Canva

[Medical Officer Bones]

18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If that is the case, what do you think we should do instead of making plans? Make sacrifices to these gods; pray for divine guidance, something else?

Seriously, what does a defeatist attitude get us besides all but guaranteeing we will lose no matter what we do?

Of course we plan ahead. Yet expect our plans to be thwarted at every turn and hope for lady luck to deign us her favour. And doubt is our guide.

All the while we take care to avoid taking ourselves too seriously, because our ending is just around the corner and our time on this tiny planet in a tiny corner in our unimaginably big and old universe represents but an infinitesimal flicker and is even quicker forgotten.

So we laugh back at the gods! And learn of the purpose of the universe in a blade of grass.

[Mystical]

Read through every page. I feel more optimistic than my original reaction a few days ago. I use Affinity Photo literally every day since the v1 days. I am just a hobbyist but still have a decent passive side income from some of the work I do/did in the program, so not sure where I rank in the level of 'importance' as a customer to Affinity. In all honesty Canva probably sees my value as negative 0 since their subscription users as 'worth' more to them. Probably the same way no one will read this post. So obviously its a little powerless knowing the tools you enjoy and have fun creating fun stuff with could change in the future in a very dramatic way.

I mostly use the Affinity programs for fun non-monetary projects in gaming so I've become quite attached to the Affinity programs (especially photo) in my project pipeline. I once was just as attached to Adobe products being the biggest fan as far back as the 'video collection' CS bundle days and the same way I was a huge supporter of Alias' Maya. Sadly both Adobe and Maya (when Autodesk bought them) went the subscription route so I dropped them. I got lucky with Substance Painter though when it came on the market. I owned it but also owned 3D Coat and took a liking to 3D Coats painting system more so feel I dodged a bullet when Substance Painter got bought by Adobe and removed perpetual. Technically you can buy a standalone of Substance on Steam ... but lets be honest, you still have to log into a steam account to use the tool, not not 'true' perpetual. This is one loophole of 'yes we have perpetual' Affinity doesn't do where they require you to log into a 3rd party program like steam to buy a 'perpetual' license.

It was hard for me to imagine a world (in this case a computer I owned) without Maya, Adobe, and Substance Painter installed but it eventually happened. It was a few months of transition having to search and research new programs finding the right fit and honestly it worked out well. With Blender releasing their major 2.8+ release I was able to still do competent 3D Modeling work with even Maya interface friendly add-ons so I felt right at home. With Affinity its non-destructive and good performance made me more happy then I ever was with Photoshop. I also have Davinci Resolve to fill the void of Adobe Premier Pro and use Hitfilm Pro as my stop-gap for the minor motion graphics but still hoping one day Affinity could make an After Effect competitor which lead me to my final topic.

Now that Affinity has the funds and support I'm not just hoping the current programs keep receiving great new updates and features but hope this means the affinity toolset can expand as well. An After Effects motion graphic program made by affinity would honestly but the best outcome of this acquisition for me. It feels like the next logical program in  Affinity's wheelhouse to create, motion graphics programs were the hardest to find alternatives to for me. Only time will tell of course what we see Affinity release in the future but for now I will remain more optimistic than worrying about having to find alternatives again.

[albertkinng]

Just for laughs 🤣

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

Of course we plan ahead. Yet expect our plans to be thwarted at every turn and hope for lady luck to deign us her favour.

What you are describing is called defeatism. As in, no matter what one does they fully expect to fail or are excessively willing to accept that they will.

IOW, it is an extremely negative way of looking at the world, one that thankfully is not representative of how most people think.

[SrPx]

Philosophical theories apart, there's clearly a good chance for the future of Affinity and its users of being bright, more than before, now with a strong company behind it. And from what MikeV told us, it seems to be a better actor than those that tend to make these big operations, and also from what he explained, the possibility of an Adobe buyout is unlikely due to Australian regulation (as was said in the initial video, Canva is an Australian company, HQ in Sydney, if I'm not wrong). Yet so, it doesn't harm to be training in other tools as well (I might have like 40 tools graphics related installed, lol), it will expand everyone's knowledge, and for some, it would probably cure their anxiety. I understand that those not being solo freelancers (hello), neither hobbyists, but having the responsibility of a full organization (even if it is only a few workers) have quite less margin, more compromises and responsibilities, and so, more reasons to be anxious. But till some extent they might be able to apply a bit of this, hopefully. Anyway, I've got a good feeling about the whole thing.

