The way forward for Affinity Designer, Photograph and Writer, subscription-free 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 adjustments 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 moderately than transfer to a subscription mannequin as many feared, Canva’s made it totally free. Or, at the very least, freemium.
Affinity is accessible now as a desktop app for macOS and Home windows, with an iPadOS model on the way in which sooner or later sooner or later. The fundamental performance of the app does not appear all that totally different from the three separate apps Serif supplied earlier than, solely now you possibly can toggle between their instruments through separate Vector, Pixel and Structure tabs. Canva stresses you even have the choice to combine and match instruments, and save customized toolbars to make use of for particular kinds of tasks, if you’d like.
Past layering in chunky serif fonts, Canva’s contact appears comparatively gentle. The Affinity app now requires a free Canva account to make use of and affords integrations with the corporate’s suite of instruments, with a brand new choice to ship an Affinity challenge on to Canva. The corporate can also be making its Canva AI Studio instruments obtainable in Affinity, giving customers the power to robotically take away a background or use Generative Fill to edit a part of a photograph. How properly veteran Affinity customers will take to those adjustments stays to be seen, however they will at the very least have the ability to proceed utilizing their current copies of the previous Affinity V2 lineup.
Free sounds good, however one of many attracts of the unique Affinity inventive suite is that you may 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 will probably 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 widespread 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, nevertheless it’s nonetheless not clear if Apple plans to shift them to a subscription mannequin sooner or later.