Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/canva-acquires-affinity-design-suite-004813952.html

by achow • 2 years ago

333 341 2 years ago

finance.yahoo.com

s4mw1se• 2 years ago

now they just need to train generative AI models by opting in all of their users to allow training in on their data and forcing them to opt-out if they want otherwise. To compete with adobe that is.

nocoiner• 2 years ago

I know nothing about Canva. As someone who has been a big fan of Affinity, their products and their pricing model, do I start freaking out now or can I just wait until the acquisition closes?

t-writescode2• 2 years ago

Yeah, as someone that's been very happy with the Affinity Suite and am scared of any major changes to them, this is pretty scary to me, as well. Reminds me of when Jasc was bought by Corel waaaay back in the day.

Canva, if you're on HN, seeing how we're going to respond, please don't take away the stand-alone, non-subscription-based, affordable system that Affinity's products are. I love their products. I don't want to have to find alternatives.

freedomben2• 2 years ago

Hate to say it, but a subscription model is coming. Canva is making money hands over fist by doing that, and I can't imagine they are going to part from what has been so lucrative

timeon2• 2 years ago

Not only subscription, but what I find problematic about Adobe is bloatware.

facialwipe• 2 years ago

I enjoy Serif products but have always wondered how it would survive. Pixelmator stayed a family-run bootstrapped operation while Serif scaled a company in the EU around the Affinity Suite.

gedy2• 2 years ago

I don't know, products rarely get better with these acquisitions. I like my native app Affinity Designer, with a reasonable one time license very much as is.

nikolay2• 2 years ago

A mistake, if you ask me. They can't compete with Adobe.

phinnaeus4• 2 years ago

Affinity can, though. I haven't touched Photoshop/Illustrator in years since I discovered Affinity.

nikolay2• 2 years ago

Adobe is not just Photoshop and Illustrator; Affinity is still subpar, and Adobe products are moving fast ahead.

orbital-decay• 2 years ago

You're probably not the target audience though. Adobe products might be old, dysfunctional, and janky under all that cruft, but they have vast amounts of domain knowledge put into them.

Meaningfully competing with Photoshop & co involves breaking the lock-in (nearly impossible) and being much better use-case-wise. It's been done in certain niches where Photoshop is bad/mediocre/stagnates, like digital painting, but for general purpose suites like Affinity it means they have to be better at most things, which they just don't seem to be capable of.

MrTrvp• 2 years ago

Canva is subscription based.

microflash2• 2 years ago

The link should probably be changed to official announcement.[1]

That said, this is pretty dismaying. I've been using Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for years. Their standalone and non-subscription based apps are perfect for my usecase. Compared to Adobe, they are a no-brainer. But, I don't think Canva would leave them be as is. Either next versions will be a subscription or a rug pull is coming for the existing version.

[1] https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity/

achow2• 2 years ago

Also, this maybe distracting for either parties

- Affinity team (if they are pressured to go beyond professional designers or change to subscription, go to cloud, web etc.)

- Canva. Professional/enterprise is a very different ball game than the consumer market that they were focussing on. Ex. their mobile app for consumer itself is kind of broken, whereas mobile first experience is very important for the demography that they are targeting.

lstamour7• 2 years ago

Canva slowly built out enterprise features, but it’s not fully there yet. They seem to be aiming for what Sketch was aiming for before Figma overtook it - the ability for teams to publish and use design systems and templates in Canva. Which is a cool niche to start with, but isn’t flexible enough.

Plus Canva doesn’t really have the concept of “local files” so they’re stuck until they evolve to include every feature of Google Drive, at minimum, including local file sync. Canva ignoring traditional apps is like Chrome pretending the OS doesn’t exist and then building ChromeOS. Some concepts are necessary complexity, particularly for power users. Canva is a bit too simple still, and thus frustrating.

gardaani• 2 years ago

Here's Serif/Affinity announcements: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/canva-press-... https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-statem...

And here's few Affinity forum threads about the topic:

- https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201405-que...

- https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201403-can...

dean2432• 2 years ago

of course. big corporations only think about profit. affinity as we know it are dead.

eviks• 2 years ago

Unlike small corporations who only think about selling themselves out to the big ones

melodyogonna• 2 years ago

Is there a company that doesn't think about profit?

adamnemecek• 2 years ago

If they want to compete with adobe the have to put in some work

tempodox• 2 years ago

“Compete with Adobe” presumably means they will enshitten Affinity software even worse than Adobe did theirs. Looking forward to subscription-based ad-infested nagware.

upsuper9• 2 years ago

Canva and Affinity just released another news [1] which makes the pledge that

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.

[1] https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/

musicale2• 2 years ago

Guess we'll see how well this ages.

phinnaeus4• 2 years ago

Maybe I'm naive but I'm not so sure Affinity will automatically end up as a subscription-based app like Canva Pro and Creative Cloud. Subscription makes sense for Canva Pro where a lot of the value add is in additional elements and templates and there's not a versioned app you can buy with a certain set of features. For a tool where you release discrete versions with new features it's a lot easier to just sell it as one-off purchases.

Even if Canva was out to milk Affinity for every dollar, the size of the market for the professional-level tools is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the market for Canva-level tools. I can't imagine it would move the needle. But what do I know...

KingOfCoders3• 2 years ago

Oh no!

graypegg4• 2 years ago

Well, I’m glad I have my standalone license. I guess I’ll be on Designer V2 for the next 10 years like I was with Illustrator CS3.

chilldsgn• 2 years ago

Same. I upgraded last year and the software is fantastic and priced exceptionally well. I used to have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, but it got way too expensive and the frequency I used it didn't justify the price. Glad I found Affinity. I have Designer V2, Photo V2, and Publisher V2. I use all of them occasionally when I have time to work on my side projects. Subscriptions suck.

user432678• 2 years ago

I wonder if it will work that long without need for patches/updates with the current pace of deprecations in macOS. Using Affinity Photo myself, wondering if I’d better off switching to Windows at this point.

themagician2• 2 years ago

We really need a version of Docker for desktop apps on macOS now. Would be nice to not have to worry about what's going to be broken after an update.

seec2• 2 years ago

To be honest, that’s only one of the many reason to leave the Apple ecosystem in the near future.

I think that many would be better off switching to Windows (or Linux if they can) but they still believe or are attached to how things use to be.

I use to really love macOS but it has become an annoyance on many front, removing plenty of what made it better all while making it more and more like iOS and generally more closed and inflexible system.

Personally I have lost faith and I think that even if they would start reinvesting right now, it would take 10 years of pain with ever more expensive hardware.

jwells895• 2 years ago

I’m increasingly tempted to buy a second hand license for one of the old single-purchase Creative Suites and just run that in a VM or with period-accurate hardware forever. For me practically all of the value in current graphic editors is compatibility with modern operating systems… CS1-CS3 are basically feature complete as far as I’m concerned.

graypegg4• 2 years ago

Honestly there's still things from CS3 that are missing in Designer V2! Being able to auto-trace sketches is still something that Designer can't do. There isn't really much that I'm doing now in a vector editor, that I wasn't doing 15 years ago. "feature complete" is a good way to put it.

