Canva

[pixelstuff]

40 minutes ago, Cealcrest said:

I hate Canva so much. Sure, they "democratized" design, and now there's even more horrible design assaulting the eyes. They have an uphill battle to fight to win over professional, high-end designers.

I would honestly go to Adobe before admitting I use a Canva product. Fix that market perception, Canva. Adobe says professional (if stodgy and stuck up) and Canva says amateur and unconsidered. Change my mind, Canva.

Didn't the acquisition announcement say they were keeping the Affinity branding? Canva might be aiming for a StanleyBlack&Decker kind of company that also makes Dewalt, Irwin, Craftsman, tools. Maybe Canva wants the Affinity team to develop their professional line of tools under the Affinity branding and plans to carve out a segment of their cloud infrastructure to be branded as the Affinity cloud services. They might still have a "Canva templates" persona or module that can be opened in the Affinity apps though.

To me that seems like a better branding move than renaming everything as Canva Photo, Canva Designer, and Canva Publisher.

[Greengestalt]

4 hours ago, Ruffian said:

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....

Thanks there - I don't know how he thought it was "Amateur" software.  The "Amateurs" pirate Adobe which "One Man's Opinion" was made possible by them as 4D Chess aka if they steal it they VALUE it and better thieves rob banks versus becoming real radicals and making a different currency...  It's a LOT more risky making a counter program than just making plugins for Adobe and hoping they'll hire or favor you someday.

If it comes to it the pledges and statements could be used for a class action...

Though I don't want that - I just want AutoTrace back and them to continue normally.

BTW - On the "We have older computers" - it works on NEW ones too!.

Brand new computer from Dell, huge memory modern processor (20 core) graphics card - so I can crank out hyper 3DCG, juggle dozens of documents, handle new Ai based things OK...  And I popped in the DrawPlus and it WORKED - from my DVD-Rom straight.  No messing with earlier windows version.  My pic from a project I'm working on took seconds to render even with "My God this will take half an hour...!" settings from what 10 years ish ago?

[Ruffian]

2 minutes ago, Greengestalt said:

If it comes to it the pledges and statements could be used for a class action...

Though I don't want that - I just want AutoTrace back and them to continue normally.

BTW - On the "We have older computers" - it works on NEW ones too!.

Brand new computer from Dell, huge memory modern processor (20 core) graphics card - so I can crank out hyper 3DCG, juggle dozens of documents, handle new Ai based things OK...  And I popped in the DrawPlus and it WORKED - from my DVD-Rom straight.  No messing with earlier windows version.  My pic from a project I'm working on took seconds to render even with "My God this will take half an hour...!" settings from what 10 years ish ago?

That's good to know.  I researched some things on reddit and decided against trying PagePlus but will follow through on DrawPlus.

We have Malibal computers : 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900H   2.60 GHz, Installed RAM 64.0 GB (63.7 GB usable),NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 8GB,  64-bit operating system, x64-based processor, Windows 11 Pro.

Our old laptops are Malibal and still working but running Windows 7...one is 12 years old and the other is 8 years.

[L Markus]

Everything still works fine. It’s staying up-to-date with new OS requirements down the road that has me worried.

Here’s a plan: Set up a spare computer with the best specs you can afford (future-proofing) and purchase and install a spare copy of Affinity Suite. Add updates as they are released. That way, if Canva does the worst and the licensing servers for perpetual V2 go down, you won’t be in fear having a hard drive failure and no way to reinstall, because you have a backup machine ready to go. In fact, set up two backups for good measure. That should give a few years of good service even if Canva changes everything later. By then, other options will probably be available.

That makes more sense than jumping ship now, while everthing is still working fine. It’s exactly what I have already done, in fact. And if Suite V3 comes out with perpetual license and the ability to work offline, I will happily buy it and stay onboard. The price could be a lot higher, even;I could justify that. Affinity IS an incredible product at a bargain price,after all!

