Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Affinity Studio now free

affinity.studio

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

791–800 of 825 posts

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#791

Post by alt227 »

brookst wrote: post #582
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…

What will you recommend to people instead?

Stick with Adobe. They may like to squeeze the money out of you but at least their tools are top tier.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#792

Post by sally_glance »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #743
sethaurus wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler than that. Canva's primary competitor is Adobe, and Adobe's remaining advantage is with creative professionals. That's Adobe's core market and their core revenue stream. It's a classic "commoditize your complements" play. Canva remains profitable without charging for Affinity, but Adobe can't stay profitable if they stop charging for Photoshop/Illustrator. The business justification works without…

I mean, 9/10ths of the dark-pattern distrustworthy bullshit businesses pull is not required to attain or maintain "profitability," it's just squeezing every dime of revenue from their customers. I would frankly rather pay for software then be left wondering if I can trust free commercial software.

Would be really nice if we had more of the "just pay" options. As it is the "just pay" options mostly also can't be trusted any more than the free(-mium) options, and both will try their best to "squeeze every dime of revenue".

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#793

Post by alt227 »

eddielement wrote: post #596
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…

Wow. They paywall something that used to be free? You're mad. They give you something free that used to be paid, you're STILL mad! Incredible!

You have reduced it down to the wrong components. Its not about the price, its about care and effort in development.

If something free gets put behind a paywall because theres genuinely a push for growth in the software thats fair enough. Taking 3 seperately paid products and turning them into 1 freemium app which requires registering an account for is completely different IMO.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#794

Post by KevinDonnot »

dannyw wrote: post #62
odie5533 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that the basic tools are all free, they no longer make money. AI features are the only thing that makes money, so all development is going to funneled into the AI features exclusively.

Hi, Canva employee & Affinity user+lover for 10+ years (pre-acquisition) here. That’s not true. We really do want to make all design, including professional design, as widely accessible as possible; including those who can’t afford it. I understand this could be interpreted as ‘corporate PR’, but even from a game-theory sense, you’d want to maximize the top of your funnel, which is free users.

Hello,

As a professional book designer and graphic design professor, I am sorry but I can’t rely to switch my main tools (and student guidance) over policy claim from Canva.

I totally get that inference and maintaining software is very costly. If the business model is only oriented toward AI tools, a very good proof of good faith would be to open source and provide a pay-per-use AI API. I have no doubts that a good part of the graphic design community would quickly shift to free as in free speech tools with a foreseeable future. We desperately need a Blender for DTP…

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#795

Post by derefr »

isodev wrote: post #692
derefr wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't make any assertion about AI, only about "AI" (note the quotes in my GP comment) — i.e. the same old machine-learning-based features like super-resolution upscaling, patch-match, etc, that people have been adding to image-editing software for more than a decade now, but which now get branded as "AI" because people recognize them by this highly-saturated marketing term. Few artists want generative-AI diffusion…

Next time, tell it to make you a comment in 150 characters. Nobody has time to read AI slop

My friend, my writing isn't AI slop. It's Adderall slop. AI slop is far more structured.

(Also, because I assume this is your issue: em-dash is option-shift-hyphen on US-English Mac keyboard. I've been using them in my writing for 25 years now, and I won't stop just because LLMs got ahold of them.)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#797

Post by Andrex »

fainpul wrote: post #783
Andrex wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made that change sometime in 2.x(?) and I doubt they'll walk it back. Getting into the export flow takes time but I find it to be cleaner.

I think it's annoying and patronizing. When exporting, I have to use the file browser to pick a directory and filename to save, when all I want to do is overwrite the file I have open.

It's a one-time thing per file while Gimp is open. Subsequent exports can be triggered instantly with Ctrl+E or File -> Export (instead of Export As...)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#798

Post by tomhow »

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]

> My guy

Please omit patronising barbs like this from comments on HN.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#799

Post by rubymamis »

BoredPositron wrote: post #702
radiKal07 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kdenlive is free and open-source and is so great, such a slept on app

It shares the trait of every QT app the ux is horrible.

I do agree that most Qt apps don't put much attention on UX - but I tried to with my Qt app: https://get-notes.com

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#800

Post by ascorbic »

dangus wrote: post #721
ascorbic wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple bought NeXT and made it one of the most popular operating systems on the planet.

But if Apple didn’t buy them, Apple would have made their own operating system and NeXT might still be here today with their own operating system. Like I said, a competitor was removed from the market.

The only operating system that was killed was Mac OS 9, while NeXTSTEP lives on in billions of devices today
Post reply on HN