Canva

[mehdy]

11 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

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...

The missing functions and futures like auto trace and rtl support etc .. is the only winner card for V3 or Canva suite v3 or whatever,

Lower you expectations we all in same boat and show some respect

[jonheal]

Though, I'm nervous about the future (I'm a worrier, in general), I reckon we should give Serif/Affinity/Canva a chance to make good on the Four Pledges they emailed out this morning.

Maybe we should worry more about WWIII spurting out of Ukraine and incoming nukes more than whether or not we get saddled with a subscription. 🤪

[Caius Nocturne]

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

This is not something that you can guarantee us. The only people who can guarantee whether or not this continues to be a mission-led project are the people who own it. And in this case it is Canva and its investors. The investors of Canva (and soon the public investors as it eventually tries to IPO) want what any investor wants - money number go up. This will happen regardless of what any other stakeholder around this product (including us) would like.

This is a JPEG for PR, not a legal agreement. At best, this will be the case for a few years and this will absolutely change as soon as it becomes inconvenient for the people who are actually in control - the ones who own Canva. Big tech companies never turn the screws immediately.

I would also like to remind everybody in this forum that about a year and a half ago, Serif made a tweet saying that they would never sell. And yet the owners sold.

I would also like to inform people that subscriptions are just one way that tech companies can make a product worse. Affinity could remain a simple paid product and the investors will still try to bleed it dry, annoy and shake more change out of you another way. Or they could make too many stupid decisions trying to get more money out of it and destroy it in the process. One way or another, there is no way that this is a decision for the better for this product, because as in every business with shareholders, the money number has to go up.

[walt.farrell]

38 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.

You may be right, of course, but Ash said there are a lot of improvements still coming in V2 (2.5 and beyond), so until they actually announce V3 we won't know for sure.

[Kiarian]

The Four Pledges have at least given me some hope Affinity users won't all be dumped like a bad habit. I can now watch Ivan Weiss's upcoming masterclass in peace. Well, that's if World War 3 doesn't kick off anytime soon.

[NewInBoston]

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

Very uplifting news. Also, at least Affinity will never have cash flow issues, something that can be a very real obstacle for smaller software companies. 

[mehdy]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

You may be right, of course, but Ash said there are a lot of improvements still coming in V2 (2.5 and beyond), so until they actually announce V3 we won't know for sure.

Thank you for clarifying this mr Walt, for me the V2.4.1 have everything I need if I need auto tracer I go with inkscape if I need RTL I go with leomoon so my expectations are low in this maters but to have V2 better thank run into V3 subscription.

I appreciate your comment,

[esto]

From a 'looking into a business strategy crystal ball' perspective, pledge 3 is interesting. If it gets carried out, it would suggest that Canva have plans to penetrate Adobe's market by offering the Affinity suite as a mature professional-standard competitor in schools and other training environments (as opposed to just pushing Canva as the main product). This could be healthy for Affinity, in that Canva may see a long-term benefit in keeping it alive and actively developed.

But as many have said, pledged (and predictions!) aren't worth an awful lot, so we'll just have to wait and see. Hope for the best, plan for that worst, and all that...

[bici]

3 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Thank you @Ash for this commitment, both from Affinity and Canva - although I do wish this was released yesterday along with the acquisition announcement as it could have stemmed 20 odd pages of discussion, speculation, and anger.

I'd 'thank you' in the reactions, but sadly I have no more to give today (the forum won't let me).

Very happy to read this, and really looking forward to ePub (hopefully both fixed and reflowable) export!

same here. Thanks Affinity. Still waters run deep. 

[NewInBoston]

1 minute ago, esto said:

From a 'looking into a business strategy crystal ball' perspective, pledge 3 is interesting. If it gets carried out, it would suggest that Canva have plans to penetrate Adobe's market by offering the Affinity suite as a mature professional-standard competitor in schools and other training environments (as opposed to just pushing Canva as the main product). This could be healthy for Affinity, in that Canva may see a long-term benefit in keeping it alive and actively developed.

But as many have said, pledged (and predictions!) aren't worth an awful lot, so we'll just have to wait and see. Hope for the best, plan for that worst, and all that...

Agree. Affinity has little traction in mainstream professional application. I have yet to see a job requirement stating Affinity Suite. It's always Adobe. This needs to change and breaking into education is one way to remedy this. Also, there are so many different workflow improvements I can think of if Affinity is able to connect to Canva API.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

4 minutes ago, NewInBoston said:

Very uplifting news. Also, at least Affinity will never have cash flow issues, something that can be a very real obstacle for smaller software companies. 

No, they haven't had ANY cash flow problem in Serif Ltd recently - this small company has made 45 million pounds (50m dollar) real profit last three years, so, that has not certainly been the problem...

[NewInBoston]

1 minute ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

No, they haven't had ANY cash flow problem in Serif Ltd recently - this small company has made 45 million pounds (50m dollar) real profit last three years, so, that has not certainly been the problem...

Key word: never.

[bici]

8 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You may be right, of course, but Ash said there are a lot of improvements still coming in V2 (2.5 and beyond), so until they actually announce V3 we won't know for sure.

The Sun Also Rises. 

[Tia Lapis]

Yeah I see V3 announcement sometime in summer - big news: subscription only...

[000]

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

 

A "Pledge" ist not a promise and "we are committed to" is very different from "we are going to" -- sorry, but while this is a nice gesture, I've heard this noncommittal language way to often (in recent years even from our gouvernment with their listening, their commitments and the famous "five pledges") to believe any of it.

As I have spend a good amount of time of learning Affinity and moving all my work to it I'll stick with it for the time being. Worst case is that my version 2.4 stays as it is and I'll use it until I don't find a computer that runs it anymore.

