Canva

[pinchies]

47 minutes ago, Ash said:

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. 

Dear Ash, you're right -- we all should be pleased, as more resources sounds like a great thing. However, you must know that none of us are naive -- the trend of good software going to subscription licensing has been clear over time, and most of us could share our own stories of how we have been burned and betrayed by this. I bought V1 of the suite, and I bought V2 too. I really hope to buy V3, V4 and V5 when the time comes too. Buy being the active verb there. Please keep doing awesome stuff in that fashion, and we will back you all the way.

P.S I've never used Canva myself, and as it is a subscription, I never planned to....

Edited March 26 by pinchies

[Bit Disappointed]

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.

[BertD]

35 minutes ago, Ash said:

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.

 

Well Ash, if you are going to move services within a subscription plan only, not available to a perpetual license, you cripple your software and make the perpetual version a second citizen. You're basically moving to a subscription model then and will guaranteed cease the perpetual version once enough users have given in and give you their monthly dollars.

 

 

35 minutes ago, Ash said:

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. 

 

As an owner of the company I'd be pleased as well. You've done well and congrats, sincerely. You built the business to what it is and worth today. But to me as a user, nah, when something like Canva buys you, I've lost all trust, it'll purely be about the shareholders and gaining users. 

I'm pretty sure all of this has been discussed when the takeover was discussed, unless you were just happy to take the money and leave the rest to them (Canva) for which of course I couldn't blame you. For whatever we all think or say, most of us would be happy to be bought out like that.

But yeah, I don't take much positive out of this and I hope you prove me wrong.

 

[MikeRo]

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. 

Edited March 26 by MikeRo

[AshTeriyaki]

2 minutes ago, lineweight said:

It's a bit hard to understand what's in it for Canva.

Surely they haven't paid an enormous amount of money, to enable you to carry on making upgrades for existing users for free.

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.

[wiredfractal]

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.

[Sid J]

This is great news for everyone who believes in subscription services, BUT, someone missed the fact that those people are not Affinity users.

Let's be very clear, the userbase will drop Affinity when subscriptions arrive. 

FYI marketing folks, you can't upsell against users core beliefs.

A bad day for Affinity users  
 

[ostonica]

47 minutes ago, Ash said:

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. 

I abandoned Affinity products a couple of years ago when it became clear that Affinity had no interest in developing what I need for my every day work, making ebooks. The excuse was that you did not have enough resources. 

Well, now you do have the resources and Canva does export to the epub format so PLEASE seriously consider adding this feature to Publisher 2.5. 

Jim

[esto]

Given the recent history of tech acquisitions, one has to hope that Serif have gone into this with open eyes.

Tech entity becomes big and massively (over)valued, buys up various smaller entities. Market takes a slight turn, new CEO comes in, or shareholders get a bit bored, and the parent company shutters the small one. Just look at the massive job losses in tech at the moment, the closures of smaller games studios, the acquisition (and re-acquisition) of Bandcamp, and on and on...

These small companies are toys for the big boys, bought for a few useful patents, or for some industry kudos. A $40 billion company has a working business model. Let's not pretend tiny Serif can offer Canva a 'new market' or 'new opportunities' that it would be interested in, and let's not pretend corporations care about the 'culture' of their acquisitions. Serif represents a few assets that can be bought at a low cost.

The future of Affinity and Serif seems clear: useful Affinity tech will be folded into Canva. Canva will at some point make cost savings - perhaps Serif will be shuttered, or turned into a skeleton staff, or maintained as a shell in a country with lower wages than the UK. Perhaps Canva will strip the useful IP, 'cost-save' Serif down to a few staff then sell it on in a few years.

This is a sad day for users, and perhaps some members of Serif staff. Something was built, here. Something was done a little differently, and had real value. As said, one has to hope Serif's owners aren't under any illusion as to how this will turn out.

[Sid J]

5 minutes ago, pinchies said:

Dear Ash, you're right -- we all should be pleased, as more resources sounds like a great thing. However, you must know that none of us are naive -- the trend of good software going to subscription licensing has been clear over time, and most of us could share our own stories of how we have been burned and betrayed by this. I bought V1 of the suite, and I bought V2 too. I really hope to buy V3, V4 and V5 when the time comes too. Buy being the active verb there. Please keep doing awesome stuff in that fashion, and we will back you all the way.

