Canva

[Flynnsworth]

2 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

This is just Ashleys damage control over yesterday show that was a mess..

And, don't be too optimistic - can't see any benefits of this in the future...

We’ve all been burnt by these corporate buyouts and awful subscription models. Macromedia was a painful 1 for me. But we’d have never reaped the benefits of such great tools without MacroMind and Authorware merging in the first place. They also bought out Altsys who made FreeHand and FutureWave who made FutureSplash (Flash). After that we got a pioneering suite of software with an amazing vector engine before Adobe came along and took the bits that they wanted.

Canva does strike me as the typical venture capitalist type corp ready to destroy everything in its wake. If that is the case, then they have absolutely no reason whatsoever to make the pledges that they have made today.

I am sure they are under no illusion that this community has walked away before and it will walk away again if need be.

They have the funding and infrastructure to take Affinity software to the next level. Serif have the development expertise to take Canva software to the next level.

Only time will tell but I’m not going to make 20 posts on this forum crying about hypotheticals.

[Sid J]

1 hour ago, DarkClown said:

Either way it will be hard for canva to (re-)gain trust of the customers. This merger marketingwise coud have been prepared a lot better!

Cheers, Timo

Yesterday's video said far more than the words were trying to say. Sadly, when trust is gone, it is gone.
People may want to forget yesterday's debacle, but the doubts will always be there.

It's really sad that Serif demonstrated that they do not understand the user base. 

[Sid J]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

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.

The good reason is there to see (actually more than one reason), but if you can't see it, that's your problem.

[mehdy]

Who agreed with me?

Technically the Affinity V2 has everything that We need right?! 

Let's get the updates for free untill the V3 comes out, and keep using existing V2 for every, if the V3 was subscription We all gather and make a good by party 🎉 if it's not subscription let's make a meeting and decide what ever we stay or not because for real We loved Affinity because of it positioning it was in the industry and all that trust gained like 80% of it evaporated (imo), otherwise we take the but to old home 🏠 if there's no huge benefits of staying at leats We do something We know it will work for us.

I will keep my V1 and V2 softwares forever as agreements in licence, and affinity required to keep them running and provide activating support each and every time we have an issue or we changed our personal 💻 laptop with new one etc.

[Ruffian]

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

That's totally not true.

@Greengestalt We were with Serif long before it became Affinity.  Why because Serif actually had software that we could use for the creativity that we needed.  We have stayed with them as they evolved into Affinity but missed some of the attributes in their previous software.  We purchased the whole offering even when our older computers could not actually use it just as support for the company. 

Three months ago we upgraded to new computers and upgraded to the V2 and now to have this news is just a bombshell.  Like so many others we will no longer be adding any additional add-ons or give them any more of our funds.

Our old computers still work and have the older Serif products on them especially PagePlus and CS6.  But we will also be looking for an Affinity alternative.  Unless @Ash can provide a copy of how the contract is clearly written to protect us users and that Affinity still retains the rights and controls, Canva will be able to do whatever they want.

Some reassurance could be provided by removing the requirement to authorise new installations of V2 products online, and any additional online callbacks to be removed.

Pledges are just that pledges...they are not legal binding....

[artjourney]

22 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

Affinity is at serious risk of being dumbed down for general consumption, rather than being enhanced for professional (level) usage. There are plenty of free tools already.

That has been my observation with many other softwares over the years. Standard vs Pro. For pro features, well you have to pay more. Apple is very smart in this area with the way they market their products.

The focus will be on Pro edition (for more money and serious professionals), while the standard is just for hobbyists, forcing people to go Pro or find an alternative.

[Pan Athen]

I'll be straight with this. I've been too many years in the creative media to hear this and not feel alarmed. Using a product means that we build our pipeline and our archival with projects based on proprietary formats, which then become useless (or very expensive in time to convert) if we need to switch to another toolset. The affinity platform uses a closed proprietary format, so the amount of licenses sold is already definining this power of holding clients that Canva might have seen as a prospective market to tap into. Apart from the nice words about how we all want to make a better world, your products are still tools that are used in production and this is important to have in mind.

My fear is that Canva will try to sneak in subscriptions one way or another and this seems to be the case if you read between the lines of the four pledges email that we got recently.

I don't want the pricing model to change. If AI features are introduced, they should not be part of a subscription cloud service, but offered to run on my computer as part of the perpetual license model like they do in DaVinci Resolve.

The fifth pledge that I would like to see is: "Affinity will always run on your desktop. We will never make this a SaaS platform by introducing AI or other cloud services in the desktop editor." If you need to run something heavy on processing then you should offer a cloud SaaS solution but also leave the option for any users that want to run the same tools using their own computer power. DaVinci Resolve does that. Adobe doesn't, and this is why I don't use their tools.

