Canva

[PhatMonkey]

I bet the people at Adobe were saying few months ago "hmm maybe we should consider offering perpetual licenses again as Affinity is taking a large chunk of our customer base" Then after this CANVA announcement Adobe said while laughing their socks off "AH scrap that idea lets keep the subscription model going, Affinity just sunk their own flagship"
🤣

[nezumi]

Is this some sort of mass panic attack?  😆

"Video isn't good enough, everybody lies, tomorrow servers can be off, lets make our own software in India, you're a spineless sheep if you are not looking for replacement NOOOW!"

Bloody hell man...

Repeat after me: goosfraba.

GOOS..FRABAAA.

Good.

13 minutes ago, bures said:

This is a pretty brutal discussion. And the company is silent. This is quite telling.

What do you want them to say? Whatever they say they will be accused of lying immediately. It turned into a madhouse here.

Luckily we have a solution.

India.

🤣

[Chills]

11 minutes ago, bures said:

This is a pretty brutal discussion. And the company is silent. This is quite telling.

Which company....  Affinity (let along the developers)  probably can't say anything at all without Canva approving it.

dopt the Angry Cat Avatar to protest the Canva take over. 🙂

[jacekl]

12 minutes ago, Insider said:

Unfortunately, I have no confidence that Affinity Suite will not move to a subscription model. Why should I? At some point the validation servers are going to disappear. That's why I'm going to switch my workflow to the subscription-free professional VerctorStyler, QuarkXpress and the innovative Pixelmator Pro. Much cheaper than Adobe without a subscription in the long run and much more professional than Affinity apps.

 

If Vector Styler is created by only one person, and also a teacher (as someone wrote here earlier), I do not predict a very bright future for this project. As the code base grows, there will be architectural problems, there will be more and more bugs, and it will become more and more difficult to maintain, especially for one person. Eventually the project will get stuck. I've seen this many times. Software engineering is not a trivial thing and professionals have been learning it by decades.

Of course, I could be wrong and maybe this programmer is a genius like Linus Torvalds.

[Chills]

23 minutes ago, Greengestalt said:

ANYONE been a user since they were Serif not Affinity?

I doubt it because Serif were aimed at amateurs and your strange uncle who did the local model railway club magazine.
You know people like Canva users.....

AFAIK Serif  took off when it did affinity and aimed at the pro and semi-pro  Adobe users in the way Canva doesn't

I am just hoping it is that Canva wants to move to the more professional market but the comments from Ash seem to indicate the opposite.

dopt the Angry Cat Avatar to protest the Canva take over. 🙂

[Greengestalt]

42 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

He is not entirely wrong, but basically, he is quoting what is the success of Canva. India

Ahem, GOING there I've met people who could strip locked devices of major brand names and get custom OS's installed.

Wish I could have taken one of their cars back.  No I don't mean a tuk-tuk.  Try  $6K for something that'd be easy to run, repair, fuel with CNG, super safe in a crash.  But it'd be taken and trashed when I tried to take it from the shipping container.  Software isn't as protected as auto companies so one of the few things we can "Outsource" the Outsorucers for.

 

This is serious.  Ten years ago, yeah, it'd cost too much.  Twenty years ago, both cost too much and less outsourcing options.  Today it's almost Fiverr.

I haven't participated in the forums here much - and when Ai got topical I tried because Affinity did NOT have it.   More a 7-up commercial thing; "Never had it..." and was trying to get in suggestions they advertise based on it - no AI no Data scraping.

Also - not that anyone noticed - I've been with this software since Serif only software.

 

Furthermore "AI" is a catch all for machine learning.  That's where a crowdfunded thing could make new stuff the others don't have;  One of those machine learning simulators where it'll try 10 million times in an hour but can from scratch learn something.  Imagine that for helping with "This photo is too low resolution, notably the face and edges", "I'd like these 3D Poser images to look more realistic and like a 70s movie" along with help on sliders, filters...?  How about the format so you could setup a "Zine" that you'd print out, cut and fold the documents and it'd adapt it if you added pages?

