←back to thread

Affinity Studio now free

(www.affinity.studio)
1203 points dagmx | 4 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
mns ◴[30 Oct 25 17:21 UTC] No.45762506[source]▶
Devastated about this. Good for them for making money on the sale to Canva, but still, this is a sad day. Studio is now freemium, in the future probably more and more features (outside of AI) will be added in the subscription, and you will end up with an app full of disabled features and pop-ups encouraging you to subscribe and unlock the new and shiny thing.

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

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

replies(9): >>45762554 #>>45762840 #>>45762843 #>>45762916 #>>45762953 #>>45763112 #>>45763260 #>>45763287 #>>45766527 #
t-writescode ◴[30 Oct 25 17:23 UTC] No.45762554[source]▶
[flagged]
replies(10): >>45762687 #>>45762690 #>>45762709 #>>45762727 #>>45762833 #>>45763004 #>>45763236 #>>45763297 #>>45763477 #>>45779678 #
pndy ◴[30 Oct 25 17:59 UTC] No.45763004[source]▶
My friend was using Photoshop 7 up until she couldn't install it for whatever reason under W10. It was always enough for her to do what she was doing with her digitalized drawings.

Not sure if she found a replacement but she certainly didn't want to use GIMP - interface was way too convoluted and layers management weird, according to her IIRC.

replies(1): >>45763301 #
1. inanutshellus ◴[30 Oct 25 18:21 UTC] No.45763301[source]▶
Learning GIMP as a PS user is like changing operating systems.

... but it has always been worth it for any normal person, IMO.

That said... PS's new AI tools might make GIMP no longer a viable option even for normies like me.

replies(1): >>45771024 #
2. archerx ◴[31 Oct 25 11:54 UTC] No.45771024[source]▶
Learning GIMP is not worth it for anyone, people should use the much better and actually usable open source alternative called “Krita”.
replies(1): >>45771367 #
3. inanutshellus ◴[31 Oct 25 12:38 UTC] No.45771367[source]▶
Maybe other apps are better, but my guess is that they just work harder at copying PhotoShop's UX whilst GIMP actively worked to innovate.

Remember too that PhotoShop itself is unintuitive and hard to learn.

That unintuitiveness is a mark of honor for Photoshop ("ooo, it's so powerful you have to take _classes_ to learn it!") and a mark of shame for GIMP ("ooo, those twits didn't clone PhotoShop, the fools! It's so hard to learn!")

replies(1): >>45772555 #
4. archerx ◴[31 Oct 25 14:47 UTC] No.45772555{3}[source]▶
Well GIMP innovated in the wrong way, you can put the steering wheel in the backseat of a car in the name of innovation but that doesn’t make it better. I honestly would rather use JavaScript and canvas over GIMP because it’s just more intuitive.