KingOfCoders3• 2 years ago

(Customer from the very beginning for Designer&Photo, made a book with Publisher)

They will move to subscriptions (there will be many more of these moves, see VMWare), which will kill their differenitation towards Adobe and kill the product. If subscription, I can use Illustrator (which has 10x more tutorials than Designer). Most companies screw up M&A.

presentation• 2 years ago

If the pricing model is the only thing that differentiates Affinity then that wouldn’t have been a very good sign for their future

cageface• 2 years ago

As a happy Affinity customer and relatively casual user I prefer them because of their reasonable fixed prices and because and I don't have to run the abomination that is the Adobe Cloud client on my machine.

If they switch to a subscription model I will definitely be looking for alternatives.

abhpro• 2 years ago

It's clearly enough for many people. That's the only reason I use Affinity, although I do agree Adobe could change their pricing models overnight and they would be in trouble.

ulfw• 2 years ago

Canva seems lost in terms of what they are or want to be. I suppose AI doesn't help businesses like Canva's.

appstorelottery• 2 years ago

I painfully switched to Affinity because of the rising Adobe subscription prices, I'd been a photoshop/illustrator user from the Dot com boom... I recall paying around 780 every two years for creative suite and given the hell I'd gone through by choosing Flex for a ERP project (Adobe's promises of iOS compatibility never materialising, then breaking compatibility - requiring a close-to-rewrite in their next version of Flex)... to cut a long story short - gave me shall we say - a few resentments towards the company. I suppose it's time to consider Pixelmator now, I'm such a grey-beard... subscriptions suck. ;-)

raffraffraff• 2 years ago

Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 12 Monterey or later and is fully optimized for Macs with Apple silicon.

Might save some non-Apple users some time.

ihateolives• 2 years ago

Pixelmator is nice for tinkering, but in no way it compares to Adobe Ps/Ilustrator for professional use. Workflow you can learn but there are subtle bugs that just crop up here and there like freeform transform handles just disappearing on some backgrounds etc. Some of the design decisions are different enough so that I haven't still gotten used to them after two years because it just doesn't feel intuitive to me, e.g. every single time I mess up working with text tool for the first five minutes time until I recall how it works.

zubspace2• 2 years ago

Step 1: Announce the acquisition. Everyone will talk about the company and the fear of subscriptions.

Step 2: Tell everyone, that the current pricing model will stay and no subscriptions will be offered. Everyone will cheer and recommend the products.

Step 3: Wait until the dust settles and switch to subscriptions. The community will say "told you that this will happen" and life goes on.

sotsoguk• 2 years ago

Sad, but true

zubspace2• 2 years ago

Yes, and let me explain why.

Subscriptions are significantly better for a company. They result in a steady income and a predictable growth curve. It's so much easier to plan the upcoming years if you can predict the income.

While we all focus on the latest news, the leaders of those companies already planned their next 10 steps ahead, even taking into account our sentiment towards them. Remember that they aim to maximize profits at all times.

It happened or happens in B2B, car sales, music, film, in games, and drawing apps... Everywhere you see, really. And it's so convenient if there is already a scapegoat like Adobe, which transitioned to subscriptions for the same reason.

And yes, I hate it. Even though it's easier to swallow 10 bucks a month, eventually you will spend more. They know it and we know it. All we can do as customers is to not support those companies, but this only goes so far. And what are we to do, if most offerings are subscription based?

pier258• 2 years ago

Hopefully this will allow the Serif team to improve their products. I bought their products from day one with the hope they would get better but after 10 years or so I'm still on Adobe.

Daub6• 2 years ago

What could they do better? I am interested.

lstamour7• 2 years ago

Let’s see… they’re so far behind they only recently added pathfinder tools to their illustrator app with v2… initially claimed it wasn’t necessary https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/68819-bett... but then gave in and basically shipped it https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=...

It’s hard to sell an entire industry on replacing tools that “just work” with a new set of tools unless they actually work better. Consider what VS Code has had to do to try and get devs switch to it from other IDEs: they had to offer first-class support for pretty much every other IDE’s method of operating, e.g. plugins to take the keyboard shortcuts from other IDEs, plus offer better support for languages (e.g. LSPs, use of TextMate bundles), and on top of that offer new features not seen elsewhere (e.g. devcontainers, web-based IDEs, first-class GitHub integration…) and even then people will obviously still pick JetBrains products for Java or Python because you can’t actually copy every feature and win.

Likewise it only took me 5-10 minutes with Publisher before I started noticing missing features with text (Adobe has an excellent text rendering engine, go figure) and Designer in v1 was so frustrating that I haven’t used v2 much, though my use cases were pretty specific. I’ve actually found myself putting up with the bugs in OmniGraffle (oh so many bugs) because the infinite canvas there works so well when zooming around. When it works, that is.

Got a bit sidetracked in my answer, but Adobe has a lot going for it. Honestly this is probably great news for Figma, as they have an opportunity now to build better web-based photo and publishing apps before Canva can figure it out.

pier258• 2 years ago

There's plenty but as an example the group isolation feature in Designer. To me is the biggest deal breaker.

It has been requested plenty of times and there are multiple threads in their forum. This one is 10 years old:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-is...

pseingatl3• 2 years ago

Affinity Publisher lacks epub export.

dudus• 2 years ago

Never heard about Canva. But checking them out they seem to focus on mobile apps and web apps to edit photos and videos. With a very specific focus on social media influencers. Don't be fooled by the cheeky templates and filters,they are going heavy on AI, with some interesting features such as inpainting and video background removal.

I guess that's either a very lucrative business or they have a ton of VC money behind them. This acquisition gives them some good editors on desktop to use as a base to deploy some of this AI tech focusing on a more pro market.

enra• 2 years ago

It is fairly lucrative business, $2b last year from serving the lower end of creative tools market.

They are also about to ipo so this acquisition probably gives the an additinal growth story to sell.

Scrounger• 2 years ago

It is fairly lucrative business, $2b last year from serving the lower end of creative tools market.

Started by some 30 yo Australian chick with no tech background too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep21f3ncvBk

fuzztester• 2 years ago

Never heard about Canva. But checking them out they seem to focus on mobile apps and web apps to edit photos and videos. With a very specific focus on social media influencers.

Some WhatsApp group users in India use Canva to create posters for events and then post them on various WhatsApp groups.

Torn• 2 years ago

Yes, very lucrative with huge free cash flow. 60% YoY growth last year too

themagician2• 2 years ago

Canva powers the scam market. It's played a big part helping the scam market expand. Everything from "make money online" creative to flooding Etsy with poorly designed AI garbage to crypto scams. Canva and Stan are the peanut butter and jelly of scammery in 2024.

theshackleford• 2 years ago

Your description could equally be describing google, Facebook, twitter or even the internet itself.

Daub6• 2 years ago

This is bad news. The Affinity offers a genuine and very high class alternative to the Adobe suite. Its HDRI workflow is league ahead of anything else.

As for Canva, all I can say is that I downgrade any student who makes their research slides using this dumb service. The slides are template-driven horror with each exported pdf slide being rasterized pngs: stupidly large files with text that is impossible to select and copy.

blowski3• 2 years ago

I downgrade any student who makes their research slides using this dumb service

I really hope you’re exaggerating

edu• 2 years ago

From another comment, he teaches design. As a designer, I find it’s legit to downgrade a design student for using Canva.

hhh• 2 years ago

Why would you downgrade a student based on the tool they use to create their presentations instead of the content itself?

ttoinou• 2 years ago

Because they made a bad tool choice for their own convenience ? That leads here to big images and unselectable text, no accessibility.

Terretta• 2 years ago

Tapping into both my own uni graphics design and a past life as senior exec at a mega corp: because designers that use bad tools to make unusable presentations are failing "you had one job", to make something presentable across the variety of business modalities.

