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Affinity Studio now free

(www.affinity.studio)
1199 points dagmx | 10 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.013s | source | bottom
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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).

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pmkary ◴[30 Oct 25 18:08 UTC] No.45763112[source]▶
I was so in love with the idea of "purchase and own for life" I thought every now and then I will buy the license and have a piece of mind. What started after SaaS is now at its closing days to have fully ruined software and from now on there will be hell like we have never seen before. Free Software is dead, Indie software as we used to is dead, and great businesses like Serif are down the road of being dead. I'm so sad.
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archagon ◴[30 Oct 25 19:45 UTC] No.45764449[source]▶
Free software is dead? Free software is still there, same as it ever was. And it will be there forever. The more people flee to it from SAAS shittification, the better it will get.
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1. Gigachad ◴[30 Oct 25 21:41 UTC] No.45765716[source]▶
It’s not dead, but a lot of it is stagnant. How much has Gimp improved in the last 10 years vs photoshop.
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2. archagon ◴[30 Oct 25 21:48 UTC] No.45765783[source]▶
Gimp, maybe not so much[1], but I understand that Krita has improved quite a bit. And regardless of stagnancy, both of these applications will continue to exist long after Affinity gets our-incredible-journeyed.

[1]: (FWIW, I don't know one way or the other. Apologies to any Gimp developers here.)

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3. prmoustache ◴[30 Oct 25 23:12 UTC] No.45766507[source]▶
Gimp has improved a lot and is still awesome value in term of dollar to service provided, even while making a small monthly or yearly donation.
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4. Andrex ◴[30 Oct 25 23:25 UTC] No.45766639[source]▶
Gimp actually, finally had their big 3.0 update earlier this year which "modernized" (to ~5 years ago) a lot of the codebase. The UI is mostly the same but it's using much more modern UI components (editing text isn't terrible now, etc.)

https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/03/16/gimp-3-0-released/

Gimp's problem is mostly one of funding and attention, like most OSS projects. But it's never stopped development, which I think is impressive 27 years on.

Imagine where Gimp would be if any company treated it like Valve treats WINE.

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5. Andrex ◴[30 Oct 25 23:30 UTC] No.45766663[source]▶
Another Gimp diehard for life here. I should make a donation, I appreciate the reminder.

People go on and on about how bad Gimp's UI is, and while I won't defend it I will the criticism is 99% overblown.

https://i.imgur.com/3gqmu9N.png

If you take 10-15 minutes to customize the UI it can be pretty damn simple if you want. I'd say those minutes are worth it to avoid a subscription and to support a true OSS stalwart project.

6. archagon ◴[30 Oct 25 23:31 UTC] No.45766676{3}[source]▶
Oh nice! Just gave it a shot and it does feel a lot more pleasant to use on macOS than what I remember.
7. fainpul ◴[31 Oct 25 14:35 UTC] No.45772405{3}[source]▶
Can I now finally open a png or jpg file, make some edits and hit <Ctrl + S> or do I still have to go through the "Export" dialog?
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8. Andrex ◴[31 Oct 25 17:42 UTC] No.45774633{4}[source]▶
They made that change sometime in 2.x(?) and I doubt they'll walk it back.

Getting into the export flow takes time but I find it to be cleaner.

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9. fainpul ◴[31 Oct 25 17:56 UTC] No.45774809{5}[source]▶
I think it's annoying and patronizing. When exporting, I have to use the file browser to pick a directory and filename to save, when all I want to do is overwrite the file I have open.
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10. Andrex ◴[31 Oct 25 23:03 UTC] No.45777681{6}[source]▶
It's a one-time thing per file while Gimp is open. Subsequent exports can be triggered instantly with Ctrl+E or File -> Export (instead of Export As...)