[albertkinng]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

IOW, it is an extremely negative way of looking at the world, one that thankfully is not representative of how most people think.

True, I'm ready for Canva Designer, Canva Photo and Canva Publisher.

[JGD]

On 3/28/2024 at 11:43 AM, Amontillado said:

I hope there's a hidden message in all this from Canva. Despite the extreme negativity, this forum continues public visibility. I hope that means Canva is willing to give customer complaints due attention.

If Canva hasn't gotten the word about how subscriptions would impact their market, they are completely hopeless.

I mean… They may look at Adobe and the fact that there’s nobody else with a complete DTP package (never was, in fact… Macromedia only had FreeHand, Flash and Dreamweaver), do their math and realize they’re willing to leave on the table one or two out of the three million of perpetual licenses that Serif sold, because maybe they convert at least a third of them to a more expensive subscription and finance the app with the proceeds from their main Canva customer base. The math doesn’t work in our favour, I’m afraid.

[debraspicher]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

What you are describing is called defeatism. As in, no matter what one does they fully expect to fail or are excessively willing to accept that they will.

IOW, it is an extremely negative way of looking at the world, one that thankfully is not representative of how most people think.

I think even that's reading too much into it. I understood what they were saying the first time and it's not "defeatist" to be realistic. Defeatist would be sticking with a broken solution that isn't really working out for them because we think "Oh, we won't get treated better elsewhere...". I can look backwards and see the lapses in judgement in both developmental decisions, communication, etc and come to a factually balanced conclusion that production will not lead to higher quality until they've shown even a desire to commit to a better record. (Speedier addition of features... yay, even more bugs). If what is available is sufficient for that person's use-case, then by all means, continue forward unencumbered... Edit: Like most people, I hate transitioning, so its out of necessity atp.

[JGD]

On 3/28/2024 at 11:38 AM, Patrick Connor said:

I cannot allow this to stand. Gary Bates and Jim Bryce were both very long term employees in Sales and Development for well over 20 years long before they took on Director roles. They dedicated their careers to both the Serif Legacy range and the Affinity range. Please stop this

@PaulEC did well in apologizing, and I won’t pile up on your colleagues with basic assumptions, either. But you do know that both things can be true, right? Having dedicated themselves honestly to the products and the company, and still having gotten a golden parachute of sorts and leaving said company in the hands of another whose licensing model – which, let’s face it, was at least half of the reason many of your current customers picked your products in the first place – is completely antithetical to that of Serif, I mean. Which, no matter which way you slice it, is what effectively happened here. If anything happens to Affinity, it will completely and irreversibly tarnish their legacy, I’m afraid, and you also know that, and you also know we’ll be here in the forums to remind you of it before the bosses at Canva turn off the lights.

Anyway, I won’t dwell too much on that, and just add another €0,02; this just made me realise that Serif would have actually done better in having offered a hybrid subscription/perpetual model from the get-go, perhaps with faster releases. It would’ve either prevented this mess in the first place, or make us believe that Canva would at least have a great working example of a hybrid model to learn from and accept into its portfolio. But nah, the optics of this are definitely not as rosy as your pledges paint it.

We will only barely trust Canva – and, by extension, Serif employees and Serif as a subsidiary, because that’s the new hierarchy now – and be at ease after a few hybrid releases, with proper reassurances that we won’t ever lose access to our apps and our files in at least some capacity (again, Typeface.app’s licensing model comes to mind, and it would be great if Canva actually opened up about their future plans and pledged on whatever model they have coming).

Yeah, it’s a terrible position to be in, and I don’t envy you, but if you’ve ever been through a breakup, an infidelity episode, or whatever, surely you know how these things work. It’s hard to regain trust once it’s broken, and the company they picked, the naïveté of thinking that such a set of pledges wouldn’t be necessary at all on day 1 but then also thinking they would be enough moving forward, etc., doesn’t bode well at all for the future.

