Serif is the company that originally built this software.

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2014–2024

Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model:

- Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent)

- Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent)

- Affinity Publisher: print and layout design (Adobe InDesign equivalent)

They were solid, professional tools without subscriptions like Adobe, a big reason why many designers loved them.

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2024

Canva acquired Serif.

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2025 (today)

The product has been relaunched. The three apps are now merged into a single app, simply called Affinity, and it follows a freemium model.

From what I’ve tested, you need a Canva account to download and open the app (you can opt out of some telemetry during setup).

The new app has four tabs:

- Vector: formerly Affinity Designer

- Pixel: formerly Affinity Photo

- Layout: formerly Affinity Publisher

- Canva AI: a new, paid AI-powered section

Screenshot https://imgur.com/a/h1S6fcK

Hope can help!

To me this is exactly why you would want to buy software licenses as one-time purchases - the company can't rug pull you for what you already bought. If I want, I can keep using the Affinity apps on this machine indefinitely.

It seems a lot of people are really frustrated that they purchased software and now the company is doing something else. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a license for standalone software that you are protected in case the company goes under, or gets bought, or decides to do something else?

Do people think the apps they bought are going away? Or did they expect to get free updates forever for their one-time purchase? Or am I missing something in this announcement?

But since they promised not to go subscription when they got acquired by Canva, making it free with AI as the subscription is a clever solution to not break their promise while still introducing a subscription model.

I think their bet is enough people will want the AI, which I think is correct.

As a long time Affinity user, first reaction was: "see, there is the subscription", but on second thought, fair enough, well played. I'll probably get the AI subscription as well.

I do wonder if over time more features will go into that premium plan, but we'll see.

Edit: It seems like some of the AI stuff runs on device, they are not very clear about what does or doesn't. That makes me change my opinion a bit, as that's just straight up a freemium subscription model.

- they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it. You might have paid for perpetual access to it 2 months ago, but it has completely stopped. As the world moves on (new chips, new OS features, just general software movement) this will increasingly feel like a second-class experience.

- the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it. it is also practically guaranteed to feed your work into AI unless you buy pro sometime in the next 5 years

In short, something secure, top class, the "best the company offers" product doesn't exist anymore. What was once there isn't.

There is absolutely nothing in the world that anyone can say to convince me that this is not the end for Affinity. Every single product that went through this ended up being an ad data gathering subscription pushing unusable app for anything useful.

I have both a V1 and V2 license. V2 is probably now useless considering that it will never get any updates. This marks the death of one of the last popular pay once and use forever apps (in the sense that a V3 with new features will never exist).

Just noticed the AI feature integrations are locked behind a premium sub, makes sense to go for a wide funnel with a premium free product then up-sell to people who want the AI integration, should turn out to be commercially successful.

Really hoping a Linux version is in the works. Hopefully the exodus from Windows picks up so we can accelerate the timeline for Linux support. (Currently using the amazing https://photopea.com for most image edits on Linux)

C'est la vie, all good things must come to an end. I'm glad the original team made it out with a financial reward (from Canva sale)...

Time for someone else to pick up the mantle! [and for everyone else to stop moaning]

The last suite with this name had a terrible UI. Canva also owns Leonardo which is pretty great so perhaps this will have a decent UI now that they've bought and revamped it.

This is 100 miles away from the interoperability of Adobe's Dynamic Link whereby apps such as Premier and After Effects are 'united' in a manner that feels clunky and forced. Almost all Adobe apps were acquisitions, and most of them are now horrendously long in the tooth. Uniting them seamlessly would be impossible.

I adore Affinity photo for its top to bottom support for high dynamic range images. Editing RAW images is a buttery smooth dream, compared to Photoshop, which feels like I am banging my head against the software.

I paid for V1, paid again after they released V2 even though I was on Linux which they didn't support. I did it mostly out of support, and also because the community was making strides to get a decent wine setup working, so I would eventually get back to using it if I ever felt like it.

More diversity in creative software is always nice to have, and it's good to keep challenging the idea that "Adobe is dominant because it's the best solution". Tho I don't feel like Canva is quite the player I'd be rooting for either.

