An Affinity for Canva 

As a graphic designer when I found out I was depressed for a long while to be honest. It's so hard to find an equivalent. Now I have to look for other alternatives. I simply don't trust their "oath" as it's not legally binding

I’ve been an Affinity user for some time and I love it. I recently used it to design my own book which included a lot of images/graphics and the integration of all three apps within essentially one app is great. A huge timesaver. I can only hope that after the acquisition it will only get better. Time will tell. Or should I say Canva will tell.

I have been watching your enlightening videos for some time now, William, so it’s about time to thank you for your wonderful insights, related to designing, writing and publishing. This video is also very informative but generally, it all leads back to the issue of the plight of the content creator. I am in a process of writing a rant about it. Thanks again.

As an Affinity user under Windows, l do hope Canva does not do what Corel does with CorelDraw and inflates the cost of the perpetual licence to stupid o' clock levels, currently £600+ in order to make a subscription look more palatable. Or what Xara does and hobbles the perpetual licence in terms of features compared to the subscription version. A lot of goodwill is riding on this.

Hi William, Thank you for your informative tutorials. Like you I have come from Pagemaker to Quark and jumped to InDesign version 1.5 because it looked better and a lot cheaper but it went up and up then went to subscription and as I needed the entire suite it was costing me $AU 87 per month but I am now basically retired and not wanting to pay that much. I bought version 1 of the Affinity suite a few years back and now ditched Adobe except for Photoshop and replaced Premiere, After Effects and Audition with the free DaVinci Resolve. Lets hope Canva don't spoil it for us.

100% agree. 😂 Glad I'm not alone. I hate Canva. I Love Affinity. Was devastated when I got the email...🤦 Changed over a couple of years ago, couldn't afford the Adobe suite. Affinity had been a perfect solution. Please Canva leave it alone.

Hi William, I was hugely saddened when I got the email from Affinity. I am also hugely cynical about the future of Affinity but such is life. I'm an old fart and don't like change especially when it appears it's all about money, grumble, grumble, grumble :-)

I'm always a bit suspicious, when a company announces, "We are excited..." or, "We are proud to announce that..." It usually means they've hit financial problems and are looking for a buyer.

I completely agree… hope Affinity isn’t corrupted by Canva. I think many others have concepts also, based on the repeated press releases from Affinity. And if we own Affinity apps, will we get reduced price access to premium Canva? Great video, as always!

Great video, William! Years ago, I used Photoshop to create mock posters and even the odd book cover. But then it went to a yearly subscription, and I didn't use it enough to justify the price. What would you recommend? :)

I hope Affinity does remain a one-time purchase software. One of the reasons I switched to Mac/IOS a few years ago was to completely eliminate Adobe from my pipeline. The two big programs I wanted was Vellum on the Mac, and Procreate on the iPad. But the Affinity suite has proven to be a fine replacement for the Adobe offerings. We'll all see how this acquisition actually plays out. I'm expecting to be disappointed, but time will tell.

I love the Affinity apps and have been using Serif products for almost 30 years, so I'm desperately hoping that this isn't the beginning of the end of that relationship.

Which Affinity app would be best for RU-vid thumbnails? And would the sale still be available around the end of August?

I'm curious about Affinity's ability to export to PDF and have it be tagged for accessibility properly. Canva does a poor job on this currently.

I have been wondering about the 3 million users figure. Until quite recently you had to buy each application separately. I have the Windows versions of each, Mac versions of each and iPad versions of each. Does that make me one user? Three users (either once per app or once per platform)? Or 9 users (because I bought 9 items)? That’s an entirely rhetorical question, I don’t expect you to know. I use Affinity, Adobe Creative Cloud, Corel PaintShop Pro, Overleaf and iStudio, even Microsoft Publisher from time to time. Some of that is historical reasons, some is due to requirements of collaborators/clients. What you use is usually more complex than just price or personal preference unless you are completely solo.

William, why not use Apple Keynote to create your RU-vid thumbnails? Set page setup to 16:9. Export as JPG.

1:44 Jeez! Clean that monitor (I'm not OCD, no honest.....)

William I've been using an affinity publisher and designer for a number of years. And recently I added 160 page typography book to a Canva website if you are interested, I will send you a link. Frank Wakeman.

Affinity is great but for get an employ you must forget it.

And I hate online-poly apps also. It seems that Adobe is slowly moving to a place where all of its apps will be online-only within five years.