 

I'm just going to ignore status the hecklers - what do they think this forum is - Twitter (X)?

[Dee3D]

8 hours ago, RichardMH said:

Aren't double negatives fun! 

Aha! Yes, so the double-negative 'Ain't nobody acquiring us' really meant 'Somebody is acquiring us'. It was a secret code, ha ha. But seriously, so saddening that that is what actually did happen.

[Greengestalt]

2 minutes ago, Chills said:

I doubt it because Serif were aimed at amateurs and your strange uncle who did the local model railway club magazine.
You know people like Canva users.....

AFAIK Serif  took off when it did affinity and aimed at the pro and semi-pro  Adobe users in the way Canva doesn't

I am just hoping it is that Canva wants to move to the more professional market but the comments from Ash seem to indicate the opposite.

>>I doubt it because Serif were aimed at amateurs and your strange uncle who did the local model railway club magazine.

MY 'strange uncle'?  I hope that's generic vs targeted harassment/insulting.  This isn't some "Exceptionally gifted" school where the lazy bored "Teacher" just assumes the first punch loses so you try to provoke all day.  Yet that's what I feel here.

 

It's also super untrue;

Serif even way back was pretty powerful.

 

The Gimp made me feel like...well the name.

Early Krita was nice but a huge memory/processor hog.

I could go onto dozens of others that had their fun (Dogwaffle, anyone) but tended to make me feel like a crash test dummy saving after EVERY few minutes in fear.

By contrast I assembled novels and edited images out of the dock and never missed not having Photoshop or the (right) fear/guilt of pirating it.  I was glad to be rid of it.  

[Andy05]

12 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

It was me who promised this product and using for 6 years. It is a product of one person. From Finland. You are making a statement without even heard or have used the product. How mature. 

Stable updates. 
Feedback in the forum. 
Implementations of features … ongoing.
Plans in the roadmap are fulfilled.
Responsive to suggestions.
No AI.
Not a copycat. But it learns from the past projects like Freehand / Corel / Illustrator.
Image tracing – I know, crazy, huh?

Test it. Research. Then comment.

I just downloaded the trial. Indeed, looks promising. And even without any further updates and new features, it's pretty much covering almost all needs for a professional vector design tool. 

Any ideas about how good its exports work for print? Because this is one of the things, which can get a bit tricky in Affinity's apps as well.

Edited March 27 by Andy05
Fixed a typo—thanks to loukash!

[joe_l]

Personally I feel joining the Canva family was a bad move. Getting the information about the acquisition first from a Canva source a PR disaster. For private and work use I will stick with V2.

[henryanthony]

Canva will not kill Affinity because Affinity is not a competitor of Canva. It would make no sense. It would make sense for Adobe to kill Affinity but why bother. Adobe is the industry standard and that will not change. What will probably happen is V3 will be released with AI included to try to entice current Affinity users to get on board the Canva train and make some quick money.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, Andy05 said:

[Any] ideas about how good its exports work for print?

That's what I've been trying to figure out since the free VS betas a few years ago.
I still have absolutely no clue by looking at the esoteric PDF export options, let alone by attempting to understand what they mean. 
PDF/X-3 or PDF/X-4 presets? Fail.

[PaulEC]

30 minutes ago, Greengestalt said:

ANYONE been a user since they were Serif not Affinity?

Serif is the company, Affinity is the range of software that it produces. Previously Serif had another range of similar software (the "Plus" range: PagePlus, DrawPlus, PhotoPlus etc) And yes, there are quite a lot of people who used that and now use Affinity.

[BarryHu]

My life is too short to read all 20 pages of reactions so sorry if I am repeating what others have written.

 

I wish you well but I’m not sure this is a good move for Serif or your Affinity apps. And worrying for us mere users.

 

I’ve looked into Canva previously and just done so again, even to the extent of downloading/installing it, and I suspect you will be drowned out in all the stuff that it throws at its users. Quite bewildering but likely useful for those that like to live in the world of “templates”.