Fortunately, they seem to be handling the existing lifetime licenses a lot better than Autograph did when it got acquired by Maxon.

Overall I think I'm rooting for them. Good luck Affinity!

Edit: Just checked out the app. They essentially put Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher together in one app, switchable from a tab. Honestly, it's executed well. I hope it stays free—these apps are legitimately useful replacements for their Adobe equivalents.

So far what I've got is a new amazing photo editor that's unlike GIMP has "Inpaint brush" and "Patch tool" and even has free built-in image segmentation model and tons of other good features and even, seems, should support Photoshop plugins. Even if every single new feature going from now on will be gated behind some absurdly priced subscription I'm still totally fine with what i've been given already.

No way they bet entirely on AI thing popping off, unless they'll come up with their own "Nano Banana" idk who really needs simple "text to image" model, and even if they do it's still not that good to be worthy of subscription. On another note subscription right now also gives access to three local running models: upscale, depth map generation and colorizer, pretty cool small models in addition to segmentation that's given for free, I guess they might end up adding additional later there. Another thing I see is that several third party services baked in, for example Dropbox in linked services and two stock image providers Pexels and Pixabay, maybe that covers some cost for them. On mysterious ploy to gather all users data for Big AI I see one concerning thing: Right away program asked whether I want to share data and I selected option "no" but then in settings suspicious "Send usage and performance data to Affinity" was enabled, either I forgot that I pressed yes or it's a bug or something intentional.

One of the great things about using the Affinity suite for the last few years has been the consistency of design conventions and key commands across all three programs, so of course it makes sense to merge them all!

Whereas Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign all have inherited different commands and conventions from their independent developments and are incongruent.

I'm so impressed by the workflow now. This feels like a tremendous win from a workflow standpoint.

Just tried the new affinity application for a couple hours and it's pretty great. Personas are now studios and as far as I can tell features from all apps are now integrated into one.

Giving this away for free is insane value and I am very glad to have this as a photoshop alternative.

- Inkscape is an obvious one --- there's also https://cenon.info/, perhaps Gravit Designer? Any word on Graphite.rs 's stand-alone desktop version?

- GIMP, Paint.net, Darktable and Krita

- Scribus or LaTeX or Typst

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/about/

Signing in launches a browser to complete the sign-in process, but on macOS it launches Safari, not my OS default browser – this takes extra work to do over just using the `openUrl` call on macOS. Safari is blocked.

Thankfully something on my system redirects the URL opening to pass it to my orgs enforced browser, I sign-in, and then nothing happens. The page says it has launched Affinity, but Affinity is sitting there doing nothing waiting for me to log in.

I realise I'm on a somewhat non-standard setup, but an OAuth login flow is not hard to get right. I've built dozens of these flows in my career and messing it up this much is hard.

Edit:

> To report a bug within the application, click the "?" button in the top-right corner of the workspace. From the panel, select "Report a Bug".

This menu is not accessible until you have signed in. No other method of bug reporting is provided.

> Generate a playful logo for product named "Serenity" using the style of Robin Hood forest and freedom themes

The result for such a simple prompt is pretty impressive: https://imgur.com/a/xLZlfQM, the produced artifact is already in vector format with tweakable curves, lines, and colors.

Well played, Canva. Maybe Affinity Studio is a smart move in the long run. I think I will be among Pro subscribers.

And I assume this is a supplement to (and not a replacement of) the existing Affinity applications?

Thanks, but no thanks.

If I install it, it should be mine to do whatever the hell I want to do with it, online OR OFFLINE.

I would be perfectly fine with paying for continued maintenance of V2.

  /Applications/Affinity.app/Contents/Resources/JSLib
  ├── application.js
  ├── artboardinterface.js
  ├── artboardproperties.js
  ├── baseboxinterface.js
  ├── brushfillinterface.js
  ├── buffer.js
  ├── collection.js
  ├── colours.js
  ...
  ├── units.js
  ├── vectorbrush.js
  └── visibilityinterface.js

Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.

