Do you like Photoshop, but not the subscription? This is a godsend – and it's free

When the Australian company Canva acquired British Serif, the creator of the popular Affinity applications, last year, the creative community froze. Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher had for years represented an alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud – without a subscription, without constantly draining money from your account. Now Canva has combined all three applications into one and announced that it is free. Forever. Does it sound too good to be true? Let’s see what the catch is.

Is the new application truly free?

Affinity applications were always presented as an answer to the Adobe tax. Instead of a monthly subscription for a thousand crowns, you paid approximately 1,800 crowns once, and the software was yours. No additional fees, no forced updates, no cloud. For graphic designers, photographers, and designers who didn’t want to pay Adobe every month, it was a salvation.

Canva has now completely reversed this model. It has merged three separate applications – Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher – into a single application for Windows and Mac. An iPad version is expected later. And the whole thing is supposed to be free. No subscription, no one-time purchase. You just download, install, and use it.

Canva is pushing this really hard on its website: “Affinity is now completely free, forever. A full-featured, professional Affinity experience available to everyone. No catch, no stripped-down version, no fees.” At the end of the page, it adds a jab at Adobe: “Stop renting software. Move here.”

What’s the catch?

Because there is a catch, of course. Not a major one, but there is one. Basic functions – photo retouching, vector drawing, text and layout work – are truly free. What Affinity did for years and what you paid for, you now get for free.

However, AI tools require a paid Canva Premium membership. Specifically, this includes generative fill, automatic background removal, AI photo upscaling, or background blur for portraits. Canva Premium costs 15 dollars per month (300 CZK). That’s not a small amount, but fairly – these are AI features that were not present in the original Affinity applications.

The second catch: you must create a Canva account. Without it, you cannot even launch the application. Canva thus gains a database of users, their emails, and potentially data about what you create. Although the company claims that it “does not sell your data, does not monetize your creativity, and does not train AI models on your work,” relying on promises from tech companies can be tricky.

And a third detail: old versions of Affinity V2 were removed from the web a few weeks ago. If you bought them previously, they still work. But Canva has not stated whether updates will continue to be released for them. If not, users who paid a thousand crowns might soon find their software becoming obsolete.

What to do about it?

If you have been using GIMP, Krita, or another open-source alternative until now, Affinity is an interesting choice. You get professional tools that are almost on par with Photoshop, and you don’t pay a single crown for it. If basic functions without AI are enough for you, it’s a great offer.

For now, it is simply the best alternative to Adobe that has ever existed. And if Canva maintains it, the creative community will celebrate.

What do you think of the new Affinity model?

Source: The Verge, Affinity