jmwellborn

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. 

Thanks for the message - hopefully a step in the right direction :-).
Personally, I have been waiting for a similar step for a long time. It must be clear to everyone that such a small company with such few resources has a very difficult time in the current competition, and that new AI-type technologies are realistically unattainable for such a small team without the support of a stronger partner.
p.s. it was to be expected that such a load of mud would appear here in response to your statement, so don't let it put you off - thanks for your work.

You know, not everyone is such a fighter as you, to calmly decide the fate of the company and its employees, and then go to sleep well.

Fun game: pretend you don’t know what this announcement is, then mute the audio and watch this guy closely. What would you guess he’s telling you?
 
He’s lost his job? The family dog’s died? Bad news about grandma, but we’ll remember the good times? The project is going to be past deadline, in fact he’s not even started it, but you can’t have a refund because he’s spent the money already?
The body language is fascinating to watch (is that guilt, sorrow? Why are his eyes red - has he been crying? Why is he so evasive?), and it’s all the antithesis of ‘quite an exciting day’.

To me, that's a given. FreeHand will come to many's mind. 
Best regards! 

I am NOT a professional. I never "studied" design. I am an amateur and learned a few things on my own. I use Affinity to do what I like. Some self publishing with Publisher. Some minor graphics work with Designer. Some photo touch-ups with Photo. I bought into the Affinity Suite, and would continue to buy into the suite based on 1 thing.... NO Subscriptions. The company was providing me the user wonderful tools to do what I enjoy doing.
 
This news is the worst thing I could have heard today. I am such a fan of Affinity. I loved the feel of the company. I loved the independence of the company. Now this is all gone. I have moved all of my projects (minor in comparison to some) into this suite of tools, based on the promise of "No Subscriptions". I have convinced others to purchase these tools, so that we could work together. And today, with this AWFUL news, the run with Affinity ends. Version 2 will still be available in perpetuity (until your computer doesn't work and v2 no longer works with the new operating systems). But version 3 will be subscription, and then we the users will pay for a garbage service with minor updates and very little push forward. "Oh look at what we've done in this month's update.... we finally fixed the kerning of the letters in the Edit menu that didn't look quite right." I've seen it with Adobe, I've seen it with Sibelius, and now I am seeing it with Affinity. What a shame. I feel I have been duped. I feel I have been betrayed. And I feel like I will be on the hunt for another Publisher type app, another Designer type app, and another Photo type app.
 
I just went to look at the Canva website. I felt even more disappointed and betrayed seeing their website, and even more worried about the developers at Affinity. The first thing it asks for without doing anything is to sign up for their subscription. Words cannot express how sad and frustrated I feel about this terrible decision.

I am honestly not happy with this announcement. As others have said before, these kind of announcements and promises have been done before and it always ended up as a subscription service in the end and customers lost their ability to purchase perpetual licenses.
I gave Affinity Photo a chance in 2017 while looking for an alternative to Adobe Cloud. It was great and I also learned to appreciate Designer and Publisher over the years. But let's be clear, the major reason for choosing Affinity over other companies was and is the perpetual license. I am absolutely willing to pay for an application and support its developers and to be honest Affinity was always on the cheap side of things for me. I would have purchased the program for 2-3x the amount as well. But I want to own the software and decide on my own if and when I'll upgrade to a new major version and pay again.
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and sincerely hope you will keep your promise to keep perpetual licenses.
 

I'm mixed on this. Canva was a surprising partner announcement, it's not the professional partner i would expect Affinity to connect with. I wouldn't associate Canva with professional software. BUT if it's simply Canva wanting to put it's name on professional software and dumping tons of money at the Affinity team with the hopes that Ash and the crew will still stay true to their values, that might be a good thing. I would love to see a few more advanced, hard to code tools come to the suite such as vector tracing and AI upscaling. 

As for the subtle hints that future versions wouldn't follow the old buy once forever philosophy, honestly i wouldn't mind paying for an Affinity subscription if it was fairly priced, this software has helped me make a whole side business of selling stock illustrations, and I've always thought it was a little under priced for the power it offers. 

I got my fingers crossed, but I'm keeping realistic expectations. 

Looking here https://www.kaleido.ai/ makes me think this is a wait and see situation and it may not be all doom and gloom. I do hope affinity won't change their name and adopt the, to put it politely, awful Canva logo.

This is interesting though. I didn't know that. Given that 5 years later, those platforms still work as expected within Affinity, this gives somewhat confidence that Serif knew what they were doing when accepting the offer. Unless it was "an offer Serif couldn't refuse"…

As with other Affinity users, I'm not at all convinced this is a good move. The wording in the FAQ saying there are no planned changes to the current price model 'at this time' is very concerning. That wording has been chosen by Serif as they cannot guarantee that this will not change.
If there is any inkling of a change to a subscription model, Affinity will lose me. I have used Affinity and recommended it to other people on the primary basis it was a professional package from a smaller, more independent company, not restricted by subscription pricing. As a designer, I have never looked at Canva as being on the same level as Serif professionally. Canva is a tool for non-professionals so the combining of the two companies to me feels like a dumbing-down of Affinity.
Unfortunately, my initial impression of this sale is that Serif have sold themselves out for a mess of pottage...