Only time and the actual goods will fix it, and I’m not just talking about v2.5 and v2.x, but also v3 and beyond. We will trust those pledges when we see them being delivered upon and when we can finally say “ah, Canva changed its ways, its target market and business model, and became more flexible and welcoming towards us, just like Serif was”. It would have to be a bit like the Apple+NeXT “merger”, with Serif sort of taking over or at least heavily influencing the culture of the combined corporate entity, and being such a smaller team on a different continent, and being blatantly called just “the last piece of the puzzle” (what “puzzle”? World domination? I know I wouldn’t want to be reduced to that, especially if the products I was responsible for were supposedly the higher tier ones, oof), nah, mate, it ain’t happenin’.

Oh, but there’s more! No matter how any of this plays out, Canva itself, and by extension everything contained therein, also has to survive the inevitable IPO (ahh, see, there’s your “world domination”), that its cash-lusting VC backers will inevitably push for. Which may obviously include an acquisition by Adobe itself during a monopoly-friendly US administration, something we all know is always around the corner. Do you also want to deny that plain, painful and obvious truth behind this entire charade? 🤔

We trusted you, at Serif, to not to sell out to Adobe, on account of it being a longstanding competitor, like Quark or Corel, and especially on being small and having survived all these years to an onslaught of acquisition attempts which we’re sure you were a target of… I suspect we’ll never trust Canva as much, even after an extra decade of bold and exciting Affinity versions and perpetual licenses, because… you’ve guessed it, Macromedia and spineless shareholders. We’ve seen this exact scenario play out before, and there’s nothing you, or Canva, or anyone else for that matter can ever do to make us forget it, it will always be on the back of our minds. 🤷‍♂️

And yep, I know this is a 180° turn over an earlier comment of mine, sorry, but I hadn’t heard about the whole VC and investment fund situation, nor that Canva’s founders and owners were such zillionaires already… I really thought their product, while certainly big, was not that popular and pervasive, but now I do and I’m still in a bit of a shock. Moving back to CC does seem almost like a sensible move, IMHO, because opportunity costs and investment in new tools are absolutely part of any such equation (you know that, and I’ve always held Serif employees to account regarding this factor even when discussing product features themselves, let alone momentous business decisions like this one). And you also know I’m a teacher who’s been warning my students of all those sorts of caveats regarding Affinity, and now I have an extra big one to add to the top of the list. We’ll obviously be installing your software on our machines and providing them with access to it because, yes, you may become the next “Macromedia” and the alternative industry standard, but also warning them about seriously learning how to use CC because it’s still the standard in the corporate world and… you may indeed become the next “Macromedia” and be gobbled up. What a mess, yikes! 😬

[Rodi]

6 hours ago, albertkinng said:

 My journey with Adobe began in 1994, but the introduction of Creative Cloud (CC) marked the beginning of my dissatisfaction. After a year of using CC, I was troubled by the realization that discontinuing my payment would mean losing access to all my cloud-saved documents and apps. This felt like Adobe was coercing me into a perpetual subscription, prompting me to explore alternatives.

I

 

Adobe, in the font world, got a patent (due to being chummy with the then President) for a font that is historically well known (Garamond) and honestly, a pilfering of Berthold Garamond by Günter Gerhard Langes revival of Garamond in the early 70s... Then what they did with the ScannGraphic font Today Sans (a beautiful font!) and made it an Adobe exclulsive named Kronos... What they did with Ares Font products (Font Chameleon, Font Monger, Fonthopper, Font Studio) was buy and can.

Then what they did Freehand... that was the death knell of competition in DTP on that level.

Adobe has a bad rep in my mind for most everything.

[mehdy]

Hi Canva, Affinity for Android devices maybe? 🤔

[SrPx]

6 hours ago, JGD said:

Which may obviously include an acquisition by Adobe itself during a monopoly-friendly US administration, something we all know is always around the corner.

