangubic wrote:
| the ai bubble has already popped!!! the biggest tech
| companies on the planet who are spending insane amounts
| of capex on "ai" keep reporting insane earnings reports
| one after another, things are popping left & right
| roywiggins wrote:
| I think you may be using a different definition of a
| "bubble popping."
| bdangubic wrote:
| hehehe I just might be ;)
| crabmusket wrote:
| > But right now, they've just made it free.
|
| It sounds like you're positioning this as a counter to the
| post you're replying to, but I think that is actually what
| they're complaining about.
|
| > you only pay if you want Canva AI features
|
| Right, so what they've done is tied their business model as
| a product to AI features and nothing else. That's not "oh
| good, I can use it for free", it's "oh no, they are no
| longer incentivised to care about the parts of the product
| I wanted".
| vednig wrote:
| They're doing an Adobe Creative Cloud with Canva now, Great !
| nashashmi wrote:
| Without charging for the desktop software.
| gotrythis wrote:
| I am a daily user of Affinity Publisher and regular user of
| Affinity Photo. I bought version 1 when it came out, upgraded
| to version 2, and upgraded this morning to the new, free
| version.
|
| This is NOT FREEMIUM as I understand the model, as it is not
| limited in any way. This is everything they were charging for
| and more, now free, with free upgrades.
|
| I'm personally thrilled to get so much value for free.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Literally on the landing page they have two columns
| comparing: Affinity vs Affinity + Canva
| premium plans
|
| And the FAQs under it are trying, repetitively, to upsell the
| Canva AI plans: Are AI features available?
| Yes. With a Canva premium plan you can unlock Canva AI
| features in Affinity. Can I access AI tools
| without a Canva Pro or other premium plan? No, these
| are only available to those with Canva premium accounts.
|
| Up to 10 or 12 times, I think I've seen it just in that FAQ.
| elAhmo wrote:
| So, unless you want to use AI, which wasn't available in
| the previous products, you are not missing out on anything?
| nashashmi wrote:
| This is what I don't understand. Why complain about it if
| the model gives you everything except the cloud service?
| groby_b wrote:
| Sigh. It was a great app.
|
| Switching to the freemium resource extraction model makes it
| utterly unattractive. (If I wanted to go with the whole "nice
| app you got, shame if something happened to it" model, Adobe's
| got that covered)
| mindcrash wrote:
| Does anyone know what will happen with Affinity for iOS?
|
| The current apps are all released by Serif but have been made
| fully free recentyly.
|
| So discontinued or what? Would be a real tragedy if it is...
| adfm wrote:
| It was mentioned in the release video that it'll be a single
| app to come out next year.
| nalekberov wrote:
| Ran it for the first time, already made 16 network requests. [1]
| Not too bad at all.
|
| [1] https://ibb.co/RkVgBFGw
| gethly wrote:
| Yet after decades, Gimp still can't compete even with programs
| built from scratch :D
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| GIMP is open source if you want to go help improve it ;)
| tredre3 wrote:
| I tried ;) GIMP developers aren't very open to external
| contributions. I don't consider my attempts to be of low
| quality either, but the bike shedding resulted in them never
| being accepted. "It's best to wait until X lands" or "I think
| this will be part of Y".
|
| Meanwhile, 10 years later, the _functional_ features I 've
| tried to contribute are still not possible in GIMP ;)
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Yeah, I was mostly being facetious haha. I know that GIMP
| as a project is notoriously difficult to contribute to.
| zitsarethecure wrote:
| If it works well enough for the people who use it, why does it
| matter?
| thoroughburro wrote:
| It doesn't work well enough for the people who use it; false
| assumption. I use it, and it's a cludge that I resent every
| time I have no other option.
| Balvarez wrote:
| We see that people people love you Affinity software! Lets buy it
| and stop doing what people love about it!
| wdb wrote:
| Can't figure out if any new non-AI features were added?
| Balvarez wrote:
| Let's aquire software that people love using... and then kill
| what they love about it!!
| slig wrote:
| We have to understand that we're a minority and they're after
| another market. I'm surprised it took this long, to be honest.
| grougnax wrote:
| The goal is to kill the product, so people are forced to pay
| for Canva
| Flux159 wrote:
| Is this built with JS / something like Fabric JS? There are some
| things that feel very similar to a web app that I worked on
| before. Wondering if there's plans to have a plugin API at some
| point if it is.
| Maxious wrote:
| There is support for photoshop plugins
| https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pag...
