Canva?!????!

[Flavio]

 

Perhaps with the sale to Canva they might be able to accomplish the nearly impossible task of implementing a perpendicular snap into Affinity Designer. Although I doubt that Canva users would need to draw a line perpendicular to another. Anyway, who cares...

[Hanterdro]

If they switch in the future to a subscription model, there is no reason not to move to Adobe.

[creativebytes]

I was going to respond to the original post here: 

...but as I was composing my response the post was locked. I also lost the content of my original post. So in summary, I just purchased Affinity 2 - so not too happy about this news. I have been in the design industry for a long time using the industry standard software. In recent times, Affinity started to grab my attention. It looks as though this will be the beginning of the end unfortunately.

Canva may be a reasonable tool for the masses to generate some content quickly, but they are trying to become all things to all people and dominate the market - in the same way that Adobe does. They seem to be doing well on that front from a business and profit point-of-view. If the suggestions here are that Affinity will be caught-up in the Canva world, then subscription model is likely (oh, dear) and the development could take a different direction (also, oh dear) I'm now putting a hold on investing time in learning Affinity - I fear my recent investment has been a waste of money. There are too many unknowns from the short statement, so will wait to hear more news, and hope that it is more positive.

[KenKelly]

So it seems they join the WEF mantra, you will own nothing and be happy. With Canva being £100 per annum it's only a matter of time a rental model happens for Affinity. Sad, but this seems to be the great reset in action.

[dutchshader]

More news on the 1st of april?

[Return]

5 minutes ago, dutchshader said:

More news on the 1st of april?

Helaas niet.

[jeoz]

1 hour ago, LunchMoney_Matt said:

Yep, as Ash said, nothing changes.... until it does.

"None of that changes today." See yah tomorrow ....

[José Edcarlos]

Creio que a decisão passa pelas últimas atualizações do Photoshop que trouxe ferramentas de IA poderosas, como o preenchimento generatio que, inclusive o Canva também tem, e o Affinity ainda não. Então creio que essa decisão seja uma forma de correr rápido atrás do PS e tornar novamente a corrida mais equilibrada, ao menos competindo com as mesmas ferramentas e em um curto período, já que o Canva já desenvolve isso e tem as funcionalidades prontas, podendo implementá-las no Affinity.

[thomas.dahl]

1 hour ago, Bit Disappointed said:

You helped us start a movement. Today, that movement becomes a revolution.

Stop yourself, Ash. We're not children. Rhetoric doesn't change reality, nauseating rhetoric just cuts away all credibility, adding insult to injury.

We've seen this twenty? forty? a hundred times? before. A few years ago, German Gravit was acquired by Corel, and Corel wrote "Welcome to the Corel family". It's not a family. I followed the individual German founders' naive optimism on their LinkedIn profiles, but today they are FIRED and Gravit is no longer being developed. A few years later, Corel changed plans, and the little fish discovered the concept of restructuring and downsizing. That wasn't family. It was melting down and minimising.

Serif, I have long urged you to become mature and professionals as a company internally, to survive as a company or to avoid this happening. You lacked the ability or will to do so, you have fundamentally failed in developing the company's culture, structure, and professionalism over several decades and now we see this business bullshit and we well know where it ends! You have simply failed monumentally, and if you had read a bit in both business history books and general history books, then you would know how tragically many revolutions have ended.

I am not afraid of subscriptions like the others. I see far more serious things happening within a couple of years with the products, and I'm starting to take my precautions today. Thank goodness I only use Designer. Maybe I and we are lucky, but precautions are there to ensure the worse scenario.

And to all you fanboys in here I have chided for years: this is where a lack of professionalism ends, and you also have a part in it. I hold the mentality accountable for it ending here.

I think you have hit the nail firmly on its head.  We have seen the same thing happen in many industries.  Personally in the medical industry, I have seen many small companies get sucked up into huge impersonal profit-orientated mega companies.  Its is all about PROFIT where the customer becomes the product and not the other way around.  Shame to to see Serif go the same way.  I feel sorry for the staff and programmers at Serif as they will see many changes and lay-off sooner or later.  I would not be surprised of the the whole code base gets shifted somewhere cheaper.