I'm curious... One of our Australian forum members, MikeV, discards this possibility, due to Canva's HQ happening to be in Sydney, Australia, and how Australian regulators are tending to deal with this sort of thing there :

" Adobe takeover
One of the concerns raised in this thread is the potential for Adobe to buy Canva – given the mood and direction of Australian competition regulators I think this is so unlikely that it does not figure in my calculations. "   

After  what has happened with Figma (Adobe tried to acquire it recently), apparently this is not such an automatic thing to expect, these days. There are some articles about it : 
https://www.afr.com/technology/no-one-can-buy-canva-now-other-start-ups-beware-20231220-p5esr8

Edit: Ouch, sorry. It seems that article is partially behind a paywall...  I could read it completely, but it seems for some reason it only shows up full when searching some stuff in Google, not accessing it directly... (I am not familiar with that site, BTW). But one of  the key points of it is that Australian companies have it pretty hard to do such operation now, due to regulation (what MikeV described).

What I am finding more in Google goes more in the lines of several sources expecting more of a competition from Canva against Adobe, grabbing more market from Adobe in the low, to low-mid end. Obviously Adobe will keep non challenged in the very high end, not just as its apps are immensely more advanced and professional, but -almost more important- because many industries (not only the game and film industries) have their pipelines, workflows, custom solutions, trained teams, tightly tied to Adobe. But a huge pie of the market is the low end (175 millions of users in Canva is no small thing) and part of a bit higher tier.

Even more the case when our skills are less and less needed (and I can't understand why people don't realize that this is the biggest danger for artists, designers, photographers, etc, but not just from Canva, but any apps with full AI art and design generation, like MidJourney , Dall-E, etc), so, the low end users can finally do a lot of work without our services (in Canva, and similar solutions), and then, the "pie" that canva can grab is significantly bigger than what it was the potential Canva's user base before. WAY more the case if they start implementing Affinity's tech inside Canva solutions (to an extent... I don't see a lot of their user base getting super technical! It's not that profile), and also keeping the branch of Affinity's standalone suite. As in, I think it aspires to way more  than the social media graphics and fast stuff for marketing people and small business owners saving bucks on designers and artists that it was its market till now. This challenges a large chunk of Adobe's user base. And from what I am digging out there, it seems I was not the only one suspecting that Canva's thing is not to be bought, but to compete with the giant, as at this point, well, it's a giant itself and it has a lot to win.

I am not saying this to challenge your opinion. I am genuinely curious about all this matter, and I might be wrong, as I'm just barely reading about these things now, pretty ignorant in finances stuff, and English is not my first language, but seems to be there quite a bunch of articles supporting this theory and right now I am not finding anything suggesting the possibility of an Adobe--> Canva buyout. But who knows.

 

[MikeV]

13 hours ago, Andy Somerfield said:

This is the most balanced take I've seen in this thread - thanks 👍

Hi Andy,

I think some of those commenting in this thread don't appreciate that this is a challenging time for all involved – including the Serif people. Kudos for keeping this forum open.

Having made two quite disastrous production software choices in the last decade I really wanted to get a deeper understand of the situation. I'm gun shy, and don't want to make a third bad decision – stay and eventually lose access to production files or abandon software that is going to improve and expand – particularly into fixed format ePub.

My post was a summary of thoughts to date. I wasn't sure it would contribute to the debate – it goes on a bit. In the end I felt some of the local knowledge might be helpful to others.

Having though more overnight, and read recent responses including from NewInBoston, RC–R and SrPx – I'm feeling one degree more confident that this might all work out okay.

Mike

[lphilpot]

2 hours ago, debraspicher said:

...it's not "defeatist" to be realistic. Defeatist would be sticking with a broken solution that isn't really working out for them because we think "Oh, we won't get treated better elsewhere...".

Exactly. I'll take realism -- even if it superficially looks pessimistic at times -- rather than rose-colored glasses. I don't like surprises. My ultimate advantage over many here is that I'm not making my living with Affinity. I feel for those who are in an uncomfortable (to say the least) situation at the moment. The principles and fallout still apply to me, just not as potentially painful nor disruptive.