| Zealotux wrote:
| I was just looking yesterday for a simple vector editor, will
| give it a try. Sorry, Inkscape is a total mess to use.
| internetter wrote:
| You can link your V2 store purchases by signing into the app,
| clicking the dropdown with your name in the top left of the popup
| window, and clicking on the "Advanced" dropdown
|
| I don't like the new UI. It feels dumbed down.
| jwr wrote:
| I hope the older versions (V2) will be maintained for a while...
| I can't help but worry about the upcoming ensh*ttification -- I
| think it's inevitable that some day some exec at this now large
| company will come up with innovative ideas for "monetizing those
| free users" and things will go down the drain as usual.
|
| I would be perfectly fine with paying for continued maintenance
| of V2.
| greggh wrote:
| Nope. No more updates and it's removed from the app stores.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, I downloaded the Mac app, and here's what I don't like:
|
| - Goodness gracious, that icon. And 3.5GB?????
|
| - Requires a login (so I suppose no disconnected operation)
|
| - Seems to jumble together the vector, bitmap and publishing apps
| (which I very much prefer to have as separate things)
|
| Mostly everything I've been able to try in 30 minutes seems to
| work, but a 3.5GB app is a sad sign of the times.
|
| Will most likely keep using the old versions until they die on
| me, especially on the iPad.
| jama211 wrote:
| It's because it's four apps in one, they merged the affinity
| suite apps then added their own ai app too
| rcarmo wrote:
| Fine, but the Mac mini I downloaded this in has very little
| internal storage, so I am not using this and will only keep
| the old designer and publisher apps around (Pixelmator is
| better for my use case)
| egypturnash wrote:
| > a 3.5GB app is a sad sign of the times.
|
| It's par for the course, Illustrator 2025 is 2.8 gigs on my Mac
| for just the binary, 3.29 gigs for its directory in
| /Applications for _some_ of its support files, plus however
| much space it takes up in ~ /Library for more of its support
| files.
|
| Photoshop's another 4.8 gigs for its binary and InDesign's
| another 2, so Affinity's doing pretty well to get some part of
| the functionality of all of those in a mere 3.5 gigs. Or
| Adobe's hilariously bloated. Or both. Let's go with both,
| really.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > so I suppose no disconnected operation)
|
| You're wrong about that point, it works offline just fine after
| activation. It's even stated in their FAQ. Of course it's
| possible for them to change that at any time.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| On first impression it feels wonky. I have v2 installed for
| Photo, Design and Publisher and they all feel much better to work
| with. I guess I can count my blessings and at least be grateful
| that it's not yet another Electron clusterfuck a la New Outlook
| marcodiego wrote:
| And since it will be a freemium model or ad-supported, here comes
| one more example why we should use and support free software.
| greggh wrote:
| I don't understand this thread at all. I think this is the first
| time I have seen a thread that talks about something requiring a
| new account be created at some company, and a nonsensical major
| change to a product (merging the products into one, optional
| subscriptions) where the majority of people seem to be saying
| "thats ok and good luck" to the company. Worse, people who are
| upset this has happened to software they liked are getting
| downvoted. These three pieces of software are not the same tool
| and them all being shoehorned into one UI is just idiotic.
|
| It feels like the thread is being astroturfed.
|
| They removed our software that we paid for from the Mac Store,
| and everyone is just like "thats fine, good move canva". Serif
| did a great job of keeping their software working through macOS
| major version updates. It's another reason many of us paid for
| their software. That's gone, and people are just cheering them
| on. It's very confusing.
| alt227 wrote:
| Plenty of people in this thread mourning the loss of the only
| real competitor to Adobe in the design space.
|
| This is indeed a sad day.
| hmstx wrote:
| Seems like it's,
|
| - "good job on the acquisition and maintaining some kind of
| product" - how many of these are users?
|
| - "this is now dead and completely useless to me, I am
| switching to something FLOSS this instant" - I'm betting
| v2-decayed-for-a-couple-years still beats GIMP/Inkscape from
| the future in at least UX for example, and it certainly does
| now)
|
| - some "it's all a scheme for AI training" which would be more
| of what I'd expect, although for the time being, appears to be
| FUD when it comes to local files (surely Lord Vader will change
| the terms further as well)
|
| For me it took a bit of self-discipline watching the video
| announcement _first_ , before checking any comments anywhere.