Other than that, I really wish that this is a good choice for Serif and that the future will be bright for them and for us using their platform. If not, alternatives will always be there in a free market and I can keep my current version forever or until it's not compatible with my OS anymore.

[Bit Disappointed]

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.

[esto]

11 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Yet another new user here, showing up and praise Canva AUS...

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.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

20 minutes ago, R C-R said:

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.

You're one of the real veterans here on the forum - clever nice and skilled.

But, for me it ain't about subscription or not, it's about a entusiastic "small" company in England that has an profile to be independent , a company we could forum chat with the owners and developer...

But now it will become an faceless super capitalistic company that don't care about old customers - new users in, more money, products with glossy advertising - this will not end well for sure...

And, pretty obvious that the guys in top of Serif Ltd will quit sooner or later with pockets full of dollars&pounds...

Edited March 27 by Leigh
Removed swearing.

[Duskstalker]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

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.

there is. canva is a company that runs a subscription based cloud service. canva is going to be publicly traded soon, that means canvas actions are going to be hypercapitalistic, because their only goal is to increase value to their shareholders, which mostly boils down to predatory monetization and absorbing competition with the goal of ultimately becoming a monopoly. adobe is mostly there.

canva will integrate the "pro tools" from affinity into their cloud service. this is why they bought affinity. they didnt want a desktop app to maintain, they want to merge affinity tools with their cloud. because this is their business model.

the affinity suite remaining a standalone desktop app on a perpetual license is fierce competition for canva at that point. when they are done merging affinity into their cloud they will of course shut down the desktop versions of affinity to force people into their cloud business. its quite simple really. and the pledges by former serif - now canva - employees are just that. 

[Flynnsworth]

6 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Yet another new user here, showing up and praise Canva AUS...

We all see this bullshit clear - no-ones listen...

How anyone can read my post and think I’m a Canva fan is beyond me. You are trolling at this point. Changing your username like a 6 year old.

I have signed up to the forum today to share my views as an Affinity customer. I’ve attached my purchases for the last 5 years.

Please kindly share your purchase history with the group.

[Chills]

6 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Yet another new user here, showing up and praise Canva AUS...

We all see this bullshit clear - no-ones listen...

As your sig says:   "Happy amateur that playing around with the Affinity Suite"

If you read the thread, most of us who are not happy moved from things like the Adobe CS when it went CC.  We are not "happy amateurs."  99.9% of the people in this thread are long time Affinity users, we have seen Canva and don't like it.  Canva users turning up in this forum saying what you are doesn't help those who run their livelihoods on Affinity.  

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Sid J said:

The good reason is there to see (actually more than one reason), but if you can't see it, that's your problem.

I think they have made it more than clear enough that they will not be abandoning the perpetual licence model for the Affinity apps for the foreseeable future, so no, I do not see any problem with continuing to use & support the Affinity apps. Only if they ever renege on that pledge will I have any reason not to trust them.

[R.I.P. Affinity 26.03.2024]

6 minutes ago, mehdy said:

Who agreed with me?

Technically the Affinity V2 has everything that We need right?! 

Let's get the updates for free untill the V3 comes out, and keep using existing V2 for every, if the V3 was subscription We all gather and make a good by party 🎉 if it's not subscription let's make a meeting and decide what ever we stay or not because for real We loved Affinity because of it positioning it was in the industry and all that trust gained like 80% of it evaporated (imo), otherwise we take the but to old home 🏠 if there's no huge benefits of staying at leats We do something We know it will work for us.

I will keep my V1 and V2 softwares forever as agreements in licence, and affinity required to keep them running and provide activating support each and every time we have an issue or we changed our personal 💻 laptop with new one etc.

I needed blend tool and erase tool so bad. And I guess we won't see them coming now until v3. Personally, I'm not jumping of the ship right now. I'l wait what is 2.5 beta about. 2.2 till 2.4 were already poor for features (only minor fixes mostly). If its the same for 2.5 ill probably gonna try VectorStyler or will use try to use my old Illustrator cs6. I can't afford Adobe right now.

Also v2 will work until Canva wants it to work. You can't activate it offline. When Canva closes activation servers you won't be able to use it at all. Only v1.

[wVanDyck]

5 hours ago, Ash said:

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.

Thank you so much for sharing these pledges. My comments below are in regards to #1.

Presonus, the developer of the Studio One music production software started off with perpetual licenses and later announced its subscription plan. No surprise, there was intense vocal concern expressed by those who had paid for a perpetual license and gladly willing to pay for updates.

Presonus wisely offered two paths, perpetual licenses with for pay upgrades, and the subscription model which offered access to range of add-ons at no extra cost beyond the monthly subscription fee.

In this situation, Presonus had cast the widest possible net to keep everyone in the fold rather than losing loyal supporters.

Best wishes for the continued success of Affinity!!!

