{"id":49865,"date":"2025-10-31T13:28:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=49865"},"modified":"2025-11-04T09:21:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T14:21:16","slug":"combined-affinity-studio-now-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/31\/combined-affinity-studio-now-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Combined Affinity Studio Now Free"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcus Mendes<\/a> (MacRumors<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>, TidBITS-Talk<\/a>, Mac Power Users<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Affinity has announced a complete overhaul of its design suite. Starting today, the company is unifying all its tools into a single app for vector, photo, and layout work, and making it permanently free.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Here’s Ash Hewson, CEO of Affinity:<\/p>

“There’s no catch, no stripped-back version, and no gotchas. The same precise, high-performance tools that professionals rely on every day are now open to all, because creative freedom shouldn’t come with a cost.”<\/p><\/blockquote>

[…]<\/p>

The all-new Affinity<\/a> was completely redesigned to offer a seamless way to switch between vector, photo, and layout work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Combining Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher into a single app is an interesting move. There was clearly duplication and extra friction from having them separate yet integrated, but it’s hard to get the user interface right in a mega app. I still prefer when Interface Builder was spearate from Xcode (though it matters less as I phase out my usage of nib files).<\/p>\n\n

The immediate catch is that now you need to log into a Canva account to use the app, and there will probably be constant upselling UI<\/a>, like with Apple’s services apps. Maybe that seems like a small price to pay for getting all these professional tools for free. But I have a bad feeling<\/a> about this, both because it seems like the pro app functionality will no longer be the focus and because I don’t understand how they’re going to make money. Is the subscription with AI features that<\/em> compelling?<\/p>\n\n

Ernie Smith<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Canva is well-suited for those smaller tasks, which is why they’ve convinced 24 million people to pay $120 per year or more for its offering, many in workplaces. Potentially, though, Canva Pro could be nearly as popular as Microsoft 365, which has an estimated 440 million paid subscribers<\/a>. The pitch to employers: Rather than buying graphics software for one or two departments, everyone gets a Canva Pro subscription.<\/p>

If only the market wasn’t so split because of all the professionals favoring Creative Cloud and looking down on Canva.<\/p>\n

That’s where the make-Affinity-free logic comes into play. For years, Adobe’s Achilles heel has been its overwhelming high cost, which has left many early-career or freelance professional designers feeling sustained sticker shock, year after year.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If Canva can get more than 6 normies for every professional Adobe serves, they come out ahead.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Canva just flipped 40 years of design-business logic on its head, and if they pull this off, they look like geniuses. If they don’t, hopefully Affinity doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jesus Diaz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So, how does a free professional tool make business sense for Canva? Adams explains it to me with a simple mantra: “craft and scale.” The high-end, pixel-perfect “craft” happens in Affinity Studio. The “scale”—where that craft is used to generate massive amounts of content—happens in Canva. By making the craft tool free, Canva is betting it can grow the entire design ecosystem.​<\/p>

The strategy is to build a frictionless bridge between these two worlds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Craig Grannell<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

All was good for a while. But fans got twitchy last year when Serif was snapped up by Canva, a company rather fond of subscriptions itself. Such concern escalated to full-blown panic this October when Affinity desktop apps vanished from sale, replaced by the cryptic slogan “Creative Freedom Is Coming”.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

So what’s the catch? Well, the iPad<\/a> version won’t be ready until next year, which explains why the iPad Affinity suite<\/a> quietly went free rather than being pulled from the App Store. And there’s the integration of Canva AI tools, such as Generative Fill, Expand & Edit and Remove Background. GenAI is… divisive<\/em> (let’s say) in the creative world. But those tools are entirely optional and Canva promises your work in Affinity “is not accessed to train AI features” anyway.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It does technically break Canva’s pledge to “offer perpetual licenses”<\/a>, but given that the new price is literally zero<\/em>, I think we can forgive the company for that. What I’m interested in now is not just how Affinity evolves, but also how Adobe responds.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Presumably, most of the future work will be on new features that require a subscription.<\/p>\n\n

Brody Ford<\/a> (Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Adobe Inc. brought together 10,000 marketers, filmmakers and content creators to its annual conference this week to persuade them that the company’s software products are adapting to artificial intelligence and remain the best tools for their work.<\/p>

But it’s Adobe’s investors, rather than its users, who are the most skeptical that generative AI technology won’t disrupt the company’s business as the top seller of software for creative professionals.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The company’s shares have lost about a quarter of their value this year as AI tools like Google’s video-generating model Veo have gained steam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n