It feels like the thread is being astroturfed.

They removed our software that we paid for from the Mac Store, and everyone is just like "thats fine, good move canva". Serif did a great job of keeping their software working through macOS major version updates. It's another reason many of us paid for their software. That's gone, and people are just cheering them on. It's very confusing.

I don't like the new UI. It feels dumbed down.

An UI design tab next please, some more players in that space would be nice.

I bought the Affinity v1 apps, buying into the vision for a no-BS forever app.

I was surprised to see a v2 app show up a year after I bought into v1 with what I remember was something like a 25% discount. But this was going to be the new forever app, and I understand wanting to get things right on a second pass.

Reading about how v2 will no longer get updates just makes me see red.

I mean, free tools are good. But I smell a road to enshittification (for example, by offering Affinity for free so you create Canva account, then they push Canva AI or whatever BS to you little by little, and in the end deprecate affinity so you would move to Canva web Pro Ultra Version with 90% off for the first 3 months). Could be wrong, will see I guess.

[Edit] Just to clarify something. It's not like I expect to pay for a license and get updates forever, but from what it seems like from other comments, the original apps are being removed from the App Store, meaning that the "free Affinity" is "Canva Flavored" Affinity, rather than the original tools.

They've missed a trick so far not making a Linux version. People have been crying out for ages that Adobe never made a Linux version of Photoshop, and with the whole Windows 11 debacle now and people shifting over it would make perfect sense.

If Serif was going to be acquired, I can't think of a better company to have done it.

That said, I'll try this when it will become necessary. Affinity tools were great. I downloaded the new Canva version, and although I'm not a fan of the new icons and general look and feel it seems okay. It feels a bit less responsive than the v2, that might be fixed with some "bug fixes & small improvements" releases. I might be just jaded and resigned.

Edit: Actually it is still possible to update.

I was worried when they bought Serif, but this new Affinity gives me hope. Canva makes good design products but they've been missing from the pro market. We all know Adobe runs that arena, and that most consumers are sick of their business practices. Canva is probably the best company positioned right now to compete with Adobe, and they have a huge incentive to bring users over. Keeping the base app free while enabling an optional subscriptions for the only remote component with operating costs lets Canva keep their top level funnel wide open. Even if most users don't pay for AI, that's still a huge number of people in the Canva ecosystem.

Of all the companies to buy Serif, Canva is probably the best case scenario.

I for one, think this is a really nice thing, and that it gives access to really well-made and actual professional-level design tools to a huge swath of people who didn't have it before, be it for personal use or for work. No previously included feature is now part of the subscription, and they've made sure to say they'll be free forever. I see this as a huge win.

[1] https://ibb.co/RkVgBFGw

Sure, it's free -- but it's no longer the same product with the same priorities.

1. They silently make it online only. Currently you need to make an account and be online on activation, so they're already one step closer to getting there.

2. They silently ditch the concept of buying and owning Affinity software, but that's okay because it's ~totally free~!

3. As soon as they lock in enough users from how nice and friendly they are, pull the rug. At some point they'll suddenly start locking features behind the pro subscription.

It's textbook at this point.

Why the account tie? Will it phone home to train yet another AI model on my image editing workflows? Will it work air-gapped?

I'm a loyal Serif customer and paid for their software. I LOVE Affinity. And I HATE "free" commercial products because they need to extract revenue from subscription services, ads, data selling etc.

This is the first step toward making Affinity become another rental application like Photoshop. Escaping Adobe's predatory business model is exactly why I became a Serif customer in the first place.

It's quite obvious that it's now a funnel into the subscription, and that's not great.

This is obviously the 'tech circle of life' in action, but... how depressing...

I've always been guilty of preaching market diversification but sticking with the big(ger) players, but this sort of thing illustrates the need for multiple, viable players that all have good market share, so that – whenever one gets cannibalised and debased into some VC-money-addled marketing funnel – there are others to which people can flock in support/protest

BUT I'm curious how they'll handle interoperability with existing workflows... Are there import/export paths for PSD, Sketch, Figma... Without that it's just another silo...