Being able to email the presentation and copy text from it are generally more important to communications impact and utility in the workplace than how it looks.

Being aware what your tool does to the presentation is part of the job you're learning in school.

skeeter20202• 2 years ago

same reason you'd downgrade a programming student if they handed in an assignment as an Excel macro? Not just because of the VBA but because to use it you now need to buy MS Office?

skrebbel• 2 years ago

Wow sucks to be your student

goralph3• 2 years ago

You don’t sound like a good educator. Perhaps withhold your personal and subjective gripes for the sake of your students

rjzzleep2• 2 years ago

He does explain the rationale though. They’re both things I didn’t know about canva generated files. Makes sense for them to do that I guess, it means you won’t be able to reuse any of their stuff outside of their platform.

neurostimulant• 2 years ago

Telling their students to avoid locking down their works inside a subscription-based service is good imo.

gedy2• 2 years ago

Almost agree, but submitting research information as an image, and not selectable/copyable text is kind of unacceptable these days.

objektif2• 2 years ago

He sounds like a very good educator. I wish people always guided me against using shitty services throughout my education.

Daub6• 2 years ago

I see now that I should have made myself more clear. slides made in InDesign are indeed a stated requirment. Why....

I teach Design. One of the key learning outcomes of most design courses is the ability to handle long documents through their structural styles: heading 1, heading 2, caption, block quote, lists etc. Most design apps offer this functionality, even Powerpoint. However, none do it as elegantly as InDesign. I'm no Adobe fanboy (I do most of my own work in the Affinity suite) but InDesign remains the leader of the pack in this regard.

One crucial strength of InDesign is that it that manages anti aliasing of text very effectively. Just compare the output of ID to MS Word and you will see. I guess you are familiar with pdfs from LaTex? Compare those with pdfs from MS word. Similar difference.

It also does not produce or allow fake bold/italic etc. If a font does not have a built in bold then it won't fake one up by thickening the characters. This is why the font and charter panels in InDesign seem so feature-poor compared to those of Photoshop or Illusustor which offer such fake variants.

One final reason... cloud based services are risky things to rely on, especially in a uni. This year one service many students and staff used closed its doors. Caused a lot of angst.

Marciplan• 2 years ago

you don’t sound like a good educator

madjam002• 2 years ago

I feel sorry for your students. PS Canva can export PDFs with vector graphics

cangeroo• 2 years ago

You're a great educator!

I'm surprised that other people here cannot separate their subjective opinions, whether they agree with your judgment, from fact, whether you're a good educator.

It would be more reasonable to say: A good educator would help students understand that PDF files should have a small file size, and if a student fails to notice that, you will have to downgrade them for lack of attention to important detail.

And, of course the acquisition is bad news. Americans are the only people I've encountered that seem to celebrate the dystopian monopolized unfree market that we're headed towards.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if Canva has people to distort social media to downvote anyone who disagrees with them, as other companies do.

blowski3• 2 years ago

If the course makes it clear that grading is affected by accessibility and efficiency of file size, and then submitted work ignores those factors - regardless of Canva being used - then downgrading it is justified. Perhaps it’s obvious to designers that Canva has these problems, but to a non-designer like myself, the comment sounds like snobbery, with students’ grades affected by the capricious whims of their teacher.

I wouldn't be surprised if Canva has people to distort social media to downvote anyone who disagrees with them

Snide remarks about astroturfing are also off topic here.

upsuper9• 2 years ago

Hello, I'm an engineer in Canva's editing team, which is also responsible for rendering of designs.

Text in our PDF export should generally be selectable and copyable. I just tested one presentation template I recently used, and it is indeed so.

I know there were bugs forcing text to be rasterized in certain cases, mostly related to text effects. To my knowledge, they should have been worked around by adding a layer of transparent text on top.

If you know any design that produces PDF file where text becomes not selectable, that might be a bug, and it would be appreciated if you can provide more details so that we can investigate and possibly fix.

nrml_amnt• 2 years ago

I love HN.

Daub6• 2 years ago

I confess I have never used Canva myself. However, every pdf that students send our way from Canva is basically just series of flattened images. This also applies to the many Canva derived pdfs which I see from job applicants. So... What is going wrong? I will look into it and message you if I find anything new.

Thanks greatly for making contact. Only on Hacker News.

To be fair to your product, it is the only viable means by which a set of slides can be worked on collaborativly and online. You saw that InDesigns collaboration tools suck and stepped in.

MichaelMug• 2 years ago

Canva's approach has been to create a convoluted, frankenstein's monster, browser-first, mixed media editor that is largely inadequate for professional workflows. Also everything is locked away in their cloud from files to assets. I hate everything about Canva's UX and performance.

I suspect Canva will attempt to integrate Affinity into their cloud offering without fully comprehending the specific use cases and features that made Affinity successful in the first place. Canva's target is the novice and social media influencer, Affinity is a different market.

Sad day...

whitehexagon• 2 years ago

I wonder in these type of takeovers, when it seems clear that nothing good can come next for the product users, if it would be somehow possible for a cooperative style takeover by the customer base.

jwr• 2 years ago

It's bad news and not because of the "fear of subscription" (if you think you aren't paying for a subscription now, you are deluding yourself).

The problem is that most acquisitions go wrong and that larger companies generally care much less about their users. There are no good scenarios and no possible benefits there for Affinity users (like me). In a small company, management cares about users, because these users provide a direct lifeline for the company. In a large business, management cares about "shareholder value" as measured by their bonuses and this quarter's earnings. That does not map well onto customer satisfaction (see Adobe, Dropbox, or really just about any company that became large or got acquired).

getcrunk• 2 years ago

What a shame. So far akamais purchase of linode haven’t bourne ill fruit. Time will tell

xz18r• 2 years ago

If they move Affinity to subscription, CorelDRAW is probably the only viable (commercial) graphic product left with a perpetual license. Apart from FOSS, of course.

tap-snap-or-nap• 2 years ago

The thing I learnt about FOSS which gives me a long term advantage is that I have to learn to do things only once.

pseingatl3• 2 years ago

No, there's Viva Designer, a German desktop publishing program.

klelatti3• 2 years ago

Based on last published accounts (2022) Serif is very profitable and growing strongly: revenue £31.2m (up from £23.4m) and operating profits £17.9m (up from £14.4m). So it doesn't seem like they needed to sell.

Of course it is still small in the scheme of things - Canva seems to have revenue of c$2bn - and seems to be owned by three individuals in their 50s so one can probably understand why they wanted to to sell.

upsuper9• 2 years ago

Mel and Cliff are not even 40. See the Australian young rich list, they are the first one and two: https://www.afr.com/young-rich/the-10-richest-young-australi...

klelatti3• 2 years ago

Serif’s owners not Canva’s.

YetAnotherNick• 2 years ago

What's the net profit?

filmgirlcw4• 2 years ago

So it doesn't seem like they needed to sell.

They probably didn’t need to sell (but who knows) but an offer of a buyout at a 20x multiple (based on the Bloomberg report) when the core business faces competition from Adobe and Canva, not just for core features where depending on context, Serif can do quite well, but also in the burgeoning AI-assisted space, where Serif has zero ability to compete (and AI is a big part of Canva and Adobe’s plans, whether certain vocal users like it or not), is compelling.