|
| I'm glad I got my v2 licences a few years ago, they've allowed
| me to dabble in graphics again without losing my mind to other
| even more affortable products. The strings that come attached
| with this and the potential lack of options for some workflows
| later down the line bother me. Just hoping v2 doesn't get too
| much more unstable with time.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| > These three pieces of software are not the same tool and them
| all being shoehorned into one UI is just idiotic.
|
| Have you used it yet? It's a very elegant implementation. I,
| for one, am very excited about the workflow advantages of being
| able to easily switch between all three modalities with a
| click.
| nirava wrote:
| This is a deletion.
|
| - they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace
| won't be coming to it. You might have paid for perpetual access
| to it 2 months ago, but it has completely stopped. As the world
| moves on (new chips, new OS features, just general software
| movement) this will increasingly feel like a second-class
| experience.
|
| - the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid
| subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class"
| feeling as new pro-only things are added to it. it is also
| practically guaranteed to feed your work into AI unless you buy
| pro sometime in the next 5 years
|
| In short, something secure, top class, the "best the company
| offers" product doesn't exist anymore. What was once there isn't.
| damnesian wrote:
| > the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid
| subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-
| class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it
|
| There's a plague of this on the entire industry now. Free apps
| abound, none of them will do exactly what you need, all of them
| will point you to the shiny unfree thing that will.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The practice would be easier to tolerate if the unfree thing
| had reasonable pricing. Alas, it is always subscription-based
| and the monthly fee is crazy high, in the range of re-buying
| a traditional download product every four months. I
| understand that professional users might have more money to
| spend but it still seems to me that those companies
| overestimate what potential customers are willing to pay as
| running costs.
| netghost wrote:
| I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware.
|
| If you get value out of the free part of a tool, great! If
| not, then you get to choose to pay for the rest or not.
| Personally I'm happy that it tends to be the feature set I
| can live without that costs money. Not always, but often
| enough.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Fair, but shareware was pay-once, which many people find
| preferable to a subscription-chained model.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| You don't have to keep paying for a subscription. You can
| stop at any time and still have access to all the non-AI
| features.
| tavavex wrote:
| Yes, that's the situation at launch. The fear that's
| expressed above is that the subscription model
| incentivizes pushing people towards it as hard as
| possible. It's the exact opposite of Serif's
| straightforward model from before. Get ready for most new
| features (including ones that are unrelated to AI) to
| become locked to the subscription model. When they think
| they're not getting enough out of Affinity, they may also
| start cutting core functionality to force people to
| subscribe. Maybe, a limit on how many documents you can
| edit at once, or a layer limit (for the photo part), or
| an object limit (for the vector/"designer" part). This is
| how all of these subscriptions go nowadays.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >You don't have to keep paying for a subscription. You
| can stop at any time and still have access to all the
| non-AI features
|
| And if Canva decides that "I am altering the deal. Pray I
| don't alter it any further,"[0] what will you do then? Go
| and _rent_ the Adobe subscription suite instead?
|
| [0] http://www.quickmeme.com/img/32/32b4229145de0a2c1171b
| 9b5757f...
| netghost wrote:
| That's a great distinction.
|
| There is a big difference between a one time payment and
| a recurring payment, especially if the company canceling
| the product or going out of business means you can no
| longer use the tool, and I honestly steer clear of those
| in most cases.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware.
|
| It's not even close. This is more akin to shareware where
| Bill Gates shows up at your house to collect a payment
| every month and formats your hard drive if you don't cough
| up the money.
|
| Shareware gave you a perpetual license and control that
| couldn't be taken away, especially before the internet.
| lysace wrote:
| That sucks for that usecase, agreed.
|
| On the plus side, there is finally a free modern piece of
| software that matches 80s MacDraw and MacPaint on the Mac.
| (Keynote isn't it.)
| microtonal wrote:
| I'm sad (buyer of both v1 and v2). Being a paid app as opposed
| to require a subscription was the main selling over the Adobe
| Suite. A lot of users migrated to Affinity for that reason. As
| the free version will get more and more crippled as they move
| to pushing subscriptions, why not switch back to Adobe?
|
| I hope somebody else will try to crack this market like
| affinity did a decade ago.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I'm kinda keen on this. A few months ago I was looking at
| making a one time magazine print, but I discovered there were
| essentially no affordable options. The affinity option was
| the cheapest one, but still unaffordable for a one time
| project.
|
| I don't even mind paying a subscription but the adobe option
| requires you to get a minimum of 12 months.
| ezfe wrote:
| Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can
| stop paying if the product stops getting updates.
|
| Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to
| complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting
| updates.
|
| Note: I own a license to V2 of the Serif suite.
