Affinity Studio now free | Hacker News Reader

Affinity Studio now free

affinity.studio

1,217 pointsdagmx793 comments

https://www.affinity.studio/

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I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here:

Serif is the company that originally built this software.

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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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

But is the new Affinity app quite literally feature equivalent? Is there anything the latest version of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo Desktop edition can do that the new combined Affinity app cannot do? That's my only concern.

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)

I still use the Affinity desktop apps (before the move to the store) and they're fine.

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.

They're doing an Adobe Creative Cloud with Canva now, Great !

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)

You need account to use, but can download without account.

https://www.affinity.studio/download

Flames to dust / Lovers to friends Why do all good things come to an end?

And so the enshittification begins. Such a shame to lose another set of solid, non-subscription-based desktop apps.

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.

Oh, so it's disguised as being free but in reality it's one major step towards becoming a subscription model. Got it.

Nothing beats Adobe. IMHO.

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?

The future roadmap we thought we had seems to have gone away. I won’t be using the “free” version, as there are unknown strings attached I’m sure. If not now, down the road.

Yes, I can keep using v2, but how much do I want to invest in an app that I know has an expiration date for me? I need to start planning my exit, so I’m not left in a bad spot down the road.

I’m curious what Apple plans to do with Pixelmator. They bought it a while back. I was a Pixelmator user, but switched to Affinity. Now I’m not sure what to do.

I’m lucky though, as I’m just a hobbyist, so it’s not as serious as it is for some who have professional workflows who need to look at finding something that will still allow them to do their job.

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.

You answered your own question. Buying a perpetual license ensures the company can’t rug pull you. Not having the option for a perpetual license gives no guarantees of the sort. One of Serif’s top selling points was the perpetual license, and people were rightfully nervous about the Canva acquisition. They even made it a huge point in their announcement to reassure people who were nervous about the perpetual license model going away.

A perpetual license does not entitle me to anything beyond the scope of the license, of course. It’s great that I can use V2 for as long as it serves my needs. But now, when someone new is looking for graphic design software, or if I find am missing some good features in V1 or V2 that get added to the new software, of course I will be upset that I no longer have the option to upgrade to or recommend the non-rug-pullable option.

I feel like it’s not unreasonable to have a negative opinion towards the decisions companies make that further the enshittification of the professional software world.

And some of us did upgrade and would like to see the software improve further and buy further upgrades making it even better in the future, but now I expect it'll be turned into a subscription or shut down in the next few years, because its a minor side thing for Canva, and that's sad.

I see this same discussion in the audio world sometimes re Waves plugins, and one big factor there is Windows vs. Mac.

Windows users tend to be able to use old, even ancient versions forever with no trouble. Mac users on the other hand, often seem to be faced with having to either pay for a new software version that works with a newer version of Mac OS, or stay on an old version of the operating system - sometimes on old hardware as well.

The benefits you describe are certainly real, but I think people should be free to complain and be disappointed as well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

perpetual licenses give you access to the software you purchased perpetually. a perpetual license doesn't usually give you access to later versions of the software, only updates & fixes for the version you bought.

you were lucky to get the updates that you got. that is not normal, and is not something that a perpetual license purchaser should expect to get.

> 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

> . V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get any updates.

How does it becomes useless?

Until there is a new format that you absolutely can't avoid on your day to day life there is no reason you cannot use it the same way you have used it until now.

I think a lot of that feeling is just FOMO.

[flagged]

For personal use, piracy is always an option.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s already happened: when trying to download, I can’t sign up for “security reasons”.

This never happened to me when getting something from the AppStore, or from anyone else really. And that’s the problem with cloudgarbage, you have zero control over it.

> 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.

> Will everyone's worse fears come true?

I mean, it's sort of inevitable. Eventually, Canva will find itself under pressure to grow revenue (or even just weather a downturn). The maintenance of a complex desktop application is expensive and there will be pressure to increase "conversions" by putting more and more of the useful functions behind a paywall.

That said, their immediate goal is probably to take away customers from Adobe, and right now, the product is free, has more features than the old Affinity, doesn't need to talk to activation servers on an ongoing basis, and doesn't auto-update. So we should enjoy it while it lasts.

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)

I doubt this is good, I'd expect minimal investment in the free version and ever increasing subscriptions. I WANT to pay for my software.

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]

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).

What was the difference between v1 and v2?

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.

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.

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.

