AshTeriyaki

There's quite a lot to gain for Canva. They get a mature suite of professional level tools they can integrate with their other stuff. Likely meaning designers can work directly on Canva documents, have inline review etc etc. They could spend a fortune developing these tools from scratch or buy out a veteran graphics company and inherit all of that knowledge and work. Affinity is a bit of a bargain for them.

I can’t see much good coming from this.
Personally, I’ve never really cared about the lack of subscription, and I’ve always thought Affinity products were priced too cheap. I moved some of my illustrator work to Affinity in the early days for performance reasons and before I knew it, I had moved over entirely. Not saying I like Adobe, I don’t like their business practices* but it was not my motivation for investing in Affinity and being an early advocate. Selling to a company with a similar lack of financial scruples isn’t much different, enshittification comes to all of their services eventually. Capitalism comes for all of us and something like this was kind of inevitable. Still a bit sad though.
 
*Adobe are a dream compared to Autodesk.

I can’t see much good coming from this.
Personally, I’ve never really cared about the lack of subscription, and I’ve always thought Affinity products were priced too cheap. I moved some of my illustrator work to Affinity in the early days for performance reasons and before I knew it, I had moved over entirely. Not saying I like Adobe, I don’t like their business practices* but it was not my motivation for investing in Affinity and being an early advocate. Selling to a company with a similar lack of financial scruples isn’t much different, enshittification comes to all of their services eventually. Capitalism comes for all of us and something like this was kind of inevitable. Still a bit sad though.
 
*Adobe are a dream compared to Autodesk.

Well... it was ok while it lasted. Now I know for sure that much of what I hoped would make it into Designer is never going to happen. One thing for sure, its time to look for an alternative to what was an alternative.
Whenever an acquisition occurs, the standard BS greasing up language comes out. "I'm excited about this", "I'm excited about that". I would prefer a strait up - "This is what's going down, and be happy I'm even telling you. This product isn't going to be developed as originally intended going forward - oh and by the way... It's going to be subscription based starting with V3! Isn't that just great, I'm so excited for the future and I can't wait to get on this wonderful journey!
Oh, and btw... a subscription model is best for our users, because we care. Barf! 🤬 And that's it! end of story. No need to ease the wounds for the sensitive.
Right now they say "No subscription for the foreseeable future". But wait and see, it's standard corp. practice to wait at least a year or two. I'm sure in two years the name Affinity will be gone as well as the perpetual license.
So why then bother with a fire side Q&A about the acquisition? I don't care about the acquisition, and I know you guys don't care either. It's more a standard practice to keep the user base from fleeing in anger over the annoucement. Let's remember, Canva paid a hefty price and they intend on recoup this investment. And so it's important that we the users play along, because without the users, there is no product. That's what this friendly chat is about.
Well... now that I've said my peace. I want to congratulate the heads of these two companies for a spectacular job well done on this deal. I'm sure you all will have a great bonus coming. Hmmm, curious... just one last thing though, after the acquisition, we already know what's going to happen to the apps, but what's going to happen to the little people in the company? You know, what always happens in these cases? Oops sorry, you mean they actually believe that nothing internal will change? Is that what they were told? Sorry didn't mean to let the cat out of the bag.

I'm not sure I'd agree with this, as Adobe has clearly shown in recent years with the 'dumbing down' of their user interfaces, and the introduction of tools like Express (Adobe's answer to Canva), Fresco (Adobe's answer to Procreate), slimmed down web versions of Illustrator and Photoshop, and Premiere Rush (social media video editor) that they are very much interested in also competing in the market for 'light creatives' as you call them (which is a HUGE market). As such, Canva is indeed in competition with Adobe, and needs a complement of tools that speaks to a more professional audience, integrates with their existing product(s), and enables collaboration between the two in order to attract users/orgs that currently (or want to) use Canva, but whose creative teams, agencies, etc still demand to use 'professional' tools to work in, and collaborate with their clients.
Like it or not, creative software has been/is being democratized, and the idea of what constitutes 'a professional creative' is shifting, which means that the biggest market by far is now found in the MASSIVE (and very cost conscious) middle.
I'm not defending the acquisition, just trying to shed some light on how it might fit the overall strategies at play.
'Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been' and all that.

Canva is a VC-funded company, so they're not going to be running Affinity with the intention of making a product people like at a reasonable price, because I guess that's just something losers do nowadays. In other words - welcome to the Enshittification spiral.
It may take a few years, but it will get there like literally every other VC-backed product. I'm sure Serif's owners got a juicy exit though.
I have been a user of Affinity Designer for almost 10 years, and it helped me make so much that would have been really hard with FOSS and the business stability that Serif had made it wonderful and reliable because I knew that it wasn't going to have multi-tier funhouse subscriptions dropped on me or other price-gauging elements. That's gone now, so I will be treating this product and this business accordingly, with a 50 foot pole, until a stable business makes an alternative.