P.S I've never used Canva myself, and as it is a subscription, I never planned to....

I tried Canva, it's not really a place for creators, designers etc

[pinchies]

11 minutes ago, RichardMH said:

I'm probably the odd one out but it doesn't worry me. Software is a pretty low proportion of what I spend on photography. More concerned that Affinity Photo hasn't been keeping up. Hopefully this will remedy that.

I too would love a lightroom alternative.... and glad I purchased lightroom standalone when you still could!

[Corgi]

Now that Serif is owned by an Australian company, what will this mean for us users? Will all the UI icons be upside down? Will all the video tutorials use Australian accents? Please say 'no.'

[loukash]

6 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Quote

In May 2019, the company announced the acquisitions of Pixabay and Pexels, two free stock photography sites based in Germany, which enabled Canva users to access their photos for designs.^[39]

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"…

[EJD1]

Congrats on finally getting that payday for all your hard work.

However, it's painfully obvious from your overall letter, your vague praise for Canva's "cloud" expertise & understated, terse comment on how current users were safe through V2 & will receive updates to it (for a while, anyway), that all future true affinity will be lost as Affinity programs shift to a subscription model asap. We will assume that if there were to be a stand-alone V3, you'd have clearly mentioned it. You didn't, so there won't be.

Sadly & clearly, V2 is the end of the line. From here on, any V3+ will clearly consist of locked-chain accts, which if they were only more expensive would be hard enough, but dealable. But that insidious model also impacts our control over our creative work going forward. When we later lose our subscription, as with any subscription model, we lose our access to all our files on that platform henceforth. All of our work is then held hostage.

This also starts the process of Affinity being tossed from corporate hand to corporate hand as yet another asset, down along the M&A rabbit hole, which is intolerable for a high-quality, formerly user-focused product. I've worked for a number of such firms w/ world-class products, and seen the name (unattached now from its former quality product) tossed from entity to entity, slapped on any half-hearted product, and it is heartbreaking. Large firms may feel comfortable with all that, as they're not focusing on changing anything they do with their files anytime soon. However, this fully dismisses independent users & dumps us all off by the side of the road, as you move on, financially set.

Again, I believe none of us would begrudge you your well-earned payday. But a simple "Hey, everyone, guess what?" msg, as we're told our purchases of your product will now/soon be obsolete & we all need to begin looking elsewhere, hurts. Alas, you cannot hide that or assuage or undo that with clever marketing & decent intentions.

The one request we'd make is this: please outline exactly how long you plan to support V1 & V2, w/ updates & customer support, before it's discontinued in the full shift over to the subscription-only model. We'll assume this shift will not be entirely in your hands, so those who've believed in you over the years will need your best-faith assistance here so we can plan our workflows. We'll need some type of heads up to be able to begin the process of looking for an Affinity alternative once we lose our beloved Adobe alternative.

[Intuos5]

13 minutes ago, Bit Disappointed said:

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.

Indeed, there really is no alternative that has integrated vector, raster and book publishing features in a single app. I don't want to think aboht going back to separated software. But as it stands, the future of Affinity as a small business and hobbyist tool depends on the pricing scheme, as much as we may like certain features or not. Customer support and features are secondary for those on a budget unfortunate as it is.

[tudor]

I have business clients who use Canva a lot. From now on it'll be easier to explain to them why I use Affinity and not Adobe apps: "they're all made by Canva, don't you know?"   

If you'll find a way to exchange editable files back and forth between Canva and Affinity apps, that will be a huge selling point for Affinity.

[MickRose]

To me, it's partly the existence of this forum which has engendered a sort of loyalty to Serif in it's attempt to make decent and cheap software in a market dominated by Adobe. Big companies have bought small companies since companies existed and I have no ill feeling towards Serif for allowing itself to be bought out. I can see why they think it's a good thing for them (not just the money) and only time will tell if it turns out to be a good thing or not for it's customers. Presumably at some point a super-duper subscription only version will come out and users will have to make their own minds up about that. Thanks for the ride.

[Greengestalt]

BTW - please forgive the double post in the thread here - but I want to also be constructive vs my earlier one on worry of subscriptions, etc.

A feature from the "Serif" days - Draw Plus - the "Auto-Trace" which flattens an image like poster paint but a lot more wiggle room and makes them vectors that can be then used and modified in other software AND dropped into some HTML website construction engines like Xara!