| paulhebert wrote:
| I'd prefer to have them release a new version every X years
| and let me buy that for a fixed cost. (This is how Adobe used
| to work)
| ezfe wrote:
| You can't have your cake (one time payments) and eat it too
| (software gets perpetual updates).
|
| Perpetual licenses with 1 year of updates is a good middle
| ground, but they have said that the v2 suite will get
| maintenance updates for some period of time so even that
| type of license would not have changed this conversation.
| paulhebert wrote:
| Sure. I get that. My ideal scenario is that existing
| versions get security patches and critical bug fixes but
| you have to upgrade for new features.
|
| But I realize that's less lucrative and not how modern
| software tends to work
| zenware wrote:
| Except that you can, because every software company did
| this for decades... Want to upgrade to a new version of
| our product? That's another one time fee for that
| version.
|
| If you squint, this looks a lot like a subscription
| model, but with extra steps. Why it's different is
| because those extra steps actually matter.
|
| They matter to the people who aren't subjected to
| subscription dark-patterns to keep them from
| unsubscribing for just a little bit longer. They matter
| to the product, development, and sales teams who know
| they actually have to produce and deliver something
| meaningful if they want repeat customers. The matter to
| the accounting teams on all sides of the transaction, in
| particular because subscription revenue or expenses can
| always be counted as "recurring" and this has
| implications on cash flow which itself can impact many
| things.
|
| The pitch has always been "we grow with you, this is a
| win-win", implying that perpetual license fees are
| actually good for you to pay. Ostensibly because keeping
| your supplier in business keeps you in business, but in
| reality it was totally possible for a software supplier
| to go out of business and for their customers to continue
| operating without issue for 5, 10, even 15+ years, before
| even considering finding a replacement software.
|
| And despite the pitch seeming so sweet, the literature on
| why you want your software business to operate on a
| subscription model was always about gaining an advantage
| over your customers, however marginal it may be, and now
| the data has borne out that the advantage is stark.
| chemotaxis wrote:
| > Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you
| can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.
|
| How? First, by that time, you've usually spent many times
| more than it would have cost you to own the software
| outright, so the vendor is already better off. Second, if you
| stop paying, you lose access to the software, possibly with
| no other way to open existing files, etc. You're the one
| who's being held hostage - not the vendor.
|
| As a hobbyist, I shudder to think that my total annual bill
| would be if all the software I use every now and then had a
| subscription model. It would be well in excess of
| $5,000/year.
| ezfe wrote:
| Sure, if the subscription is unreasonably priced. Then yes,
| it will be unreasonable.
|
| Final Cut Pro is a $300 piece of software with a $50/yr or
| $5/mo subscription. It would take you 6 years to reach the
| same price which shows the subscription cost is reasonable.
|
| It's a separate issue when software is unreasonably priced
| in subscription mode, versus the merits of the subscription
| model itself.
| chemotaxis wrote:
| My beef isn't with products where you have a choice
| between perpetual and monthly. It's with products where
| you don't. This includes the "always-online freemium"
| model, where you only really lose features over time to
| drive free -> paid migration over time.
| roywiggins wrote:
| All of my photos are stored in a big Lightroom database.
| If I wasn't using an old camera supported by Lightroom 5,
| I would have to pay an ongoing cost just to maintain
| access to my photo database, in perpetuity. This sucks no
| matter how much the price actually is right now- it could
| change!
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Subscriptions often don't allow continuing use of even
| existing versions of the product after you stop paying - it's
| not just about access to future updates.
|
| The main exceptions are subscriptions that are explicitly for
| support and maintenance contracts on top of a perpetual
| license. There are also a few unusual business models, like
| JetBrains offer for subscriptions that last at least 12
| months which grants a perpetual fallback license of the major
| versions (including future minor versions) that were current
| during any part of the subscription up through 12 months
| before cancellation.
| ezfe wrote:
| Correct, and you're no longer paying so that's okay? It is
| unfortunate if the software stops existing but there is not
| a financial issue.
| kiicia wrote:
| It's other way around, issue exists because of subscriptions
| and everyone rushing to subscription bandwagon
| donmcronald wrote:
| > That you can stop paying if the product stops getting
| updates.
|
| You also lose the ability to access your data in a lot of
| cases. That's the problem. I also own a v1 and v2 license for
| the Affinity stuff. I've used it to design myself exactly
| _one_ logo, so I would have been way better off subscribing
| to Adobe 's stuff for a month, right?
