jmwellborn

Hello, Serif team
I am a recent member of the Affinity family, but I feel like it's just that. There's a lot of negativity surrounding this new deal, and I wanted to make sure you also get encouragement. I think the pledges are great. If you stay true to them, keep Affinity standalone and professional, and integrate it with Canva in the future in order to allow professional designers create templates in Affinity for marketers to use in Canva, this will be a groundbreaking workflow for the world of design.
There isn't a single piece of software out there that solves the problem of professionals who enjoy non-destructive, complex softwares such as Affinity collaborating with marketers who enjoy the simplicity of something like Canva templates.
I hope the entire team is as excited as I am for the future of Affinity. Keep Affinity professional, Canva for the beginners or non-designers, and you'll have yourselves the best design suite on the market.
This is a web agency owner's (extremely passionate about Studio Link and your design suite) wishlist of features to come from the new Canva resources:
Blend tool functionality Real vector brushes, not rasters on vector paths Real vector patterns, not rasters repeating on vector shapes Variable font support Smart object import functionality in Affinity Publisher Canva, please pay for additional developers to handle bug fixing, there are some persistent bug threads here that haven't been solved in 3-4 years Better transfer of Adobe format documents (I know, I know, it's closed-source format and the idea is to bring people over FROM Adobe, but sadly we still live in a world dominated by .ai .psd and .indd) for example the constant non 0 font tracking makes importing large document a real pain Export persona for all Affinity apps (I shouldn't have to open designer to export a batch of 10-20 logos I've been working on in Publisher) Generally way more Studio Link integration. Having a suite is great, but what you've developed in Studio Link is something special. Maybe Develop, Liquify, Export should become Modules rather than standalone personas in other apps. So that people would be able to add modules to their unified app (currently Publisher) just as we would add panels right now. Even if it requires a restart of the app, people would be able to make their one design app as slim or all-encompassing as they want. Some sort of image tracing capability Point-based gradients/Gradient meshes Some sort of vector filters suite (roughen, smoothen curve, distort, background distort, etc.) This is a list I'd been keeping for the past months, working on small business and big corporate website and design projects alike, using exclusively your suite for professional designs.
Let's make this thread a place for positivity and genuine recommendations for the future of our favourite design suite. The serif team seem to be very excited and eager to bring the best design tools out there into existence for us.
So let's make it happen together.
Tudor.

The Paint Mixer Brush tool is a great way to realistically mix paint on your canvas. Today we’ll look at how to use this tool and what the settings mean.
 
 

Happy Easter to all.

I also wish you all a happy Easter, despite and precisely because of all the excitement about the takeover.

Also from me to you: happy Easter ! Made this one in APhoto for my grandchild 😂
 

With all the hype surrounding Canva's acquisition, let's not forget it's Easter.
Have a great Easter.
 
Made with Affinity Photo, assets from @v_kyr.

Haunted Forest Toolkit
Added a Set of Vector Trees to supplement the Zombies!
13 large Vector base trees
21 Branches
12 Grunge Bases

.zip contains a single AD 2.2 file with 7 artboards
You can chop them up!
and use them with Zombies!

Trees





Branches



Grunge Base


Affinity Designer 2.2 File:
Haunted Forest Toolkit.zip
 

Clearly, the new boss is paving the way for newcomers. Many Canva users are unfamiliar with Affinity, so they require tutorials to grasp how to use a professional design app. Step by step, my friend—step by step.

Now you cling like shipwrecked people to an airy pledge, the thinnest hope you could possibly cling to. And why did it suddenly appear the day after? It's pure damage control you're uncritically swallowing. Let's see what happens. It's a "promise" - not a guarantee. Non-binding, uncertain. One of the easiest places to cut, and it's been done a thousand times before.

Come on mate, you've got to stop this. You've already accused me and others of being Canva shills, regardless of the main content of our posts. It's argument in bad faith - this thread is for discussion of the announcement of Canva's acquisition of Affinity, so surely people must be allowed to speak freely if they feel there are positives to Canva (or even the acquisition) without being accused of being shills? Or is it obligatory that we hate Canva and everything they do?
Just think logically for a second - this is a tiny forum that Affinity have full control over. Why would Serif/Canva expend business resource on shilling in a tiny forum of users, when they haven't done the same on social posts where it actually matters? If they were going to pay shills, why didn't they do that yesterday too? And if Serif didn't want people voicing dissenting opinions (which, let's be honest, they have no business incentive to do), why wouldn't they just block/mute/shadowban negative posts, or just close this and make it an announcement thread?
As my other posts here should make clear, I'm not keen on this acquisition, and I couldn't care less about sticking up for a business, big or small. But this is a discussion and I think people should be free to voice opinions without being accused of being paid actors.

The sky is falling!! The sky is falling!! The sky is falling!! 
Oh wait. No, it's not. There is as yet no good reason to believe we are being forced into a subscription model for the Affinity apps, certainly not one good enough for all the hysteria this topic & others have generated.

