Don’t like paying for Photoshop or Illustrator? You may not need to, as Australia’s Canva says its apps that do much the same are now free. Yep, you read that right.
If the barrier to learning a tool or skillset is access to that tool or skillset, it makes sense why not everyone learns how to use those apps and tools, and declines to grow a skillset that could help them in their careers or later in life.
Learning something image editing in Photoshop or design in Illustrator or InDesign means you typically need access to the tools, with the obstacle not only being the cost of entry, but also the time it takes to learn what’s needed to use them effectively.
But what if those tools were free? Or more specifically, what if tools like those apps were free, and made it possible for more people to try them, and to get into the art of content creation?
Australia’s Canva is about to test that concept, thanks to its acquisition of Adobe competitor Serif last year.
Canva has already spent most of its 12 year life reshaping the idea that graphic design needed to be handled by a professional, building an online service that anyone could use, and its latest effort pushes that concept once again: not only can anyone use Canva’s new Affinity tools, but they won’t need to pay for them.
Previously, Serif’s Affinity offered competition for Adobe by providing pay-once tools that worked as well as Adobe’s, missing out on some of the AI Firefly features, but delivering everything else.
You could pay under $100 for one of the apps of under $300 for the entire range, and that was all you need to pay for the life of the app, a dramatic difference from the monthly cost of Adobe’s collection.
But with Canva’s change to Affinity, the cost is now gone. The “all-new Affinity”, as Canva puts it, brings all three previous apps into one app and platform, offering photo editing like Photoshop, vector design like Illustrator, and layout tools like InDesign into one application that won’t cost a thing.
That includes features like editing RAW with photos, page controls for print and layout, GPU acceleration, and path controls. It’s the sort of feature set you might find individually on Adobe’s apps, and pay separately for.
Canva notes the app release is free forever, though hasn’t said if previous owners of Affinity V2 (the last version) will continue getting updates. Their apps will apparently keep working, but V2 may be stuck where it was left.
However, Canvas has said that while Affinity is free, Canva’s AI tools are available through the apps for paid Canva subscribers, giving them something as an extra, much like how Adobe’s tools provide AI support.
In terms of availability, the Canva Affinity apps are available now for Mac and Windows, with an iPad app to come.
