Adobe critics herald Affinity for new free creative studio

Adobe rival Affinity, which was acquired by Canva last year, has announced that it will now offer a professional-grade creative studio free to users, a move that has been heralded by critics of the Photoshop maker after years of rising costs.

The company is known for long offering its apps including Affinity Photo, a rival to Photoshop, and Affinity Publisher, a rival to InDesign, at one-time costs rather than under a subscription model, which had already drawn many creatives away from Adobe.

But now it has released a new studio, simply Affinity, that brings vector, photo and layout tools together into one application, chief executive Ash Hewson announced on October 29. It was designed under guidance from Canva’s Designer Advisory Board.

“For too long, professional designers have had almost no choice in the tools they use, from bloated software that slows them down, to subscriptions that stack up, and workflows that interrupt creativity,” Hewson said. “Across the creative community, we’ve heard the same frustrations: a call for speed, for power, for freedom.”

Hewson said that having its features all in one studio streamlines the creative process of its users and computing power.

“There’s no catch, no stripped-back version, and no gotchas. The same precise, high-performance tools that professionals rely on every day are now open to all, because creative freedom shouldn’t come with a cost,” Hewson said.

Inside Affinity, the company now offers Canva’s artificial intelligence tools, like generative fill, for those with Canva premium accounts, which will help keep the base studio free.

Affinity announced Monday that the new app has already been downloaded more than 630,000 times since launching four days earlier.

“Affinity became free, and to me, it shifts everything, since Affinity is packed with everything basic that a designer needs, and it’s free to use,” one graphic designer said on Reddit. Another said that they also switched because being billed about $78 monthly by Adobe was “unjustifiable.”

But not everyone celebrated the news. Some users expressed fears that the company will try to push people harder toward Canva’s subscription tiers over time, or that the app will stagnate without financial incentives to keep up-to-date.

“This reminds me, I need to download the last version of the license-based software before they disappear it entirely,” one creative commented on Reddit. “I don't trust that this will remain free or even available at all in the future, and I certainly don't trust them with my data.”

Another Redditor said, “I actually hate that it's free now. It used to be $50 per app and I loved the idea. Pay once for a great, polished app and keep it forever. Nowadays, whenever I see ‘free’ I see red flags.”