And no, I’m not a joined-yesterday shill. I’ve been using Serif since DrawPlus X3.

 

But take away my ability to work offline and I am gone in a heartbeat.

[monzo]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

It was already removed from the Stores, as far as new purchases are concerned. But it's still available for you in your list of purchased apps.

(Except for some users who are in regions where Apple has apparently removed the V1 apps completely.)

Is that an Apple decision, or Serif’s? But anyway, as has already happened to some, access to those of us who purchased V1 via Mac/iOS stores could lose access to our original purchases completely - V2 ‘lifetime’ versions as well if our new masters at Canva bring out updates to that one, or a V3 that’s subscription based. Which let’s be realistic here, is only a matter of time.

 

 

[jimh12345]

Reminds me of when Daimler bought Chrysler. The joke was:

Q - "How do you pronounce Daimler-Chrysler?"

A - "Daimler."

 

When a product gets bought like this, its identity ends. Within a year its key developers are gone and the new owners realize they don't really know how to take it forward. So they hire new guys and hand them a list of "features" put together by marketing.  In this case that's going to be more half-baked AI, like everyone else in the business.  

 

 

[Greengestalt]

7 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

Thank you for the pledge - we are big "Grain of Salt" here due to the real world effects of Maxxon taking Zbrush, that CEO of Unity, etc.  And this is for real products not franchises and hobbies - better not get started there.

Most of the time - IRL - when a corporate entity comes in the product is DESTROYED or downgraded and sucked DRY.  Even if they seem to want to chase their customers away.  Reason?  Short-selling stock. Apparently they can "Bet against the team" even if they set it to RUIN and not get jailed for criminal fraud.  Source - Gamestop early 2021 where it got in the news because some Redditors countered their plot - though the stock brokers bailed them out.  Or my own eyes having managed a store during the recession and being one in fifty that made a profit had some vicious middle manager sent in to wreck it.

We could at the very least do a mass letter and call/email to our officials and hamstring the  bailouts, tax breaks.  In the USA lobbyists give $70K for every $1 in bribes, but when they do get attention they demand lots of money to do nothing.  And  there is competition and even if not well if  you turn it into a pricey subscription model, might as well go back to Adobe...

I'd rather go forwards - As long as 1 and 2 are followed I'm with you tenatively.  My big issue again -

Auto trace - want it back and better.  Just tell them to dust off the old files, old source code, etc.

More innovations and yes I'd PAY for them in the upgrade:

A - Photoshop brushes, filters, plugins - Work on getting them to work.  DAZ really butchered Poser doing this.

B - (should be easy) LUT browser and preview

C - Ai - NOT for Art (shut up luddites) but for training and feedback

D - hyper privacy so they can work with data but no way of detecting individual users or spying on them even if wanted to - 100% waring "You are not in privacy mode, in training mode" on screen in case of any necessary research.

 

This gets to where #4 interests me:

I'm taking some AI classes and refreshing myself on programming.

Not high skill but these tools are incredible and I'm seeing tons of usage for them already.

Now we don't need to put innocent little sprites through harrowing mazes but what IF we used a learning module and gave it access to features of the software and then gave it feedback...?  This also means improving the sliders and options.  Then the thing's brain is trained by positive/negative feedback and fueled by keywords.  I don't mean a machine that is true AI/AGI but can break down the colors and shapes and user added tags - then process requests at first crudely then take feedback and keep feeding the system.  Then the learning modules are created work and useful in the main software and could be as easy as "I want to turn this into a comic book illustration" and it'd even partially flatten and stretch/modify.  Or "I want this to look like a 70s Grindhouse movie", "I have 3DCG people, make it look like a real photograph"  This is stuff I do WITH my human non artificial intelligence but it could be codified using modern AI modules without needing a supercomputer -rather, by Xer standards we all have a Cray Supercomputer or better on our desks now!  End users would then work with their own systems and have their custom AI modules saved (back it up offline, people) so if a crash/new computer/lockdown virus you pop it back in.  These personal modules would be based on their own feedback and training.  And yes they'd help the module but reasonable paranoia make it so general data is still optional AND its anonymized in a way you couldn't peek if you wanted to.