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

Yep. Your art is now their training data. Their AI subscription today comes at the cost of your job tomorrow.

Love to see this the day Adobe emailed to say it’s hiking my Photoshop/Lightroom subscription by 50% ($10/mo -> $15/mo)

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.

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. :-(

For sure. But "less shitty than Adobe" isn't a life goal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

For those of you puzzled as to how three separate apps (Photo, Designer and Publsher) have become one (Studio), as a long-time user it was always clear that under the hood this was always the case. Indeed such interoperability has clearly been built into the Affinity suite from the ground up.

This is 100 miles away from the interoperability of Adobe's Dynamic Link whereby apps such as Premier and After Effects are 'united' in a manner that feels clunky and forced. Almost all Adobe apps were acquisitions, and most of them are now horrendously long in the tooth. Uniting them seamlessly would be impossible.

I adore Affinity photo for its top to bottom support for high dynamic range images. Editing RAW images is a buttery smooth dream, compared to Photoshop, which feels like I am banging my head against the software.

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.

Yeah I get the feeling everyone is talking about the AI stuff, but the majority of the launch talks about the actual _software_ they’re launching, and I really like it.

I’m happy for AI subscribers to subsidise my experience ;)

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.

Did they remove any features in Photo? Or is it basically just glommed together?

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

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.

> 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.

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.

GIMP doesn't have "Patch tool", it doesn't have "Inpaint Brush" that is like content aware fill but brush, it doesn't have content aware fill either. I remember there were some plugins that provide features kinda similar to those tools but it was a huge pain to install and use them through nested filter menus. It's a great program for free open source, but it's decades behind on feature parity with other editors, and launch times long enough for me to prefer opening Photopea tab in browser instead

Gravit Designer was sunset 9/1 of this year after the acquisition by Corel.

Viva Designer as an alternative to Publisher. There's also a Linux version as well as Mac and Windows.

Paint.NET isn't open source, is it?

This thread is pure doomerism. Program became free and people made up tens of scenarios why this is bad, awful and literally the end. I mean I understand it's "too good to be true" and some "rug pull" is coming, but people acting like it's "over over".

So far what I've got is a new amazing photo editor that's unlike GIMP has "Inpaint brush" and "Patch tool" and even has free built-in image segmentation model and tons of other good features and even, seems, should support Photoshop plugins. Even if every single new feature going from now on will be gated behind some absurdly priced subscription I'm still totally fine with what i've been given already.

No way they bet entirely on AI thing popping off, unless they'll come up with their own "Nano Banana" idk who really needs simple "text to image" model, and even if they do it's still not that good to be worthy of subscription. On another note subscription right now also gives access to three local running models: upscale, depth map generation and colorizer, pretty cool small models in addition to segmentation that's given for free, I guess they might end up adding additional later there. Another thing I see is that several third party services baked in, for example Dropbox in linked services and two stock image providers Pexels and Pixabay, maybe that covers some cost for them. On mysterious ploy to gather all users data for Big AI I see one concerning thing: Right away program asked whether I want to share data and I selected option "no" but then in settings suspicious "Send usage and performance data to Affinity" was enabled, either I forgot that I pressed yes or it's a bug or something intentional.

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?

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.

So did they buy Affinity and all their tools and gave it for free?

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/about/

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.

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.

Canva acquired Affinity year and half back - Mar 2024.

https://www.canva.com/en_in/newsroom/news/affinity/

Nothing is free. I think we've all learned that by now. AI issues aside, think about the data you're locking forever when switching to Affinity. As much as we all hate Adobe, their formats are at least reverse-engineered and their specs published. With Canva's new free toy, you don't get that luxury. All of your work and data are basically locked forever in their proprietary format that no open-source software can read. So it's really up to Canva to decide for how long you get to play for free and under what rules.

Using this free desktop app requires Canva sign-in, ok fine, I can stomach that, it's free after all.

Signing in launches a browser to complete the sign-in process, but on macOS it launches Safari, not my OS default browser – this takes extra work to do over just using the `openUrl` call on macOS. Safari is blocked.

Thankfully something on my system redirects the URL opening to pass it to my orgs enforced browser, I sign-in, and then nothing happens. The page says it has launched Affinity, but Affinity is sitting there doing nothing waiting for me to log in.

I realise I'm on a somewhat non-standard setup, but an OAuth login flow is not hard to get right. I've built dozens of these flows in my career and messing it up this much is hard.

