Canva Bought Affinity!





  • @richbyte

    Wow, it will be interesting to see what happens with Affinity then
    In the forums it is already expected that subscription could come



  • "The team behind Affinity remains in place and our approach remains the same"

    Established systematic ignorance of user requirements and relaxed development?



  • @creative fine remark ☺



  • That Canva deal is making quite a few waves and is a topic in many forums,
    the side effect is that "VectorStyler" appears in many lists as an vector graphics alternative.

    I praised β€œVectorStyler” in the Blender forum as an AD alternative.



  • I came here too from the Affinity forum lol. would be awesome if this software could even 1-up affinity and run decently under Linux (doesnt have to be native, wine is good too).



  • Canva just did a favor to Adobe. Affinity users are not the same audience as Canva users. They are people who would switch from Adobe. Also this is also a kind of monopolistic coercion to force people to a subscription model by cannibalizing independent software alternatives which offer perpetual ownership license.



  • I am all for it and advocating, any AD user should switch to VS.
    πŸ‘‰πŸ» http://pxl.to/AffinityAlternatives



  • @michaelokraj said in Canva Bought Affinity!:

    I am all for it and advocating, any AD user should switch to VS.
    πŸ‘‰πŸ» http://pxl.to/AffinityAlternatives

    Is there a way to view the full image(s) without a LinkedIn membership - nothing happens when I click on the image.



  • Ok, back to step 1:
    Get a LinkedIn account πŸ˜‰

    4_1711541689077_6.png 3_1711541689077_5.png 2_1711541689077_4.png 1_1711541689077_3.png 0_1711541689077_2.png



  • Pretty much the reason of my presence here. I don't expect Affinity to remain viable in the near future, so I'm looking for alternatives. For Photo, I've found my happiness with Krita/Clip Studio Paint, as my main use was to draw. For Designer, VectorStyler is my main choice, and I'll certainly switch soon.



  • I have been using the affinity products in all my work flows since they were launched. Their strength is simplicity and stability, I believe. I have never experienced any crashes, and they are both fast and stable. It's amazing to be able to work with both raster and vector in the same app. Although they don't have all the tools and features a serious professional would require, they are slowly catching up. Wish them best. I recently started using VS. It will take some time to get used to UI and funtionality and still a long way to go.



  • @michaelokraj
    It would be naiive to think that VS would not sell out if the right buyer and price came along. I think the only safe bets are FOSS. The project I am watching is https://graphite.rs. VS is great for many, but at least I have always ended up with bugs that defeated the purpose. Admittedly, I have not used VS for months now.



  • It's why I'm here. I'm not about to give up on Affinity yet; that would be a bit hasty, I think, but I'm pretty firmly in the 'not feeling too great about all this' camp. Anyway, it's a good reason to cast about and see what else is out there. I saw very positive mentions of VectorStyler, so I've come to check it out-- installed the trial version and I'm impressed. I'm more one of those artsy types who really belongs in a raster app with lots of splat brushes, so I really appreciate the hands on shape bending tools you have going on in here. Very cool stuff, and very cool even if I'm able to stick with Designer until the end of time. I expect you'll see a fair few more of us wandering in, looking sad and lost. I hope we won't be too onerous of an imposition.



  • Hi there all who have just discovered VectorStyler. Most of the users here come from other vector editors (commercial and open source) and a lot of us have experienced the 'fanboy/fanperson' dress-down one time or another in the Serif forums. The Affinity roadmap has never been realised, and what was most disappointing to me was that things the users deemed important were not listened too.

    I have been using VectorStyler for a while now, as a matter of fact, I had at the time to still wait for the Windows version to be released, but it has been a fun ride sofar. We have active users, which come in with great ideas to improve functionality, emphasize what we need most and have discussions about this which invite (in general) open feedback from others in the forums. And then we have a very responsive developer who invites us to play and discover all aspects in VectorStyler, asks us to explain how and why we need some functionality, and luckily keeps reminding us that VS is a tool on its own.

    I hope you all have a great time discovering the potential of this application and join the conversation and make this the best alternative around, without being sucked into a subscription model. Please let us know how you go, and yell out if you need help discovering ways to do things. This is NOT illustrator nor affinity designer, but a beast on its own. Go play!



  • @_NM_ I hope you realize your hypocrisy in your statement. And … what are you doing in this forum, when you are not using the software? Hilarious.

    You're accusing me of naivety, I won't address at all. Good day.



  • @syllie Thank you for the welcome! And I apologise for the less-than-nice fancreature behaviour you've experienced from certain elements. You won't get that from me. I've never been much for application tribalism. I've loved Serif for making good tools accessible to people for whom industry standards, and their accompanying price tags, are not an option. That approach enables more people to become artists and designers who wouldn't otherwise have the ability to learn the principles. But closing one's mind to other things is just self limiting and being mean to other people about their choices is just mean. Boo to that.

    Those of you who have been around here a while, do you have any thoughts on how long the sale might last? I've only had the briefest of plays with VectorStyler yet-- but I've also just bought the dogs their anti-tick stuff, and they're big dogs so that was a bit of an oof.


  • administrators

    @Strangechilde said in Canva Bought Affinity!:

    do you have any thoughts on how long the sale might last? I

    Given the current predicament πŸ™‚ we can have the sale open at least until 15th of April.



  • @_NM_ said in Canva Bought Affinity!:

    VS is great for many, but at least I have always ended up with bugs that defeated the purpose. Admittedly, I have not used VS for months now.

    The FOSS "Graphite" is interesting - thanks for bringing it to our attention. I'll keep an eye on it as well. Seems like it has a lot of big plans to eventually come to fruition. I didn't dig in far enough yet, but I was intrigued by the ability to see the steps in a process and then go back and alter them. It's always interesting to see the different approaches developers take to creating vector editing programs

    I'm glad you're back on the VS forum and using VS again. The fastest way we can see VS improve is to keep testing and reporting the issues consistently. Areas of VS get fixed the fastest where active users frequent. The diversity of dedicated users reporting has made VS more well rounded over the years.

    Selfishly in some ways, I was/am all about consistently reporting the specific hurdles that kept me from using VS more fully and my workflow has improved as a result. It wasn't without sacrifice; any time I got stuck in VS due to a bug or other limitation, I'd utilize an old copy of Illustrator to get me through until the VS problem was resolved. The developer is very approachable and active in fixing the issues which means most problems do not remain in place for very long. A lot changes in VS each month, more than many would expect, given the pace of most other software development.



  • @VectorStyler You are a kind soul. Thank you! πŸ˜„