 

It also seems to be quite persitent in urging its users to "go Pro" and pay each month to carry on - exactly why Adobe is such a horror these days.

 

Hopefully Affinity will be marketed as a seperate entity to Canva.

 

I started with Serif when it was a Windows suite (and enjoyed it) and now have the Affinity Universal Licence (Mac/iPad & Windows) so hopefully I'll be able to continue as now even without updates/upgrades after any move to a subscription basis occurs.

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

The features for a pdf are solid.

Sure.
If you speak fluent gibberish.  

[Greengestalt]

1 minute ago, PaulEC said:

Serif is the company, Affinity is the range of software that it produces. Previously Serif had another range of similar software (the "Plus" range: PagePlus, DrawPlus, PhotoPlus etc) And yes, there are quite a lot of people who used that and now use Affinity.

Yep, that's where I got in.  Loved it.  And the new versions were much better and the older ones run without struggling with emulation mode.  But they weren't clunky amateur stuff, you could import/export all the major files and if  you ever tried the Auto-Trace it gave even Macromedia a run for its money.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

one gives support and advice and there is always that one person screeming: "BUT! …" – so mature. I love it.

Until this I found your contributions interesting.
Now welcome to my ignore list.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

11 hours ago, Tape_Worm said:

After having been through a corporate merger as an employee, I believe that anything said by Serif or Canva at this point will be utter horse shit.

They'll say nothing will change, that's a lie.  They'll say we'll only improve things as requested by you, that's a lie.  

Capitalism sure is great eh?

Time to find another alternative.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now - searching for alternative software that can substitute Affinity Suite, but not choose Adobe...

The thing is, on iPad there's nothing like Affinity Suite, so, probably it will end for me stop using such apps on mobile platform... Sad...

I hate Serif now!!

[esto]

As someone who's been strongly (though, I hope, fairly) critical in this chat, I'll say a positive word for Canva itself, given I'm using it right now 🤣

Having worked on various marcomms teams and projects over the years, Canva is a godsend for the kind of digital work that requires something to look good (or good enough), without the resource for professional-tier products. Many teams don't have the budget for a tool like Adobe or Affinity, much less the time and resource to trail team members up. Most professionals here will be so used to professional products that they may have forgotten just how intricate, fiddly and opaque these products can be for the untrained - I'm sure we've all seen the nightmares that can come to life when an untrained individual 'has a go in photoshop'!

If I look back on what tools digital and social teams were using a decade (or more) ago, the low entry bar, the cloud aspect, the easy team sharing, and the super quick workflows in Canva are genuinely really bloody useful - they've saved my teams countless hours, and I can only imagine how that scales for larger organisations. Get set up with a brand kit, get a professional to make you a few templates, and you've go untrained individuals able to make quality ('quality' in the sense of digital - it's awful for print!) imagery, videos and even animations, in hours or minutes. For the churn of the content factory that is the modern day world of marcomms, Canva is simply a very useful product.

Don't get me wrong though, it's not a professional tool, if the professional in question is a designer, photographer or artist. I regularly run into fairly simple use cases where I have to load up affinity to do the job, and there are all sorts of pains and niggles with the UI. But as a tool, it opens up a lot of possibilities for individuals and teams that just weren't options a decade ago.

You'll note that, while the commentary here and on socials on Affinity's channels is almost unanimous in its disappointment, Canva's channels are full of excitement and praise. For Canva, and Canva's users, this makes a lot of sense, should fill some of the gaps in Canva's UI, and so on.

It sucks to see specific products become watered down - many have felt the pain of Apple's continued under servicing of the pro market, for instance - and I'm no less saddened by the eventual loss of what Affinity is. I get why proper designers and visual professionals may hate Canva and what it represents. But I guess I'm just saying it's a tool like any other, and one that's used professionally to a high-enough standard.

[Pseudolus]

"Nobody wants to wake up to the news I woke up to this morning, nobody."

