An Amazing Deal - I’m Really Surprised

Hi folks. As many of you know, I am a big fan of the products from Affinity. Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher are go to applications for me, with Designer and Publisher completely replacing their Adobe competitors and Photo taking more and more of my work that would normally just go to Photoshop.

The bundle was always a great deal at about $100 CAD for all three. Earlier, the company that makes the Canva drawing tool bought Affinity and I became quite worried. Canva’s free edition is quite good, but the serious edition is a subscription model and I am not a fan of ANY subscription models as a generalization. Lots of folks love Canva, I confess I find the UI more confusing than useful.

So I had a few fears. First that Affinity products would turn into the dreaded subscription model that ticks me off. Second that the so usable user interface would be screwed up making it more “user friendly” or as I in my cynical moments refer to as moron friendly. Third, I was scared that the excellent Affinity products would get slathered in AI bullshit.

I am very pleased that I have been proven wrong in every case.

The new Affinity combines the three former separate products into a single integrated application that is available for Macintosh or Windows. You do need to create a free Canva ID to get it. And that’s it. The entire package has no costs associated with it. No cloud storage, no AI surcharges, just great tools as a truly amazing price.

If you are a Canva Pro subscribers, you do get AI stuff that can be leveraged from Affinity. I’m not and see no value in AI stuff so don’t care.

Now I am a long time Affinity customer, and have dutifully paid to stay current. With everything now free, what does that mean for my investment? Affinity has negotiated with a massive type house and registered users of prior versions will receive a massive type library at no cost in the coming months. I do get fonts with Adobe subscriptions, but I find them Adobe centric and so rarely engage. If the Affinity fonts work only in Affinity app so be it, but if available in other apps as well, that will be a huge win.

I have also been informed that there is an iPad version of the new Affinity app coming to be available early in 2026. It’s not ready yet, but prior versions were superb and I expect no less on the new version.

Does it sound too good to be true? Did to me, but I have downloaded and installed the new Affinity and there have been no surprises so far. You can get your free copy at affinity.studio if you want to give it a try. Affinity is not trying to be Lightroom Classic, it’s a deep editing tool doing both vector AND pixel level editing and all with a common file format. I’m enthused and you might be inclined to give the product a go.

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