 

Working with us - the users - we could improve this into something really next level.

We could also turn this into a custom "Ai Upscaler" competing with the few working good but pricey modules on the market now.  No "Dis" to them they are good but the ones that work pretty pricey.

And users that put in a lot of work for modules get credit and free upgrades or shares?

 

Anyways we are very cautious here - but we'd like this to be good and improve going forward.

Most of the anti-Ai people are the "AiArt turk mur jurrb!" scardeys - and we don't really need an "AiArt module" already easy and fun to use affinity photo to correct bad fingers and such.  But machine learning can make its ability to modify photos and objects and setup documents go next level and the purpose of this type of software is to do just that.

[R C-R]

On the subject of trust, one thing I trust implicitly is that nobody can predict the future with any certainty. Consequently, all these comments about what Canva and the Affinity staff will or won't do in the future is nothing more than speculation & should be treated as such.

Personally, I think the sanest course is to wait & see how this plays out over the next several months, particularly if they deliver on the promise of the accelerated update schedule with more critically needed bug fixes so many of us are aware of & hopefully some new often requested features, but if you think otherwise, so be it.

[pixelstuff]

Take the Sonic Foundry sellout to Sony and then MAGIX. The original Sonic Foundry studio is basically the same and still developing the same set of apps. So not all mergers and buyouts result in fundamental changes to the products being offered.

[Thomas Bohn]

The more I think about it the less I think the pledge means anything for the future, they put things like free licenses for schools and non-profits in, even though Affinity is already affordable for many of those, at least in theory. It addresses the issue of subscribtions but not really at the core. Also when Canva goes public all bets are off and only shareholder value remains. The only thing they could do to get my trust at least partially back is to reverse the acquisition and make Serif an employee owned company. I know, this is unrealistic but I need to speak it out.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, Thomas Bohn said:

It addresses the issue of subscribtions but not really at the core.

Why not? What exactly do you think is the real "core" issue?

[AlainP]

I was out of this forum for a while, but I had to come back after the email we all received.

So much political language, when was the last time a politician kept his word. Look at all these acquisitions over time, all the bought companies have disappeared for the benefit of the buyer. Remember, money rules the world, and every man has his price. The primary goal of Canva is to make profits. 

[ham_candy]

Ahhh this sucks, software companies merging never ends well for the users. Just look at what happened to Macromedia, or Softimage, or Sculptris/Zbrush. This is why we should donate to open source projects instead of handing our money to greedy corporations that don’t give a darn about their customers. Blender is proof that the open source model can be successful.

[gguillotte]

It's interesting in my day job to chat about TinyMCE and Redis reneging on non-binding licensing promises and making disruptive changes that force people to stop using their products.

Then I close my day-job laptop, open my freelance laptop, and get to read non-binding licensing promises that, were they to be reneged upon, would be disruptive changes that force people to stop using their products.

Not one tech company is worthy of trust for trust's sake. Nevermind that none of these promises assuage any of the concerns prevalent in the creative field that hires me to use Affinity tools—even if they did, these are non-binding pledges that require a degree of trust that has already been damaged.

[Bad_Wolf]

More bug fixes, more features, faster updates, what can we ask for more?

Let us wait and see what the future brings. Speculation will only bring more concern, emotions and anger.

Wait and see what happens over the next months. I remember the release of the V2 version, emotions and disappointments were running high. After a few weeks the storm was silenced and development continued.

Give this union a chance, I believe we will see new opportunities coming our way. Blending, image tracing, all features we want so much, are now coming this year.

Let's look positive to the future and in the meantime, let us do what we like to do... drawing and designing.