Edit:

> To report a bug within the application, click the "?" button in the top-right corner of the workspace. From the panel, select "Report a Bug".

This menu is not accessible until you have signed in. No other method of bug reporting is provided.

I've had good experience contacting canva support in the past who've checked things with engineering teams, you should be able to contact them about their new affinity sign-in

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.

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.

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.

Despite the mixed feelings I have about this direction, Canva's AI deal seems to be legit. Usually, AI does a fairly limited job when it comes to vector graphics, but this is what I've got with Affinity Studio:

> Generate a playful logo for product named "Serenity" using the style of Robin Hood forest and freedom themes

The result for such a simple prompt is pretty impressive: https://imgur.com/a/xLZlfQM, the produced artifact is already in vector format with tweakable curves, lines, and colors.

Well played, Canva. Maybe Affinity Studio is a smart move in the long run. I think I will be among Pro subscribers.

I loved the Affinity apps, but not on a subscription. I don't do subscriptions or 'freemium' for apps, only for content. On desktop I'll move to Krita / Inkscape / Scribus. On iPad, not sure yet. The key here is watching out for proprietary formats that won't open without the app or subscription; this is something we are going through with Microsoft Publisher offboarding right now to ensure we can archive and read the designs in the future. The same applies to Affinity - if you value past creations, export them to a common future-proof format.

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?

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."

It looks like the pro version includes all the AI features. The free one is for "proper" artists ;)

If you're not paying, you are the product.

“Even if you are paying, you are the premium product.”

I think we need to stop saying that quote since the existence of subscription. Can you stop Google from tracking you or let you define your “algorithm” if you have purchased YouTube Premium and one of the Google Drive plans? I really doubt.

I think it is the value of the company matters. If their intentions is to keep investors happy, the users are always the product no matter paying or not. By contrast, there are quite a lot of free open source software doing the same for free, but the users still remain user.

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.

Let's aquire software that people love using... and then kill what they love about it!!

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.

The goal is to kill the product, so people are forced to pay for Canva

What is it you think they killed? It’s just V3 of the suite, and it’s free now.

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/

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.

It looks like that's fixed now. It redirects to affinity.studio for me.

OK, there is a link to the Affinity Serif product on the Canva website as Affinity V2. Looks like an acquisition

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.

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.

Nope. No more updates and it's removed from the app stores.

I explained to Affinity this summer, "...it would only be in your favor to have a designer learn your tools instead of Figma and Adobe, because the reason they got popular is because people brought them to work."

In 2025, Affinity's trial was one week. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people saw ads and signed up for 6 month licenses. I signed up, but I didn't activate. There was no requirement to activate immediately in the offer, and the welcome email specifically mentioned the license would start after the downloadable products were activated.

Affinity announced in 2024 that the offer has been updated: the 6 month licenses would expire immediately if not started in the next weeks.

Since I had written my own desktop software products, I advised Affinity to email the hundreds of thousands of people and offer another long license, especially if they didn't activate or didn't use it.

I explained my advice to affinity@serif.com:

"I decided... I'm not going to be using my time to learn new design software in a week's trial... I think there is a very easy and (practically) free solution, like I wrote in the original replies, including extending a license."

"...it would only be in your favor to have a designer learn your tools instead of Figma and Adobe, because the reason they got popular is because people brought them to work."

And now, the 2024 web page with the offers redirects to the new announcement!

We see that people people love you Affinity software! Lets buy it and stop doing what people love about it!

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

so basically there's no more incentive to maintain or improve the affinity suite..

Yep, the design side of the software will rot and die.

Except their competitors? Why do you think Canva bought them?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

This is a simple business decision by Canva. They see the future of creative work is to lean heavily on AI. So all the basic editing functionality is now table stakes. Giving it away for free is a powerful play against Adobe.

I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but the application bundle on macOS hints at a pretty robust scripting API using Javascript. The functionality doesn't seem to be exposed from what I can see in the app.

  /Applications/Affinity.app/Contents/Resources/JSLib
  ├── application.js
  ├── artboardinterface.js
  ├── artboardproperties.js
  ├── baseboxinterface.js
  ├── brushfillinterface.js
  ├── buffer.js
  ├── collection.js
  ├── colours.js
  ...
  ├── units.js
  ├── vectorbrush.js
  └── visibilityinterface.js

In the "first look video" Ash Hewson (Affinity CEO) says "“we’ve also got full scripting capability coming very, very soon” (at 21:33). What's said in the video is that this - and some other developments - will be part of "free" and not dependent on subscription. https://youtu.be/UP_TBaKODlw?si=lJkRZ6l8ekQRF43R&t=1293

Nice catch! As a V1 and then V2 user, this was the only thing that was missing for me :)

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.

