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.
Affinity Studio now free
131–140 of 825 posts
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes sense. It's free until you guys stop supporting it or go out of business, then it disappears.
I don't think it disappears - the copy I have will still be on my machine, and free to use as well. Unless they implemented something to remotely delete it?
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#133On 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 :)
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#134I 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.
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#135wow, if they add Good Enough™ video editing I can probably cancel my Adobe CC subscription
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#136It'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 i…
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 y…
Is Da Vinci Resolve's free version unsustainable?
No. Because it's part of the cost for Black Magic Design that if they want to have their own hardware and not have the industry's monopolists (Adobe and Apple) make it difficult to maximise their sales, they need to control their own app.
This is what Canva think about their asset marketplace and AI tools, I guess. They need their own app to make sure Adobe can never so much as tug at the corner of the rug.
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#137Devastated 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).
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#138Many comments here that this "makes sense." Free does not make sense! If I'm not paying for it I'm not the customer anymore.
Yep. Your art is now their training data. Their AI subscription today comes at the cost of your job tomorrow.
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, Canva employee & Affinity user+lover for 10+ years (pre-acquisition) here. That’s not true. We really do want to make all design, including professional design, as widely accessible as possible; including those who can’t afford it. I understand this could be interpreted as ‘corporate PR’, but even from a game-theory sense, you’d want to maximize the top of your funnel, which is free users.
I loved Affinity v1 suite's offline activation model. Sadly that changed in v2 and the same thing is happening now. Is there any hope to enable activating v2 offline? That way I can still install and use it when you eventually shutdown the activation server.
I understand why this is important. I’ll try my best to see what we can do :) Thank you for the great feedback.
Re: Affinity Studio now free
#140It'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 i…
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 y…
It looks like it is an offline application (after license verification) in he FAQ
>You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods.
As a long time Adobe "user" (read: hater) I'm curious if this decision targets Adobe or Microsoft options more..? Maybe both.