 

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

3 minutes ago, Chills said:

As your sig says:   "Happy amateur that playing around with the Affinity Suite"

If you read the thread, most of us who are not happy moved from things like the Adobe CS when it went CC.  We are not "happy amateurs."  99.9% of the people in this thread are long time Affinity users, we have seen Canva and don't like it.  Canva users turning up in this forum saying what you are doesn't help those who run their livelihoods on Affinity.  

I don't get it? Do you think I'm positive to this new Canva affair? No...

Yeah, happy "amateur", but not that I trust my Affinity Suite.

Making a lot of work on my spare time to sportsclubs, shops, minor advertising and so on - but never get paid because that's my mission to help certain people in society.

I have another daytime job.

[BHIP]

This is a great step for you because ya'll made MILLIONS! 

For the rest of us......

I have no faith that this is a good deal for the end users. I was not going to renew my subscription to Canva because I was learning so much in Affinity and wanted consolidate my work and end another subscription.

I will not pay a subscription fee for Affinity. It's just not going to happen. 

[KarinC]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think they have made it more than clear enough that they will not be abandoning the perpetual licence model for the Affinity apps for the foreseeable future, so no, I do not see any problem with continuing to use & support the Affinity apps. Only if they ever renege on that pledge will I have any reason not to trust them.

I so much hope you are right. I have three books in me that I plan to have finished in about 18 months. The first one is nearly done. If I can just continue to use version 2 for at least that long I will be happy. I've had the software rug pulled out from under me way too many times to feel very confident.

[esto]

13 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Your energy to reply a huge amount of text says it all... You have been caught...

[mehdy]

12 minutes ago, R.I.P. Affinity 26.03.2024 said:

I needed blend tool and erase tool so bad. And I guess we won't see them coming now until v3. Personally, I'm not jumping of the ship right now. I'l wait what is 2.5 beta about. 2.2 till 2.4 were already poor for features (only minor fixes mostly). If its the same for 2.5 ill probably gonna try VectorStyler or will use try to use my old Illustrator cs6. I can't afford Adobe right now.

Also v2 will work until Canva wants it to work. You can't activate it offline. When Canva closes activation servers you won't be able to use it at all. Only v1.

So sad that V2 is online activated, but as our agreement with Affinity it's required to keep it up and running otherwise full refund, we own it its not subscription crap, the old V1 it's used to activate with serial but this big brother V2 need email and password. I think affinity will keep their servers up running and separated from V3 Canva Suite. At least with my 20% trust remaining in affinity.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

30 minutes ago, mehdy said:

Who agreed with me?

Technically the Affinity V2 has everything that We need right?! 

Let's get the updates for free untill the V3 comes out, and keep using existing V2 for every, if the V3 was subscription We all gather and make a good by party 🎉 if it's not subscription let's make a meeting and decide what ever we stay or not because for real We loved Affinity because of it positioning it was in the industry and all that trust gained like 80% of it evaporated (imo), otherwise we take the but to old home 🏠 if there's no huge benefits of staying at leats We do something We know it will work for us.

I will keep my V1 and V2 softwares forever as agreements in licence, and affinity required to keep them running and provide activating support each and every time we have an issue or we changed our personal 💻 laptop with new one etc.

Are you serious now???

"Technically the Affinity V2 has everything that We need" - what an idiotic reply...

If we already had everything, Serif Ltd could have frozen the development of Affinity Suite already...

I could do an 20 sentence long list what's missing in Affinity Suite, but that is just so tiring...

What I really miss, and are disappointed at from Serif, is that several new functionalities into Affinity Suite has been left out on iPad platform - silly decisions...

[Mithferion]

1 hour ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Pledge 3 - why is this so good just now?

It's good because it's good. It'd be better if they've done this before, but still, I don't see any harm.

Best regards!

[Aongus Collins]

3 hours ago, Ash said:

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

@AshThanks for your clarification, which goes well beyond anything I'd hoped for. I've been using Affinity Designer since the first Mac beta, and am delighted to see this direction. I don't like subscription plans, but others may differ so a dual or hybrid strategy makes perfect sense -- especially if it brings even a fraction of Canva's 170m users into the Affinity fold. 

[norbinw]

I bet they will run like Capture One. Subscription plan + fixed fee to own the CURRENT version. Also, integrate some Canva templates and resources. Which is good.

As long as I will make money with it, I will buy Affinity. While owning something sounds cool, renting is also OK. For ex, I own V1, now I also own V2, and when V3 comes out, we will probably all own that too, always using latest versions, never going back to previous, because compatibility issues - resulting in a boatload of versions in your account that you never use. So if a sub price is justified, I would probably just subscribe instead of buying every version for a full price.

While I do understand some people, who still use PS CS6, I am not able to do that, as I (and probably many others) need the latest tools for a better/faster workflow, rendering previously owned apps "useless". For those who want it as a hobby, there will be a fixed price for the current version or you can just get alternatives.