At the end of 2025, some strange developments took place at Serif, the company that owned the incredible programs from the Affinity series: Photo, Publisher, and Designer.
The website simply displayed a message saying that something new was coming and that it would be fantastic. What was curious is that the sale of the products was halted during that period. Since these programs were on version 2, most people naturally assumed it was just a somewhat gimmicky marketing move.
Well, after a while, news dropped like a bomb: the programs Affinity Photo, Publisher, and Designer had been sold to the Australian company Canvas.
In other words, all the trust that Serif had built with its customers over the years was seriously shaken, and many doubts began to arise.
To explain what had happened (and reduce the collateral damage), Canvas launched an information campaign explaining that it had bought the three products and merged them into a single program called Affinity 3, with the slogan “Creative Freedom.”
The suite would become “free forever,” and everyone would live happily ever after…
Obviously, this left some people happy and others (including me) extremely suspicious.
According to Canvas, the new Affinity would be free except for new features based on generative and corrective AI. To access those, it would be necessary to pay for a premium license. Okay, fair enough, but… there are a few catches.
The first is that the format of saved files has changed and no longer allows saving in the previous format. This can be interpreted as an attempt to force the migration of all files from earlier versions to the new one. Many people didn’t like this and decided to remain on the older versions.
The second issue is that there is absolutely no guarantee that Canvas will honor what it promised. We’ve seen this before with Adobe when it bought Aldus—after some time, they killed the products and forced users to migrate to the Adobe platform.
A third point is even more concerning: the requirement to create a Canvas account in order to use the new Affinity.
I suspect that exactly the same thing will happen again, but in a slightly different way. I think the suite will undergo transformations or be absorbed into another product and will eventually become paid, or simply be discontinued in favor of other products.
It’s important to make it clear that the meaning of free use is completely different from a purchase contract, in which you buy the rights to use the product.
Terms of use can be modified at any time. Your data may, at some point, start being used to train AI.
To be very honest, Canvas is not that good-natured. It's a business and they want money. Sooner or later.
I hope I’m wrong.
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