Anyway, like many of you, I'm feeling very uncertain about the future of Affinity's viability. But I'd like to avoid catastrophizing by saying that Affintiy will go full-subscription in the future. We cannot possibly know that. Even Microsoft still offers a one-time purchase for its core Office apps, and there's no reason that Canva/Serif couldn't offer something similar. Maybe a subscription add-on for cloud-based storage and AI functionality.

EDIT: What did I say? 👏

The thing that gives me the greatest pause here is that selling to Canva is antithetical to what this community stands for and why we use Affinity, a bit like a taxi service being purchased by Uber. Serif was always able to offer a professional suite of apps for start-ups, independent artists, hobbyists, and professionals in a way that Adobe could not. It filled a major gap in the market, as Adobe is willfully anti-customer because they know they were the only game in town and they know that the sales of CS are not what keeps their company afloat. Serif put the customer in the driver's seat and earned its small-but-mighty community through word of mouth, transparency, and good faith.

You cannot bottle that.

Canva's goal, on the other hand, is to make the market even tougher for these same groups of people by essentially cutting the designer out, even going so far as to entirely replace us with machine learning. These two communities are oil and water, and I don't see how this merger can be beneficial to us, in this comparison, the "little guy."

It feels a bit like our divorced dad is taking our puppy and giving it to his new family.

I wish people were being kinder to Ash, as this community has been pretty nasty to him since V2 came out, and it's never sat right with me.

[GenewalDesign]

Just now, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

I hate Serif now!!

But you'll keep posting here, uh? 😁

[jacekl]

15 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

It was me who promised this product and using for 6 years. It is a product of one person. From Finland. You are making a statement without even heard or have used the product. How mature. 

Stable updates. 
Feedback in the forum. 
Implementations of features … ongoing.
Plans in the roadmap are fulfilled.
Responsive to suggestions.
No AI.
Not a copycat. But it learns from the past projects like Freehand / Corel / Illustrator.
Image tracing – I know, crazy, huh?

Test it. Research. Then comment.

I guess you didn't understand what I wrote. I wrote about development practice, IT projects, technical debt and the darker side of this profession. I did not write about this program and its bugs or features. Don't be blinded by your love for the tool.
I don't need to use this program to know what problems such a model involves. I have been a programmer for several decades. And you write from the perspective of a user of the current version. Nothing else.

[VectorVonDoom]

49 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

I promise, you will be overwhelmed. Join the forum there, the community is small but fine. And the one-man-company replies quite quick. If you have any questions, let me know – as long as I am here, I can reply.

The forum whilst generally fine has a few that put me off visiting it again. I didn't notice a ban/ignore option but might have missed it. However for me there's no real requirement to visit any app forum, you can just use it.

[Dee3D]

7 hours ago, wader said:

I still run Photoshop CS6 that I've clung to since CC became the only option.

Seems I'll be doing the same for v2 of Affinity products, they really are great and should remain relevant for some time to come.

Same here, I still use my old Photoshop CS4 which still runs fine on Windows 10 (hope it will on Windows 11 when I get around to getting a newer PC!). I bought Affinity Photo because I won't pay for Photoshop CC or ANY other subscription model and was so pleased to find a standalone photo editor of such good quality. I thought it would be a good bet because it was in ongoing development, now that offline Photoshop is defunct. But now - who knows what will happen to it. So disappointing. Back to CS4 and Paint.net, I guess...sigh...

[boorowaboy]

This change in ownership should has created a huge (?) storm of comment. See a screen grab of my emails. Normally one or two might appear as I have listed to see who is joining Affinity. Looking for other like minded designers. Now many are concerned about the future. As several have said before the learning curve for design programs is so long it isn't possible or desirable to continually relearn new programs. I am at the end of a 50yr design life which began with marking up text for monotype setting and pasting up galley proofs for publishers to check. Then Litho artwork with Rubylith and overlays, then Pagemaker, Quark, Indesign and now Affinity. All doing what I could do with a type scale, Rotring pen on a drawing board. All those brain cells wasted on learning redundant operations and now Af looks like it may head down the same route.

Instead of wasting all those hours on design programs I could have learned a couple more languages or be a musician and still be home in time for tea.