owlexifry
Well-known member
well, im not gonna pretend to know the difference
the only 'graphics design' i ever do is with my shaky sinister left hand and a felt tip pen.
Affinity Software - October 2025 Announcement
- Thread starter benny_profane
- Start date
the only 'graphics design' i ever do is with my shaky sinister left hand and a felt tip pen.
szukalski
Well-known member
I was just about to mention the free licenses.
My money is on v3 being released, you wouldn't be giving away licenses if your aim is to move to subscription.
Hopefully it's be some hybrid model where you still have a perpetual license and more advanced features (AI) are subscription based.
That makes more sense than all the fear mongering. Perpetual licenses are kinda their thing, and it's their main selling point versus Adobe.
At the same time, it's not feasible to add features which incur ongoing costs (like AI) without a subscription model.
My money is on v3 being released, you wouldn't be giving away licenses if your aim is to move to subscription.
Hopefully it's be some hybrid model where you still have a perpetual license and more advanced features (AI) are subscription based.
That makes more sense than all the fear mongering. Perpetual licenses are kinda their thing, and it's their main selling point versus Adobe.
At the same time, it's not feasible to add features which incur ongoing costs (like AI) without a subscription model.
jessenator
Well-known member
Oh I mean that the frame rate tanks on my old Mac lol.well, im not gonna pretend to know the difference
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benny_profane
Well-known member
The licenses seem to be limited by platform now, right?
A v3 release may very well be the case. A month with no indication of what’s happening while removing things like add-ons and the forum is not very consumer-forward—especially given the amount of concern raised with the canva acquisition.
Affinity is burning a lot of good will they’ve gained. Their consumer base has accepted a substantial amount of missing functionality due to their pricing model alone. If they are going to continue with that pricing model, I think they should be assuring their customers that that is their intention.
Cybercow
Well-known member
Just a tidbit of Adobe history . . . .
Adobe does not like competitive products in the market. In June of '91. ULead Systems (Taiwan) released PhotoStyler, the 1st ever 24bit image editor as a competitor for Photoshop. At the time I had both (worked in a pro print shop) and Photoshop really sucked in comparison. Adobe tried to buy PhotoStyler directly from ULead Systems, but ULead wouldn't have it. So Adobe quietly went to Aldus (PageMaker) and suggested that if there were able to purchase PhotoStyler from ULead, Adobe would purchase the entirety of Aldus. Aldus went for it thru its PrePress group later that same year, retaining the name 'PhotoStyler'. Well, as I understood it at the time, Adobe backed out of purchasing the entirety of Aldus and offered only purchase their PhotoStyler and consummated the deal in 1994 when Aldus discontinued PhotoStyler. Adobe then took the guts & heart of PhotoStyler and crammed into the PhotoShop we saw grow into what we know today. All this left me with the impression that Adobe was more into the business side of image editing than image editing itself. Hence the business licensing model(s) Adobe now exacts.
I'm not bashing PhotoShop, it's a great image editor. But like many other PhotoShop users, I retained their last onsite-only licensing version and will not upgrade to their subscription model. Adobe even tried to stuff pop-ups into their onsite-only licensed updates to scare folks into upgrading to their web-based licensing. That's when I blocked all access to all Adobe sites in my router.
A couple of years ago, I procured the Affinity suite and used it for a bit. I still prefer PhotoShop to the Affinity stuff. Still, sad to see it caved to Adobe.
Adobe does not like competitive products in the market. In June of '91. ULead Systems (Taiwan) released PhotoStyler, the 1st ever 24bit image editor as a competitor for Photoshop. At the time I had both (worked in a pro print shop) and Photoshop really sucked in comparison. Adobe tried to buy PhotoStyler directly from ULead Systems, but ULead wouldn't have it. So Adobe quietly went to Aldus (PageMaker) and suggested that if there were able to purchase PhotoStyler from ULead, Adobe would purchase the entirety of Aldus. Aldus went for it thru its PrePress group later that same year, retaining the name 'PhotoStyler'. Well, as I understood it at the time, Adobe backed out of purchasing the entirety of Aldus and offered only purchase their PhotoStyler and consummated the deal in 1994 when Aldus discontinued PhotoStyler. Adobe then took the guts & heart of PhotoStyler and crammed into the PhotoShop we saw grow into what we know today. All this left me with the impression that Adobe was more into the business side of image editing than image editing itself. Hence the business licensing model(s) Adobe now exacts.