|
| Wrong, at least in my opinion. The problem with subscriptions
| is that you lose control over future access to your data. For
| my logo, I'm fine with Affinity Designer v2 never getting
| updated as long as I can load the software and use it as-is.
|
| I recently loaded up an abandoned Java project that I haven't
| looked at in a dozen years. I use IntelliJ IDEA and it
| wouldn't load in the most recent version of IDEA because the
| Gradle version used in the project was too old. I fired up my
| self-hosted server that I used at the time, installed IDEA
| v8, added a hostname for the Sonatype Nexus server to my DNS,
| and loaded my old project to look around.
|
| You can barely do that anymore because you don't own or
| control anything. Everything is subscription based, pay
| forever, with deep links to infrastructure you don't control
| either. I can mostly do it because I refuse to get on the
| subscription "never control anything" bandwagon, but I'll
| still probably get burned by online activation at some point.
|
| Just wait until everyone has 2 decades of AI context locked
| away behind paywalls controlled by a handful of companies.
| Everything in existence will be vendor locked and those
| companies will usurp every novel idea anyone is naive enough
| to feed in as context.
| dataflow wrote:
| I think people want either (a) a subscription that lets them
| keep the latest version perpetually, or (b) a perpetual
| license that provides some predictable amount of updates
| (this could be zero).
|
| What people don't want is to pay for updates that they were
| led to believe they would get, but that they never got. Or to
| lose access to software that they paid a lot for, or that
| they got locked into (even free).
|
| I don't think these are particularly difficult expectations
| to understand or meet.
| odie5533 wrote:
| I just want to pay $50 and have a single version I can download
| that doesn't need to auto-update and that I can use as long as
| I want.
| Computer0 wrote:
| I did pay for perpetual access to it 2 months ago! :)
|
| As a windows PC user I am hoping the compatibility issues wont
| effect me and I can enjoy the product offline.
| stOneskull wrote:
| i wonder if you get some type of compensation if you paid
| recently.
| Gigachad wrote:
| A one time license never entitles you to ongoing updates.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| > they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image
| trace won't be coming to it.
|
| There's as of yet no confirmation about this. There is a lot of
| speculation, but there has not been official confirmation.
| justinclift wrote:
| > they're completely stopping all updates to v2
|
| The article itself says at least this bit. I didn't notice
| anything about a "trace" thing though, but I was just
| skimming.
| jansan wrote:
| On the bright side, i am still using Paintshop Pro v7.04 from
| 2001, so we may be able to use Affinity for another 20 years,
| too.
| fschuett wrote:
| If possible, please make a Linux version.
|
| Just in case any Canva engineer is reading this.
| popcar2 wrote:
| Uhhuh. I think anyone in the tech field can immediately tell
| where this is going, and I'm not at all excited for it.
|
| 1. They silently make it online only. Currently you need to make
| an account and be online on activation, so they're already one
| step closer to getting there.
|
| 2. They silently ditch the concept of buying and owning Affinity
| software, but that's okay because it's ~totally free~!
|
| 3. As soon as they lock in enough users from how nice and
| friendly they are, pull the rug. At some point they'll suddenly
| start locking features behind the pro subscription.
|
| It's textbook at this point.
| p_ing wrote:
| Why did they force the use of Safari to sign into the app? What's
| the disrespect with the user's browser of choice (and one that
| already has the valid token)?
| ezfe wrote:
| There is no code in Canva that specifically opens Safari, it
| would be a `ASWebAuthenticationSession` from macOS.
|
| Safari is used by default, other browsers have to support this
| feature to use it and do not, so you just get Safari.
| ajs1998 wrote:
| Yeah this is driving me crazy. It must be a bug because it says
| "a new tab has been opened in your default browser" but my
| default browser is not Safari.
| possiblerobot wrote:
| The entire Affinity Suite is now reduced to bait on a hook for an
| AI subscription service. This is enshittification. This
| arrangement will also undermine Affinity's credibility as a
| serious tool for work (and play!).
|
| I just want to pay for nice software made by thoughtful people
| like a normal human.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Support open source projects with donations and contributions
| possiblerobot wrote:
| I'd love to do that, but I haven't seen any projects that
| have the polish and cohesive vision that I feel pro art /
| design tools should have. Apps like Inkscape and GIMP have
| always felt pretty rough around the edges and unpleasant to
| me, in a way that money won't help.
|
| Can you recommend any?
