Affinity Studio now free

This is a deletion.

- 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.

> 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

There's a plague of this on the entire industry now. Free apps abound, none of them will do exactly what you need, all of them will point you to the shiny unfree thing that will.

That sucks for that usecase, agreed.

On the plus side, there is finally a free modern piece of software that matches 80s MacDraw and MacPaint on the Mac. (Keynote isn’t it.)

I'm sad (buyer of both v1 and v2). Being a paid app as opposed to require a subscription was the main selling over the Adobe Suite. A lot of users migrated to Affinity for that reason. As the free version will get more and more crippled as they move to pushing subscriptions, why not switch back to Adobe?

I hope somebody else will try to crack this market like affinity did a decade ago.

The practice would be easier to tolerate if the unfree thing had reasonable pricing. Alas, it is always subscription-based and the monthly fee is crazy high, in the range of re-buying a traditional download product every four months. I understand that professional users might have more money to spend but it still seems to me that those companies overestimate what potential customers are willing to pay as running costs.

I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware.

If you get value out of the free part of a tool, great! If not, then you get to choose to pay for the rest or not. Personally I'm happy that it tends to be the feature set I can live without that costs money. Not always, but often enough.

Fair, but shareware was pay-once, which many people find preferable to a subscription-chained model.

Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates.

Note: I own a license to V2 of the Serif suite.

I’d prefer to have them release a new version every X years and let me buy that for a fixed cost. (This is how Adobe used to work)

I just want to pay $50 and have a single version I can download that doesn't need to auto-update and that I can use as long as I want.

I did pay for perpetual access to it 2 months ago! :)

As a windows PC user I am hoping the compatibility issues wont effect me and I can enjoy the product offline.

> Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

How? First, by that time, you've usually spent many times more than it would have cost you to own the software outright, so the vendor is already better off. Second, if you stop paying, you lose access to the software, possibly with no other way to open existing files, etc. You're the one who's being held hostage - not the vendor.

As a hobbyist, I shudder to think that my total annual bill would be if all the software I use every now and then had a subscription model. It would be well in excess of $5,000/year.

Subscriptions often don’t allow continuing use of even existing versions of the product after you stop paying - it’s not just about access to future updates.

The main exceptions are subscriptions that are explicitly for support and maintenance contracts on top of a perpetual license. There are also a few unusual business models, like JetBrains offer for subscriptions that last at least 12 months which grants a perpetual fallback license of the major versions (including future minor versions) that were current during any part of the subscription up through 12 months before cancellation.

Sure, if the subscription is unreasonably priced. Then yes, it will be unreasonable.

Final Cut Pro is a $300 piece of software with a $50/yr or $5/mo subscription. It would take you 6 years to reach the same price which shows the subscription cost is reasonable.

It's a separate issue when software is unreasonably priced in subscription mode, versus the merits of the subscription model itself.

Correct, and you're no longer paying so that's okay? It is unfortunate if the software stops existing but there is not a financial issue.

You can't have your cake (one time payments) and eat it too (software gets perpetual updates).

Perpetual licenses with 1 year of updates is a good middle ground, but they have said that the v2 suite will get maintenance updates for some period of time so even that type of license would not have changed this conversation.

> they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it.

There’s as of yet no confirmation about this. There is a lot of speculation, but there has not been official confirmation.

You don’t have to keep paying for a subscription. You can stop at any time and still have access to all the non-AI features.

i wonder if you get some type of compensation if you paid recently.

It’s other way around, issue exists because of subscriptions and everyone rushing to subscription bandwagon

Yes, that's the situation at launch. The fear that's expressed above is that the subscription model incentivizes pushing people towards it as hard as possible. It's the exact opposite of Serif's straightforward model from before. Get ready for most new features (including ones that are unrelated to AI) to become locked to the subscription model. When they think they're not getting enough out of Affinity, they may also start cutting core functionality to force people to subscribe. Maybe, a limit on how many documents you can edit at once, or a layer limit (for the photo part), or an object limit (for the vector/"designer" part). This is how all of these subscriptions go nowadays.

A one time license never entitles you to ongoing updates.

Sure. I get that. My ideal scenario is that existing versions get security patches and critical bug fixes but you have to upgrade for new features.

But I realize that’s less lucrative and not how modern software tends to work

I’m kinda keen on this. A few months ago I was looking at making a one time magazine print, but I discovered there were essentially no affordable options. The affinity option was the cheapest one, but still unaffordable for a one time project.

I don’t even mind paying a subscription but the adobe option requires you to get a minimum of 12 months.

> That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

You also lose the ability to access your data in a lot of cases. That's the problem. I also own a v1 and v2 license for the Affinity stuff. I've used it to design myself exactly one logo, so I would have been way better off subscribing to Adobe's stuff for a month, right?