[Intuos5]

30 minutes ago, R C-R said:

On the subject of trust, one thing I trust implicitly is that nobody can predict the future with any certainty. Consequently, all these comments about what Canva and the Affinity staff will or won't do in the future is nothing more than speculation & should be treated as such.

Personally, I think the sanest course is to wait & see how this plays out over the next several months, particularly if they deliver on the promise of the accelerated update schedule with more critically needed bug fixes so many of us are aware of & hopefully some new often requested features, but if you think otherwise, so be it.

It's both, while we don't know what will happen, there's been plenty of precedents to point to how softwares went down after an acquisition.
So while it's best to be patient to await a final verdict, there's no reason not to voice any concerns in the meantime — at best these concerns can get addressed, at worst, people were right to be concerned. Now it's up to Affinity (Canva) to regain user trust, which Serif carefully built over years, but as we know, it can be gone in one foul swoop by breaking user expectations (and identification with the identity of the software and its mission). That people are passionate about this means they care.

[Thomas Bohn]

24 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Why not? What exactly do you think is the real "core" issue?

I can only speak for myself, for me the independence of Serif as a company is important. Not being publicly traded like Canva probably will in the future is also important. I'll admit, I have trust issues.

 

22 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I can imagine, or rather I can't imagine, people with this line of thought getting married.

That is the thing, I just don't trust the people who made the pledge. If you don't really know if you can trust your future spouse you should probably say no.

[wingsline]

1 minute ago, Thomas Bohn said:

That is the thing, I just don't trust the people who made the pledge. If you don't really know if you can trust your future spouse you should probably say no.

Same here. My major problem is how I will open the v2 files when I lose my v2 suite? And yes probably 1-2 years it will be supported or something, then on a new machine u cannot activate it and its a pretty big problem in the long run.

[Tia Lapis]

8 minutes ago, BofG said:

I don't understand how that will come about, unless they intend to move at least some of the development away from Serif.

I see not everybody has gone blind 😜

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Ruffian said:

I researched some things on reddit and decided against trying PagePlus but will follow through on DrawPlus.

Do you have a DrawPlus product key? Serif stopped selling DrawPlus several years ago, so unless you can find a copy on Amazon Marketplace or eBay you won’t even be able to install it, let alone try it out.

[Bit Disappointed]

Imagine being a company that needs to invest in graphic software now. Affinity would be the most uncertain option by far in the short, medium, and long term. No one responsible for a company and its employees invests in pledges and half-finished apps.

You can say what you want. Affinity is now synonymous with UNCERTAINTY in the market, and what hobbyists choose to cling to is one thing, but those who can pay real money for the products choose safe paths forward.

The four pledges are PR for children.

[Chills]

1 hour ago, jimh12345 said:

When a product gets bought like this, its identity ends. Within a year its key developers are gone and the new owners realize they don't really know how to take it forward. So they hire new guys and hand them a list of "features" put together by marketing.  In this case that's going to be more half-baked AI, like everyone else in the business. 

Not always.  When BMD brought Da Vinci Resolve they kept the same team and it is still, largley, in place. They brought the price right down and added Fusion and Fairlight Audio and really improved the features and dropped the price again (perpetual license with free updates for life) and did a free version.

[Chills]

25 minutes ago, BofG said:

I don't understand how that will come about, unless they intend to move at least some of the development away from Serif.

OR they move more people and resources in.
However Brooks Mythical Man Month comes to mind https://www.waterstones.com/book/mythical-man-month-the/frederick-brooks-jr/9780201835953

Also this is a must read for any SW company. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/in-search-of/9781590597217/

[Aurea Ratio]

I don't see this ending well either, and I find no comfort in the pledges that does seem to be an attempt to control a failed communication strategy.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. I have no high hopes but I have other options if Affinity disappears or take another more Canva like form.

[Ruffian]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Do you have a DrawPlus product key? Serif stopped selling DrawPlus several years ago, so unless you can find a copy on Amazon Marketplace or eBay you won’t even be able to install it, let alone try it out.

I do and actually have the disk