Is Affinity Studio the real-deal or is it a trick?

[Ambrosia7177]

Hello.

I see that Canva has combined the Affinity products into something called "Affinity Studio".

In addition, I see that Canva has made "Affinity Studio" free.

However, is this just a trick by Canva to get people to upgrade to a paid subscription?

While Affinity Studio is free, apparently you have to buy a subscription to do fancier things.

Not sure where is that "line in the sand"?

Sadly, all of my dreams of building a website and YouTube channel got put on hold during 2024 (and now 2025), and so I never got a chance to try out different photo-editing software applications - which a lot of you recommended in the past.

I could use some serious help figuring out if the free version of Affinity Studio will do what I need.

(Don't mind buying standalone software, but am NOT interested in going down the subscription route...)


Here are some things that I need to do in 2026...

For my website:
- Basic photo-editing (e.g. Resize, crop, reduce file-size for web/mobile, adjust light-levels, maybe tweak color)
- Ideally be able to apply adjustments to multiple photos at once. (I can see myself needing more of a production-line versus spending 10 hours editing one photo for the cover of Vogue.)


For YouTube:
- Take screenshots from video, and do basic photo-editing (like above) so a screenshot can be used as cover-photo for a YouTube video.
- Create professional looking YouTube thumbnails. (**Super important)


It also isn't clear to me if the Canva application is entirely paid now?


Side Note:
I think I have gotten pretty good at shooting (and editing) video in DaVinci Resolve - at least I am proud of my work thusfar.

However, I know that a MAJOR WEAKNESS of mine is not knowing how to make professional-looking YouTube thumbnails.

(All of the experts say that without a top-notch YouTube Title and Thumbnail, your channel is doomed.)

And the reality is that I am NOT a graphic designer, plus I think that using A.I. to create **fake** Mr. Beast-type YouTube thumbnails is evil.

I do NOT want over-the-top looking thumbnails. Rather, I just want to be able to take a photo (or video clip), maybe swap out the background, add some text, and have it look good enough to make people want to click on my video.

Am hoping that I don't need a Master's degree in art / graphic design to create professional-looking YouTube thumbnails.

Also not sure WHICH TOOL I need to do this based on my requirements??

Clearly the paid version of Affinity Studio / Canva could do wonders, but is there a way to do that in the free version of Affinity Studio, OR is there a practical way to do that in some other software that doesn't require a paid subscription or get into things like using A.I. to train their LLM off of my work.

I am willing to roll up my sleeves, but knowing that I work like a tortoise, am hoping there is software available where I don't have to spend 5 years learning a bunch of stuff.

My dream is to launch my business in 2026 (i.e. website and YouTube channel), and so time is of the essence!

Is the free version of Affinity Studio the solution? Or do I need something else?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

 

[MBAir2010]

Ambrosia7177.​

what graphic design software do we use now?

I have been using Photoshop/Illustrator since 1990 and now use Affinity 2021
as some as my self that program is cumbersome, hard to read and can't draw continuous lines.
BUT
this program does what I need for my M1s as I need a program for layers only
with some touch up.
I have designed some fun stuff like this avatar in affinity 2021,
as CS4 or later really does a better job as profession graphic design.
I use my early Intel MacBooks to perform my creative designs and upgrade the website.

last year I had the time to build a website from scratch using CS4 which seem very 2012ish
as that is interesting, has many playful features like roll over, motion graphics and slide shows.
I never tinkered with CCS creative style sheets since that is boring and mundane.
that being said the main inpatient of graphic design is one mind, rather than software.

hope this helps and Cavna aint doing this for free so be careful.

 

[Slartibart]

Everything the previous version 2 plus a few new things like vectorising are fully usable in the new free Affinity Studio. Everything in your list is indeed covered.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Anything useful here?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-affinity.2471192/

 

[Ambrosia7177]

what graphic design software do we use now?

Nothing. Just getting started.

hope this helps and Cavna aint doing this for free so be careful.

That is my suspicion...

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Everything the previous version 2 plus a few new things like vectorising are fully usable in the new free Affinity Studio. Everything in your list is indeed covered.

