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Affinity Studio now free

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#621

Post by musicale »

karel-3d wrote: post #397
pmkary wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so in love with the idea of "purchase and own for life" I thought every now and then I will buy the license and have a piece of mind. What started after SaaS is now at its closing days to have fully ruined software and from now on there will be hell like we have never seen before. Free Software is dead, Indie software as we used to is dead, and great businesses like Serif are down the road of being dead. I'm so…

yeah I liked it too but then, I realize how little I pay for this type of software vs how much I pay for subscription for services that I honestly barely use. financially, subscriptions just make more sense sadly. People vote with their wallets, and they vote subscription. It's sad, I loooooved Affinity and their licensing schemes, but honestly... I can see why they are moving. The AI stuff though makes no sense to m…

> financially, subscriptions just make more sense sadly

for the company, maybe

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#622

Post by Nition »

npilk wrote: post #502

What a fascinating thread. I bought Affinity Photo and Designer V1 as one-time purchases a few years ago. I didn't upgrade to V2 when those came out. I have continued to occasionally use the V1 apps - I was just in Photo the other day. To me this is exactly why you would want to buy software licenses as one-time purchases - the company can't rug pull you for what you already bought. If I want, I can keep using the Af…

I see this same discussion in the audio world sometimes re Waves plugins, and one big factor there is Windows vs. Mac.

Windows users tend to be able to use old, even ancient versions forever with no trouble. Mac users on the other hand, often seem to be faced with having to either pay for a new software version that works with a newer version of Mac OS, or stay on an old version of the operating system - sometimes on old hardware as well.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#623

Post by SenHeng »

tavavex wrote: post #437
bigyabai wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems fatalist. Free software isn't dead, and indie software hasn't died because the notion of "purchase and own for life" isn't a sustainable business model. In the 1980s, buying a new computer often meant buying compatible copies of software you already owned. It was a treadmill of support that did keep computing alive, but also prevented ordinary people from investing into the hobby as fully as they liked. Ma…

> indie software hasn't died because the notion of "purchase and own for life" isn't a sustainable business model The worst thing is that it can totally be a sustainable business model. Many software giants of today grew to their size by offering "buy to own" products through the 90s and 2000s. Lots of software can still be bought through that model, especially games, and it seems to be going pretty well for the deve…

And lots of game companies keep going bust or get bought out by the bigger ones.

Even now, over a decade after its release, FFXIV subscriptions are what’s keeping the mighty Square Enix alive.

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/library/pdf/25q4slides...

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#624

Post by roywiggins »

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. :-(

I'm still staggering on with Lightroom 5, who knows how long that will work. Until I buy a new camera it doesn't support the RAWs of, I guess.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#625

Post by usefulcat »

blackqueeriroh wrote: post #393
nightski wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they are giving the core away for free to collect training data.

You can opt out of the telemetry sharing

So they say, for now, for some definition of "telemetry" and "sharing", caveat caveat caveat..

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#626

Post by insane_dreamer »

bovermyer wrote: post #327
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…

Thank you for the context. I was an Affinity Suite user for a long time after I dropped Adobe. I now use a mixture of GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape for visual things. I don't have a good alternative for InDesign - even Affinity Publisher wasn't one. Since my tabletop RPG business closed, I haven't had a need for a powerful layout application. I just use Typst or LaTeX for my personal projects that need a layout engine.

> don't have a good alternative for InDesign

There really is none, at least not that is comparable. InDesign is perhaps the one product where Adobe really shines.

Aldus PageMaker and Quark XPress were worthy predecessors; I used both back in the day, but Adobe bought PageMaker and discontinued it. As for Quark, not sure what happened to them but they're not around anymore.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#627

Post by garganzol »

wdb wrote: post #160

Can't figure out if any new non-AI features were added?

Plenty of them. Image tracing is probably the most notable one (converts pixels to vectors).

After playing with it several hours, I can say that Affinity 3 is pretty solid release. The new AI persona is surprisingly useful too.

Initially, I was reluctant to migrate from Affinity 2 but now I'm sold.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#628

Post by chupchap »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #27
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.

No, I used to work in a newspaper and we were switching between text editing, graphic design and image processing tools for our work. This makes a lot of sense! That said, most magazines and newspapers have designated people to focus on each of these and the chances of one person having to shift between all three is a little narrow.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#629

Post by vrinsd »

dannyw wrote: post #89
glimshe wrote: post #54

Nooooooo! I'm a loyal Serif customer and paid for their software. I LOVE Affinity. And I HATE "free" commercial products because they need to extract revenue from subscription services, ads, data selling etc. This is the first step toward making Affinity become another rental application like Photoshop. Escaping Adobe's predatory business model is exactly why I became a Serif customer in the first place.

I’m also a loyal Serif customer, love Affinity, and I work at Canva. This is not the first step in that. It’s not anywhere close to our plan. We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the default tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever. AI features; like generative fill, have COGS and incremental inference costs. Hence that’s an _optional_ subscription. I understand why you feel that way. Having being…

Hi DannyW,

I think it's super cool that you work at Canva and are taking the time to interact with your customer base.

Maybe this isn't the right venue (I didn't see an e-mail address in your profile so I'm just asking here) but can you pass along feedback to the UI team for Affinity?

I personally think most programs, especially audio / video editors are improved by:

A) Optionally having icons that have text labels in-addition to the image (i.e. the word "Cut" + scissors, "Paste" + paintbucket, etc) ; doesn't have to be full on MSFT 'Ribbon' UI either!

B) Giving users the ability to choose how big or small the icons (and associated text) are (i.e. 16-pix, 32-pix, 64-pix or small, medium, large)

For point A:

I am aware this creates a challenge when you make a release of a program for other languages, so it's a burden on the translation and software validation teams.

Use-case: I work between so many different programs when doing photo editing and learning the pictogram icons for each application is mentally burdensome that it's VERY helpful having labels as well. Otherwise I constantly find myself hovering on an icon and reading the tooltip, that text might as well be integrated into the icon!

I end up using CaptureOne for image processing, DxO for noise reduction, Affinity for pixel editing and that's just in dealing with RAW photos for one type of photography, I might use others as well depending on the subject matter.

For point B:

Our monitors now are super high DPI and squinting at tiny icons designed when we had limited real-estate is a real tax on the eyes.

Thank you again for reply on this public forum and many us who are paying customers are happier to give you guys money over companies like Adobe who now only offer subscription software.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#630

Post by peteforde »

ezfe wrote: post #352
peteforde wrote: post #348

I'm feeling some real hurt seeing this announcement. I bought the Affinity v1 apps, buying into the vision for a no-BS forever app. I was surprised to see a v2 app show up a year after I bought into v1 with what I remember was something like a 25% discount. But this was going to be the new forever app, and I understand wanting to get things right on a second pass. Reading about how v2 will no longer get updates just…

You bought a one time license and the app still works, what's the issue? You can't expect to pay $70 for perpetual software.

Except that their messaging was very much that this was a product designed by people who believed that you should buy something once and that you should be able to use it for a long, long time. Lots of new content and features in the pipeline. The safe harbor from subscription model bloodsuckers we should support with our dollars on principle.

Remember Windows 10 was once marketed as the last Windows? I do.

The real harm here is that every time there's a rug pull, our trust evaporates just a little further while our memories get a little bit longer.

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