Affinity Studio now free • Hacker News Board

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#21

Post by yoz-y » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #4

Seems much better than was feared, though I haven't yet downloaded and tried the new version and there's still plenty of room for things to decay in the future. It requiring an account (and thus, internet connectivity) to use is offputting, though. That is a prime enabler of enshittification, since it allows Canva to force updates that users may not necessarily desire. Hopefully it's easy to reverse engineer so old v…

I do hope you can still use it without internet. Otherwise the program is much less interesting.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#22

Post by skwee357 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

Kind of a bummer. I paid for Affinity tools some time ago, but I guess my license is now worth trash, and if I want to use the new Affinity tools, I need to have "Canva account".

I mean, free tools are good. But I smell a road to enshittification (for example, by offering Affinity for free so you create Canva account, then they push Canva AI or whatever BS to you little by little, and in the end deprecate affinity so you would move to Canva web Pro Ultra Version with 90% off for the first 3 months). Could be wrong, will see I guess.

[Edit] Just to clarify something. It's not like I expect to pay for a license and get updates forever, but from what it seems like from other comments, the original apps are being removed from the App Store, meaning that the "free Affinity" is "Canva Flavored" Affinity, rather than the original tools.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#23

Post by kitd » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

nocoiner wrote: post #2

This seems … way better than what I expected following the acquisition? What am I missing? And I assume this is a supplement to (and not a replacement of) the existing Affinity applications?

It looks like the pro version includes all the AI features. The free one is for "proper" artists ;)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#24

Post by gdulli » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Shouldn't that have sounded so counterintuitive as to trigger a first instinct to double check rather than post?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#25

Post by pavlov » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

nocoiner wrote: post #2

This seems … way better than what I expected following the acquisition? What am I missing? And I assume this is a supplement to (and not a replacement of) the existing Affinity applications?

It is a replacement, the old Affinity apps are discontinued:

"Your Affinity V2 license (via Serif) remains valid and Serif will continue to keep activation servers online. But please note that these apps won’t receive future updates.

"For the best experience, we recommend using the new Affinity by Canva app."

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#26

Post by zbhoy » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #3

[flagged]

You do realize that's the same Affinity? They got bought by Canva and released this product now. It's the same company

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#27

Post by cosmic_cheese » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #20

As an Affinity user, I'm interested to try this out (just downloaded). I'm surprised they tried to put it all in one app. Affinity Publisher is quite different from Affinity Photo for example. Edit: Just checked out the app. They essentially put Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher together in one app, switchable from a tab. Honestly, it's executed well. I hope it stays free—these apps are legitim…

Combining vector and raster editors makes some amount of sense since the raster editor had some vector capabilities anyway, but yeah, tossing in layout/desktop publishing feels kind of weird. It's a bit like combining a microwave oven and a blender.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#28

Post by microtonal » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

It seems that the Affinity apps are removed from the Mac App Store? That would be a shame, because they are sandboxed. I don't want yet another app with unfettered access. Of course, I can still download them from my purchases, but I think there will be no updates anymore?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#29

Post by osxman » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

This is bad news... I liked the Publisher/Designer/Photo apps on my Mac. The presentation of this new 'Canva' acquired product feels like a circus, and roadmap is very unclear also. This feels like it will be the end of a none adobe solution.

Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#30

Post by codeptualize » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #20

As an Affinity user, I'm interested to try this out (just downloaded). I'm surprised they tried to put it all in one app. Affinity Publisher is quite different from Affinity Photo for example. Edit: Just checked out the app. They essentially put Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher together in one app, switchable from a tab. Honestly, it's executed well. I hope it stays free—these apps are legitim…

It looks very similar to what they already had. If you had all three they all were already integrated, you can just switch between the different types of editing modes.