Combined Affinity Studio Now Free

Pity for folks who use spaces to separate their layout, and image manipulation workflows. It's a very common workflow for people to use Photo in dark UI mode, but Publisher in Light UI mode, which isn't going to be an option now.

I too have a bad feeling about this because it all feels like Newspeak. "Free" should be in quotes. It will be "free" like everything "free" is anymore. Full of ads for upsells. And even on the paid version, full of popups for further upsells.

The reference to Apple is a good one. The TV app is just a billboard now. Even if one subscribes to TV+ you'll still get popups for MLS or F1 or MLB or whatever else they want to push.

I suppose I don't blame companies for wanting to make money but it's getting insulting.

Adobe brought this on themselves. Their apps have been total crap for at least the past decade. I don't know what happened, but they lost the mojo they used to have. There are so many weird quirks in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign -- where you learn to do a task a certain way in one app, and then to do the same task in one of the other apps is a completely different workflow (for no apparent reason). Or things which seem totally obvious are either impossible or require insane multi-step workarounds. I recently had an issue where I saved a file "in Creative Cloud" but then couldn't access it on my other computer, nor my iPhone. Because saving "in the cloud" on Adobe apps apparently means 2 or 3 different things depending which Creative Cloud app you are using! Oh and why can I scale the interface in some of the apps on Windows, but not others? Adobe is a mess.

I'm remaining cautiously optimistic. As I understand it, they did add several new features in this new release (beyond combining the apps), all without pushing it into the premium tier. Will that change in the future? Time will tell.

I read another view that I think is a good take on this. This is a play for Canva to take on Adobe, particularly in the AI space. Afinity gives them pro-level software available for free, removing friction if you're a current Adobe customer. Customization lets them get closer to the UI they already know (vs. adopting a new UI). And the premium definitely seems targeted as AI stuff. If you don't need it, you'll likely be able to do without. And even if you do, it seems to be more reasonable than the cost of Adobe with their AI.

For now, I will be happy to enjoy the benefits of Affinity's new product as Canva takes on Adobe.

Absolutely no way this ends well. I’m keeping my current versions frozen in amber until they stop working.

This is a crummy decision on its face, because I use all three programs differently and this undoes that. But it’s step one in the total ruination of these programs and only a fool doesn’t know that.

“It does technically break Canva’s pledge to “offer perpetual licenses”, but given that the new price is literally zero, I think we can forgive the company for that.”

“They’ve broken their word once, but surely that’s the only time they’ll do this!” How do people who cover this business fall for the same thing over and over?

The combined app is nice enough for now, but I expect enshittification to ensue. I'll keep my copies of the three previous apps around. Hopefully Apple doesn't make any macOS changes that break them.

The real question is whether Canva's incentives still align with the users of Affinity. For now, they do, because Canva wants to get professionals to switch from Adobe's suite to Affinity.

The new version introduces a bunch of features in the free version that I've wanted. I also think that combining the three apps into one makes a lot of sense, and makes it easier to use for more complex designs. This is a great update.

The final positive thing I will say is that the subscription is extremely cheap (for now). Even if they keep adding new features only to the subscription (which, again, has not been the case for this update), it's easily worth the money.

The problem, of course, is that we don't know the future. Will Affinity become successful enough that Canva will start treating it as a profit center? Will they change their strategy and lose interest in Affinity and allocate developer resources elsewhere? If the Canva IPO goes through, will incentives change to the point where it starts hurting Affinity?

In the long run, the fact that the business model is no longer "the actual users of the software pay for the software" is probably bad. But all software dies eventually, and the enshittification of Affinity hasn't started yet, and might not for another decade or more.

I'm not too worried.

This is great - and pretty exciting - temporarily. But we’ve been down this road too many times. I think Occam’s razor applied to the tech industry tells us this is going to end badly because it always does in the tech industry

Even if the people in charge hold fast to their lofty commitment, the next people in charge will probably degrade the experience

That’s why I think open source is the only real solution to the problem of the tech industry, but their tools are quite behind due to lack of funding. We need to take that funding into our own hands I think

The more I think about it, the more I think this is just a way to prop-up Canva subs by offering a good desktop package, and less about trying to capture whatever the Serif revenue was. Meaning, it doesn’t matter that this is free. The whole point is to be a carrot not so much for existing Affinity users to subscribe to Canva (but hey, if they want to, that’s a bonus), but for would-be or existing Canva users to stay subscribed or as a play to get the more lucrative team/business/enterprise Canva subs, now that there is also a strong desktop suite. That said, I fully expect another Canva price increase because of this move.

