The way forward for Affinity Designer, Picture and Writer, subscription-free alternate options to Adobe Inventive Cloud, was unsure after the apps’ developer Serif was acquired by Canva in 2024. Now, over a 12 months later, the modifications Canva has launched are massive, however not essentially unwelcome. The newly relaunched Affinity by Canva combines all three apps right into a single piece of illustration, photograph enhancing and format software program, and quite than transfer to a subscription mannequin as many feared, Canva’s made it completely free. Or, not less than, freemium.
Affinity is offered now as a desktop app for macOS and Home windows, with an iPadOS model on the best way in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later. The essential performance of the app does not appear all that completely different from the three separate apps Serif provided earlier than, solely now you may toggle between their instruments through separate Vector, Pixel and Format tabs. Canva stresses you even have the choice to combine and match instruments, and save customized toolbars to make use of for particular varieties of initiatives, in order for you.
Past layering in chunky serif fonts, Canva’s contact appears comparatively mild. The Affinity app now requires a free Canva account to make use of and provides integrations with the corporate’s suite of instruments, with a brand new choice to ship an Affinity challenge on to Canva. The corporate can be making its Canva AI Studio instruments obtainable in Affinity, giving customers the flexibility to robotically take away a background or use Generative Fill to edit a part of a photograph. How nicely veteran Affinity customers will take to those modifications stays to be seen, however they’re going to not less than be capable of proceed utilizing their current copies of the outdated Affinity V2 lineup.
Free sounds good, however one of many attracts of the unique Affinity inventive suite is that you possibly can buy a license for Serif’s particular person apps and never ever have to consider it once more. Canva is promising that the brand new Affinity might be free going ahead, however a free app that requires an account and would possibly attempt to upsell you on subscription-based AI options shouldn’t be fairly the identical factor.
Affinity wasn’t the one Adobe competitor to be acquired in 2024. Pixelmator, a developer of common photograph and picture enhancing instruments for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, was absorbed by Apple in November that very same 12 months. The corporate’s apps proceed to be maintained, however it’s nonetheless not clear if Apple plans to shift them to a subscription mannequin sooner or later.