This is a good rule of thumb

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah I can actually cancel my pro plan now, dont think I need the AI Feature, let's see

kind of fun that their fonts are Affinity Serif and Canva Sans

Yet after decades, Gimp still can't compete even with programs built from scratch :D

GIMP is open source if you want to go help improve it ;)

If it works well enough for the people who use it, why does it matter?

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.

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.

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.

Linux version when

Indeed. Although I suspect Wine or proton could be an option - not checked.

Wish they would properly support linux - the Affinity products are PAINFUL if not near impossible to get working in wine.

I was going to ask about wine support. Anyone tried in Bottles (wine distribution)? I've had better luck with Bottles than plain Wine with other software. Hoping to try soon.

And since it will be a freemium model or ad-supported, here comes one more example why we should use and support free software.

I'm surprised people aren't really talking about how this affects Adobe going into the future. Adobe frankly has been hostile to it's users for the past while, this should really shake up the game. Creatives now have access to a pro-level tool for free with the option to pay extra for AI features. This is a clear shot across Adobe's bow and positions Canva to control the creative vertical from professionals to the average person.

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.

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.

It's always like this, and it's been like this for 40 years, and every time, people get caught by surprise...

As of right now it seems like if you have the old V2 apps installed they can still be (re)activated with your old Serif/Affinity license that is tied to an email. I was able to just do that with Designer v2. I also seem to be able to re-down them through the Apple App Store and they work fine. You do get a prompt "Would you like to keep your app linked to your Affinity Store account? This allows you to automatically stream any free or purchased content you have directly to your app." But its unclear to me what that means at the moment given that Canva has changed the licensing model.

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.

I think a lot of commentor here forget that Canva is a large, profitable company that has a long track record of putting its consumers first. I'm not going to pretend that the fruit won't ever sour, but a company that wants to get more people in design, upsell them on fremium optional features, and has other profitable businesses to support the funnel is a hell of a lot better than Adobe.

If Serif was going to be acquired, I can't think of a better company to have done it.

This is a sad day, but it was obvious something horrible would happen, since they had pulled the products with zero communication, such a user hostile move to remove products for a month.

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)

Reminds me of DBAN/EBAN.

Was the case we had 2 really good options in enterprise data destruction. EBAN with a yearly license scheme, and BLANCCO with a per hard drive wiped license scheme.

BLANCCO buys EBAN, kills the product, but permits DBAN the open source variant to be available permanently, with no modern EBAN features, and no updates.

Of course they did make one change to DBAN, it leaves a small image on wiped hard drives advertising BLANCCO.

And ofc, there was nothing really preventing Blanccos per hard drive license from increasing.

I use both Affinity V2 and Canva. I used Affinity for finicky stuff, and Canva for pointy clicky template based construction when I need something simple, fast.

I detest Canva, despite using it. Everything is advertising for the premium version. And I expect Affinity to go the same way, Canvas elements will (if not already) be integrated, and those elements will in most cases advertise themselves as being paid assets. Eventually it will go the way of DBAN and just be an advertisement for Canva.

I will ride out V2 for as long as it continues to function. Then I will find something else.

This is a tremendous loss.

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 £400 to £800/yr.

Ran it for the first time, already made 16 network requests. [1] Not too bad at all.

[1] https://ibb.co/RkVgBFGw

Well. It can now be considered as pure trash. Goodbye, Affinity.

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

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?

Yeah 100% the hope is to train a model to do the things currently a professional needs hiring for so they can enable an unskilled to prompt that work.

Well, time to donate more money to Krita, Inkscape, etc.

This sucks. But it also means the door is open for yet another person to come along and make one-time purchase Vector/Pixel/Layout apps.

The cycle will just repeat itself unless they’re open source.

Not happy. I recently purchased the whole suite and now not only is it now free (didn't need to purchase it), but it's no longer even what I want. And it doesn't work on iPad until they finish whatever rewrite, when cross-platform + apple pencil niceness was a huge draw.

Sure, it's free -- but it's no longer the same product with the same priorities.

How long ago? I’d be going for a refund or credit card coverage if you’ve got it.