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i would gladly pay $500 for GIMP if i felt their developers
| would prioritize features that i actually need out of an
| image manipulation program. they never have and by the looks
| of things, they never will. it's too bad.
| rckt wrote:
| I opened an SVG file, copy-pasted a shape, exported the file and
| the new shape was wrapped in a transform tag, which was
| absolutely unnecessary. Won't be using this.
|
| Once there was a great app, Gravit Designer. It produced the
| cleanest SVG markup. Too bad Corel murdered it.
| lloydjones wrote:
| I expressly bought this software (Designer, Photo, Publisher) out
| of principle, against Adobe's enshittification and
| monopolisation, and because it was premised on "pay once; own it
| forever".
|
| This is obviously the 'tech circle of life' in action, but... how
| depressing...
|
| I've always been guilty of preaching market diversification but
| sticking with the big(ger) players, but this sort of thing
| illustrates the need for multiple, viable players that all have
| good market share, so that - whenever one gets cannibalised and
| debased into some VC-money-addled marketing funnel - there are
| others to which people can flock in support/protest
| doawoo wrote:
| Well, time to donate more money to Krita, Inkscape, etc.
| grougnax wrote:
| Well. It can now be considered as pure trash. Goodbye, Affinity.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Thoughts on opensource alternatives?
|
| - Inkscape is an obvious one --- there's also
| https://cenon.info/, perhaps Gravit Designer? Any word on
| Graphite.rs 's stand-alone desktop version?
|
| - GIMP, Paint.net, Darktable and Krita
|
| - Scribus or LaTeX or Typst
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > GIMP
|
| still no cmyk, and AFAIK text editing is almost worse than
| useless. not everybody's use case, but it keeps me spending
| 12.99 a month for PS.
| raincole wrote:
| And Blender.
|
| Yeah I know it sounds like a joke, but all Blender's icons are
| made in Blender, so it's officially an 2D vector graphics app
| too.
| shrinks99 wrote:
| Most of Blender's icons are actually made in Penpot which is
| also what the Blender foundation uses for UI prototyping. The
| brush icons are made in Blender though!
|
| https://penpot.app/penpothub/libraries-templates/blender-
| con...
|
| https://code.blender.org/2024/11/new-brush-thumbnails/
| starkparker wrote:
| Haven't seen anything on Graphite.rs (site is still suggesting
| Q4 2025) but people on the Affinity Discord have been putting a
| lot of disgruntled new eyes on it.
| scroot wrote:
| Thanks for posting, I hadn't even heard of this
| indrora wrote:
| Gravit Designer was sunset 9/1 of this year after the
| acquisition by Corel.
| rekabis wrote:
| Any app that requires an account just to run a totally-local app,
| is also a company that can unilaterally deny your ability to run
| said software on your own computer for whatever reason they want.
|
| Thanks, but no thanks.
|
| If I install it, it should be mine to do whatever the hell I want
| to do with it, online _OR OFFLINE._
| gazook89 wrote:
| Their FAQ says that the account and online access are needed
| for the download and license activation, but after that it can
| be run offline.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Oh great, I just finished my year long move from Photoshop to
| Affinity Photo...
|
| Now I have to start over again? Ugghhh...
| HeckFeck wrote:
| AI has now devoured humanity, and not even with entertainment if
| it was in a proper dystopian way. It's just engorging all the
| software products we love, accelerating enshitiffication. We just
| get another fucking subscription. Why can't we have killer robots
| to fight instead?
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| Bought the Affinity Studio license less than a year ago and I'm
| feeling incredibly ripped off right now. So much so that I'm
| going to cancel my Canva subscription. When you do things like
| this, Canva, you are sending a loud and clear signal to me that
| even though I paid a lot of money for your product, I am STILL
| just a product to you and not a customer, and thus can no longer
| trust any of your offerings.
|
| I'm so sick of sellouts.
| dejongh wrote:
| Freeium mostly sucks. Escape before they squeeze every drop of
| blood out of you. There is a cost to everything that is how the
| reality get's in.
| rohan_ wrote:
| Isn't everyone using Rive these days?
| jumpocelot wrote:
| Unlisted video sent by e-mail to those who subscribed on that
| mysterious page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP_TBaKODlw
| peteforde wrote:
| I'm feeling some real hurt seeing this announcement.
|
| I bought the Affinity v1 apps, buying into the vision for a no-BS
| forever app.
|
| I was surprised to see a v2 app show up a year after I bought
| into v1 with what I remember was something like a 25% discount.
| But this was going to be the new forever app, and I understand
| wanting to get things right on a second pass.