Wrong, at least in my opinion. The problem with subscriptions is that you lose control over future access to your data. For my logo, I'm fine with Affinity Designer v2 never getting updated as long as I can load the software and use it as-is.

I recently loaded up an abandoned Java project that I haven't looked at in a dozen years. I use IntelliJ IDEA and it wouldn't load in the most recent version of IDEA because the Gradle version used in the project was too old. I fired up my self-hosted server that I used at the time, installed IDEA v8, added a hostname for the Sonatype Nexus server to my DNS, and loaded my old project to look around.

You can barely do that anymore because you don't own or control anything. Everything is subscription based, pay forever, with deep links to infrastructure you don't control either. I can mostly do it because I refuse to get on the subscription "never control anything" bandwagon, but I'll still probably get burned by online activation at some point.

Just wait until everyone has 2 decades of AI context locked away behind paywalls controlled by a handful of companies. Everything in existence will be vendor locked and those companies will usurp every novel idea anyone is naive enough to feed in as context.

> I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware.

It's not even close. This is more akin to shareware where Bill Gates shows up at your house to collect a payment every month and formats your hard drive if you don't cough up the money.

Shareware gave you a perpetual license and control that couldn't be taken away, especially before the internet.

On the bright side, i am still using Paintshop Pro v7.04 from 2001, so we may be able to use Affinity for another 20 years, too.

Except that you can, because every software company did this for decades… Want to upgrade to a new version of our product? That’s another one time fee for that version.

If you squint, this looks a lot like a subscription model, but with extra steps. Why it’s different is because those extra steps actually matter.

They matter to the people who aren’t subjected to subscription dark-patterns to keep them from unsubscribing for just a little bit longer. They matter to the product, development, and sales teams who know they actually have to produce and deliver something meaningful if they want repeat customers. The matter to the accounting teams on all sides of the transaction, in particular because subscription revenue or expenses can always be counted as “recurring” and this has implications on cash flow which itself can impact many things.

The pitch has always been “we grow with you, this is a win-win”, implying that perpetual license fees are actually good for you to pay. Ostensibly because keeping your supplier in business keeps you in business, but in reality it was totally possible for a software supplier to go out of business and for their customers to continue operating without issue for 5, 10, even 15+ years, before even considering finding a replacement software.

And despite the pitch seeming so sweet, the literature on why you want your software business to operate on a subscription model was always about gaining an advantage over your customers, however marginal it may be, and now the data has borne out that the advantage is stark.

That's a great distinction.

There is a big difference between a one time payment and a recurring payment, especially if the company canceling the product or going out of business means you can no longer use the tool, and I honestly steer clear of those in most cases.

> they're completely stopping all updates to v2

The article itself says at least this bit. I didn't notice anything about a "trace" thing though, but I was just skimming.

My beef isn't with products where you have a choice between perpetual and monthly. It's with products where you don't. This includes the "always-online freemium" model, where you only really lose features over time to drive free -> paid migration and show growth.

I think people want either (a) a subscription that lets them keep the latest version perpetually, or (b) a perpetual license that provides some predictable amount of updates (this could be zero).

What people don't want is to pay for updates that they were led to believe they would get, but that they never got. Or to lose access to software that they paid a lot for, or that they got locked into (even free).

I don't think these are particularly difficult expectations to understand or meet.

>You don’t have to keep paying for a subscription. You can stop at any time and still have access to all the non-AI features

And if Canva decides that "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further,"[0] what will you do then? Go and rent the Adobe subscription suite instead?

[0] http://www.quickmeme.com/img/32/32b4229145de0a2c1171b9b5757f...

All of my photos are stored in a big Lightroom database. If I wasn't using an old camera supported by Lightroom 5 (that I bought outright in 2011), and was using modern Lightroom instead, I would have to pay an ongoing cost just to maintain access to my photo database, in perpetuity.

This sucks no matter how much the subscription actually is right now. Losing access to all your old work in its original format if you don't pay a subscription to a company that might decide to do anything, up to and including shutting down the servers and killing the app? No thank you.

Yeah, Lightroom 5 hasn't had any updates, doesn't support any new cameras, etc. But it still works, I can still look at all the photos I took with my old camera, and all my edits, and this will work, for free, until Lightroom 5 bitrots away into not working on Windows 14 or whatever.

It sucks that I can't just buy a new version of Lightroom when I get a new camera, instead I'd have to jump ship or sell my soul to Adobe.

It's right there in the FAQ.

"Your Affinity V2 license (via Serif) remains valid and Serif will continue to keep activation servers online. But please note that these apps won’t receive future updates."

That's not true. I've paid for a one time license for software before and received updates until the next major release.

I understand what you're saying, and yeah, that does suck.