I'm disappointed to see so many negative responses to such a good thing to do. I understand where it's coming from, the distrust on progressively de-empowering freemium apps. But if there was a product to gain some trust (or at least the benefit of the doubt) on doing the right thing, and having a fair and balanced approach to monetization, it is Affinity. Same thing they've been doing for years.

I for one, think this is a really nice thing, and that it gives access to really well-made and actual professional-level design tools to a huge swath of people who didn't have it before, be it for personal use or for work. No previously included feature is now part of the subscription, and they've made sure to say they'll be free forever. I see this as a huge win.

I've been using the affinity suite since v1 for nearly a decade. Upgraded to v2 when that came out, and use it weekly on my iPad and Desktop. I was warry of Canva for a while, but my wife really got into it for designing and printing signage, invitations, and cards for our wedding. She's a light prosumer, and seeing her be able to create some really awesome stuff and fuel her creativity made me quite happy. Well worth the $15/m for pro to see her smile and be proud of herself.

I was worried when they bought Serif, but this new Affinity gives me hope. Canva makes good design products but they've been missing from the pro market. We all know Adobe runs that arena, and that most consumers are sick of their business practices. Canva is probably the best company positioned right now to compete with Adobe, and they have a huge incentive to bring users over. Keeping the base app free while enabling an optional subscriptions for the only remote component with operating costs lets Canva keep their top level funnel wide open. Even if most users don't pay for AI, that's still a huge number of people in the Canva ecosystem.

Of all the companies to buy Serif, Canva is probably the best case scenario.

I was just looking yesterday for a simple vector editor, will give it a try. Sorry, Inkscape is a total mess to use.

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.

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

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).

When somethings free, I’m suspicious.

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.

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

Oh great, I just finished my year long move from Photoshop to Affinity Photo…

Now I have to start over again? Ugghhh…

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

I'm not sure that's good news actually.

If you're not the customer - you're the product.

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...

>Your PSDs are welcome here

>Import PSDs, AIs, IDMLs, DWGs, and other file types into Affinity, with structure, layers, and creative intent preserved.

I think for now, they will be fine with solo. for small businesses

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?

I’m just happy good design tools are free again, feels like a win for everyone.

I still always wanted Serif to build a really solid competitor to Lightroom's catalog management. Thats the only thing I never got from them. Otherwise, I've always been a fan of Affinity photo.

This is very disappointing. I bought Affinity because I thought a "pay once, own the software" was a business model worth supporting. In fact, people loved to point to Affinity's transactional model to contrast it with Adobe's subscription model.

Now it will become freeware, and by "freeware" I mean "nagware" because it will keep telling you about pro/AI features that you don't have access to.

Just like on Windows you don't own the system, on this "freeware" you don't own the software. You're a renter, a freeloader. So you can't complain about the ads. But you WANTED to just buy the thing so you wouldn't have to deal with ads. That option is now off the table.

Imagine if you bought a boat and you can't just enter every room of the boat, because the boat comes with a bouncer that stands in front of a certain door and he won't let you enter. That's what it feels like. Not only the boat isn't yours, it is also not a welcoming place to be. It will always feel like you're an outsider being conditionally allowed on someone's software instead of just being a guy using a thing you own.

I don't know. On some days I feel I just don't like software anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition - none of these problems.

Unlisted video sent by e-mail to those who subscribed on that mysterious page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP_TBaKODlw

Are there any alternatives out there that are still subscription-free and AI-free?

Downloaded v3 but it kept crashing for me on Windows 10. Possibly because I had designer v1 previously installed. If anyone's facing the same issue, deleting %APPDATA%\Affinity directory fixes this.

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.

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.

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.

There is support for photoshop plugins https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pag...

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.

I was using Affinity Designer! I still will, I liked it. I was really happy about the pay-once model.

It's quite obvious that it's now a funnel into the subscription, and that's not great.

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)

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.

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.

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!

On Mac, the app size when installed is 3.5GB!?? How can we get such a size?

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 :)

The software I paid money for better not update to this crap.

I can't find the "Pricing" button on the webpage anywhere.

I don't want "Free", I want a situation where I can buy and own a perpetual license for the software.

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)?

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.

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.

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...

It was mentioned in the release video that it’ll be a single app to come out next year.

>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.

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.

Not devastated by this because faith was not put in any product whatsoever. Just time building up on things. Greed eating out some dreams.

They've lost a loyal customer. I no longer have a reason to continue using the product, and would rather switch to Adobe.