As a longtime user, this move makes me sad because I know I’ll lose some good tools to an inevitable subscription push (I also have Adobe CC and Canva subscriptions that I use for very different tasks so I’m not completely opposed to paying for a sub, but I certainly won’t pay Adobe prices for Affinity), but I can’t fault the company from wanting to exit, especially when the climate is what it is for the tools they sell.

Let’s put it this way, I can’t imagine them doing better than this.

klelatti3• 2 years ago

Serif can do quite well, but also in the burgeoning AI-assisted space, where Serif has zero ability to compete

I think you've hit the nail on the head. AI tools will become essential and if you haven't got the resources to compete in this area you're likely to fade into relative irrelevance.

And at a 20x multiple probably a steal for Canva too given what this deal will give them - even without raising prices / going to subscription model.

AuryGlenz2• 2 years ago

I was a professional photographer until late last year.

Photoshop’s new AI tools are an absolutely incredible timesaver. Jobs that would have taken 30+ minutes (and probably wouldn’t look great) can now take 30 seconds. It was kind of amazing watching the perception shift online in photography groups from “AI is evil!” to “Wow, this is really helpful.”

There’s no way they could keep competing, even if they tried to take something off the shelf like Stable Diffusion and integrating it. Without some sort of subscription they’d need to have people run it locally, and that’s really only feasible with high end Nvidia cards too. I suppose the initial plan might be to add tools like that, have a separate subscription for that, and boil the frog to a full subscription.

redwasp• 2 years ago

Ugh. I've seen what happens with Canva's acquisitions once already, albeit at a much smaller scale: I used to use a free service for PowerPoint templates called SlidesCarnival[1]. Decent templates, very customizable, and generally significantly better than the PowerPoint defaults.

They also got bought out by Canva, and I've watched the quality drop massively- any new content is almost entirely unusable, often only available on Canva itself, and chock full of design tropes and poorly SEO-optimized content. (Some of them are so bad as to be unintentionally hilarious.) It's a real mess, and it makes me less than optimistic about them buying out Affinity.

To be fair, their model was wildly different from a fully-featured editing suite, and certainly welcomed this kind of change, but they absolutely gutted that site: the only positive is that the original templates are still there, if you search for them. I'm not holding my breath, but I expect the same treatment now. An absolute shame- I don't use a photo editor enough to warrant an Adobe subscription, so I'll probably stay on Affinity V2 until it stops working.

[1] https://www.slidescarnival.com/

sarreph• 2 years ago

There was something so special and powerful about Affinity Designer V1. It was just a supreme amount of value and such a robust application that it became the tool I learned to do graphic design on, and the tool I loved.

I feel like something slipped with Designer V2 - the features went a bit weird and broad, and the amount of bugs got irritating and eroded my love for it and it being my go-to recommendation.

That all said, it’s still good software today and I’m glad the Serif team gets some kind of payday. I think the drop in quality of V2 makes the whole thing a bit less bittersweet for me.

WillAdams3• 2 years ago

The sad thing is that much of what was really nice in AD came from copying Aldus/Altsys/Macromedia Freehand.

I wish Adobe had at least put all of Freehand's capabilities into InDesign --- I might still be using it if that were the case.

PetitPrince• 2 years ago

It's a sad state of affair when the first thing people think (myself included, and rightfully so) is "how will the product worsen" (in this case, with subscription) instead of the opposite.

I'm also preparing for a mysterious update that will make the V1 and V1 of the suite non-functional because of non-visible stuff like "security improvement" and "system stability".

I hope that I'm wrong.

joduplessis• 2 years ago

As per the article, do people really see Canva as a competitor to Adobe? I must be missing something.

reportgunner• 2 years ago

Affinity is the competitor I think.

TheCapeGreek• 2 years ago

I've never seen much hate for Canva until this thread.

HN will really hate on any kind of acquisition, regardless of if the acquirer is a "big bad" like Adobe or not.

bluescrn• 2 years ago

It’s not about hate for Canva. It’s about love for Affinity. Who are now being gobbled up by a bigger fish, with the inevitable consequence being enshittification.

punkbit2• 2 years ago

Most comments seem to be from Affinity customers. I've been a customer for many years. They have incredible software, and it's extremely sad because past acquisitions seem to destroy the applications people like and support, not the other way around. Canva looks like McDonalds.

omgmajk• 2 years ago

It's not really hard to see why though. Software which only real saving grace is a better license model than the bigger fish gets bought by another bigger fish to ultimately, most likely, get put in the same license model.

hresvelgr• 2 years ago

In light of this, I can't help but feel the OSS alternatives to the Adobe graphics suite are pretty abysmal.

Inkscape is passable but aspects like filters are obtuse to use and that's largely because it's trying to be a good compliant SVG editor and not necessarily a good vector graphics editor.

GIMP's user experience in my opinion has been terrible for decades and every time I have given it a chance it's annoyed me into closing it. I can get things done, but it gets in my way.

As for Scribus I've never used it, but based on the previous two I'm not instilled with confidence.

jarek-foksa2• 2 years ago

Inkscape is passable but aspects like filters are obtuse to use and that's largely because it's trying to be a good compliant SVG editor and not necessarily a good vector graphics editor.

It is actually possible to build an intuitive UI for filters while staying compliant with SVG. You just have to abstract away the low level SVG primitives ("feColorMatrix", "feComponentTransfer", etc.) with user-friendly presets such as "Sepia" or "Drop shadow". I actually created a mockup for such UI in Inkscape long time ago [1] and I eventually implemented it in Boxy SVG [2].

Advanced filter editing could be improved by switching from tree-based to node-based UI, in similar fashion to e.g. Jasc WebDraw [3].

[1] https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/SpecSimpleFiltersUi

[2] https://boxy-svg.com/blog/19

[3] https://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/webdraw02.png

jwells895• 2 years ago

Personally speaking I’ve always found Inkscape frustrating compared to Sketch or Affinity Designer, but it’s in a different way than GIMP is. GIMP I think would mostly be fine if they just ditched all the quirky GIMP-unique UI conventions in favor of more commonplace counterparts (which in some cases is as “easy” as using standard GTK widgets instead of custom stuff) but who knows when or if that’ll happen.

maxmcorp• 2 years ago

With the advent of generative AI the painting has been on the wall for some time. Using it in Photoshop is simply so good that it is a necessity by now. Affinity are not a large enough company to train an AI, and any AI will not be able to run locally for a long time. So it must take place in the cloud and therefore require a subscription.

GrumpySloth2• 2 years ago

This is very sad. I’ve been an Affinity customer since V1. What I expect to happen now is in some future a move to a subscription-based model and more focus on nonsense AI features and some useless cloud integration.

Also: since when a company capable of routinely acquiring other established companies for tens of billions of dollars a startup?

achow2• 2 years ago

since when a company capable of routinely acquiring other established companies for tens of billions of dollars a startup

The acquisition was for “several hundred million pounds”, nowhere near tens of billions of dollars.

GrumpySloth2• 2 years ago

My bad. I got some numbers in the article mixed up.

infl8ed2• 2 years ago

This caused me to bite the bullet and buy the v2 universal licence, currently 30% off. If you've ever bought anything v1 including a single app you probably qualify for the upgrade offer which is an extra 25% off on top of the sale https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/store/upgrade-offer/

I'm not necessarily against their inevitable subscription model, but may as well get the standalone while the getting is good. There are also often some good grandfather plan rates, if I decide later to go that path.

microflash2• 2 years ago

The problem with V2 license is that it cannot be activated offline so Canva can take a courageous decision to stop activations any time in future. V1 is great because it can be activated offline.

infl8ed2• 2 years ago

Interesting! I didn't realise this, however on balance I think I'm still happy with my purchase. Also looking into it, business licences (minimum of 2 pack purchase) can still be activated offline, just in case that is useful to anyone https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/188396-off...