I pay for Canva (tho I think I set my sub to cancel and not auto-renew, but that won’t be until June or July) for some tasks where it’s frankly just faster than Photoshop and the Canva suite is good enough for a lot of people out there. Adobe has its own competitor, Adobe Express, which is similar to Canva but not as good in some ways (but better in a few others, and then the real thing is that it’s included with your Creative Cloud account and you can thus get it for free from your employer and not have to deal with the hassle of also trying to explain why you need one of the corporate Creative Cloud seats but also Canva — ymmv based on your employer), so as I said, I think strategically, this opens up some options for Canva to continue to go after the corporate set of users who don’t need full CC, but still want to have access to desktop apps.

Obviously, the big elephant in the room for teams/enterprise is still that there is no real video comp (the stuff Canva offers is garbage and CapCut is sadly the best option for normies but it’s also expensive) and Serif never tried to get into that space. And of course, there is the diminishing (but still real) lock-in stuff. I know an AI or PSD is never going to be quite as good in Affinity as in CC, and for individual users, that’s fine. But if you’re working with a lot of people, it’s really not.

But I think this is a really strong play to continue to go after the hobbyist/aspiring creative market — where again, Canva already does well. I don’t like having the apps combined because I don’t ever use the Publisher app and have no reason for it to take up space on my computer or iPad, but if the same people who made Affinity are still working on it and they haven’t all quit with their money, then I think this could be OK. This also potentially gives Canva a stronger mobile ecosystem (there are apps for iOS for Canva but they aren’t as powerful as what’s on the web or the Affinity apps).

Still, I’m not willing to call this a total win, I’m going to say it will be neutral. Because as I said, I’m expecting them to raise Canva prices again because of this.

One note on AI. Tabling the whole “how do artists feel about this generation of AI tools” bit aside (as if Adobe hasn’t been using AI of some type since content-aware came out what,15 years ago?), if the AI features in Affinity are as good as they are in Canva (which has the best green screen remover of any tool desktop or online that I’ve used, and I’ve used them all), I think a lot of people will like them.

"less about trying to capture whatever the Serif revenue was"

Serif's revenue is likely a rounding error in Canva's books, but if Affinity gains serious market share, monetizing it in ways its users don't like will become increasingly attractive.

"I don’t like having the apps combined because I don’t ever use the Publisher app and have no reason for it to take up space on my computer or iPad"

I'm pretty sure the way the apps worked previously was that all apps were already included in one another. So instead of three apps, each 3 GB, you now have one app that is 3.5 GB.

I also didn't have Publisher installed, but I've probably still halved the space Affinity takes up on my disk by installing the new version and removing the old ones (although I'm not sure if there's other data the installation puts on my disk that the .app itself doesn't account for).

@Christina @Plume It’s probably good (or at least low-risk) for Canva’s business, but I mostly care whether it’s good for Affinity users long-term. Their interests started out as a rounding error in terms of revenue and now they’re a pure loss-leader. That could be fine if they keep the same team and give them autonomy, but long-term it doesn’t seem like a stable situation.

We know where this is going. This is the beginning of enshittification. Some years from now it will have ads, or require a subscription, or be full of dark patterns, or all of the above.

And it's already bad enough that it requires an account to use. More data harvesting, more privacy violations. I don't want it.

I'm done with Affinity. I wanted a nice alternative to Photoshop, especially one that was a good macOS citizen, but no way am I going to invest more in it now.

I'm so very tired of nearly every bit of software or service going in this direction. Nothing is safe, outside of open source.

I build a LaunchBar action that fixes the lack of recent documents showing when using left arrow or space bar.
https://github.com/Ptujec/LaunchBar/tree/master/Recent-Affinity-Documents