|
| Reading about how v2 will no longer get updates just makes me see
| red.
| ezfe wrote:
| You bought a one time license and the app still works, what's
| the issue? You can't expect to pay $70 for perpetual software.
| atoav wrote:
| Well this puts them on my blacklist. And I am an educator in
| precisely the artschool they would profit off catering to.
|
| I refuse to teach my student tools that change the contract
| once you bought into them.
|
| Adobe is on that list too.
|
| The only major non-open source software that isn't is anything
| by Black Magic or Steam, both companies that have found healthy
| sustainable business models and jave acted reliable towards
| creaters and the open source community they relied on in their
| humbe beginnings.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I got the email just now about this. I was happy to pay real
| money for good software as I had done for Affinity V1 and would
| have upgraded to V3... but now it's free because we are the
| business now.
|
| With a big dollop of AI slop on top.
|
| Every single time some acquisition happens, this happens.
|
| I am more than happy to pay good money for quality software to
| support a business so it doesn't need to resort to this. Even a
| monthly subscription would have been preferable.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| More TelemetryWare? No thanks!
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| seems like Canva want to take adobe market share
| karaterobot wrote:
| I bought all the Affinity programs after ditching Adobe, which
| I'd used for 20 years or so. I'm a professional designer, and
| even though most of my work is in Figma these days, it's nice
| having dedicated bitmap editing and document design applications.
|
| I bought (two different versions of) these apps specifically
| because they weren't a SaaS suite with a predatory monthly
| subscription model, and a constant barrage of cross-promotion and
| integration with their other products.
|
| Now that Figma is public, it's rapidly become another fully
| enshittified SaaS suite whose only selling point is that there's
| nothing better out there for now. Affinity is now pivoting in the
| same direction. What a time to be a designer!
| floo wrote:
| For context: I own licenses for both Affinity Designer, and the
| full Affinity 2 suite.
|
| Just tried the new affinity application for a couple hours and
| it's pretty great. Personas are now studios and as far as I can
| tell features from all apps are now integrated into one.
|
| Giving this away for free is insane value and I am very glad to
| have this as a photoshop alternative.
| coldcode wrote:
| Did they remove any features in Photo? Or is it basically just
| glommed together?
| floo wrote:
| Looks complete to me.
| pbowyer wrote:
| This is well timed as my wife has lost her educator status, and
| we've canceled Adobe Creative Cloud this month as we can't
| stomach the jump from PS400 to PS800/yr.
| egorfine wrote:
| I'm not sure that's good news actually.
|
| If you're not the customer - you're the product.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| ...and they still don't have proper Devanagari support.
| mjmas wrote:
| Won't this end up how Draftsight did? (Free for years but
| required user details, and then Dassault decided to disable each
| and every free installation and require a subscription)
| girvo wrote:
| Oh this is so sad. I was literally trying to buy a license for
| Photo the other day and confused as to why. I don't want a Canva
| license I don't want a bloody subscription
| mung wrote:
| I feel like everyone is very negative about something that hasn't
| happened yet. This gives a desktop environment to Canva users,
| where the revenue actually is. It's both a trojan horse and a
| usable product. Will everyone's worse fears come true? Maybe,
| maybe not. Mean time you have an excellent app, for free, and
| very few software products, free, open source, closed source,
| perpetual, subscription.... last "forever". They are often
| obsoleted by some new product, new workflow or just a new OS.
| Take it for what it is right now.
| girvo wrote:
| > Will everyone's worse fears come true?
|
| Yes, they will. Enshittification is a constant and is driven by
| misaligned investment incentives to that of good products.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| The new version is a nice update over v2, with some great new
| features.
|
| The downside is that some useful features like background
| removal will never come to the non-subscription version. OTOH,
| the subscription is cheap if you think of it as license cost
| for an Adobe alternative.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| If a product is free, the user is the product.
|
| Why the account tie? Will it phone home to train yet another AI
| model on my image editing workflows? Will it work air-gapped?
| yoz-y wrote:
| Arf, and me who was hitting that "update later button", now I
| wish I had updated to the latest version before the removal from
| the store.
|
| That said, I'll try this when it will become necessary. Affinity
| tools were great. I downloaded the new Canva version, and
| although I'm not a fan of the new icons and general look and feel
| it seems okay. It feels a bit less responsive than the v2, that
| might be fixed with some "bug fixes & small improvements"
| releases. I might be just jaded and resigned.
|
| Edit: Actually it is still possible to update.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| I looove the fact that we can now seamlessly switch between the
| Photo, Designer, and Publisher modalities within a single
| program.