And again, I hope it all works out, but I'll have to see it with my own four eyes. 🙂 

[MikeV]

14 minutes ago, SrPx said:

I'm curious... One of our Australian forum members, MikeV, discards this possibility, due to Canva's HQ happening to be in Sidney, Australia, and how Australian regulators are tending to deal with this sort of thing there :

" Adobe takeover
One of the concerns raised in this thread is the potential for Adobe to buy Canva – given the mood and direction of Australian competition regulators I think this is so unlikely that it does not figure in my calculations. "   

After  what has happened with Figma (Adobe tried to acquire it recently), apparently this is not such an automatic thing to expect, these days. There are some articles about it : 
https://www.afr.com/technology/no-one-can-buy-canva-now-other-start-ups-beware-20231220-p5esr8

Hi SrPx,

Canva was started in Perth (the capital of Western Australia) and is now headquartered in Sydney, Australia – depending on the day either the largest or second-largest city in the country. An aside – Sydney not Sidney.

The Australian Financial Review is Australia's business paper of record. The article reflects our tightening regulatory landscape around acquisitions – currently there are major debates about market concentration in several industries and sectors – particularly supermarkets.

While never say never, it would have to be a dramatic black swan moment for Adobe to take control of Canva. The Review takes the attitude that this is bad for start-ups that just want to be bought by big tech as an exit strategy – which for us as users of Affinity software is a source of comfort.

I agree with you and other comments that Canva's acquisition provides near total protection from an Adobe buy-and-kill Affinity move. It is one concern that was off my list immediately.

Mike

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, debraspicher said:

I understood what they were saying the first time and it's not "defeatist" to be realistic.

OK, but how realistic is to compare what Adobe did to Freehand to what people fear Canva will do to Affinity? Canva has no reason to kill Affinity because unlike Adobe they do not have any products that compete with Affinity.

[MikeV]

10 hours ago, lphilpot said:

I think it could depend on the level and nature of the AI services being offered. For 'from-scratch' AI content generation, yes, there will be an ongoing cost which could require continuing revenue / licensing.

Hi,

I agree completely.

The post was pretty long so I used Luminar Neo as a shorthand. Once you penetrate their confusing pricing structure and very persistent marketing they offer a perpetual licence option for their basic photo software that includes AI assisted functions like smart masking, relight, enhance and structure. These adjustments are all done on-device.

While their generative AI functions to extend images, and to swap and erase/replace elements are in separate 'modules' that require a subscription and Internet connection. As yet they don't offer start-from-scratch image generation, but I would expect such a function if offered would require a subscription.

As hardware becomes more powerful and the 'AI' elements more developed I could see more of these abilities being executed on-device and so moving from subscription to perpetual purchase.

Mike

[albertkinng]

2 hours ago, Rodi said:

Adobe has a bad rep in my mind for most everything.

They once attempted to prevent other software from appropriating PostScript technology, a move that could be considered malevolent.

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, SrPx said:

After  what has happened with Figma (Adobe tried to acquire it recently), apparently this is not such an automatic thing to expect, these days. There are some articles about it : 
https://www.afr.com/technology/no-one-can-buy-canva-now-other-start-ups-beware-20231220-p5esr8

Edit: Ouch, sorry. It seems that article is partially behind a paywall...  I could read it completely, but it seems for some reason it only shows up full when searching some stuff in Google, not accessing it directly... (I am not familiar with that site, BTW). But one of  the key points of it is that Australian companies have it pretty hard to do such operation now, due to regulation (what MikeV described).

You can read the article here. 

[SrPx]

Thank you   (Alfred)

[SrPx]

4 hours ago, MikeV said:

Hi SrPx,

Canva was started in Perth....

Thank you very much for all the accurate information. It is indeed quite a positive aspect of the whole thing. As you say, at least one concern less to have.

( and I deeply apologize for the mistake with "Sydney"... I just edited it... In that case I can't put the blame on my broken English    )
 

[bbrother]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

What tangible reason(s) do you have to think Canva is evil? It can't just be because they are a for-profit company because that would mean almost all companies including Serif & a bunch of Affinity users who make a living using that & other software also are evil.

I have no problem with the fact that they earn a lot. It's about how they do it and what practices they use to achieve such huge revenues.

@R C-R Go check out Canva's reviews.

• Automatic renewal after the trial period ends
• No warnings that the free trial period is ending
• Minimum commitment period for some plans
• Billing before the billing period
• Strange, not transparent pricing rules
• Making it difficult to unsubscribe, terrible support
• No telephone, contact only by e-mail and only after logging in

These are just some of the things Canva users complain about ↑, the list is much longer but I won't bore you with it.
If you think earning money this way is ok, we probably have completely different standards.

