wiredfractal

As others have been saying, there may be a race to the bottom happening, and a certain set of Canva users who don't need collaboration features might jump ship after learning how to use Affinity apps. The optimist in me obviously wants to see Canva preserving Affinity instead of butchering it for IP, like Adobe did with Macromedia, because the overlap in user base and features is, indeed, not excessive…
My biggest concerns are with the lack of competition in the “cross-platform, integrated suite, perpetual license-only, low-cost” space, and how that might lead Canva to move to a subscription-only model while just undercutting Adobe by a bit, or by that magical amount that wouldn't push users to Creative Cloud over the lack of certain features… If you think about it, makes a lot of business sense, and I have no qualms in saying it in public; both Serif's and Canva's executives obviously thought about that, and while those at Serif were either truly idealistic or just feigning idealism because they painted themselves into the perpetual license-only corner, the big-wigs at Canva, with their 175-million-user-strong clientele may just take the L and go for it (and nab some less idealistic but still price-conscious Creative Cloud users in the process).
There are, as I've said, really good up-and-coming and historical alternatives which might keep both Canva and Adobe in check, but… VectorStyler stands alone, Pixelmator is Mac-only, and QuarkXPress is so obscenely expensive that it doesn't stand a chance to ever regain its place at the top (it's almost as if they're content with that stupid technical documentation niche, which is just sad). Corel's now once again cross-platform offering is also still lacking a DTP packaging and is on par, pricing-wise, with Quark's, and… well, it's Corel. And the whole FOSS landscape is almost as bad as it was 11 years ago when I sent that infamous e-mail to Serif (yes, even Inkscape, with nominal Apple Silicon support, is buggy and ugly as sin, having been surpassed, UX-wise, by none other than Scribus, yikes!).
By the way, I'm attaching said e-mail here, slightly edited for typos, clarity and added context, so you can appreciate it in its full glory and get a bit more appreciation for my business and technological acumen (down to sheer prescience, as Affinity would only be announced a year later! In fact, I had registered an account in Serif's old forums and got a lot of advertisement in my inbox for the Plus suite, which I only realised now when looking for this e-mail, heh 😆), before this thread is inevitably shut down:
Suffice to say, now that I'm 38 instead of 28, I'm way less of an optimist and more of a realist, if not outright cynical. I still want to be wowed, but I know better.
Also, I'm preparing a similar message to the folks at Pixelmator Team and Numeric Path (from VectorStyler). Not because I want Affinity to falter, but because I want it and Canva as a whole to have competition, as a check and balance and added market segment coverage.
Well, it seems I already have my work cut out for me; I just have to take this template, update the dates and actors and replace that Churchill quote with one from Mannerheim, I guess. 😂

So no priority for privacy of your users? Knowing Canva, they like tracking what every user does on their platform.
I still remember when you removed the google tracker on the welcome banner page on the app because it has no value for the users. I guess that's going back and much much worst.
I am still not sold out with this pledge. Once you place any trackers on any of your app, I'm completely out of this platform.

So no priority for privacy of your users? Knowing Canva, they like tracking what every user does on their platform.
I still remember when you removed the google tracker on the welcome banner page on the app because it has no value for the users. I guess that's going back and much much worst.
I am still not sold out with this pledge. Once you place any trackers on any of your app, I'm completely out of this platform.

I wish I waited and didn't buy the Version 2 when it launched. Another purchase that I've regretted.
I've always sing praises for Affinity Suite to all my colleagues and have completely built my workflow for the Suite for the past 5-6 years. Even though I have two decades worth of experience with Adobe, I have completely switched because of my complete trust with Serif. I've used the apps for my professional and personal work and was happy. 
With this acquisition, Affinity as a brand will be gone in a few years. As Canva, I don't think I'd want to sell a "pro" app under a different name for their subscription service for Enterprise.
It's been a good run Affinity. If I can refund my purchase of V2, I would.
Another lesson not to associate my work with a tool. Removing all mention of Affinity and hashtags on all my work.

I wish I waited and didn't buy the Version 2 when it launched. Another purchase that I've regretted.
I've always sing praises for Affinity Suite to all my colleagues and have completely built my workflow for the Suite for the past 5-6 years. Even though I have two decades worth of experience with Adobe, I have completely switched because of my complete trust with Serif. I've used the apps for my professional and personal work and was happy. 
With this acquisition, Affinity as a brand will be gone in a few years. As Canva, I don't think I'd want to sell a "pro" app under a different name for their subscription service for Enterprise.
It's been a good run Affinity. If I can refund my purchase of V2, I would.
Another lesson not to associate my work with a tool. Removing all mention of Affinity and hashtags on all my work.

But are funded by Venture capitalist.

But are funded by Venture capitalist.

I wish I waited and didn't buy the Version 2 when it launched. Another purchase that I've regretted.
I've always sing praises for Affinity Suite to all my colleagues and have completely built my workflow for the Suite for the past 5-6 years. Even though I have two decades worth of experience with Adobe, I have completely switched because of my complete trust with Serif. I've used the apps for my professional and personal work and was happy. 
With this acquisition, Affinity as a brand will be gone in a few years. As Canva, I don't think I'd want to sell a "pro" app under a different name for their subscription service for Enterprise.
It's been a good run Affinity. If I can refund my purchase of V2, I would.
Another lesson not to associate my work with a tool. Removing all mention of Affinity and hashtags on all my work.

I wish I waited and didn't buy the Version 2 when it launched. Another purchase that I've regretted.
I've always sing praises for Affinity Suite to all my colleagues and have completely built my workflow for the Suite for the past 5-6 years. Even though I have two decades worth of experience with Adobe, I have completely switched because of my complete trust with Serif. I've used the apps for my professional and personal work and was happy. 
With this acquisition, Affinity as a brand will be gone in a few years. As Canva, I don't think I'd want to sell a "pro" app under a different name for their subscription service for Enterprise.
It's been a good run Affinity. If I can refund my purchase of V2, I would.
Another lesson not to associate my work with a tool. Removing all mention of Affinity and hashtags on all my work.

I'm pretty sure that Macromedia and Freehand also saw a bright future on the horizon...
 
So yeah, a subscription based V3 is just around the corner.

I know I’m just being a brat pointing this out but…
With the upgrade to v2 it was said on these very forums and I quote (bold added by myself)
“All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!”
Did you burn through all that money that enabled you to invest heavily in development faster than expected. 😝😉
Ah well. Business is business. 👍😊 I really do hope it works out better than I expect for the users. 

no constraint as far as I know. I'm sending the file now thru email.

Ooops, was late answer this. Sorry MEB.  :mellow:  :o
 
The functionality has, er, cheekily sneaked in... you will find it in the next beta release tomorrow. :D You will need to turn it on in Preferences.

Thanks Affinity Folks for all of your hard work. I'm looking forward to the new version. But, I'm still hoping for one feature in particular. I'd love it if that when you select a layer on the artboard/document that it would display the same layer in the layers panel. So that means scroll to the right position and expand any groups to show me the layer I selected.
 
Sketch does this very well and it's such a time saver. Having to go and find a layer I'm working on slows work down. And if you don't want it to be the default behavior, perhaps adding it as a preference to make it the default? Any chance of this making into the 1.5 release? Thanks.
 
Note: the functionality exists in the context menu "Find in Layers Panel"... I just want it as the default behavior (or a way to make it the default behavior).