> Losing access to all your old work in its original format

Most photo editing apps retain your originals, even when they're in a database. For example, Apple Photos has a folder full of originals with no modifications. Does Lightroom not have this?

I understand that there is a lot of metadata that you also want, I'm just curious about this detail?

There is a big difference between buying a perpetual licence with extra yearly support packages versus leasing the software with on a subscription model. While the two options may appear to be the same thing, the first one doesn't remove your ability to run the software once you stop paying for support.

The best way that I have to describe it is in the first option you're buying a version of the software and then paying for updates and bug fixes in a flexible manner, while in the second option you're leasing use of the software for as long as you continue to pay.

Lightroom's edits are non-destructive, so the original format of the edited photos exists within Lightroom's database or inside Lightroom's sidecar files. Yes, all my original photos are safe, but they are unprocessed raw and jpegs. I could plausibly render out my entire library and probably should, but it's the difference between a PSD and a PNG.

(I did investigate open source tools back in 2011 but essentially no libraries could even decode the raw format my camera uses for years)

it says, "the new free version gets widely requested features like image trace" and "the v2 won't get updates anymore".

I can't read it any way other than "throw your paid-for v2, download this fremium thing, make account: to get access to image trace which is the one thing everyone has requested ever since affinity was a thing"

I could be wrong ofc, but this just looks like classic misdirection where they're pointing to the free thing but in reality it's not really free and just a distraction.

why are you redirecting the conversation to subscriptions?

you know what would fix this? releasing a v3. that was the whole sell with affinity suite. that i could buy the new v3 for whatever price they set, it will contain all the new features. and i will own v3 for whatever that product lifecycle is.

THAT is why people invested in affinity. money is almost immaterial but that's why i spent time learning the thing and making it a part of my workflow.

affinity/canva can release free software all they want, but the whole reason affinity was popular was that people could pay 160 or whatever dollars for it to not nag, never nag. that has disappeared under the misdirection of "hey look its free for everyone now"

Unless you're on Mac which many design folks are. PSP from '01 (if it existed for Mac) would likely mean running a pre-OS X version from 2 CPU architectures ago.

> Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates.

A one time license is sold on the promise of future updates perpetually to this version. If serif said “we’re not adding AI tools to v2, we’re going to go to v3 instead” I’d be fine with it. But instead they’re taking the updates they were providing to us anyway and packaging them up under a new revenue stream.

If they didn’t want this backlash they shouldn’t have sold perpetual licenses, they should have sold licenses with 1 year of updates.

perpetual licenses give you access to the software you purchased perpetually. a perpetual license doesn't usually give you access to later versions of the software, only updates & fixes for the version you bought.

you were lucky to get the updates that you got. that is not normal, and is not something that a perpetual license purchaser should expect to get.

Why would I pay $5 a month for Final Cut Pro when I can use davinci resolve for free?

> A one time license is sold on the promise of future updates perpetually to this version.

No it is not and has never been. Of course not, and you must understand that.

That’s exactly what is.

Of course legally they’re entitled to not do that, but google are also legally entitled to close your account for any reason they see fit. If they mass deactivated accounts on one of those clauses they’d likely legally be right but they’d be pulling a real asshole move, which is what affinity/canva have done here.

I think the modifications here are the "original work" in question. Like, I would be wanting to save the thing I spent a lot of time myself working on -- the edits to the photos -- in their "original format": the way Lightroom is dealing with it as modifications on top of raw photos.

Quite the opposite, unfortunately. They are designed so that you cannot stop paying without substantial loss rendering it practically impossible.

Surely if you want to oblige companies to release new versions because you purchased a version in the past, then you also have to oblige every customer to also purchase the new version. Which would be preposterous.

When you purchase something you should get exactly what you purchased, nothing more and nothing less. That's how business has been conducted for three hundred thousand years by now.

Affinity cannot deactivate the software you have purchased, that would be outside of the law.

I've adopted a workflow like this:

Camera -> Photo Mechanic ingest/culling onto laptop -> edit RAWs in DxO Photolab -> export .jpg 100% for web into "Web" subfolder for event -> pick top shots for socials, export insta-optimized shape & quality into "Socials" subfolder for event -> backup RAW/Web/Socials folder hierarchy to external SSD for backup and upload "Web" subfolder to Google Photos for sharing & "JPG backup".

I keep about a year's worth of RAW edits + JPGs on my laptop before periodically clearing space, and I have some of my overall top shots stored separately on my Pixieset site.

> As the free version will get more and more crippled as they move to pushing subscriptions, why not switch back to Adobe?

Because this is just in your imagination?

Back in the day, a one time license bought you a specific version with maybe a year of updates. That worked well for practically all users, and no one complained if they had to pay some nominal upgrade fee to get the next version.