I can’t see much good coming from this.
Personally, I’ve never really cared about the lack of subscription, and I’ve always thought Affinity products were priced too cheap. I moved some of my illustrator work to Affinity in the early days for performance reasons and before I knew it, I had moved over entirely. Not saying I like Adobe, I don’t like their business practices* but it was not my motivation for investing in Affinity and being an early advocate. Selling to a company with a similar lack of financial scruples isn’t much different, enshittification comes to all of their services eventually. Capitalism comes for all of us and something like this was kind of inevitable. Still a bit sad though.
 
*Adobe are a dream compared to Autodesk.

The second most worrying thing is that everyone talks about the pricing model, not the few but important unique features. This is probably the biggest warning that the products are the poor man's Adobe, and that price sensitivity could shift most customers to other products when alternatives are available.
There will be consequences of this. I can sense there are people who do not understand how the world works, but they will experience consequences regardless.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

I can’t see much good coming from this.
Personally, I’ve never really cared about the lack of subscription, and I’ve always thought Affinity products were priced too cheap. I moved some of my illustrator work to Affinity in the early days for performance reasons and before I knew it, I had moved over entirely. Not saying I like Adobe, I don’t like their business practices* but it was not my motivation for investing in Affinity and being an early advocate. Selling to a company with a similar lack of financial scruples isn’t much different, enshittification comes to all of their services eventually. Capitalism comes for all of us and something like this was kind of inevitable. Still a bit sad though.
 
*Adobe are a dream compared to Autodesk.

I can’t see much good coming from this.
Personally, I’ve never really cared about the lack of subscription, and I’ve always thought Affinity products were priced too cheap. I moved some of my illustrator work to Affinity in the early days for performance reasons and before I knew it, I had moved over entirely. Not saying I like Adobe, I don’t like their business practices* but it was not my motivation for investing in Affinity and being an early advocate. Selling to a company with a similar lack of financial scruples isn’t much different, enshittification comes to all of their services eventually. Capitalism comes for all of us and something like this was kind of inevitable. Still a bit sad though.
 
*Adobe are a dream compared to Autodesk.

Oh well. It was fun whilst it lasted. As soon as you become a £100 a year subscription service (which you will), I'll just go back to Adobe.
 

I think that's the problem. If Serif thought there was a chance of making the same profits from Linux as there is from Windows, Mac and i-pad versions, they would probably do it. Like you say, they are in business to make money!

If some people are disappointed and want to provide feedback, that's what this forum is for. Fine. Especially when they highlight specific issues. And some people have gone to a lot of trouble to describe and illustrate issues. Unfortunately it seems to me that other posts have expressed a level of negativity I'd associate more with Tw*tt*r than a  forum for graphics professionals. Just my two cents.

Most negativity doesn't come from graphics professionals, but from people who don't use these apps to make money.
You already have your v1 license for life. What are you complaining about? Nobody promised you'll get free updates forever. That's not how software development works. Have you even used paid software before?

I'd love a save incremental / save version button, when clicked it'd just save a new version of the file in place with _0001 etc appended to the filename. Super easy, lovely little feature.
 
Bruce bonus time - add a user definable suffix option to preferences so users can choose version themes or timestamps etc.

Here's 20 fur and hair brushes. They are fairly simple, but I like them. Enjoy.
Fur & Hair.afbrushes.zip

It's dawned on me I haven't checked this thread in several years. 9,000 downloads? Blimey.

Here's 20 fur and hair brushes. They are fairly simple, but I like them. Enjoy.
Fur & Hair.afbrushes.zip

Here's 20 fur and hair brushes. They are fairly simple, but I like them. Enjoy.
Fur & Hair.afbrushes.zip

Here's 20 fur and hair brushes. They are fairly simple, but I like them. Enjoy.
Fur & Hair.afbrushes.zip

I've moved my RGB Skin Tone Palette over to AD, here you go!
Skin Tones.afpalette.zip

Here's 20 fur and hair brushes. They are fairly simple, but I like them. Enjoy.
Fur & Hair.afbrushes.zip

I could have sworn I had put out a feature request for this, but I'd vote to have "create artboard" ticked by default when you create a new document. Just a simple flip around. Pasteboard access is such a desirable feature, it should really be there the entire time. I can see the benefit of having a focused canvas too, but more often than not I imagine most people want access to the pasteboard, I know I do.

Anybody see any 'pixel persona' hair or fur brushes out there?  Ash, your vector brushes are awesome but I'm working on a series of pixel persona paintings and I am on the hunt... 
I might look into making some but wanted to ask around first. Cheers!!