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Affinity Studio now free

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#601

Post by garganzol »

I've been a long-time Affinity Suite user - starting with the 1.x versions and later migrating to 2.x. I recently tried the new Affinity Studio (Affinity 3.x), and one change immediately kills productivity: the artboard background color is now pitch black.

Here's why that matters. The artboard background isn't part of a design - it’s a neutral filler color meant to visually separate artboards, much like the wall color in an art gallery. When the background is pure black, darker designs blend into it, making it almost impossible to distinguish artboard boundaries. The result? A confusing, visually fatiguing workspace.

Previous Affinity versions got this right: they used a neutral grey, a tried-and-true choice that rarely clashed with any design content.

Sadly, this feels like yet another case of form over function. I can easily imagine someone in-house thinking the black background "looked cool", but that aesthetic decision severely compromises usability - and says a lot about where priorities lie.

Canva's acquisition of Affinity gives off the same uneasy vibe as Broadcom buying VMware. Great tools, potentially questionable stewardship.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#603

Post by eldaisfish »

pikewood wrote: post #266
ryandrake wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true for very badly written software, and/or on platforms that maintain very bad backward compatibility. It's not some natural law of software--it's choices that (IMO) bad developers choose to make over and over.

This already happened with Affinity Photo v1 on iOS; a lot of functionality did not work after an iOS update. It feels like Apple changed something in their libraries, so it doesn't even matter how robust your software is if the underlying OS doesn't honor compatibility.

ok, but if you depend on software for work or business, you do not update your OS until you can guarantee and verify that your software will work.

The original iOS version worked. Maybe don't update iOS if you want to continue using affinity's software?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#604

Post by nocturnes »

Gigachad wrote: post #474
alwillis wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free is unsustainable Canva makes $3+ billion (up from $1.5 in 2023) per year; they have 21 million paying customers out of 240 million users. "Only" 8.75% are paying customers. They don't need huge uptake in AI subscriptions from Affinity. So yeah, free is sustainable for the foreseeable future.

Would they continue to invest in Affinity development if it isn’t converting in to paying users?

My experience: clients want to use Canva for everything; designers don't.

This has a reasonable shot at eliminating reasons for designers to pass complex work back to Adobe's suite. If they disrupt Adobe's dominance at the professional end of the market, it puts Canva in a very comfortable position.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#605

Post by atoav »

comradesmith wrote: post #567
atoav wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this puts them on my blacklist. And I am an educator in precisely the artschool they would profit off catering to. I refuse to teach my student tools that change the contract once you bought into them. Adobe is on that list too. The only major non-open source software that isn't is anything by Black Magic or Steam, both companies that have found healthy sustainable business models and jave acted reliable towards…

They didn’t change anything about the software you bought? It still functions like it did the day you bought it.

Technically, sure.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#606

Post by JeremyJaydan »

garganzol wrote: post #601

I've been a long-time Affinity Suite user - starting with the 1.x versions and later migrating to 2.x. I recently tried the new Affinity Studio (Affinity 3.x), and one change immediately kills productivity: the artboard background color is now pitch black. Here's why that matters. The artboard background isn't part of a design - it’s a neutral filler color meant to visually separate artboards, much like the wall colo…

You can right click the 'pasteboard' and change it to gray.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#607

Post by protocolture »

Reminds me of DBAN/EBAN.

Was the case we had 2 really good options in enterprise data destruction. EBAN with a yearly license scheme, and BLANCCO with a per hard drive wiped license scheme.

BLANCCO buys EBAN, kills the product, but permits DBAN the open source variant to be available permanently, with no modern EBAN features, and no updates.

Of course they did make one change to DBAN, it leaves a small image on wiped hard drives advertising BLANCCO.

And ofc, there was nothing really preventing Blanccos per hard drive license from increasing.

I use both Affinity V2 and Canva. I used Affinity for finicky stuff, and Canva for pointy clicky template based construction when I need something simple, fast.

I detest Canva, despite using it. Everything is advertising for the premium version. And I expect Affinity to go the same way, Canvas elements will (if not already) be integrated, and those elements will in most cases advertise themselves as being paid assets. Eventually it will go the way of DBAN and just be an advertisement for Canva.

I will ride out V2 for as long as it continues to function. Then I will find something else.

This is a tremendous loss.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#608

Post by aeonfox »

ineedasername wrote: post #588
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…

I am unclear on the problem: are the apps, previously free, significantly more limited than their prior free versions unless/until you also purchase a subscription for the CanvaAI portions? That aside, this isn’t a new thing for Canva, they aren’t chasing AI here, in this space GenAI is chasing the use case that Canva has been filling for a while, and incorporating genai as part of that is just, you know, “hey lots o…

> are the apps, previously free, significantly more limited than their prior free versions unless/until you also purchase a subscription for the CanvaAI portions?

I was curious too. The FAQ says this:

> Yes, Affinity really is free. That doesn’t mean you’re getting a watered-down version of the app though. You can use every tool in the Pixel, Vector, and Layout studios, plus all of the customization and export features, as much as you want, with no restrictions or payment needed. The app will also receive free updates with new features and improvements added.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#609

Post by xmprt »

alt227 wrote: post #253
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…

On the other hand, Adobe Photoshop has been amazing for years and I'd argue Affinity has already beaten them at their game. Now Adobe is pivoting to integrating AI tooling into their programs which I don't want and so if Affinity wants to try taking on Adobe on AI too but needs to charge for it, I'm all game.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#610

Post by garganzol »

JeremyJaydan wrote: post #606
garganzol wrote: post #601

I've been a long-time Affinity Suite user - starting with the 1.x versions and later migrating to 2.x. I recently tried the new Affinity Studio (Affinity 3.x), and one change immediately kills productivity: the artboard background color is now pitch black. Here's why that matters. The artboard background isn't part of a design - it’s a neutral filler color meant to visually separate artboards, much like the wall colo…

You can right click the 'pasteboard' and change it to gray.

Thanks for the tip. There are some predefined colors out there, but all of them either too dark (darker shades of gray) or too bright (white). My spatial brain needs #e5e5e5 to function properly, but it seems impossible to set that in Affinity 3.0.

Edit: never mind, found it at Settings -> User Interface -> Artboard Background Gray Level.

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