ALSO for freelancers and small teams licensing models matter... a subscription tied to an account can be a hurdle if you need to collaborate with clients outside the ecosystem...

Would love to see more clarity on offline use, local file formats and plugin APIs... those details make or break a creative suite...

Now it's "free" with an account and an optional subscription. Basically the opposite of why everyone supported them. Good luck, folks.

Was the case we had 2 really good options in enterprise data destruction. EBAN with a yearly license scheme, and BLANCCO with a per hard drive wiped license scheme.

BLANCCO buys EBAN, kills the product, but permits DBAN the open source variant to be available permanently, with no modern EBAN features, and no updates.

Of course they did make one change to DBAN, it leaves a small image on wiped hard drives advertising BLANCCO.

And ofc, there was nothing really preventing Blanccos per hard drive license from increasing.

I use both Affinity V2 and Canva. I used Affinity for finicky stuff, and Canva for pointy clicky template based construction when I need something simple, fast.

I detest Canva, despite using it. Everything is advertising for the premium version. And I expect Affinity to go the same way, Canvas elements will (if not already) be integrated, and those elements will in most cases advertise themselves as being paid assets. Eventually it will go the way of DBAN and just be an advertisement for Canva.

I will ride out V2 for as long as it continues to function. Then I will find something else.

This is a tremendous loss.

For those who want a lifetime license instead of freemium, Amandine* is similar to Affinity ($30 on Mac Store).

(I have no connection to either app).

* Edit: It's Amadine, not Amandine (my typo)

I don't want "Free", I want a situation where I can buy and own a perpetual license for the software.

The current apps are all released by Serif but have been made fully free recentyly.

So discontinued or what? Would be a real tragedy if it is...

Now it will become freeware, and by "freeware" I mean "nagware" because it will keep telling you about pro/AI features that you don't have access to.

Just like on Windows you don't own the system, on this "freeware" you don't own the software. You're a renter, a freeloader. So you can't complain about the ads. But you WANTED to just buy the thing so you wouldn't have to deal with ads. That option is now off the table.

Imagine if you bought a boat and you can't just enter every room of the boat, because the boat comes with a bouncer that stands in front of a certain door and he won't let you enter. That's what it feels like. Not only the boat isn't yours, it is also not a welcoming place to be. It will always feel like you're an outsider being conditionally allowed on someone's software instead of just being a guy using a thing you own.

I don't know. On some days I feel I just don't like software anymore.

Now I have to start over again? Ugghhh…

If you're not the customer - you're the product.

What I do hope to see is more talent and investment contributed to OSS tools. It would really benefit everyone if GIMP, Inkscape, Krita and others received the Blender treatment.

It requiring an account (and thus, internet connectivity) to use is offputting, though. That is a prime enabler of enshittification, since it allows Canva to force updates that users may not necessarily desire. Hopefully it's easy to reverse engineer so old versions can be preserved and remain functional.

Just in case any Canva engineer is reading this.

I'd love to have an actually free alternative to the offerings from those rapacious thugs over at Adobe.

/RANT

But this isn't actually free. Rather than paying with currency, you pay with your PII and, presumably, your attention as you're relentlessly marketed to by Canva and by whomever they decide to sell your PII.

This is all too common and folks seem to be okay with it for some unknown reason. If you walked into an art supply store, grabbed the stuff you wanted/needed and headed to the cashier with cash and they refused to sell you anything unless you provided them with your name, phone number, email address, etc., etc., etc. you'd likely walk out without purchasing anything. [N.B.: Yes, Radio Shack always asked for that info, but didn't require it for purchases.]

Yet it seems that selling your personal details and attention is perfectly fine online.

What's more, since you must have a valid "account" with Canva to use their "free" offering, you are also subject (generally without recourse) to changes in the licensing/subscription models and they can take it away whenever they feel like it. What could go wrong? It's not like that's ever been an issue, right?

I'd love to use Affinity Studio. But I won't. Because the price is too high for me.

I'd note that these sorts of shenanigans aren't limited to Canva -- far from it. It's just one more vendor contributing to the further enshittification of the tech sphere. And more's the pity.

