ECLombardo Posted April 1 Share Posted April 1 I want to start by saying that my comments are my just my own opinion and my own viewpoint, albeit coming from the experience of of 30+ year creative profession in the commercial art industry, and as a fine artist. I recently reached out to the Affinity team in the hopes that I could purchase the universal suite but with a credit of what I had spent previously on the iPad versions alone. This request was denied and I understood and accepted that as fair. The suite was then put on the current sale and I was tempted to jump in to purchase it, but ultimately decided instead to wait for Black Friday or Cyber Monday in case there would be a better sale. My goal was to begin to move away from the Adobe Suite and begin to use Affinity as my main suite of creative tools. As I am no longer working in the field and not necessarily tied to the hold that Adobe has on the industry, I felt Affinity had a fantastic innovative approach to workflows that I wanted to explore without the stress of needing specific (Adobe) formats - either importing or exporting. This, however, was replaced with a deep feeling of being let down when it was announced that Canva purchased Affinity. Canva, in my humble opinion, not being a professional tool, was well suited for the hobbiest who would want to explore, or by entrepreneurs who needed quick, cheap and easy creative solutions to their business models. Mostly what I saw it used for was by people making invitations, paper crafts, or social media posts. At least that's how it started. I dipped my toe into it in its beginning, and even subscribed to their higher tier for the expanded options. Finding that it didn't yield me the more expansive space I needed for my creative projects, I dropped it and always considered it a good alternative to non-professionals who wanted/needed tools for their own needs but who didn't need the expensive suite of tools that Adobe offered. I've followed its growth since then, but still didn't find it to my needs and the needs of my colleagues. Affinity, however, was a different story. It burst on the scene with an exciting and robust suite of tools marketed towards professional designers and illustrators and pushed a narrative of being an alternative to the very expensive Adobe stronghold - which lacked the amazingly innovative and integrated ecosystem that Affinity had to offer. So much so that as I mentioned, I was ready to leave Adobe (that I had been a client of since Photoshop v1) to replace Affinity as my one and only go-to for my professional needs. I now feel very let down that a product so heavily marketed to professionals was bought out by a company that was more suitable for the hobbiest, entrepreneur or student. It would be as if Windsor and Newton were bought out by RoseArt. This is not an elitist rant - the fact is that there are artist grade tools and there are student grade tools in every medium. However, when the student grade buys out the professional grade it only devalues the latter to make the opposite version seem more valuable. That may look great for Canva users (which is used quite a bit by POD creators and others who want to make a quick buck on Etsy - don't believe me? Look on youtube to see how many "easy ways to make 100 gazillion dollars a month using Canva and Etsy by making mugs and t-shirts" videos there are), but it's degrading to those professionals who really looked towards Affinity as a valid and strong professional set of creative tools. In a world where art is already looked upon as a luxury service for many budget minded companies (and usually the first department on the chopping block), scoffed at as unnecessary and not "true" professions, heavily criticized (as all art is subjected to opinion), facing unfair comparison by AI-generated slop come to life by mere word "prompts", and has already suffered the loss of many talented people due to the easy-to-use digital tools used by untrained "creators". Hand-created art has already been losing its value over the years as it is (except for in countries like Japan where artists are highly regarded and valued for their talent). Losing a suite as valuable as Affinity to the lure of Canva and it's truck-load of cash was, again, highly disappointing to this professional who looked forward to breaking free of Adobe's hold of the profession. I'm now very glad I didn't make the purchase of your suite. For me, Affinity's future will lie now in the hands of a company who's objective has been to make it easy for anyone to crank out mass produced garbage to flood social media sites and shopping platforms like Etsy - who by the way, also turned their backs on artisans to allow said mass-produced garbage to be sold on their site. Adobe is losing their way too, I am aware of this. They have been slowly integrating AI tools into their own ecosystem too. I'm not oblivious to that. But at least it still remains focused on professional creative needs and the artists who make their careers in the industry. I'm very disheartened to see that for me, Affinity will ultimately be reduced to nothing more than tools to make quick social media posts, facebook reels, and other uninspired marketing tripe. What a bright future that will be indeed. KC Honie and thebodzio 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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