RicoElectrico• 2 years ago

Great to know, I pondered buying V2 as a V1 owner, but now they can kiss my butt.

The only downside is that Affinity V2 has no option to save files in a V1-compatible manner. Which stinks for exchanging stuff with other Affinity users.

mythz• 2 years ago

I'm a happy Affinity Customer thanks to their low cost perpetual licenses and quality software, hoping that none of that changes - don't use it nearly enough to justify maintaining a subscription.

kkirsche• 2 years ago

I love their software and am happy for the humans behind it all. As a customer who doesn’t believe they won’t force a subscription on me, I wish I had never supported them

rcarmo3• 2 years ago

Oh boy. I willingly gave my money to Affinity because I don’t want a subscription model, I don’t want my creative apps to rely on the cloud _at all_ to work _and_ I want native Mac apps. I am not reassured by their FAQ at all.

I suspect a year from now Canva will break at least one (if not all three) of these features and force me to leave Affinity by version 3.

It would be extremely ironic if Gimp was the only graphics app left standing I could use without all of the above nonsense (well, I am happy to keep supporting Pixelmator, but… you get the idea).

rpastuszak• 2 years ago

It would be extremely ironic if Gimp was the only graphics app left standing I could use without all of the above nonsense

I know successful agencies relying on OSS tools only (such as Gimp and Penpot) so I wouldn't mind that. I hope Gimp will have its Blender moment (I've been using Blender for years, but always kept coming back to Maya, this changed with the new UI)

kfarr• 2 years ago

Agreed, GIMP is powerful and just one UI refresh away from being a true alternative for many.

WillAdams3• 2 years ago

In addition to Gimp there are:

- Paint.net

- Pixen

- Inkscape --- straight-forward vector editing

- Seashore --- this is Mac OS UI overlay for GIMP

- Krita --- vector editing with painting features

- Scribus --- page layout

- TeX/LaTeX --- batch/markup driven page layout which can do anything one can put together a TeX macro to achieve (I use it a lot and have written articles for TUGboat on it: https://tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb24-2/tb77adams.pdf

- Blender -- 3D modeling

- GraviT --- another vector editor, this is likely the one most like to Affinity Designer (since they were both modeled on Freehand)

- FontForge

nacs• 2 years ago

I wish more people knew-of/promoted Krita - it's far more user friendly than GIMP and just as powerful if not more.

Fantastic for photo editing, digital art/paint and vector tools.

https://krita.org/en/features/

jarek-foksa2• 2 years ago

There is also Graphite (https://graphite.rs/) which, unlike Gimp, has a modern architecture and very ambitious goals (Blender for 2D basically).

mattanimation• 2 years ago

Photopea as well (photoshop clone in browser)

rcarmo3• 2 years ago

I used most of those (I paid my way through college with Photoshop 2.0 and Macromedia stuff). There is really nothing in the Open Source world that is good enough. Maybe Krita, but not for Illustrator-grade vector editing. I really miss Macromedia...

LordAtlas• 2 years ago

Affinity already disappointed the original believers when they started off telling people they could pay a one-time fee and get all future updates for free. They then ditched version 1.xx buyers by releasing a version 2 that you could only use if you paid them again.

matwood3• 2 years ago

Affinity should not have said that (if they did), and no one should have believed them. That's just not how software or business works. Even if we go back in time to packaged software, big updates were always a pay for upgrade.

piperswe• 2 years ago

I already started to worry about Affinity's strategy when they introduced online activation in version 2 of their software. I really appreciated the offline activation in the original versions - it means I will forever own Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher 1 on my NAS, no matter what they decide to do in the future.

punkbit2• 2 years ago

Sad news! I've been an Affinity customer for many years; I like it much better than Adobe. Canvas branding is underwhelming, and there is no doubt in my mind that Affinity will change to be at the level of what Canvas represents: a web app.

ReleaseCandidat2• 2 years ago

Official statement from Affinity (Serif):

https://affinity.serif.com/de/press/newsroom/canva-statement...

   Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?
   There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase. Existing Affinity users will be able to continue to use your apps in perpetuity as they were originally purchased – with plenty of free updates to V2 still to look forward to!

Am I the only only reading "no changes ... at this time" with a ", but there are going to be ..."

rjzzleep2• 2 years ago

You’re definitely not the only one. It’s going to be a matter of time before subscriptions come.

steve19773• 2 years ago

"with plenty of free updates to V2"

But let's not talk about V3...

matwood3• 2 years ago

at this time

Anything a business says about current business should have 'at this time' appended. They are simply being honest.

coldtea6• 2 years ago

This is a different context. Whenever an acquired business says "at this time", it means "forget everything you think you knew about us, so long suckers!".

coldtea6• 2 years ago

Existing Affinity users will be able to continue to use your apps in perpetuity as they were originally purchased

Until of course Apple changes some API, or Windows users want to jump to ARM or something, and then they're up shit creek.

lloydatkinson• 2 years ago

Ah great. More fucking enshittification. What a disaster.

returnInfinity• 2 years ago

Canva wants to be the next Adobe

Acquire figma next.

pentagrama• 2 years ago

I love Affinity Designer as a tool and his pay once license, I'm pretty sure that if you already purchased current version (V2), you will be fine, but I'm afraid they will go the subscription route soon like Adobe and Canva.

Is suspicious that Affinity marketing was always highlighting the pay once license model and against subscription, and in the official announcement there is no mention of that.

A lesson is that with the good ol Inkscape that type of thing that endangered the tool it doesn't happen.

beezlebroxxxxxx• 2 years ago

It will probably go subscription, unfortunately.

But the smart move would be to double the price (obviously not immediately, but eventually) while retaining the pay once model and really doubling down on the professional aspect of the Affinity products (even if, compared to Adobe, they're not super professional grade yet). The reason people bought Affinity stuff was the pay once deal. That's how you retain those customers while aggressively moving into a prosumer market for Canva.

Now, though, Affinity is just another gravestone on the path of insane tech rent-seeking, buy-extract-kill, and financialization.

seec2• 2 years ago

I agree but if they want to double the price they really need to be a lot better. Last time I used it for a quick project (relatively simple yet complex restaurant menu layout) I really wished I had used Adobe stuff instead (paid for a month or bootleg version). On the surface Affinity stuff is nice but it is very lacking in some not even advanced use cases and rather finicky, errors/bugs prone. You end up spending a lot more time, building up a lot more frustration than you would with Adobe tools.

Adobe is stupid expensive for someone who do not make money off it, but their software are quite good all things considered…

steve19773• 2 years ago

If Adobe would have a little bit of brain left, they would offer a cheaper subscription now. Essentially covering Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Instead of only the reasonably priced PS/LR bundle versus the too expensive "all the products we ever had" bundle.

They could basically wipe out Affinity. But yeah, won't happen I guess...

filmgirlcw4• 2 years ago

They don’t need to do that. First, Adobe doesn’t see Affinity as meaningful competition. Adobe sees Figma and Canva (and Blackmagic and Avid in the NLE space) as competition, but a company doing £30m a year in revenue is barely a blip on their radar (Adobe did nearly $20b in revenue in FY23).

