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Affinity Studio now free

affinity.studio

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#251

Post by carlosjobim »

mns wrote: post #137

Devastated 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 s…

> V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get any updates.

What are you talking about? I plan to use it for at least 5-10 years more. Excellent software that takes care of all my needs. Melanie Perkins is not going to visit you in your house and force you to uninstall it.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#252

Post by okanat »

codeptualize wrote: post #63
Inityx wrote: post #44

If you're not paying, you are the product.

There is a premium plan for the AI features, so that's the strategy, which does make some sense, I bet a lot of people will want to have those features.

Good software is never freemium. It is either paid upfront or it is a timebomb. I am okay with keeping things proprietary and asking for a fair price. Once free-to-play is introduced, the software is gone for good.

I thought about buying Affinity a couple of months ago since they offered a perpetual license. Now I won't even think installing it

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#253

Post by alt227 »

pentagrama wrote: post #143

I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here: Serif is the company that originally built this software. -------- 2014–2024 Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model: - Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent) - Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent) - Affinity Pub…

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif.

Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone else.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#254

Post by reaperducer »

mns wrote: post #137

Devastated 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 s…

V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get any updates.

Is it really?

People on HN are always talking about how they use pre-Creative Cloud versions of Adobe products years and years later.

My firewall already blocks Affinity programs from accessing the internet without my permission. I guess I'll set it to an automatic deny so I don't lose any features, or have to deal with any nagging.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#255

Post by pikewood »

t-writescode wrote: post #149
mns wrote: post #137

Devastated 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 s…

[flagged]

There's already precedence for app deterioration in their iOS apps. Affinity Photo V1 for iPad lost a lot of functionality in brushes and other features with later versions of iOS (e.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/AffinityPhoto/comments/1725daf/what...)

It was never updated.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#256

Post by rckt »

I opened an SVG file, copy-pasted a shape, exported the file and the new shape was wrapped in a transform tag, which was absolutely unnecessary. Won't be using this.

Once there was a great app, Gravit Designer. It produced the cleanest SVG markup. Too bad Corel murdered it.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#257

Post by inanutshellus »

pndy wrote: post #224
t-writescode wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

My friend was using Photoshop 7 up until she couldn't install it for whatever reason under W10. It was always enough for her to do what she was doing with her digitalized drawings. Not sure if she found a replacement but she certainly didn't want to use GIMP - interface was way too convoluted and layers management weird, according to her IIRC.

Learning GIMP as a PS user is like changing operating systems.

... but it has always been worth it for any normal person, IMO.

That said... PS's new AI tools might make GIMP no longer a viable option even for normies like me.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#258

Post by alt227 »

indiantinker wrote: post #76

So did they buy Affinity and all their tools and gave it for free? https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/about/

Yep, but dont expect the level of quality development that was there before. These'free' tools are to attract you to buy ai. They are now only selling tools. Serif were pushing to beat Adobe at their own game and make the best designer tools available. Canva are just trying to sell you ai.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#259

Post by kybernetyk »

exasperaited wrote: post #201
nicce wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this read in ToS somewhere? I know many professional artists and if they would find out that their work is used for training, the app is uninstalled faster than it takes time for you to read this text.

It says, on the actual website, the absolute opposite: "Your content in Affinity isn’t used to train AI features — we can’t access local files. For content you choose to upload to Canva, you’re in control. You can review and update your preferences any time in Canva settings." The only nuance I can think of here is that if you are using the cloud AI tools, you are uploading content. But it's largely hypocritical to c…

>2025

>believing anything a corporation says

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#260

Post by egypturnash »

rcarmo wrote: post #202

Well, I downloaded the Mac app, and here's what I don't like: - Goodness gracious, that icon. And 3.5GB????? - Requires a login (so I suppose no disconnected operation) - Seems to jumble together the vector, bitmap and publishing apps (which I very much prefer to have as separate things) Mostly everything I've been able to try in 30 minutes seems to work, but a 3.5GB app is a sad sign of the times. Will most likely k…

> a 3.5GB app is a sad sign of the times.

It's par for the course, Illustrator 2025 is 2.8 gigs on my Mac for just the binary, 3.29 gigs for its directory in /Applications for some of its support files, plus however much space it takes up in ~/Library for more of its support files.

Photoshop's another 4.8 gigs for its binary and InDesign's another 2, so Affinity's doing pretty well to get some part of the functionality of all of those in a mere 3.5 gigs. Or Adobe's hilariously bloated. Or both. Let's go with both, really.

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