/RANT

Why is/isn't it too "expensive" for you? (Note, this is a real question, not a poke at anyone.)

Edit: Fixed prose. Added to rant.

This could be good news, but as someone who paid for a perpetual license, I'm worried that some of the features I paid a one-time license for will eventually move to a Canva subscription model :(

The reason that worries me is that when I look at the feature chart, you've got "Affinity" compared with "Affinity + Canva Premium Plans."

Subscriptions make sense for certain services. I'm not opposed to a subscription model in general. But for creative tools, I LOATHE subscriptions. It means that my creative work is now held hostage by rent-seekers who require me to pay them monthly fees to be able to access my art work. NO!

So if I ever need a Canva Premium plan in the future to be able to use certain Affinity features that I've PAID FOR then fuck them, I'm abandoning them as fast I abandoned Adobe after being an Adobe user/customer for 30+ years.

  on macOS or Windows.

I just want to pay for nice software made by thoughtful people like a normal human.

Once they were bought by Canva, whose software I find atrocious, I gave up on it.

My problem with this is that it seems like a gateway to being forced to pay monthly, Adobe-style. Or else what they're really selling are the AI tools. Just sell me a solid piece of software I can keep using forever offline. I can still do all my design work in Illustrator CS6 if I want to haul out a 15 year old laptop. Sell me a version of that for Apple Silicon and I'll happily pay for it.

I bought (two different versions of) these apps specifically because they weren't a SaaS suite with a predatory monthly subscription model, and a constant barrage of cross-promotion and integration with their other products.

Now that Figma is public, it's rapidly become another fully enshittified SaaS suite whose only selling point is that there's nothing better out there for now. Affinity is now pivoting in the same direction. What a time to be a designer!

It being free means it'll eventually get enshittified though.

Oh well, I just bought V2. What worries me however is that it already used an account instead of a license key like V1...

No, thank you.

thank me later.

I'm not that hopeful though.. with freemium, everything is subject to be clawed back slowly into a subscription if the subscription offering fails to perform well enough.

I'm so sick of sellouts.

With a big dollop of AI slop on top.

Every single time some acquisition happens, this happens.

I am more than happy to pay good money for quality software to support a business so it doesn’t need to resort to this. Even a monthly subscription would have been preferable.

(Idk why everyone’s disappointed, it seems clear that canvas hopes the AI is good enough to get people to fork over their money. That’s… alright, as of now?)

Here's why that matters. The artboard background isn't part of a design - it’s a neutral filler color meant to visually separate artboards, much like the wall color in an art gallery. When the background is pure black, darker designs blend into it, making it almost impossible to distinguish artboard boundaries. The result? A confusing, visually fatiguing workspace.

Previous Affinity versions got this right: they used a neutral grey, a tried-and-true choice that rarely clashed with any design content.

Sadly, this feels like yet another case of form over function. I can easily imagine someone in-house thinking the black background "looked cool", but that aesthetic decision severely compromises usability - and says a lot about where priorities lie.

Canva's acquisition of Affinity gives off the same uneasy vibe as Broadcom buying VMware. Great tools, potentially questionable stewardship.

Absolutely great product, I hate Adobe with a passion you wouldn’t believe.

The only problem is in time it will probably become paid, as most things do. Oh well, then I’ll just uninstall.

It is all apps combined in one. It is free. Requires Canva account. AI features require Canva Premium subscription. No iPad app (yet). Still missing RTL support.

now glad people can unleash their creativity.

Into the trash it goes.

Once there was a great app, Gravit Designer. It produced the cleanest SVG markup. Too bad Corel murdered it.

- Goodness gracious, that icon. And 3.5GB?????

- Requires a login (so I suppose no disconnected operation)

- Seems to jumble together the vector, bitmap and publishing apps (which I very much prefer to have as separate things)

Mostly everything I've been able to try in 30 minutes seems to work, but a 3.5GB app is a sad sign of the times.

Will most likely keep using the old versions until they die on me, especially on the iPad.