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Affinity Studio now free

(www.affinity.studio)
1199 points dagmx | 2 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.48s | source
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pentagrama ◴[30 Oct 25 17:21 UTC] No.45762521[source]▶
I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here:

Serif is the company that originally built this software.

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2014–2024

Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model:

- Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent)

- Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent)

- Affinity Publisher: print and layout design (Adobe InDesign equivalent)

They were solid, professional tools without subscriptions like Adobe, a big reason why many designers loved them.

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2024

Canva acquired Serif.

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2025 (today)

The product has been relaunched. The three apps are now merged into a single app, simply called Affinity, and it follows a freemium model.

From what I’ve tested, you need a Canva account to download and open the app (you can opt out of some telemetry during setup).

The new app has four tabs:

- Vector: formerly Affinity Designer

- Pixel: formerly Affinity Photo

- Layout: formerly Affinity Publisher

- Canva AI: a new, paid AI-powered section

Screenshot https://imgur.com/a/h1S6fcK

Hope can help!

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groby_b ◴[30 Oct 25 22:05 UTC] No.45765942[source]▶
Sigh. It was a great app.

Switching to the freemium resource extraction model makes it utterly unattractive. (If I wanted to go with the whole "nice app you got, shame if something happened to it" model, Adobe's got that covered)

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simondotau ◴[31 Oct 25 00:50 UTC] No.45767201[source]▶
To be clear, it's unattractive because we're at step 1 or 2 of a familiar 3-step playbook where "free" looks great today, but not tomorrow. It might not be this year, or next year, but eventually Canva will do something shitty to extract revenue from its users. A mildly crappy outcome if you never paid for it, but a really frustrating one for people who did pay Affinity for a software license.
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1. mns ◴[31 Oct 25 08:28 UTC] No.45769577[source]▶
Once they manage to get enough Adobe customers on there and get some good market share, the investors will want their money multiplied (and you can't realistically do that just with AI features), so they will use the same playbook like any other business out there that used VC money to take over a market, and make you pay, probably first for proper support, and then more and more updates will come only to the + subscriptions.
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2. sethaurus ◴[31 Oct 25 09:50 UTC] No.45770146[source]▶
The alternative is that they monetize it the same way Canva monetizes its other products: most features free, "pro" subscription for online collaboration/server-driven stuff and a library of stock content. Plus an enterprise tier.

All of that could get added to affinity without changing its core offering, which would be consistent with both their past strategy and their current messaging.