Financial Review (https://www.afr.com/technology/canva-s-billion-dollar-bet-on-a-37-year-old-nottingham-company-20240321-p5fea0):

Serif’s accounts lodged with the UK Companies House show a highly profitable business under no pressure to sell. It had revenue of £31 million ($60 million) in the 2022 calendar – the latest year for which figures are available, up 33 per cent over 2021 – while profit rose 19.5 per cent to £16.4 million.

Canva chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht would not confirm an exact price for the Affinity acquisition, but indicated it was significantly more than a £400 million estimate based on Serif’s financials.

That would likely put the price above $1 billion, paid for with a mix of cash and Canva stock. Asked why Canva, with about 4000 staff globally, did not build similar software to Affinity, Mr Obrecht said: “While essentially anyone with enough resources and top talent can build anything, we feel the headstart they have and the quality and speed of their product were unmatched.”

Canva has made several acquisitions in the past but is building up to an eventual public listing in late 2025 or 2026, where it will be measured against companies like Microsoft and Adobe, which can bundle numerous products together for enterprise customers.

 

[Mad Manx]

It would appear this is the beginning of the end for Affinity for me personally. Know doubt there are many people out there willing to pay for a subscription based service from Affinity, alas I am not one of them.

No doubt when Affinity introduces the invertible subscription plans the pricing will be low to drag people in. Once they’ve got the consumer where they want them wait for the price increases.

I may as well purchase an Adobe Subscription.

[mwilliamanderson]

Personally, I'm cautious. I use Affinity to design, but as an educator, not as a designer. I used to be a designer and I can remember the days of QuarkXpress, then the fledgling program that was InDesign… programs come, programs go. It is the way of things. So, for me, as long as I can download V2 in perpetuity, it does all I need it to do.

If a subscription model is introduced, I will have to think hard about the cost… at the moment, without discount, the cost of the one-off payment for the suite is £160. If a version last over, say, three years before the next version, then over 36 months, on a subscription model, I would only expect to pay approx. £4.50 per month. So, when you look at it like this, then the prospect of subscription isn't so bad.

However – and this is a BIG however – subscription models don't allow you to own the program as an entity in and of itself. The payment needs to be made to have access to the downloaded program. That is the issue I have with subscription models, mainly because I'm old school – if I'm going to contribute to your pension pot, Mr. Hewson, along with Canva's shareholder profits, I want something tangible, not a license… sorry, terribly old school, but someone has to begin the push back against the subscription model.

[thomas.dahl]

Worth a read:

https://newsletter.failory.com/p/canva-gets-130m-visitorsmo-acquiring-startups

[Visnes]

Canva is going to absorb Affinity and start calling them Canva Designer, Canva Photo and Canva Publisher which you can pay a small fee of 40 bucks a month for, or 400 a year for a little discount. But if you pay 500 a year instead you get access to all of Canva Pro too! Yay! /s

A lot of the guys in Affinity are going to be fired. They don't need double up on marketing, PR, legal, probably a few of the programmers and artists etc.

We've seen this happen before.

This sucks. At least Ash and the other investors get a nice little payout, I guess? Management is probably going to leave Canva after a year and start a new company doing this all over again.

Subscriptions are the worst thing that's ever happened to the world. Not everything needs to be a F**king "service".

Edit: I really hope I'm wrong, and that they keep Affinity as Affinity and continue supporting it as is.

Edited March 26 by Visnes

[Andy05]

14 minutes ago, mwilliamanderson said:

However – and this is a BIG however – subscription models don't allow you to own the program as an entity in and of itself. The payment needs to be made to have access to the downloaded program.

Even worse: once you cancel the subscription, you usually lose access to the apps' native file formats. Programs and apps can get replaced with a little bit of effort. But if a client asks you to modify some designs done with an app you no longer have access to, it's becoming a tricky endevour.

[VectorVonDoom]

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.

[VectorVonDoom]

1 hour ago, Hanterdro said:

If they switch in the future to a subscription model, there is no reason not to move to Adobe.

Sort of true but depends what the price difference is. Academic for me as I simply won't be doing it.