I am a long term user of Canva (Free) and never, not even once did I get the feeling that Canva is restricting me so much that I either have to pay or move to another resource. The "free" bits have always been free and instead of being taken away and made harder to find over time, it's always been very accessible and a pleasurer to use. based on that, I am excited about this Canva acquisition. I have just recently purchased Affinity photo and see lot's of potential. So far, I am enjoying the software although improvement is most certainly needed. That all being said, I am excited to see what new updates we get and how things improve in the near future. And when talks starts of Subscriptions, as long as it's cheaper than the alternative, it might be worth it, not just to get amazing updates but also to keep the company going. I am not totally against something like that. We all have the option to stay or go I guess. Totally prefer the Pay for major version model, but it might not be the best model to use when trying to pay staff and keep the lights on. 🤍 all the best for the two teams

Just wanted to offer my thanks for these recently presented pledges, which (to me at least) offered both clarification and assurance regarding the future of the Affinity suite of products.
I for one greatly appreciate you making this announcement, as it does a lot to alleviate the fears I think many of us might have had about this new situation.
So thanks again and looking forward to the Affinity suite and its upcoming development! 🙂
All the best,
R_G

Ash and the folks at Affinity have always done right by me in the past and I take him at his word. They brought us this far and I believe they will bring us more in the future. I don’t like the fact that some people are belittling the honesty and integrity of anyone based on absolutely nothing other than a crazy personal view. Let things work out and then make a decision that suits you. 

To followup on some of my comments yesterday, we are today enshrining our commitment to the Affinity community in 4 pledges made by the Affinity and Canva teams.
You can read about them here.

We do truly believe the coming together of Affinity and Canva is only going to be a good thing for our customers, staff and the development of our apps. We very much hope you will all continue to be with us on this journey.
All the best,
Ash

From the day I first discovered Affinity, I have been overwhelmed by the old-fashioned courtesy, dedication, and professionalism of the entire organization. Even when tempted by some occasional unpleasantness from the outside, honor and decency have always prevailed. It was a shock to read of this acquisition/merger today, but I for one, am going to trust Ash and his wonderful team.  They have not failed us yet, and I don’t think they will going forward.  Affinity is their creation — they surely don’t want to spoil it!   Hopefully Affinity will blossom while keeping its tradition for excellence.  Steve Jobs started Apple.  Apple has added laptops, iPads, iPhones, Apple TV, etc. without spoiling its brand either.
I wish everyone at Serif/Affinity the very best going forward and thank you for what I am sure will be many more years of happiness using the Affinity Suite. 

From the day I first discovered Affinity, I have been overwhelmed by the old-fashioned courtesy, dedication, and professionalism of the entire organization. Even when tempted by some occasional unpleasantness from the outside, honor and decency have always prevailed. It was a shock to read of this acquisition/merger today, but I for one, am going to trust Ash and his wonderful team.  They have not failed us yet, and I don’t think they will going forward.  Affinity is their creation — they surely don’t want to spoil it!   Hopefully Affinity will blossom while keeping its tradition for excellence.  Steve Jobs started Apple.  Apple has added laptops, iPads, iPhones, Apple TV, etc. without spoiling its brand either.
I wish everyone at Serif/Affinity the very best going forward and thank you for what I am sure will be many more years of happiness using the Affinity Suite. 

My hope is that the products will continue to be available as stand alone products with no sub. And they will probably also get integrated into the subs that Canva offers. Hopefully the extra capital will enable even more development of tools for us. It would be great if they can see the value in keeping both the non sub products as well as any they might offer in the Canva subs. Time will tell. Keeping my fingers crossed!

many people were asking Affinity for AI features, now that they'll have it the complaint goes the other way around 🧐
 
 
on the other end, what happened to that weird Adobe software that was supposed to be released, Abode? oh ya still "beta" since last Updated July 22, 2023 😎 🧉
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-suite-of-world-class-design-and-photography-tools

So no change to the pricing model "at this time" and v2 will get free updates (they have to be free, they can't suddenly switch model). So reading between those lines it really sounds as though v3 will be subscription or they would have simply said it will always be a one off payment model. My guess is that v3 will be along fairly quickly in comparison to how long v1 was around. Acquisitions rarely seem to be good news for customers but the acquired do nicely from it. 
Unfortunately when it comes to AD there aren't a whole lot of options to switch to, well not decent ones that are non-subscription. Unless you do simple things I've not come across any that I'd want to use, hopefully that will change. AP on the other hand there's plenty of choice.
Of course until an OS update breaks things, which has happened before, then just keep using what you have and keep an eye on alternatives.

From an article in Business Wire:
Is it too much to hope that their multilingual experience could be leveraged to address the Affinity apps’ current lack of support for Indic and RTL languages?

Look at it from a positive point of view. Functions that are missing in the Affinity programs could now be developed faster! Sure, there will be changes, many positive, some negative.
I sincerely hope that the Affinity programs will not come as a subscription model and that new functions will not be offered as "pay-to-win" options.

Agreed.
As designers, many of us have been burned. FreeHand and iView Media, just to name the two major victims I used to be using.
But not every such acquisition ends up that badly. Some examples from my alternate musician-self:
Apple buying Emagic Logic 20 years ago?
What an amazing tool Logic is today! And apparently still developed by the same Emagic team. (Alright, Apple going subscription model with the new Logic for iPad smells fishy though…) Yamaha swallowing Line 6?
Buying their HX Stomp amp and effect modeler was my best music gear investment in literally four decades being an active musician! Hard to tell if the Line 6 company had all the resources without Yamaha backing. So, also with Affinity it still can continue pretty well.

I'm not going anywhere... today.
Best regards!

Guys, dont panic. Nothing has been decided yet. There will be changes for sure as with every merger/acquisition, but whether they will be good or bad for us Affinity users, time will tell and if it will get worse, you have enough time to move elsewhere.