Yes, Affinity really is free. You can use every tool in the Pixel, Vector, and Layout studios, plus all of the customization and export features, as much as you want, with no restrictions or payment needed. If you’re on a Canva premium plan, you’ll also be able to unlock Canva’s powerful AI tools within Affinity.
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I found this video today from Michael Janda: HOT TAKE - Affinity is NOT “Free”.
Although I do not agree with all the points he comes up with, he has some good explanation, while being speculative, why Affinity is going this route. In short: Affinty is now a loss leader, hoping that people will sign up eventually for a Canva subscriptipn for using AI tools in order to compete with Adobe who still is the leader in the professional field.
If you have to sign up to use it, it isn’t free.
AI training?
Probably, and also the first step towards adopting Adobe’s shitty business model.
About a year ago, Canva tried to raise their prices significantly.
I forget exactly, but I pay for an account and can have 5 people on my team. They said they would start charging for each team member or something like that.
One person said their cot went up from like $100 to $600, maybe the numbers are off, but it’s close to how severe there increase was.
There was so much backlash over it that they decided to keep the old pricing structure.
So they’re planning to hook people in with freebies then boil the frogs a little slower.
So they’re planning to hook people in with freebies then boil the frogs a little slower.
If you never pay a dime anyway, it’s kinda irrelevant how much the AI features cost, no?
Sometimes companies gradually reduce the usefulness of the free product to incentivize people to pay. They may do this.
Sometimes companies gradually reduce the usefulness of the free product to incentivize people to pay.
If they’ll at some point revert to the old Affinity business model, there is really not a downside, isn’t it? Pay for Affinity and get to use Affinity is what V1 and V2 already did. But the comment by Neon Nova was about the pricing of Canva’s AI service and the cost of that is completely irrelevant to “traditional” Affinity users because we’re not interested in that feature anyway and – at least right now – they rule out any subscription model for Affinity itself.
They may do this.
Well, that’s speculation and reduction of the Affinity feature set is a completely different matter anyway. While I’m not fully on board with the GUI changes – changing canvas size has been moved to a weird sub menu, for example – but in my view I got a major upgrade for free that also reduced the disk footprint from 9GB to 3GB (Mac version, didn’t look at the size on Windows before uninstalling V2). So at this very moment it’s a useful upgrade for people who used V2 anyway.
AI training?
When created a Canva account for Affinity 3, the setting “train AI using information about your general usage which includes fonts, colours, search queries and instructions you input. This does NOT include any of your uploaded images, videos, or designs” was on, “Allow your content to improve AI” was off.
For now it’s configurable at https://www.canva.com/account/privacy-preferences and I think they’ll have a hard landing on the face if they ever change it.
…I want free hugs!
I’ve been a paying affinity customer for years, and I’m not signing up for Canva.
I get it’s “free”, but I’m sketched out.
I’m not buying that it’s free unless it’s FOSS almost ever. Maybe it’s just a “create an account so we can collect data on you” deal, but that still isn’t free.
Yes, you have to create an account in Canva and turn off a bunch of tracking that is set on by default. There’s even a record setting that is off at the time of me discovering it, but that just made me nervous.
I recently downloaded it to try it out but i’m thinking of just torrenting adobe tbh.
I was really hoping for Linux support some day. Now, I am totally fine sticking with GIMP.
Krita is also another good alternative, imo.
Isn’t Krita more focused on digital painting than photo editing? I always end up going back to the GIMP because of that even though I use KDE.
Yep. It’s 100% digital painting. All photo manipulation features are either minimal implementation or simply does not exist.
All the developement roadmap are often times trying to replicate Clip Studio Paint as it becomes the most used digital painting software for newer generation. Like comic/manga layout, integrated 3D pose, etc.
That’s what I thought. People keep saying Krita is a great alternative to GIMP, Photoshop, and Affinity Photo, but photo editing is not its focus at all.
It’s not but it has had non-destructive adjustment layers for years before Gimp. It’s fine for a lot of things with a much better interface.
People keep saying Krita is a great alternative to GIMP, Photoshop, and Affinity Photo, but photo editing is not its focus at all.
That’s not exactly true. Yes, the focus shifted to painting a bunch of years ago but Krita still started out as “KImageShop”. There are many image editing features available and unlike Gimp, it A) works across all major PC operating systems equally (and Android), B) uses an up to date toolkit and doesn’t lag behind by years (Gimp only recently adopted GTK3), C) doesn’t user headerbars, and D) isn’t named after “a derrogatory term for someone that is disabled or has a medicial problem that results in physical impairment”.
Krita may have started out as a photo editor, but that’s clearly not its focus today. If I need to edit a photo, I will use a tool better suited for that task, even if that tool isn’t as pretty as Krita.
Krita may have started out as a photo editor, but that’s clearly not its focus today.
Editing features were not removed, so it’s still a capable image editor, formal focus or not.
I thought Affinity apps is one of those that works great with Proton/Wine.