 

55 minutes ago, mwilliamanderson said:

Personally, I'm cautious. I use Affinity to design, but as an educator, not as a designer. I used to be a designer and I can remember the days of QuarkXpress, then the fledgling program that was InDesign… programs come, programs go. It is the way of things. So, for me, as long as I can download V2 in perpetuity, it does all I need it to do.

If a subscription model is introduced, I will have to think hard about the cost… at the moment, without discount, the cost of the one-off payment for the suite is £160. If a version last over, say, three years before the next version, then over 36 months, on a subscription model, I would only expect to pay approx. £4.50 per month. So, when you look at it like this, then the prospect of subscription isn't so bad.

However – and this is a BIG however – subscription models don't allow you to own the program as an entity in and of itself. The payment needs to be made to have access to the downloaded program. That is the issue I have with subscription models, mainly because I'm old school – if I'm going to contribute to your pension pot, Mr. Hewson, along with Canva's shareholder profits, I want something tangible, not a license… sorry, terribly old school, but someone has to begin the push back against the subscription model.

If (when) they go subscription I would have thought that's it's pretty unlikely it's going to be that cheap, possibly per app though. Subscription can be bad through to terrible, partly depends what happens if your subscription lapses. Some you just don't get any more updates, others it turns in to read only mode so you can still print, export etc but not edit, then you have the Adobe way where you're locked out of the app. 

[VarrusKane]

They are probably doing what Gamemaker will do with their new version of software.

Current version is buy once use forever but next version will be subscription based. Just like how Adobe did it when they migrated to the CC versions I think.

It was inevitable really. Corel does it too, although you can pay once... ~$800. RIP indies.

[Alexhibition]

I switched from adobe to Affinity long time ago but since a couple of months I’m using an Adobe subscription anyway for AI stuff.

As a big time affinity fan, I would just stay with adobe than using subscription based Affinity products.

Lesson learned. Never trust a company. The main focus is always profit and nothing else. There are no good companies until they are forced to be. Period.

[Boldlinedesign]

On 3/26/2024 at 4:54 AM, Dazmondo77 said:

Sad news ----- I wonder how many users will stick with affinity when it requires a subscription? A lot of us have been here before, I remember eagerly awaiting CS7 and getting a kick in the nads, although I still do occasionally use CS5 so I suppose Affinity 2 is gonna be the end of my journey, maybe we'll get another year before the canva subscription becomes the only way forward. Now the search goes on for a replacement = NO SUBSCRIPTION

@Dazmondo77  Are you still using Vectorstyler? I haven't seen you on the forum there in a long time. Big update was released recently

[JamesH]

It seems inevitable they will switch to the subscription model. I'm already starting to prepare for it by moving my files to Adobe. No sense on making my library larger with their tools only to have to convert more files later.

[mikerofoto]

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

[Iajhy]

99% of Affinity users are upset
The happy guys on this were those who grabbed the money. Very, very sad!

[j3rry]

40 minutes ago, Iajhy said:

99% of Affinity users are upset

I'm not annoyed but quite sad about how things have turned out. There was once hope for an LR clone and AI supported image processing as well as a first class raw converter. I'll probably be able to forget that after the latest developments ...
But of course a good day for the employees at Serif, their jobs have certainly become more secure.
 

[Pixel and Poly]

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!

[Equiste]

11 hours ago, When_Subscription said:

Well holy sh#t, I was about to post the old "what chu talkin bout Willis" line, but thought I'd do a quick Google first, and wow 😲

This is HUGE news, and I'm a little miffed we didn't hear it first from the company we have supported and trusted for many years. I personally hate what Canva has done to the design industry, however I can only assume they have the $$ and resources to actually give Adobe a run for their money, on top of that we may finally get image tracing!! Speaking of money, we should prepare for the inevitable subscription-based model, and / or price increase to return the unconfirmed billion-dollar acquisition to investors pockets.

Overall, I'm quite torn about this news, yet not surprised.

The honeymoon is over.

WHEN... and almost surely not IF, they change for a subscription based model, i'm sorry, but my affinity evangelism will be completely over, and i'm already on guard after this announcement, if anyone asks i'm gonna be "yeah they are good and all, and if you wanna have the v2 forever go for it, but try to look elsewhere, maybe even donating money to open source projects"

Edited March 26 by Equiste