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Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

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Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#11
The link should probably be changed to official announcement.[1]

That said, this is pretty dismaying. I've been using Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for years. Their standalone and non-subscription based apps are perfect for my usecase. Compared to Adobe, they are a no-brainer. But, I don't think Canva would leave them be as is. Either next versions will be a subscription or a rug pull is coming for the existing version.

[1]: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity/

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#12
post #5

A mistake, if you ask me. They can't compete with Adobe.

Affinity can, though. I haven't touched Photoshop/Illustrator in years since I discovered Affinity.

Adobe is not just Photoshop and Illustrator; Affinity is still subpar, and Adobe products are moving fast ahead.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#13
Maybe I'm naive but I'm not so sure Affinity will automatically end up as a subscription-based app like Canva Pro and Creative Cloud. Subscription makes sense for Canva Pro where a lot of the value add is in additional elements and templates and there's not a versioned app you can buy with a certain set of features. For a tool where you release discrete versions with new features it's a lot easier to just sell it as one-off purchases.

Even if Canva was out to milk Affinity for every dollar, the size of the market for the professional-level tools is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the market for Canva-level tools. I can't imagine it would move the needle. But what do I know...

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affinity can, though. I haven't touched Photoshop/Illustrator in years since I discovered Affinity.

Adobe is not just Photoshop and Illustrator; Affinity is still subpar, and Adobe products are moving fast ahead.

Photoshop and Illustrator are surely a vast majority of Adobe product usage. What would be #3? Premiere? Lightroom?

Actually I take it back, Acrobat is probably #1

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#17
(Customer from the very beginning for Designer&Photo, made a book with Publisher)

They will move to subscriptions (there will be many more of these moves, see VMWare), which will kill their differenitation towards Adobe and kill the product. If subscription, I can use Illustrator (which has 10x more tutorials than Designer). Most companies screw up M&A.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#18
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affinity can, though. I haven't touched Photoshop/Illustrator in years since I discovered Affinity.

Adobe is not just Photoshop and Illustrator; Affinity is still subpar, and Adobe products are moving fast ahead.

Davinci Resolve is on par with Premiere. Quark XPress is a great replacement for InDesign. No need to rely on one company for every type of multimedia software.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#19

The link should probably be changed to official announcement.[1] That said, this is pretty dismaying. I've been using Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for years. Their standalone and non-subscription based apps are perfect for my usecase. Compared to Adobe, they are a no-brainer. But, I don't think Canva would leave them be as is. Either next versions will be a subscription or a rug pull is coming for the existin…

Also, this maybe distracting for either parties

- Affinity team (if they are pressured to go beyond professional designers or change to subscription, go to cloud, web etc.)

- Canva. Professional/enterprise is a very different ball game than the consumer market that they were focussing on. Ex. their mobile app for consumer itself is kind of broken, whereas mobile first experience is very important for the demography that they are targeting.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as someone that's been very happy with the Affinity Suite and am scared of any major changes to them, this is pretty scary to me, as well. Reminds me of when Jasc was bought by Corel waaaay back in the day. Canva, if you're on HN, seeing how we're going to respond, please don't take away the stand-alone, non-subscription-based, affordable system that Affinity's products are. I love their products. I don't want…

Hate to say it, but a subscription model is coming. Canva is making money hands over fist by doing that, and I can't imagine they are going to part from what has been so lucrative

The only reason people get Affinity is because of the non subscription model.

Adobe software is just better.

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