Second, for the lowend market that Affinity serves, Adobe Express (its Canva compete) and Photoshop Express ($35 a year) are going to be enough for most of the core users. And Canva has quickly taken on the role for the low cost design tool of choice for normies who want to collaborate. I don’t use it for anything fancy, but I am not going to lie and say it isn’t better/faster at making YouTube thumbnails than basically anything else. Canva is the competitor, not Affinity. And Canva is being smart by buying a tool/team with a lot of users that they have the opportunity to now integrate with Canva. Will that integration be any good? I don’t know. But the leading web tool now has a native app component.

But make no mistake, Adobe has zero incentive to lower its prices for its core products at this time (the web products are a different story). The challenge it faces is when users at scale opt for similarly priced alternatives (Figma over XD, Canva over Adobe Express), not the middling number of users (and I count myself as one of them, but I’m just being honest) that pay for Affinity because it is a nice low cost tool.

I cannot imagine anyone who has a real business need for Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign and has to collaborate with others (and that part is key; if you’re a solo designer who never has to share files with others, that’s great but we’re not the target audience for Adobe anyway and we probably haven’t been since the early 1990s) choosing anything other than Adobe. The $720 a year or whatever it has gone up to is just the price of doing business.

Where Adobe faces challenges is from the people who don’t need to use Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop for their work but have very strong web-based competition for specific tools. The UX teams that are standardized on Figma, even if they got XD as part of Creative Cloud, who don’t use Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign, would rather pay the $45 or $75 a month to Figma. And the marketing teams that need to make graphics for social media or newsletters or whatever, would often rather pay $120 per seat for Canva than for Adobe Express (tho my recent experiments with Express show that it is getting very close to Canva in terms of capabilities and is better in some instances, Canva is prob better for that target audience, however). That’s the competition, not the offline design tools.

steve19773• 2 years ago

You have a point. I guess Adobe lowering the subscription prices is probably more wishful thinking on my part ;)

soapdog3• 2 years ago

Why every product I like ends up being bought... argh, we can't have nice things.

chadcmulligan• 2 years ago

It's interesting, if a car company is bought then they keep churning out cars (usually), if a software company is bought it's often broken. Software dev is a fragile thing relying on a network of talented individuals which is very easily broken by accountants and bottom lines. In some ways it's more like movie companies with networks of creatives that can be damaged by a takeover - Disney/Marvel immediately comes to mind.

paxys2• 2 years ago

Because no one wants to pay for products they like.

hollander• 2 years ago

We don't want to pay for software? Look at the Appstore! Good products for reasonable prices are worth the money. Affinity offers a good product for a reasonable price. Adobe offers a better product but the subscription model is hated by many. For me Affinity products are good enough. Let's hope the current versions keep on working on Apple Silicon and Windows 11/12/etc. The current 2 version is good enough for me and for the next ten years. If I really need AI tools for image editing, I'll take a one month subscription to some tool.

soapdog3• 2 years ago

Well, everyone of their clients was paying for a license. Affinity was not free/fremium.

drivingmenuts4• 2 years ago

I don't mind paying for software, but I don't want to rent it - which is effectively what subscriptions are.

jsjohnst3• 2 years ago

Because not everyone can or should IPO. Once you get to a certain point in size, your investors will start pushing for an exit (where you have two main options, IPO or sell).

sofixa• 2 years ago

It's sad that management buyouts aren't more popular. It would probably make for more quality products not having to conform to expectations of the market or private equity.

latexr2• 2 years ago

What investors? As far as I know they were never VC funded. Affinity wasn’t a dinky startup, the parent company (Serif) was founded almost four decades ago.

pembrook2• 2 years ago

Apparently most of the market doesn’t want the same things you want.

Otherwise Affinity would be the giant acquiring a much smaller Canva team.

That said, this is also further proof of why the standalone software license model died. If Affinity had a great business of their own, they wouldn’t need to sell.

Turns out if you want a software team to continue providing value to you, you should probably put them on salary (subscription).

upsuper9• 2 years ago

If Affinity had a great business of their own, they wouldn’t need to sell.

They don't need to. They mentioned that in their FAQ:

We have to say that selling Serif was not on our minds at all, but when Canva contacted us (only a couple of months ago!) there was something about it which just felt right.

rchaud8• 2 years ago

Because of the "recurring revenue" SaaS cult.

candiodari3• 2 years ago

It's not a cult if it works ...

Kye2• 2 years ago

The fast race toward version 3 has been a cause for concern. It _just_ came out and it's already in the 2.4s.

junon• 2 years ago

Welp, as if Affinity didn't already have problems...

Also, this. https://twitter.com/affinitybyserif/status/15707285663500206...

drivingmenuts4• 2 years ago

I have this horrible feeling that they're going to convert the Affinity suite to be online-only products.

pers0n• 2 years ago

It’s a matter of time before Adobe buys them and kills everything

WillAdams3• 2 years ago

Fortunately, it looks as if Adobe has gotten so big that they won't be allowed to buy much more --- witness the recent Figma deal which was shut down.

jwells895• 2 years ago

Disappointing, because this likely spells the end of one-time-purchase Affinity products, and as mentioned in the article up until now that has been a big selling point for them.

I hope I’m wrong, but if I’m not it doesn’t fare well for Affinity’s future growth and popularity. People are likely to go back to Adobe because there’s no point giving up the compatibility, instructional material, etc that comes with Adobe stuff if they’re stuck with subscriptions either way.

agotterer• 2 years ago

I hope you’re wrong as well! As a casual creative with the occasional need for photo editing and vector design tools, I could never justify the price for an Adobe subscription. But I’ve happily bought Affinity Photo and Design. They aren’t as polished as their Adobe counterparts, but the price was just right. I wouldn’t sign up for a monthly subscription.

justaman• 2 years ago

I just heard about this software today. Seeing that it was a one time purchase, I almost got out my wallet right then and there. Making it a subscription model would immediately turn me off.

DavidGetchel• 2 years ago

I agree. I've been using their programs since they came out and the one-time-purchase helped me get away from adobes clutches.

Another good thing likely bites the dust.

jsjohnst3• 2 years ago

Looking at Canva’s pricing page makes me glad I have a perpetual license to Affinity’s products. Now the question is, will I ever get any updates to Photo/Design/Publisher? I don’t need new features, but I do care about bug fixes and such.

upsuper9• 2 years ago

Now the question is, will I ever get any updates to Photo/Design/Publisher?

They answered the question in their FAQ:

Will my Affinity apps still get updates?
Yes! We have many free updates planned for V2, with a continued focus on improvements and the features you ask for.

rchaud8• 2 years ago

I have Affinity Designer and Publisher, which I've used to design and publish a music fanzine: https://www.glidermag.com

This is slightly worrying news as Canva is the opposite of the Affinity suite: cloud-only and subscription-based. I could purchase brush sets on Affinity for a fixed price, and many were made available on the user messageboard for free.

bastawhiz• 2 years ago

Just so you know, the URL you linked isn't loading for me.

lovegrenoble2• 2 years ago

Ce site est inaccessible Vérifiez si l'adresse glidermag.com est correcte.

can't access

rchaud8• 2 years ago

Updated the URL!

lambdas2• 2 years ago

Looks like it isn’t routing it correctly without the `www.`

https://www.glidermag.com/ <- this works.

