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For a very long time I used Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier, and After Effects. Probably the better part of two decades. I did more designs for signs, brochures, stickers, and vehicle wraps in illustrator than I care to count. I have used a lot of other art and illustration software over the years, but those are probably the ones I used the most.

I don’t miss them at all.

The current suite of tools I tend to use for that sort of stuff is Affinity. Affinity was three products, Designer, Photo, and Publisher, but now they are fused together into a single package simply called Affinity. When Canva, the company that bought Serif, the original developer of Affinity, announced that all three packages would be combined into one monolithic piece of design and art software, they also announced that it would be free. Well, mostly free.

This seemed to make a lot of people angry.

I know, I know. If a product is free, then you are the product and all that. Massive corporations don’t do things out of the kindness of their hearts, and they certainly don’t give away things for free.

So I understand why some people might be suspicious. They had come to like using Affinity tools and they are absolutely certain that Canva will ruin them. Just the same way that they have seen other promising tools ruined by huge corporations that didn’t know why the people who used those tools liked using them. They might be right too. Maybe Canva will ruin them. But that isn’t what has happened.

I think a lot of people who use Photoshop or Affinity photo or whatever graphics app like to think that there is a massive business in selling these programs. Sure, Adobe isn’t a small company, but relatively speaking, graphics software, especially professional level graphics software, is hyper niche. Not many people use it. And of the people who use it, not that many actually pay for it. Canva has the numbers. They know this too.

But Canva makes design software for people who are not professional designers or artists. They make software that you can quickly mock up web pages or meeting presentations. They make something closer to PowerPoint than Illustrator. Powerful design software, to be sure, but not the sort of thing a professional artist wants or needs. One brush can paint a fence, but you need decidedly different tools to paint a portrait. Not better. Just different. Affinity is different, and far fewer people use it.

Making Affinity subscription software, or continuing to have it be one time payment software, would probably make them enough money to continue development, but Affinity would be a tiny part of their Value as a company. They make so much more money selling parts of the Canva platform to companies that just need a ’good enough’ design tool.

Making it free though, that hurts Adobe. And hurting Adobe is worth so much more to them than what they could make selling Affinity. There are literally no excuses to giving Affinity a try now. If you are a professional artist or designer and you would rather not pay Adobe a lot of money every year, try Affinity. You have nothing to lose.

I have also read a lot of people complaining that Affinity isn’t good enough for professional work. That’s just dumb. I have used both Illustrator and Designer for professional work, and yes, they are different, and they have different workflows, but I actually like using Affinity more. It’s just a more fluid and modern workflow. There are a lot tools that I would like the to add and improve, but it is a thoroughly capable tool for professional work. Some folks have trouble separating ‘the way I’m comfortable working’ with ‘the right way to work’. As soon as you can do that, you will be much more able to shift from one software to another. Maybe you can paint that portrait with a four inch contractors brush.

Anyway, Affinity is free. Use it or don’t. I don’t really care either way, but I do know one thing. Getting mad about it won’t get your artwork done.