So things that a basic-to-intermediate Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer would need are currently free and available in Affinity Studio?

How does Canva fit into all of this?

Is Canva also part of Affinity Studio?

I was under the impression that once you start using Canva, you pretty quickly have to upgrade to a paid subscription to do anything of value - particularly for generating YouTube thumbnails.

 

[hg.wells]

So things that a basic-to-intermediate Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer would need are currently free and available in Affinity Studio?

How does Canva fit into all of this?

Is Canva also part of Affinity Studio?

I was under the impression that once you start using Canva, you pretty quickly have to upgrade to a paid subscription to do anything of value - particularly for generating YouTube thumbnails.

Everything is free unless you want to use Canva’s AI then you need a subscription.

https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-free/

 

[MBAir2010]

Nothing. Just getting started.

Affinity should perform everything you need to create photo and graphic design.
since you have nothing else to compare the user experience to you might grasp the tools usage better than others.
you can insert or place/import a photo, then add text, graphics and anything else they do on you tube nowadays.
then save the designs as .jpg and .gif images to insert on web design programs,
the YouTube design options add pop ups, banners and other motion video effects.

as the last professional situation I was involved in our designer used code
to change cores, sizes on ;jpg files via ccs
without opening photoshop.
ii would create the images in a certain format after reddening and cleaning up the subject.

I never gave Affinity a credit card and I can revert the program from Tahoe to Monterey
as I did on two computers this Sunday without a hitch.

 

[r.harris1]

You need a free canva account to use Affinity Studio. If you aren’t interested in the AI-based tools (generative fill, etc), which it sounds like you aren’t, you pay nothing. The v2 Affinity didn’t have those anyway, to speak of, so except for a few new things, it’s the same. The Affinity suite can do at least most of the stuff you’re after, though you’ll obviously need to invest time in yourself to learn the tools and practice them. Standing out on the web or YouTube is extremely difficult - there’s a tremendous amount of garbage - so knowing your tools well can be an advantage.

It’s always a good idea to follow the money, as has been noted. In this case, Canva are after Adobe’s corporate publishing market, which is where the big cash is. You aren’t their primary target market. Don’t get me wrong, they want you to use their tools, and will want to entice you into a subscription perhaps, but that’s far from being their main goal. It’s free for what you want, they claim forever (whatever that means), so enjoy.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

You need a free canva account to use Affinity Studio. If you aren’t interested in the AI-based tools (generative fill, etc), which it sounds like you aren’t, you pay nothing. The v2 Affinity didn’t have those anyway, to speak of, so except for a few new things, it’s the same. The Affinity suite can do at least most of the stuff you’re after, though you’ll obviously need to invest time in yourself to learn the tools and practice them.

Would prefer to create without AI.

Standing out on the web or YouTube is extremely difficult

Indeed!

there’s a tremendous amount of garbage - so knowing your tools well can be an advantage.

Well, I hate AI-generated YouTube thumbnails - along with "A.I. slop"

Am hoping that I can use Affinity Studio to create professional-looking YouTube thumbnails - plus editied photos for my mobile website - and not have it take me years to learn.

I would like to think that if I put in say 40 hours, I could be well on my way to achieving those goals?

It’s always a good idea to follow the money, as has been noted. In this case, Canva are after Adobe’s corporate publishing market, which is where the big cash is. You aren’t their primary target market. Don’t get me wrong, they want you to use their tools, and will want to entice you into a subscription perhaps, but that’s far from being their main goal. It’s free for what you want, they claim forever (whatever that means), so enjoy.

Not following what you mean?

Also not understanding Canva's "angle"....

I believe Black Magic Design makes DaVinci Resolve free because they make their $$$ off of hardware - similar model to Apple.

I don't see the benefit of Canva - a software company - of giving away 80-90% of their product for free?!

have done some research, and it appears that I could use Affinity Studio - without the paid/subscription "CanvaAI" and still learn to make professional-looking YouTube thumbnails, plus edit photos and create vector graphics all for free. But I still feel like there is some "catch" that I am missing...

And, yes, I am a "little fish" in a big ocean full of important people. This I know!

