The death of Serif Affinity

[Derek Smith]

Canva has bought out Affinity. I use their software: photo, Publisher and Designer, as good as the similar products from Adobe for my needs and for less than a year's subscription. A lot less. But they've sold out.

I suppose part of the reason is the cost of continually improving the software with no regular income stream. But still a downer for me. I lose nothing I suppose as the software is a 'for life' purchase and it is more than sufficient for me at the moment and there seems to be no major upgrade in cameras coming soon, but I'm a bit irritated.

This will not go well for Affinity fans.

[Riley Blue]

That's a bit sad. It was Page Plus, Draw Plus and Photo Plus that got me involved with magazine production in the first place, a long while ago. I moved on later to InDesign, Xpress, Photoshop and Lightroom but for a long while those are what I learnt with and used.

[Derek Smith]

Riley Blue said:

That's a bit sad. It was Page Plus, Draw Plus and Photo Plus that got me involved with magazine production in the first place, a long while ago. I moved on later to InDesign, Xpress, Photoshop and Lightroom but for a long while those are what I learnt with and used.

I had the whole Serif range pre Affinity, including Movie Plus, although I used PS as well. Photo Plus was great when all you needed was a quick crop or edit. When Affinity Photo came out in Beta, I thought I'd give it a go, despite still using PS. I quite enjoyed the fun of its steady improvement until it was stable. I bought Photo and loved in. When the next subscription for PS came round, I pulled out. Never looked back. With the three Affinity programmes in Studio I thought it was perfect. Being able to swop programmes with just one click was a revolution for me.

I don't think, or maybe just can't remember, Affinity ever marketing Photo as an alternative or replacement for PS, and Photo2 stood on its own. When Affinity2 runs its course, Canva will go subscription. I won't follow. I don't use some of the facilities of Photo2 now, and I doubt anyone does. Or of PS come to that.

The interface took a little getting used to, not as much as DaVinci Resolve (still not subscription), but I preferred it.

It's a shame. Affinity was a breath of fresh air.

[steveatesh]

Lots of debate on the couple photography forums I follow, some anguished thinking and some optimistic thinking that Canva will enable AP to develop faster and better than Serif could manage.

For it to be made subscription would break its USP over PS and it would have to improve a lot to match the AI features in PS, or be a lot cheaper but the cost of a PS subscription does not leave much room for that.

Got to say my use of AP has decreased as Capture One has improved - I rarely have need of any pixel editor nowadays and the rare occasion I would need one would be for frequency separation or large object removal or substantial background changes. For the vast majority of my editing I use C1.

I hope Canva do develop it and keep it relevant, for me personally it has lost ground and most of the updates since V2 have not been anything I use.

[cobra kid]

Sounds more like a font!

[page3]

I'm still awaiting their promised DAM.

[sgrimshaw]

Derek Smith said:

It's a shame. Affinity was a breath of fresh air.

You'll have seen the latest update from Affinity then, #1 is especially relevant:

"Earlier this week we shared the news that Affinity had been acquired by Canva. As the dust settles on the announcement, we wanted to say more about our future and our commitment to the Affinity community.

Since our inception, both of our companies have shared the same mission and vision. We were both founded with the belief that design shouldn’t be limited to those who can afford complex software. Our goal has been to make the highest quality design tools available to the largest number of people with fair, transparent and affordable pricing at our core. By joining forces, we’re looking forward to accelerating this shared vision.

Above all, together, we’re committed to continuing and amplifying Affinity’s position as the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market, while continuing to empower millions of designers to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals.

1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future.

If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity. It could also allow us to offer Affinity users a way to scale their workflows using Canva as a platform to share and collaborate on their Affinity assets, if they choose to.

2. We will double down on expanding Affinity’s products through continued investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite.

We believe Affinity is the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market. It’s non-destructive, super fast, and easy to use. As such, we want to reassure you that it isn’t going anywhere.

In fact, we’re committed to using our shared resources to continue expanding Affinity’s products through further investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite. We’re looking forward to accelerating the rollout of highly requested features such as variable font support, blend and width tools, auto object selection, multi-page spreads, ePub export and much more.

These additions will further cement Affinity as the best advanced design suite on the market and will be released over the coming year as free updates to V2.

3. We will provide Affinity free for schools & NFPs.

Canva, which has pledged 30% of its value as a company towards doing good in the world through its two-step plan, offers premium plans at no cost to schools and NFPs all over the world. More than 60 million students and teachers, plus 600,000 charities and registered nonprofits, benefit from this each month.

We’re excited to extend this programme to include free access for schools and nonprofits to Designer, Photo and Publisher. These professional-grade tools will add enormous value to this free offering, helping millions of students to master the craft of design, and empowering mission driven organisations to amplify their voices and maximize their impact.

We’ll share more details on this in the coming months, including what it means for our education and NFP customers that already use Affinity.

4. We are committed to listening and being led by the design community at every step in this journey.

Affinity and Canva were both founded on the basis that their respective communities – of expert and non-expert designers – deserved better. The tools available were overly complex, overly priced, or both. We know designers deserve better. They deserve the highest quality tools to serve their needs and they deserve to be treated fairly.

We also believe the design community also knows best what it needs. As such, we are committed to shaping our products based on your ideas, your feedback and your needs. To kick things off, we’d love to learn more about what you’d like to see as we embark on this next chapter of our journey. What would you like to see in Affinity? What features have you been dreaming of? What would you love to achieve? We’d love to hear from you here.

Thank you to everyone who has been an integral part of the journey so far. We’re excited for the future and can’t wait to see what we can build together.

With gratitude and excitement,
The Affinity and Canva Teams "

[dunkind]

Such a shame ………. He was like a father to me.

[Ace-T]

Crikey, this is a blast from the past. Used to work for Serif waaaaaay to many moons ago!

The dev team really put their heart and soul into trying to produce a set of good products.

The management team were an 'interesting' bunch.

[Derek Smith]

From various sources, it would appear that Canva want to challenge Adobe, producing a better Photoshop et al. That wasn't what the Serif crew wanted. The Affinity trio, especially in 2 mode, stood on its own. There were differences, and I preferred most of them. The Studio bit was good for me. I don't want something that, in the minds of the developers, is better than PS. I merely want Affinity3 to be an improvement of Affinity2.

That said, there were rumours that Affinity2 would be subscription only. Maybe Canva are not in it for the money but for the benefit of the non Adobe community as a whole.

Maybe.