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Affinity Studio now free

affinity.studio

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#541

Post by Andrex »

prmoustache wrote: post #532
Gigachad wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not dead, but a lot of it is stagnant. How much has Gimp improved in the last 10 years vs photoshop.

Gimp has improved a lot and is still awesome value in term of dollar to service provided, even while making a small monthly or yearly donation.

Another Gimp diehard for life here. I should make a donation, I appreciate the reminder.

People go on and on about how bad Gimp's UI is, and while I won't defend it I will the criticism is 99% overblown.

https://i.imgur.com/3gqmu9N.png

If you take 10-15 minutes to customize the UI it can be pretty damn simple if you want. I'd say those minutes are worth it to avoid a subscription and to support a true OSS stalwart project.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#542

Post by archagon »

Andrex wrote: post #539
archagon wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimp, maybe not so much[1], but I understand that Krita has improved quite a bit. And regardless of stagnancy, both of these applications will continue to exist long after Affinity gets our-incredible-journeyed. [1]: (FWIW, I don't know one way or the other. Apologies to any Gimp developers here.)

Gimp actually, finally had their big 3.0 update earlier this year which "modernized" (to ~5 years ago) a lot of the codebase. The UI is mostly the same but it's using much more modern UI components (editing text isn't terrible now, etc.) https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/03/16/gimp-3-0-released/ Gimp's problem is mostly one of funding and attention, like most OSS projects. But it's never stopped development, which I thi…

Oh nice! Just gave it a shot and it does feel a lot more pleasant to use on macOS than what I remember.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#543

Post by hv42 »

quchen wrote: post #112
johnhamlin wrote: post #101

Love to see this the day Adobe emailed to say it’s hiking my Photoshop/Lightroom subscription by 50% ($10/mo -> $15/mo)

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. :-(

https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW is rapidly going to be a nice cross-platform alternative to Lightroom

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#544

Post by danpalmer »

Using this free desktop app requires Canva sign-in, ok fine, I can stomach that, it's free after all.

Signing in launches a browser to complete the sign-in process, but on macOS it launches Safari, not my OS default browser – this takes extra work to do over just using the `openUrl` call on macOS. Safari is blocked.

Thankfully something on my system redirects the URL opening to pass it to my orgs enforced browser, I sign-in, and then nothing happens. The page says it has launched Affinity, but Affinity is sitting there doing nothing waiting for me to log in.

I realise I'm on a somewhat non-standard setup, but an OAuth login flow is not hard to get right. I've built dozens of these flows in my career and messing it up this much is hard.

Edit:

> To report a bug within the application, click the "?" button in the top-right corner of the workspace. From the panel, select "Report a Bug".

This menu is not accessible until you have signed in. No other method of bug reporting is provided.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#545

Post by aleph_minus_one »

derefr wrote: post #314
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To push back against this sentiment: “chasing AI money” isn’t necessarily their thought process here; i.e. it’s not the only reason they would “switch to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI.” Keeping in mind that: 1. “AI” (i.e. large ML model) -driven features are in demand (if not by existing users, then by not-yet-users, serving as a TAM-expansion strategy) 2. Large ML models require a lot of reso…

> and if you just let them install the app but then reveal that they can't actually run the models, they'll feel ripped off.

Just release some simple free "test application" that checks whether the computer satisfies the system requirements and does something "simple" (but relevant for the user) so that the users want to try out this simple free test application and want to update their hardware so that it can run.

Now, after the users have been incentivized to update their hardware so that they can run the cool test application, you can upsell your users to the "full software experience". :-)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#547

Post by lukakopajtic »

Nothing is free. I think we've all learned that by now. AI issues aside, think about the data you're locking forever when switching to Affinity. As much as we all hate Adobe, their formats are at least reverse-engineered and their specs published. With Canva's new free toy, you don't get that luxury. All of your work and data are basically locked forever in their proprietary format that no open-source software can read. So it's really up to Canva to decide for how long you get to play for free and under what rules.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#549

Post by coldtea »

blackqueeriroh wrote: post #421
zarmin wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim not to, but I am extremely suspicious. >No, your content in Affinity is not used to train AI-powered features, or to help AI features learn and improve in other ways, such as model evaluation or quality assurance. In Affinity, your content is stored locally on your device and we don’t have access to it. If you choose to upload or export content to Canva, you remain in control of whether it can be used to t…

I mean, be suspicious, that’s always good. But have proof before being certain of something you don’t have facts to back up.

>But have proof before being certain of something you don’t have facts to back up

When it comes to such things, it's better to assume bad intent.

Assuming corporate benevolence as the default is foolish.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#550

Post by zarmin »

coldtea wrote: post #549
blackqueeriroh wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, be suspicious, that’s always good. But have proof before being certain of something you don’t have facts to back up.

> But have proof before being certain of something you don’t have facts to back up When it comes to such things, it's better to assume bad intent. Assuming corporate benevolence as the default is foolish.

This is a better point than the one I made
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