Off topic, and if I may be so bold, check out Whitelands. They’re my friends band and they just toured with Slowdive, one to watch out for! (I am 100% biased though).

rchaud8• 2 years ago

Just updated the link. I will check out Whitelands; I just saw Slowdive in November, they had Drab Majesty open for them in Canada.

thrillgore• 2 years ago

Oh jesus christ, can we stop with the acquisitions?

pelagicAustral• 2 years ago

I've been using Affinity products forever, in fact since before the Affinity era, then they were branded Serif (DrawPlus, PhotoPlus, etc)... They have been incredibly consistent over the years with the quality of their products, which is why I have purchased many licenses over the years and always recommended people to look into their software... Like others in the thread, I really do hope they don't change to subscription-based pricing, but I assume the worst.

ramijames• 2 years ago

It really seems that the whole software world has decided to move to monthly payments. It really irks me. I don't want this.

bogota• 2 years ago

Have to extract the most value for shareholders. Only way i see it changing is people start stealing software because they get sick of it or people stop using subscription based licenses all together.

kossTKR• 2 years ago

Even worse many apps now push "Monthly payments (payed yearly)", like some scammy car salesman.

You can try for 7 days, then don't worry we'll charge for 12 months.

Ridiculous for solo devs, full stack, creatives with lots of apps etc.

I use several apps a bit here and there throughout the year but that's seemingly not a usecase for these companies, you're either "in" 365 or won't be able to use the app.

rchaud8• 2 years ago

Increasingly I'm looking at hoarding "feature-complete" applications that work fine totally offline and don't need updates. Things like text editors, GIMP, Inkscape, Foobar2000, IrfanView, file manager apps.

_fat_santa• 2 years ago

Pure speculation on my part but I think the way it will go down is Canva will announce that you can get access to Affinity products via a Canva subscription, with an option to buy the individual products outright like today. They have to be looking at Adobe and going "yeah we don't want that kind of reputation".

mdekkers• 2 years ago

They have to be looking at Adobe and going "yeah we don't want that kind of reputation".

They can also look at the market and Adobe and go “yeah, they have no alternatives, everyone is a subscriber now”

optymizer• 2 years ago

I like Affinity products. They replaced all my photoshop/illustrator needs for webdev and it was so easy to switch. The fixed license cost was great too. Now I'm worried that the typical scenario is going to unfold where Canva makes sweeping changes, replaces product vision and licensing model.

I guess I can keep using the current versions for a while, until they stop the updates.

lovegrenoble2• 2 years ago

Same for me, replaced f** Adobe, too expensive, too greedy

stephen_g• 2 years ago

Yeah, I love their Designer and Publisher products. Haven’t used Photo really because I already used Pixelmator Pro but it also looks good, and between those and Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve i’ve cut Adobe out of my life.

So this is a super worrying announcement. I really hope they don’t screw up Affinity - I really wonder how long they can hold off the temptation to let them do what they do without screwing it all up and killing the product line…

xoa• 2 years ago

While Affinity is a one-time purchase, I'll admit I was very, very disappointed when with the last version they switched from a normal product key to online-only activation requirement which was not at all clear at purchase time. So despite having purchased the whole v2 suite I ended up never using it and staying with v1, and their response was pretty junk as well. That said, I share concerns of other posters that this isn't going to make the trajectory any better. The email sent out by the CEO also gave me very strong "Our Incredible Journey" [0] vibes:

"In Canva, we've found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities that would never previously have been achievable.
Canva's revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together."

I can't speak for anyone else on HN but the whole thing (more resources! empowerment! design democratisation!) gives me some serious deja vu.

----

0: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

V__• 2 years ago

I hate these statements. They could have said something like:

"We got bought by Canva because they want more independence/alternatives from Adobe. We can invest more in development. Expect more integrations with Canva. Currently there are no plans for changes to our business model"

But they didn't. Their statement was meaningless with zero information. Which means either they will absolutely enshitificate everything or they didn't care to ask or they didn't clarify it during negotiations.

All reasons to stay far away from now on. I was planning to buy their suit for a whole team next month. Time to look elsewhere.

upsuper9• 2 years ago

"... Currently there are no plans for changes to our business model"

They mentioned exactly that in the FAQ:

Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?
There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase.

latexr2• 2 years ago

We’ve been burned so often by those kinds of statements that every time I see a company repeating them I’m left wondering if the founders are unbearably naive or they think users are stupid.

drivingmenuts4• 2 years ago

It's the usual CEO claptrap before they decimate the company.

1. Acquire company

2. ???

3. Fire developers until profitable without doing actual work

4. Raise CEO Salary

rchaud8• 2 years ago

Firing them would be stupid, unless Canva has desktop app developers sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

mortenjorck• 2 years ago

This would be a great time for Canva to reassure customers that they don’t intend to change Affinity‘s business model. Not to say such assurances are even a reliable indicator of future plans, but it would at least be a nice gesture.

ricardobeat• 2 years ago

That would be pointless as they will 100% be changing the business model. We’ve learned that over the past 20 years. RIP Affinity and one-time purchases.

josefresco• 2 years ago

No changes "at this time" is the key phrase here. Not exactly reassuring.

martin_henk• 2 years ago

It could be worse than canva, which is actually pretty great value when used with a free account. Also, Canva seems to take design kind of seriously. For example google Slides still can't do any font kerning after all these years.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

I depend on Affinity products, and am not sure how to take this news. When Adobe tried to buy Figma, I knew both companies very well and knew equally well that Adobe would ruin Figma if they owned it. I'm glad that it didn't happen. But I don't know anything about Canva as a company. Product acquisitions usually have a certain trajectory, and my default assumption is that this will follow it: deeper, unasked-for integration with Canva's other products, a new pricing model, a brand new feature roadmap driven by the desire to make back their money, the departure of key figures from Affinity about a year from now. I hope I'm wrong though!

froyolobro• 2 years ago

Affinity is amazing (I use Designer, and my dad loves Photo). Canva is actually pretty amazing too. It's going to stir things up, for sure.

lambdas2• 2 years ago

Shame. Purchased a V2 suite licence despite being perfectly happy with V1 because I wanted to support them, I don’t see anything good coming from merging with Canva.

duiker101• 2 years ago

oh no, the whole reason why I like Affinity products is the pricing model. I can't imagine that will last long.

whywhywhywhy2• 2 years ago

Not sure why a web based subscription product which already had collaboration features would want to own native one shot apps.

Only way I can see logic for this acquisition is if they're wanting the talent/experience of Affinity's developers to build web based offerings of the feature sets of Photo, Designers, Publisher as part of a Canva web offering.

rchaud8• 2 years ago

The latter is unlikely. The developers are active on the Affinity messageboards, I don't recall them ever having any interest in building web apps. Just creating a "good enough" cross-platform alternative to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator is more than a full-time job already.

dinkleberg• 2 years ago

We just need to get some big companies to give GIMP (or another OSS alternative) the Blender treatment.

microtonal3• 2 years ago

Most customers of Adobe and Affinity are on Mac or Windows. I am not sure about Windows, but unfortunately GTK apps are absolutely horrible on macOS. It probably makes more sense so fund something Qt-based for better cross-platform support.

That said, for big companies a Creative Cloud subscription (let alone a single app subscription) is only a drop in the bucket compared to employee salaries.