Don't delude yourself, the majority of your user base are here because Adobe embraced the morally bankrupt Software as a Service model and they looked for a perpetual license alternative, and for no other reason. You touted perpetual licenses front and centre, and as someone who works for a multi-national software and services company I know that if you betray your customer base's trust they do not forgive and they do not forget lightly.
I dropped Adobe like a stone the moment they went Software as a Service, the model of "rent your software, pay for eternity, spend thousands, and the moment you stop paying you have NOTHING". I will never RENT my software, software ISN'T a service, it's an end product.
I dropped Abode and never looked back, I dropped Cinema 4D like a stone when they went to a subscription model (after saying they would offer both perpetual and subscription models together... which lasted all of 2 years) and never looked back.
Rest assured I, and quite likely a very large percentage of your user base, will drop you like a stone and move on should Affinity go to a subscription model, because your perpetual licensing is the only thing that attracted us to your software over Abode.

The fact that you sold yourselves (didn't even go into partnership) after only two months of starting a conversation rings alarm bells, you are now a subsidiary, you are no longer the master of your own destiny, you are a servant, only able to doff your cap and say "yes sir" at Canva's command.
Excuse the cynicism, but we have lived this software story FAR too many times before, and it has never ended well. I hope this will be the exception to the rule. Actions speak louder than words. We shall wait to see what SaaS company Canva's actions turn out to be.

Perhaps a written declaration, a "verbal contract" if you will, between yourselves and your customers that your software will NEVER drop its perpetual license model, and that its pricing will never be inflated to such unreasonable levels to try and force people on to a future parallel subscription service?

This won't end well for us as users. Maybe it won't be as bad as what is currently happening to VMware or what happened to Filmic Pro or even Flickr but it won't be good. One of my reason why I bought Affitnity and upgraded early to 2.0 is that Serif was an independent company and not some huge corporation. It doesn't matter if nothing really changes, it is no longer a small independent company I like to support. Aquisitions are never a good idea, they always have consequences and most of them are not good. The focus will shift.

At first I thought this is an April 1st joke that accidentally fired off too early.

Hi, Ash.
That's yet to be seen.
 
The only surprises that I like are for birthday parties.
 
And that's because we've seen this story time and time again.
 
I'm truly thankful for all you've done since the first Beta of Affinity Designer up until yesterday, but I'm afraid we'll come back to this conversation down the road and talk about the new surprises we'll see.
Bes regards!

There are genuinely no plans for us to remove the availability of our apps to purchase as a perpetual licence. I will say it is possible in the future there may be an optional way to have them via a Canva subscription plan (which could also include other integrations with Canva / cloud services which you would not get with the perpetual version). But it’s very early days and there isn't a firm plan on that.
I honestly think you'll all be pleased with the outcome of this. With the additional financial backing we have no pressure at all to release a V3 anytime soon, so can be 100% focused on ploughing all our efforts into free V2 updates for the foreseeable future - and we've got some great updates in the works. 
Realise this announcement has come as a surprise and I understand the feeling of uncertainty which is brings, but I do think it's all very positive for the company and our customers. 

First red flag I saw was 'To our amazing Affinity community,'
The second was 'I am thrilled to announce that ... ".
Which usually means 'We have been made an offer we can't refuse.'
A quick google brings "Canva has made its largest acquisition to date, likely spending more than $1 billion to buy professional design software company Serif to compete directly with Adobe as its prepares a long run at going public."
https://www.afr.com/technology/canva-s-billion-dollar-bet-on-a-37-year-old-nottingham-company-20240321-p5fea0
I'd certainly be thrilled to announce that (jingle jingle).
From the FAQ's ' Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?'
Answer: 'There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, ... ', which likely means, after 'this time', uhmmm (whispers) 'yes.'
Affinity marks Canva’s latest Europe-based acquisition, joining Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019) and Pixabay (2019). Canva opened their first European HQ in 2023, based in London.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240325965656/en/Canva-Acquires-Design-Platform-Affinity-to-Bring-Professional-Design-Tools-to-Every-Organization
Oh well, good bye and thanks for all the fish, it was great while it lasted.

We were sold version 2 on the understanding that all point releases would be free. If 2.5 turns out to be a paid upgrade, huge swathes of users will abandon ship.

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.

Using various filter and layer to make a color sketch from a picture in Affinity Photo.
 

Having fun with Affinity Photo - loads of layers and layer effects, even more headaches, and photographs of a scent bottle and a wet paving slab to create the textures of the trefoil and ring...

I'm getting a real kick out of this. I think your drawings/designs are almost the greatest thing since sliced bread! Keep on keeping on.

Hi all, I thought I'd give myself a quick project to explore Affinity's Shape tools and make a series of images.
I've made some fish like creatures, but other themes could easily used, like monsters, faces etc. I was thinking this idea could help new users learn about the Shape tools and generally have some creative fun.
When I get a few spare moments, my intention is to further embellish each shape with colours, different fills, backgrounds, text etc
 

Note: the bitmap fill is from The Shizzle Style and Brush Pack (Grizzle 1), the paper texture is from True Grit Texture Supply (Folio-Vellum) and additional line shading is from Artifex Forge's Vintage Engraved Patterns (Pattern 6). Yes, I have splashed out on the Spring Sale offers!  

Live Filters in Affinity Photo can be used to fix your images or even to make new creative effects. How do they work? In this video, we’ll check them out.
 

I’ve attached a short video showing one way to do it with a brush in Designer (it might also work in Photo but I haven't tried).
2024-03-14 09-39-15.mp4