 

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

Surely it can't be because you don't like the output users of their software produce.

If someone likes these crappy tools from Canva for very basic things like creating cheap content for social media, then that's their business i don't care.

But don't think that apart from injecting money into Affinity, Canva has anything to offer, even when it comes to cloud solutions, which if Serif wanted to introduce, it could do without Canva's help. Soon, when Serif will release updates, we will see what will result from this marriage and whether Canva's money will translate into a more professional and stable application with fewer bugs.

But to be optimistic, you must have at least some basis for thinking so.

So Serif, oh s**t, sorry, not Serif anymore, just Canva, get to work and prove me wrong.

[MikeV]

23 minutes ago, SrPx said:

Thank you very much for all the accurate information. It is indeed quite a positive aspect of the whole thing. As you say, at least one concern less to have.

( and I deeply apologize for the mistake with "Sydney"... I just edited it... In that case I can't put the blame on my broken English    )
 

Thought I would check out the 'fate' of other Canva acquisitions. A couple follow this trajectory. I thought was one might be of interest – Canva's announcement in February of 2022:

https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/flourish/

and this is the Flourish web site today:

https://flourish.studio/

Let's hope this is also the Affinity story.

Also no apologies need. It's  a common mistake that mixes Sidney – a first name – with Sydney a surname. The city was named after Viscount later Baron Sydney a prominent UK politician of the late 1700s. Much more egregious is pronouncing Bondi as in Bondi Blue iMac and Bondi Beach as Bondee rather than Bon-die.

M

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, MikeV said:

It's  a common mistake that mixes Sidney – a first name – with Sydney a surname. The city was named after Viscount later Baron Sydney a prominent UK politician of the late 1700s.

Just to add to the confusion, the first Baron Sydney was Robert Sidney before he was elevated to the peerage.

Barons rank lower than viscounts. Robert Sidney became Baron Sydney in 1603, Viscount Lisle in 1605, and finally Earl of Leicester in 1618.

[CLC]

7 hours ago, SrPx said:

https://www.afr.com/technology/no-one-can-buy-canva-now-other-start-ups-beware-20231220-p5esr8

Edit: Ouch, sorry. It seems that article is partially behind a paywall...

Here is an archived version of the article before it got paywalled https://archive.is/tpn6p so everyone can read it.

  

7 hours ago, SrPx said:

Even more the case when our skills are less and less needed (and I can't understand why people don't realize that this is the biggest danger for artists, designers, photographers, etc, but not just from Canva, but any apps with full AI art and design generation, like MidJourney , Dall-E, etc), so, the low end users can finally do a lot of work without our services (in Canva, and similar solutions), and then, the "pie" that canva can grab is significantly bigger than what it was the potential Canva's user base before. WAY more the case if they start implementing Affinity's tech inside Canva solutions (to an extent... I don't see a lot of their user base getting super technical! It's not that profile), and also keeping the branch of Affinity's standalone suite. As in, I think it aspires to way more  than the social media graphics and fast stuff for marketing people and small business owners saving bucks on designers and artists that it was its market till now. This challenges a large chunk of Adobe's user base. And from what I am digging out there, it seems I was not the only one suspecting that Canva's thing is not to be bought, but to compete with the giant, as at this point, well, it's a giant itself and it has a lot to win.

Exactly what's on my mind. Also it's exactly the reason why artists are mad and starting to ai-poison their artworks. EU just started talking about control of ai and its usage, let's hope they will take us in account.

Hollywood lobby got their way around video piracy, we should want to do the same to protect us. Especially for those who use LAION-5B dataset for their commercial ai models.

Well, I personally am not fan of the takeover and worry that Affinity as we know it will cease to exist and will be turned into something different. I switched back to Adobe CC for my business needs when I saw no real progress in V2, yet I still use sometimes for some small personal projects, just because I'm sorry to let the money I've spent on it and the many add-ons burn.

We'll see if the pledge is true and Canva will help Serif to grow Affinity to a better suite.