Affinity Studio now free • Hacker News Board

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#381

Post by gazook89 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:04 PM UTC

iamphilrae wrote: post #371

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…

And so the enshittification begins. Such a shame to lose another set of solid, non-subscription-based desktop apps.

Gathered from the FAQ, you only pay if you want Canva AI features. Yes, you create a Canva account, which is free, so that you can get your license. With old affinity, you also needed an account to receive the license.

In the new UI the ai features are tucked into an additional “studio” like how layout, raster, and vector are individual studios. You can choose which studios have a visible toggle, so you can hide the Canva AI toggle if you don’t want to see it.

Perhaps it gets worse over time. But right now, they’ve just made it free.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#382

Post by MerrimanInd » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:06 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #104

MerrimanInd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand where y'all are coming from and this is not a judgement against Canva specifically. But you can't be surprised that people are concerned after so many years of anti-consumer anti-patterns in software that start exactly like this . This has nothing to do with Canva or Serif but the industry as a whole has squandered goodwill for so many years that actions like this no longer get the benefit of the doubt.…

I know, I hear you. We want to prove to be the exception to the rule. If you think about this from a macro and game-theory perspective, I hope you can see why _genuinely_ “free, forever.” is in our best commercial interests, long-term. On a personal level, I hope we don’t let cynicism prevent mission-driven companies trying to do good and customer-positive things from succeeding.

> I hope you can see why _genuinely_ “free, forever.” is in our best commercial interests, long-term.

I actually can't but I'd welcome hearing more about the strategy. I suspect what you're alluding to is maybe an open-core model? Generate free value for the entire ecosystem and then capture a portion of it with value-adding paid features? I'd be interested in that but I don't see where the FOSS layer is here.

> I hope we don’t let cynicism prevent mission-driven companies trying to do good and customer-positive things from succeeding

I also want to do mission-driven and moral work in the tech industry but I think there may be a disconnect between how the general population sees the tech industry and how it sees itself. This is my motivation to make these comments; not to be antagonistic and unpleasant for no reason but to attempt to hold up a mirror and show the tech industry the crisis of confidence that it faces. It would be like Philip Morris - after decades of subverting science and pushing cigarettes - launching a vape and expecting to receive the benefit of the doubt that the product has no downsides. Gone are the days of Silicon Valley being the warm and cuddly companies saving the world from their beanbags and open concept offices.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#383

Post by tonyhart7 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:06 PM UTC

seems like Canva want to take adobe market share

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#384

Post by scroot » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:06 PM UTC

starkparker wrote: post #330

WillAdams wrote: post #287

Thoughts on opensource alternatives? - Inkscape is an obvious one --- there's also https://cenon.info/ , perhaps Gravit Designer? Any word on Graphite.rs 's stand-alone desktop version? - GIMP, Paint.net, Darktable and Krita - Scribus or LaTeX or Typst

Haven't seen anything on Graphite.rs (site is still suggesting Q4 2025) but people on the Affinity Discord have been putting a lot of disgruntled new eyes on it.

Thanks for posting, I hadn't even heard of this

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#385

Post by possiblerobot » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:06 PM UTC

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #303

possiblerobot wrote: post #250

The entire Affinity Suite is now reduced to bait on a hook for an AI subscription service. This is enshittification. This arrangement will also undermine Affinity's credibility as a serious tool for work (and play!). I just want to pay for nice software made by thoughtful people like a normal human.

Support open source projects with donations and contributions

I'd love to do that, but I haven't seen any projects that have the polish and cohesive vision that I feel pro art / design tools should have. Apps like Inkscape and GIMP have always felt pretty rough around the edges and unpleasant to me, in a way that money won't help.

Can you recommend any?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#386

Post by gazook89 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:07 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #309

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…

I realize that money rules everything but I find it so confusing that so many companies will spend a decade building a great product and then just exit with full knowledge that it will be the inevitable end of the relevance of their work. You might think that some founders somewhere out there would be motivated by some level of ego to say “no, I won’t sell out, I built this amazing thing and the highest bidder owner…

Perhaps they know that a large buyout will help their employees for various reasons, and they set aside their ego to take care of them.

A company that hasn’t sold out is Adobe— are we in love with Adobe?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#387

Post by ajs1998 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

p_ing wrote: post #248

Why did they force the use of Safari to sign into the app? What's the disrespect with the user's browser of choice (and one that already has the valid token)?

Yeah this is driving me crazy. It must be a bug because it says "a new tab has been opened in your default browser" but my default browser is not Safari.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#388

Post by viraptor » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #295

viraptor wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there is no realistic vector drawing open source app for MacOS. Inkscape is still basically unusable with extreme lag. LibreDraw is ok for very basic things. But that's about it.

> Inkscape is still basically unusable with extreme lag. ?? I use Inkscape every day on macOS and it runs just fine, equivalent to on Windows/Linux. It was pretty bad a few years back but has caught up.

With anything remotely complicated I get lag on any clicks. Like 2s between a click and seeing anything get selected. Panning is unusable.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#389

Post by karaterobot » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

I bought all the Affinity programs after ditching Adobe, which I'd used for 20 years or so. I'm a professional designer, and even though most of my work is in Figma these days, it's nice having dedicated bitmap editing and document design applications.

I bought (two different versions of) these apps specifically because they weren't a SaaS suite with a predatory monthly subscription model, and a constant barrage of cross-promotion and integration with their other products.

Now that Figma is public, it's rapidly become another fully enshittified SaaS suite whose only selling point is that there's nothing better out there for now. Affinity is now pivoting in the same direction. What a time to be a designer!

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#390

Post by Computer0 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:11 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #125

quchen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I stopped doing photography was that I realized I’m locked to using Lightroom where all my previous pictures are, and without a subscription it’s such a hassle to gain access to them again. I miss the days when I just bought Lightroom and that was it. :-(

Capture One is fantastic, though.

One of the last 2 pieces of perpetual license pieces of photo software I have left. This software segment has almost entirely been consumed by subscriptions.