It didn’t work me at all.
not sure what method you tried, but I was able to get V2 running via Lutris using the guide in this repo
Yes! Thanks, i tried it and it works for me.
not sure what method you tried, but I was able to get V2 running via Lutris using the guide in this repo
Relies on a patched variant of Wine, so hardly “works great with Proton/Wine”. I tried V3 with regular Proton and the installer didn’t even run.
I was really hoping for Linux support some day.
I hope with easy access to Affinity V3, someone in the FOSS world will now reverse engineer the Affinity file format. The only 3rd party solution for Affinity files I’m aware of is Photopea but that may just as well be a version of Affinity Photo running in some VM on the server to convert the files to PSD to then edit the files from there.
Enshittification countdown begins now
It started when they bought affinity.
“Free”
never support anything by canva
Why not?
they’re a horrible ai slop company
Ah I see thanks for the heads up
And how does that make a company horrible?
If you can ask that question you’re horrible yourself.
I am horrible in many ways, you are right about that :). But I don’t think it is fair for a company to be labelled as horrible just because they are adding AI to their services. AI is a technology, and most of what is done currently with this is truly horrible (I am talking about chatgpt, meta, microsoft). But I believe that it can be used for good, and I think Canva implementing AI in Affinity Studio will do good to beginners, amateurs. I say this because I have used Canva many times to create posters, and other things, which would have been pain in bum to do in Gimp. It is just convenient.
You’re willingly ignorant about the many negative aspects of using Ai. Being ignorant is fine, but making such a proud display of it is not pretty.
What the hell are you talking about? I just presented my view and you labelled it as being “proud” and me a “ignorant”. You first made a personal attack on me and you label me as arrogant!? You are a true example of circle jerk.
never support anything by canva
Getting Affinity without ever paying is hardly supporting them. At least it’s a stopgap until Krita finally fixes their text tool which is honestly the sole reason why I bought Affinity 1 and 2. (In case anyone wonders: Yes, I also donated to Krita.)
It’s weird that I can’t just login using my existing Affinity ID, also Canva’s privacy policy states clear as day under section 2 that they’ll use your data to train AI models, and that policy applies to Affinity.
Edit: Data collection within Affinity seems to be opt-in for now.
I see someone on masto saying its sending something out to them over internet even when opted out
Just usage pings or actual data?
No full pcap or anakysis so no idea
Some switches were set to on for me under https://www.canva.com/account/privacy-preferences
Lovely. \s They got brought by Canva and went down the Adobe rabbit hole.
Less of an Adobe rabbit hole than an Adobe abandoned mineshaft.
I haven’t followed this software and company before, what do you mean, what is the catch?
Adobe doesn’t offer any of its software for free except acrobat reader, where you get nagged about paid features constantly, but it’s easy to ignore.
Why shouldn’t I recommend this over cracked Photoshop? Its features seems like closer to PS than Gimp or Krita.
They used to be anti-Adobe and claimed they’d never stoop to their level. This new free version offers Canva Premium plan, which unlocks cloud content. It’s only going to get worse from here.
The writing was on the wall when Serif sold the product to Canva. We already knew Canva used a rent seeking model at the corporate level, so it didn’t really matter what promises they made about what they’d do with Affinity.
I need to make sure I have my old Affinity installers. I’m sure I won’t be able to activate in a few years because they decide to take down the authentication server.
This is a good point. I’m going to download all the installers they have today and ferret them away just in case.
Have you managed to find them?
You have to log in to your old Affinity account, and from there you can find the download links.
Thanks I’ll Make sure to try this as I want to keep an apple silicon version of the installation for when I update my mac.
If you’re on a Canva premium plan, you’ll also be able to unlock Canva’s powerful AI tools within Affinity.
So freemium, not free. Which is also fine, just saying.
Edit: Needs new Canva account. My Serif account didn’t migrate. Be sure to turn off BS under https://www.canva.com/account/privacy-preferences
Top ten answers on the board; we asked 100 users “How will Canva cover the costs of the software development if Affinity is free?”
It has Ai features by subscription to Canva Premium.
don’t believe companies when they tell you they don’t want all the money on the planet by any means possible
Enshitification is inevitable. Ugh.
At least give us a Linux version.
I use this at a center I volunteer at that works with the mentally disabled. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those people are old. Surprisingly, Canva is simple enough that I’ve been able to train the elderly, of all people, to use the program to make fliers or three-fold pamphlets for themselves. It’s a good program for what it does, and the center pays for a premium subscription, so it’s not something I personally need to worry much about.
Honestly, I’m fine with this in terms of the program’s functionality, as long as Canva does’t fuck with its user interface. It is pretty simple and intuitive, and I’d argue that the UI is quite possibly one of its strongest assets, seconded only by the massive amount of options/elements you can add to your project. And it’s already apparent what AI is mostly used for within the program: making more graphic elements to slap onto your page, and more ready-made templates you can still go in and alter everything in at-will. And honestly, I’m fine with that.
If they are a registered non profit they shouldn’t have to pay for premium, and be eligible for a free subscription
We/they are. So maybe we don’t pay then. I’ve never asked. We just have the premium package, so I assumed we paid.