|
| One of the great things about using the Affinity suite for the
| last few years has been the consistency of design conventions and
| key commands across all three programs, so of course it makes
| sense to merge them all!
|
| Whereas Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign all have inherited
| different commands and conventions from their independent
| developments and are incongruent.
|
| I'm so impressed by the workflow now. This feels like a
| tremendous win from a workflow standpoint.
| benbristow wrote:
| Well, that's annoying as I bought a licence about 6 months ago.
|
| They've missed a trick so far not making a Linux version. People
| have been crying out for ages that Adobe never made a Linux
| version of Photoshop, and with the whole Windows 11 debacle now
| and people shifting over it would make perfect sense.
| npilk wrote:
| What a fascinating thread. I bought Affinity Photo and Designer
| V1 as one-time purchases a few years ago. I didn't upgrade to V2
| when those came out. I have continued to occasionally use the V1
| apps - I was just in Photo the other day.
|
| To me this is exactly why you would want to buy software licenses
| as one-time purchases - the company can't rug pull you for what
| you already bought. If I want, I can keep using the Affinity apps
| on this machine indefinitely.
|
| It seems a lot of people are really frustrated that they
| purchased software and now the company is doing something else.
| Isn't the whole point of purchasing a license for standalone
| software that you are protected in case the company goes under,
| or gets bought, or decides to do something else?
|
| Do people think the apps they bought are going away? Or did they
| expect to get free updates forever for their one-time purchase?
| Or am I missing something in this announcement?
| cromka wrote:
| They expected to be able to upgrade it in the future to most
| recent version with a one-time payment fee, like they used to
| so far.
| sedatk wrote:
| I own Affinity products and I used to be able to login to Serif's
| site to download them. Now that download link seems to have gone.
| I wish I had archived those images. Not sure if they would keep
| working though.
| nullfield wrote:
| You still can, or at least I can.
|
| https://store.serif.com/en-us/account/
|
| After login it forwarded me to the new site, but going back has
| orders, v2 downloads, and stuff.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Affinity Studio now free
|
| I'd love to have an actually _free_ alternative to the offerings
| from those rapacious thugs over at Adobe.
|
| /RANT
|
| But this isn't actually _free_. Rather than paying with currency,
| you pay with your PII and, presumably, your attention as you 're
| relentlessly marketed to by Canva and by whomever they decide to
| sell your PII.
|
| This is all too common and folks seem to be okay with it for some
| unknown reason. If you walked into an art supply store, grabbed
| the stuff you wanted/needed and headed to the cashier with _cash_
| and they refused to sell you _anything_ unless you provided them
| with your name, phone number, email address, etc., etc., etc. you
| 'd likely walk out without purchasing anything. [N.B.: Yes, Radio
| Shack always _asked_ for that info, but didn 't _require_ it for
| purchases.]
|
| Yet it seems that selling your personal details and attention is
| perfectly fine online.
|
| What's more, since you _must_ have a valid "account" with Canva
| to use their "free" offering, you are also subject (generally
| without recourse) to changes in the licensing/subscription models
| and they can take it away whenever they feel like it. What could
| go wrong? It's not like that's _ever_ been an issue, right?
|
| I'd love to use Affinity Studio. But I won't. Because the _price_
| is too high for me.
|
| I'd note that these sorts of shenanigans aren't limited to Canva
| -- far from it. It's just one more vendor contributing to the
| further enshittification of the tech sphere. And more's the pity.
|
| /RANT
|
| Why is/isn't it too "expensive" for you? (Note, this is a real
| question, not a poke at _anyone_.)
|
| Edit: Fixed prose. Added to rant.
| ch_fr wrote:
| I was very surprised by this move, because the whole lingo while
| they were teasing it was giving me much worse vibes than what
| this ended up being about.
|
| I paid for V1, paid again after they released V2 even though I
| was on Linux which they didn't support. I did it mostly out of
| support, and also because the community was making strides to get
| a decent wine setup working, so I would eventually get back to
| using it if I ever felt like it.
|
| More diversity in creative software is always nice to have, and
| it's good to keep challenging the idea that "Adobe is dominant
| because it's the best solution". Tho I don't feel like Canva is
| quite the player I'd be rooting for either.
|
| Fortunately, they seem to be handling the existing lifetime
| licenses a lot better than Autograph did when it got acquired by
| Maxon.
|
| Overall I think I'm rooting for them. Good luck Affinity!
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