Given that Serif just got handed a large sack of money, I won't do any free beta testing from now on though, and only install further updates if they have something I need rather than looking forward to playing with a new toy and being happy about everything I discover.

The software has hopped from "a journey I enjoy being part of" to "a tool I use to earn a living". My feeling towards Serif has shifted from "fan" and "advocate" to "user" respectively "customer" with a simple business relationship that can be cancelled the moment "the product doesn't meet expectations".

[Flynnsworth]

1 hour ago, Flynnsworth said:

Please kindly share your purchase history with the group.

[000]

1 hour ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

Yeah, @Dystopia is just an Bot posting the same reply in several threads in here - the Moderators is smiling...

Good first use case for AI 🙂

[PaulieT]

Hello Ash,

I hope you and the staff of Affinity, made out well in the sell-out. I fear your customers will not!

After reading about the Canva takeover, I went to the Canva website to see their product offerings. I just tried a Canva product and it did not work correctly. Then I found, there was no way to contact Canva Customer Support to tell them of the problem with their product.

As you know, Affinity (Serif) has an email address that customers or potential customer can contact when they have a question or have an issue. Not so with Canva, they obviously don't care.

There was a way to contact Sales, so I tried that approach. After filling in all the information, and going through all the Captcha screens, I received a message saying there was an error in the submission. I tried again, with no luck.

This does not give me a good feeling about the future of Affinity products!  I refer you to Pledge Item 4 - How can you be "committed to listening and being led by the design community" if there is no way to contact Customer Support? 

Paul A. Teseny

 

[75th]

22 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

A "Pledge" ist not a promise and "we are committed to" is very different from "we are going to" -- sorry, but while this is a nice gesture, I've heard this noncommittal language

It's quite something to complain about the use of the word "committed" and then accuse the speaker of being "noncommittal". No, the pledges they made are not legally binding, but it is a good sign that Canva let them say it and put both their logos on it. They have opened themselves up to much more solid accusations of lying or malfeasance later if they go back on these pledges. It's not a binding contract, but it is worth something.

[debraspicher]

49 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

Given that Serif just got handed a large sack of money, I won't do any free beta testing from now on though, and only install further updates if they have something I need rather than looking forward to playing with a new toy and being happy about everything I discover.

Uh yeah, they're not getting anymore beta testing from me either. No more testing of any kind.

(Edit: In case it's not clear for any reason, that does not count for bug reports. I'm just no longer willing to help develop software by testing it, whether that's beta or post-beta. I expect polished software to a reasonable degree.)

They can afford a whole warehouse of testers now. There's years worth of goodwill in this forum alone that still hasn't been reciprocated.

49 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

As I have spend a good amount of time of learning Affinity and moving all my work to it I'll stick with it for the time being.

It is really inconvenient to change platforms, especially for major projects. On one hand, I'll have refreshed on my other toolset(s) and be looking at other options. Adobe has aged terribly, imo. It really should be easy to compete with the right polish but Serif's team has had a terrible track record with bugs and leaving features unfinished, so I'm not optimistic whatever "pledge" gets written in that the quality won't continue to slip. That pledge can go away at anytime.


Only thing I like so far is that this is very much sounding anti-Adobe. That should please anyone, customer or not.

[jimh12345]

3 hours ago, Bit Disappointed said:

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.

That's how I feel too.   

Sorry if I sound like a cynic, or an aging know-it-all.   But I've been through Nikon Capture NX, PS Elements, and Exposure X7 before Affinity Photo.  They were all either abandoned or left on life support (Elements),  glowing "commitments" to the contrary.   I worked in the software business and I know what acquisitions typically mean, for both customers and employees. 

I just read the email from Affinity (or Canva, we don't really know) with the big promises.  Nice, but I've heard it all before;  Affinity will end up becoming whatever some execs at Canva want it to be, period.  I'd feel a lot better if I saw the word "photography" in there, somewhere, but that's pretty clearly not an interest at Canva.    I wouldn't be surprised if "Affinity Photo" drops out of the branding, leaving just "Design".

I'll keep using Affinity Photo for now but have already started looking at alternatives that are in active development and aimed at photographers.

[benhughes89]

29 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

The software has hopped from "a journey I enjoy being part of" to "a tool I use to earn a living". My feeling towards Serif has shifted from "fan" and "advocate" to "user" respectively "customer" with a simple business relationship that can be cancelled the moment "the product doesn't meet expectations".

I would say exactly the same. 👍

[pixelstuff]

50 minutes ago, Duskstalker said:

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. 

It is doubtful that Canva will want to do away with the desktop apps.

No doubt they want to connect the desktop app to their cloud services, but they almost certainly want the benefits gained from having actual desktop apps. Professional users (like those using Adobe's software) want local running apps. If Canva wants to break into the professional design space they need the same kind of thing. They wouldn't buy Affinity software and then do away with their primary feature.

As far as subscription models, Canva has to realize they just bought a company that built probably its entire audience from people not wanting the Adobe subscription system. Keeping the perpetual model would be a good way to continue differentiating themselves from Adobe and convincing those customers to jump ship. Unless Canva one day becomes bigger than Adobe, I doubt they would ever become subscription only.

[debraspicher]

Just now, LondonSquirrel said:

There will always be issues that users uncover which testers didn't. It's no use complaining afterwards that "this should have been found". 

You're confusing testing with bug reports. Please stop.

[debraspicher]

Just now, LondonSquirrel said:

I'm not confusing anything. An issue not found in testing that is found by a user is a bug. Please stop splitting hairs. 

Just stop.