I think Affinity Suite is probably most popular among indie folks, people who need it less regularly, etc.

jonathanstrange• 2 years ago

These kind of acquisitions always astonish me. How does a web company that essentially sells toys get the money to purchase a company that sells professional desktop products?

luismedel• 2 years ago

True. Maybe a proof of the power of subscription based models?

rchaud8• 2 years ago

It's 'valued' at $40bn, so if you can figure out the particulars of their VC rain dance, I imagine there's plenty of capital available for acquisitions.

goralph3• 2 years ago

They’re at a 13x multiple which is fairly conservative for a SaaS with their growth rates, and have been profitable since 2017.

Disclaimer: I used to work there.

liminal• 2 years ago

I don't see the point of this acquisition. The products don't compete, so it's not eliminating market competition. The products also don't 'synergize' (ugh) well: they target different market demographics, have separate learning curves and different business models. Why?

drivingmenuts4• 2 years ago

Market coverage? Now they're in the desktop app market without having to develop their own thing.

dantondwa• 2 years ago

I guess there goes Affinity's only reason one might prefer them over Adobe. Personally, I use all their programs quite a bit (Photo, Designer, Publisher). I like them, but I don't think they're better than Adobe's offering. If they'll eventually shift to a subscription model, I guess I won't be interested in Affinity anymore, given their products are inferior.

ocdtrekkie• 2 years ago

This is deeply saddening news. I own Affinity Photo and Designer and I'm sure in a few years people won't be able to say that. For most of my usage, mind you, Krita and Inkscape have been able to meet my needs, so more than likely this will just solidify my preference for the open source options out there.

telegtron• 2 years ago

... and let the enshittification begin!

potta_coffee• 2 years ago

I love Affinity and I don't love Canva. I'm hopeful nothing much changes but I'm not holding my breath. I'll pay a subscription over my dead body.

gkoberger• 2 years ago

Agreed, but Canva isn't really for us. Canva is for the types of people who "want a poster/t-shirt/etc that's pretty enough and have no skills with Photoshop." Canva is buying Affinity to expand their market into professionals, not to water it down.

ergonaught• 2 years ago

I began migrating stuff away as soon as I got their email announcement today.

thrownawayjests• 2 years ago

There goes the last lingering thread of my non-Linux OS use.

oliwarner• 2 years ago

I'd perform undignified sex acts on camera for supported Linux and Android versions. I'd pay too if that helps. I think lot of Linux developer-creatives would.

I love Inkscape and GIMP but they desperately need domestic competition.

What I didn't manage to read was are they buying Serif or buying this from Serif?

graypegg4• 2 years ago

From the forum, on the topic of the buyout:

"[I] Realise there seems to be a distinct lack of faith flying around here, but we'll be revealing more about our plans in the coming days and yes I'm sure you will all be pleased with what we have to say." - Ash

So that's at least possibly a sign of better information to follow.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201413-aff...

anonymousab• 2 years ago

Well, we'll see what they have to say.

But I wouldn't get my hopes up. "There are no changes to our current pricing model planned _at this time_" is already a very telling part of Serif's previous statement.

While they have earned a measure of trust, the problem is that they aren't the ones you need to trust anymore - if Canva wants to turn Affinity into a collection of bloodsucking subscription apps, then that's what's going to happen, short of a legally binding guarantee to the contrary.

UberFly• 2 years ago

The best redeeming feature of Affinity apps was that they weren't a bloodsucking subscription like Adobe. Hopefully they have a plan for the apps that keeps them the best anti-Adobe option.

bananapub4• 2 years ago

what could they possibly say?

they can't guarantee they won't move to a subscription service in the future - this entire discussion is about how Affinity management have sold out and no longer control the company.

ksec• 2 years ago

Yet another UK business in tech with great potential now gone. It just seems UK cant grow any big tech company. Even ignoring Tech, most if not all of the big UK companies are in Finances and Services.

alwillis• 2 years ago

I think one thing most people are missing: because Canva has 175 million users with a significant number of them paying a subscription, this enables them to keep the Affinity apps purchase model in place.

Think about it: why would Canva essentially destroy the reason why so many users (around 3 million according to the reporting) went to Affinity in the first place by going to a subscription model? I don't see that happening.

Canva is clear they want a foothold in the professional design market and buying Affinity and its team is the quickest way to get there.

I paid for V1 of the Affinity suite and happily paid for the universal V2 license upgrade which enabled me to run their apps on my iPad and my Mac and even Windows if I ever needed that. It was a bargain.

Ironically, I just removed the last remnants of Creative Cloud last week. I hadn't been using it, but it was there "just in case…".

Unlike when Adobe tried to buy Figma, I'm more optimistic than most that this going to turn out well for existing Affinity users.

I'd have no problem with being able to roundtrip designs between Affinity and Canva seamlessly. Someone could start on Canva and one a project progressed to a certain point, they could seamlessly transition to Affinity. Depending on what you're doing, you can quickly reach Canva's limits and it should be trivial to pickup where you left on in a future version of Affinity Designer or Photo.

Other than being able to configure DropBox, there's no cloud syncing support built-in to Affinity. Sure, you can glue it together with iCloud, OneBox, etc. but that's not what users should have to do in 2024.

I'm no stranger to bad outcomes from botched and user-hostile mergers and acquisitions of software. But this one has all of the potential to go the right way and I have no reason to think otherwise at this time.

bananapub4• 2 years ago

because Canva has 175 million users with a significant number of them paying a subscription, this enables them to keep the Affinity apps purchase model in place.

please bookmark your own post and come back to it in five years so you can have a big a laugh.

Canva wants to be a player in image editing/design/etc. They have a big product that their investors love and has the ever-so-common monthly-tax funding model.

They have now bought a tiny, niche, desktop editing suite that makes approximately zero profit compared to Canva.

Do you think they did this because:

1. they thought it would be fun to own it and not interfere in any way, and to tell their investors to fuck off over and over when they suggest redeploying resources

1. they thought it would provide a good group of people and codebases to expand their existing editing software, and given that the software they currently sell makes essentially no money, at best they'll let it limp along with most staff working on integrating it into Canva-proper, at worst they'll kill it

pseingatl3• 2 years ago

Viva Designer is a German desktop publishing program which does not use a subscription-based model. Haven't seen it mentioned here.

nipperkinfeet• 2 years ago

God, darn it. It's time to disable updates and retain an archived copy of the installer.

coldtea6• 2 years ago

OK, there goes a decent-ish Adobe alternative.

Now it will be more subscriptions, polluted with embedded Canva shit, and perhaps phasing out the desktop apps altogether.

bigboy12• 2 years ago

Adobe is for pros.

coldtea6• 2 years ago

"Pros" is not well defined, unless if it's just used to mean "people getting paid for work they do by using the software" (what actually separates the pros from the non-pros: getting paid).

Otherwise, it's a "no true Scotsman" thing, only including the 10% of hardcore graphic designers deep into Photoshop and Illustrator and such, and not the 90% of web designers, app UI designers, content creators, artists, and others, who might or might not use Adobe, but that still often make more $ than belleguered "pro" graphic designers.

It's like how an exexutive using an MBP and making $500,000k/year is "not a pro" for some, but some guy using it to make $70k/year is, and somehow gets to define what is or isn't a "pro machine".

For what many (or most) people do in 2024, many alternatives, including Affinity, Canva, Figma, Sketch, and others, are fine for their professional (as in, charging customers, or earning money by work created using the software) use cases.

DHPersonal• 2 years ago

I got a press release email from Canva today that included the following about perpetual licenses, which reads to me as if the prices are going to be increasing on those licenses:

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.

Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

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