It's an imitator of the now dead (thanks Adobe...) Macromedia Flash's "Vector Trace" and even ancient ware it runs like greased lightning on modern Gigabytes, Gigahertz computers.

Here's an example - 

 

 

 

Again this I WILL pay for - not subscription but UPGRADE package part of when you do V3.  Make the $ a sane level and add features and I'll pay.

 

Suggestions - for V3 what I'd pay to upgrade to and I'd even pay better part of US$100 for.  (I'm current in Affinity now)

1 - well this - I want "Vector Trace" back - it was formerly in Draw Plus which is the predecessor of Affinity Designer - make sure to add tons of new sliders and options and to keep all the old vector formats to import and export!

2 - Full use of Photoshop Brushes and Filters

3 - Improved LUT construction and preview - via Humble Bundle I have tons of LUTs but it's tedious to just guess and load/undo this should be simple, IMO anyways.

4 - expand the filters section with perhaps allowing others to make (and sell?) 3rd party filter sets?

5 - Pixel Canvas - to work with the neo-pixel/retro arcade people - so you can edit pixel and sprite sheets even low resolution but it will adapt to it and pull it up full screen and allow modern images to be converted into them.

6 - Easier to lock objects - I've recently played with making Kaleidescope things in Designer - a bit tricky to set up but fun - what if you could lock shapes automatically in various ways to insert inside even if randomly across the board and change it?  Maybe you can already, I'm learning there...

7 - - OBJ and other major 3D object direct unwrapping and support - perhaps some easy guide like I'll try to put a tatoo on a Poser figure but it's either ballooned or microscopic come render so a stretch or image ref layer?

 

Again - keep your edge by NO AI - but consider an ethical AI module you subscribe to - that's a subscription I'd consider. 

But full privacy, NO censorship, you can have it work with your own LoRa's (Ai training modules) and other major formats.  Keep it "Ethical" and the public domain + art gulags we'd get anything anyone would care about the whiners are really overrated.   And 100% opt in to respect a lot of luddites I've sent this way due to No AI so make sure the language is 100% spelled out, anything full Opt-in, etc.

 

Not demanding all of it but #1 is most important and 1-3 I'd welcome highly.

[Jon S]

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.

[lashman]

awful, terrible news

sigh, guess i have to keep looking ...

[Bit Disappointed]

Quote

Canva is ideal for amateurs or those who need to create designs quickly and with a more automated tool. It makes it easy for people without a professional design background to create visually appealing content that looks professional and polished, with minimal effort and time. Canva's drag-and-drop interface, extensive library of templates, images, and fonts, along with automated design features, make it a popular choice for those looking to create everything from social media posts to presentations and marketing materials, without having to delve into more complex design programs.

Amateurs, rejoice - you're in the spotlight now! That's what it's all about!

[LostInTranslation]

Canva bought Affinity to the tune of about 1 BILLION dollars.
Affinity made 16 MILLION pounds in revenue in 2022.

Yeah, I am sure that will let you carry on and change nothing.

[Bit Disappointed]

I can see where this is heading, an eternity of (justified) anxiety about subscriptions, but perhaps the most worrying trend is what happens to, for example, Designer, which is a unique tool for specific types of graphic design, and I guess Publisher users and others may find similar advantages now at risk.

You might as well get used to the idea that it will become a subscription in a few months, but as a mental exercise, consider what it means for you as creatives if you have to switch programs, or if the programs end up like plastic toys in a rubber cell for people without skills.

[Hadriscus]

Time to look for a new home ! Open source alternatives are not where I'd want them to be (otherwise I wouldn't be using Affinity!), but they're building up in strength & versatility. Inkscape has some rough edges but is a very, very capable vector program. Krita is unequalled at painting. Gimp isn't ideal right now but they're nearing a "modern" 3.0 release, let's see how that goes. Graphite.rs is young but veeeery promising. I don't really have a Publisher alternative to offer, though.

Farewell ! it's been nice.

[wiredfractal]

Remember when someone pointed out that Affinity's in-app welcome banner runs Google tracking? Serif apologized and removed the tracker.

I guess that's going back again since Canva likes to track what their user does in their platform. Remember, Serif is no more, they are now Canva.