What was your reason to use the product (to what end) and what has changed now that you now have no reason to continue to use it? What has Adobe to do with it?

I get that some have fears that Affinity is getting unusable for them in the future so maybe it's good to look for alternatives. But if you are willing to switch to Adobe you can do this when it has gotten unusable.

I too would really like a linux version of this

It works under wine (including the V3 version) https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux

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.

Support open source projects with donations and contributions

Really wish they'd do a Linux version... Even an app image or flatpak bundled with working wine would be nice to see.

Have you seen this? https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux

I'm daily user of the old 3-piece suite, should I be worried they will be taken away from me in the near future?

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.

> 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.

> 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.

It’s because it’s four apps in one, they merged the affinity suite apps then added their own ai app too

Well, the old Affinity Designer 2, Photo 2 and Publisher 2 together are 8.68 GB (Mac)

Can I work in more than one app at the same time?

  on macOS or Windows.

>:(

So basically "Canva Desktop"?

so this means that the linux-wine version will not stop working after some random update i assume?

Does the latest version actually work under wine? I remember trying a while back and only v1 was usable.

I just want to buy a product and not have it constantly upsell me. Like what Affinity was before. Please.

But how will the company “maximize shareholder value” then?

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.

I do hope you can still use it without internet. Otherwise the program is much less interesting.

If possible, please make a Linux version.

Just in case any Canva engineer is reading this.

I would have rather paid for this product as is and kept paying.

Can't figure out if any new non-AI features were added?

Plenty of them. Image tracing is probably the most notable one (converts pixels to vectors).

After playing with it several hours, I can say that Affinity 3 is pretty solid release. The new AI persona is surprisingly useful too.

Initially, I was reluctant to migrate from Affinity 2 but now I'm sold.

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.

> 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.

> 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?

What client-side features do you use that you think will get ripped out and paywalled from an old version?

…and they still don't have proper Devanagari support.

I am disappointed by this development, as the precedent for this business model is out there for anyone to see. But I have little to add about that

What I do hope to see is more talent and investment contributed to OSS tools. It would really benefit everyone if GIMP, Inkscape, Krita and others received the Blender treatment.

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.

Doesn't support my operating system.

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...

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!

https://downloads.affinity.studio/Affinity.dmg

thank me later.

You still need an account to start the app, so the direct download doesn’t really save any effort.

Awesome—I even used to pay for it.

> "Sign up to download"

No, thank you.

wow, if they add Good Enough™ video editing I can probably cancel my Adobe CC subscription

I'm not disappointed at how far Affinity has pushed the baseline for graphic design software up until this point for me with V1 and V2. I'll stay tentatively hopeful that we don't see this backslide in V3 even though i'm not expecting the same development velocity for new baseline features outside of the subscription now.

I'm not that hopeful though.. with freemium, everything is subject to be clawed back slowly into a subscription if the subscription offering fails to perform well enough.

Adobe shitting their pants r n

More TelemetryWare? No thanks!

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.

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.

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?)

Great Programm

Linux please!!! :D

seems like Canva want to take adobe market share

This is a step 1 in the process of enshittification. When the AI bubble bursts, Canva will stop being so generous and they have all cards in place in case they have to stop being nice.

Isn't everyone using Rive these days?

Still doesn't work on Linux :(

I've been a long-time Affinity Suite user - starting with the 1.x versions and later migrating to 2.x. I recently tried the new Affinity Studio (Affinity 3.x), and one change immediately kills productivity: the artboard background color is now pitch black.

Here's why that matters. The artboard background isn't part of a design - it’s a neutral filler color meant to visually separate artboards, much like the wall color in an art gallery. When the background is pure black, darker designs blend into it, making it almost impossible to distinguish artboard boundaries. The result? A confusing, visually fatiguing workspace.

Previous Affinity versions got this right: they used a neutral grey, a tried-and-true choice that rarely clashed with any design content.

Sadly, this feels like yet another case of form over function. I can easily imagine someone in-house thinking the black background "looked cool", but that aesthetic decision severely compromises usability - and says a lot about where priorities lie.

Canva's acquisition of Affinity gives off the same uneasy vibe as Broadcom buying VMware. Great tools, potentially questionable stewardship.

Another one bites the dust.

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.

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.

>Sign up to download

Into the trash it goes.

can't believe this. once paid $50 - but still a steal at that price.

now glad people can unleash their creativity.

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.

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.

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