I'm not bashing PhotoShop, it's a great image editor. But like many other PhotoShop users, I retained their last onsite-only licensing version and will not upgrade to their subscription model. Adobe even tried to stuff pop-ups into their onsite-only licensed updates to scare folks into upgrading to their web-based licensing. That's when I blocked all access to all Adobe sites in my router.
A couple of years ago, I procured the Affinity suite and used it for a bit. I still prefer PhotoShop to the Affinity stuff. Still, sad to see it caved to Adobe.
benny_profane
Well-known member
As an aside, discord is the absolute worst platform for support forums. I’m really not sure why that has become the de facto tech product support platform. It’s not really intended for static reference and results in so much clutter and duplicative information.
EDIT: I guess I can understand a desire to avoid AI/search engine scraping, but it really diminishes consumer access to information in the process.
jessenator
Well-known member
I had no idea about PhotoStyler... I knew they really wanted PageMaker (and couldn't have cared less about SuperPaint, maybe beyond the capability of having raster and vector in a single file), and just assumed they wanted Aldus for a (not quite lol) competitor to Quark XPress. That's much more devious.
Like the opposite of Apple: buy a good bit of pro software, and decide, "yeah there's more money in iPhones and skimming rich college kids with airbooks," and stop it altogether. No sale, just dead. RIP, Aperture, Shake, Final Cut. But that's another story.
I actually thought about Affinity Designer, and did buy Photo, because I needed raw editing capability. Lightroom was just so diddly-dang good at what it did, but I didn't want another subscription mess. But my freelance photog stuff wasn't viable with 9-5 and commutes (and even long before AI), and haven't done anything beyond family photos and pedals.
Wonder if an offline Designer perp license is worth banging through.
BryGuy
Active member
Giving away the old version right before they drop a new one isn’t uncommon at all. The whole point is to get as many people on the platform as possible and then get them to pay for all the great new features or whatever. Streamers do it too with their free trials. Just trying to get as many people addicted to their product. But they are just beginning nice, right?
Nostradoomus
Well-known member
Hook, line and sinker.
jessenator
Well-known member
This first one's free, the man in the alley said
andare
Well-known member
I own Adobe CS5.5 and when I bought a new mac 2 years ago I couldn't use the apps anymore because they are 32 bit so I bought the Affinity suite just in case I need to do graphics again.
Frankly I hate these apps because I have 20+ years of Adobe workflow and keyboard shortcuts engraved in my brain, so Affinity apps just feel frustrating to use. Good luck to them but I'm set for life and will never use a subscription app unless I'm forced to.
Frankly I hate these apps because I have 20+ years of Adobe workflow and keyboard shortcuts engraved in my brain, so Affinity apps just feel frustrating to use. Good luck to them but I'm set for life and will never use a subscription app unless I'm forced to.
benny_profane
Well-known member
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www.affinity.studio
The applications are being collapsed into a single free program. Not very much clarity about data use or what future user-responsiveness will be like.
Generally, free applications that aren't open-source are concerning.
benny_profane
Well-known member
My guess is a free tier that canva will have access to for their AI with a subscription pro tier.
pricklyrobot
Well-known member
Well this is lame! 
I originally started using Affinity stuff when my ancient Adobe CS2 couldn’t be installed on my then-new Windows 10 machine.
I guess we’ll see how long an obsolete Designer 2 can trudge along.
I have both the computer and iPad versions. A bit more worried about the latter, as it seems like iOS updates seem more prone to breaking old apps than desk/laptop OSs do…
I originally started using Affinity stuff when my ancient Adobe CS2 couldn’t be installed on my then-new Windows 10 machine.
I guess we’ll see how long an obsolete Designer 2 can trudge along.
I have both the computer and iPad versions. A bit more worried about the latter, as it seems like iOS updates seem more prone to breaking old apps than desk/laptop OSs do…
Robert
Reverse Engineer
There's no mention of the name "Serif" at all anymore.
I downloaded it, I'll give it a shot.... I'm interested to see just how much ends up being dependent on premium AI features.
I can live without things like "Generative Fill" and "Remove Ex From Photo" but I'd hate to see legacy features like Magic Wand depreciated in favor of the new big thing.
Harry Klippton
Not Interested
Somewhat related, I've been pondering what to do when I inevitably need a new desktop computer in the future. The few programs I use don't run on Linux, nor do I want to learn it.
Asdrael
Well-known member
Black Friday is coming up. And a basic desktop computer is pretty cheap nowadays. Even good screens are cheap. The high end stuff price exploded though, a modern graphic card is more expensive than my old school high end computer what the hell.