 

[Slartibart]

Would prefer to create without AI.

you can in Affinity Studio. Their »AI«-functionality is available through additional downloads. You have to explicitly install these.

 

[uacd]

I will try to address your questions but first will start with few things:

- Affinity is free for now. They haven’t figured out which things they will remove in a future or move to paid package. Maybe it will be free forever because all these features are manual labor, and people of the future are not too inclined to, as in your words “edit RAW image for 10 hours as if they are gonna send it to Vogue”. AI is the next big thing, so paid packages will definitely offer cloud+AI generative features + AI tools like auto edits and prompt-like user interface where you literally type in “I wanna have a YouTube thumbnail, can you make it for me? Or how do I do?”

- You don’t really have to use Affinity for YouTube covers. Canva (ironically) is enough, free version has templates like “youtube cover” or you can just google the youtube cover dimensions and copy this image into a template as your guideline so you will make an ideal template.

However, I know that a MAJOR WEAKNESS of mine is not knowing how to make professional-looking YouTube thumbnails.

Don’t worry, all you need is some stock photo website (like Pexels or Unsplash) and a bit of time to prepare it all together in Canva.

While I am with image editing software since I was 10, I think it is not so problematic to figure it out in modern interfaces like Canva. You don’t really need Affinity for that since it is more of a lightroom and offers powerful “grading” tools for images, but you can surely try and learn. Software is quite powerful and offers layer-based editing workflow which imo is the greatest image manipulation mode since you don’t really need RAW to make images good in this mode.

And the reality is that I am NOT a graphic designer, plus I think that using A.I. to create **fake** Mr. Beast-type YouTube thumbnails is evil.

If you can find a good AI generator, why not? I see many small businesses using them now. For example just yesterday saw an invintation card for 10 years anniversary of opening of the local beer brewery and it was kinda ChatGPT AI slope-ish with that old plastic generation style🤣 But yet that works, people earn money, new gen of graphic designers all scream that “function>form” (which is kinda weird), so they outsource their own tasks to AI: let it generate elements and then combine them manually, or even full-blown image generations, whichever works best.

I even saw Instagram targeted ad where a girl said “you gotta start using AI for your graphic design! Stop wasting your time, while others already did their work, you still work with your hands. You are losing money!”. So yeah, we can all see where it is going…

I am willing to roll up my sleeves, but knowing that I work like a tortoise, am hoping there is software available where I don't have to spend 5 years learning a bunch of stuff.

As I said, try Canva. Not very professional as a free version, but I used it extensively back when I worked on my previous job, as well as also it was the app where I made my resume, so it kinda works for many things.

My dream is to launch my business in 2026 (i.e. website and YouTube channel), and so time is of the essence!

I don’t know your strategy, but think about replacing YouTube with Instagram. YouTube is a dying medium these days. Ad slop is ruining it, as well as people are hating clickbait nature of the platform and that it gives more views to huge creators and doesn’t care about smaller ones. No matter if you gonna promote your channel or not, on YouTube it would be very hard to make algo work for your needs.

Instagram is much easier and straightforward in that sense, as well as can work as a mini website too. Most people have migrated here or on TikTok, but I don’t recommend TikTok since its algo is very wrecked up, it is similar to YouTube and also can be blocked any day in US or Europe, unreliable.

So if your strategy allows for it, add Instagram or replace Youtube with it. All these header images, descriptions, video cards, time wasted for every upload and clearing of copyrights for music… I mean, doesn’t it already sound dinosaur?

 

[Hooyah]

I’ve lost faith in Serif now. Canva is a web based, subscription based platform. No way they care how Serif did.

Time to ride the high seas yet again now that another hold out of fair/high value one time purchase software has fallen.

 

[cjsuk]

It's a trick. Wait until they capture enough of the market and you'll see exactly what they are up to.

Worth also noting that if software has any of the following, you always need an exit strategy:

1. Sign in that is mandatory
2. License key activation
3. Auto upgrades.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@uacd,

I will try to address your questions but first will start with few things:

- Affinity is free for now. They haven’t figured out which things they will remove in a future or move to paid package. Maybe it will be free forever because all these features are manual labor, and people of the future are not too inclined to, as in your words “edit RAW image for 10 hours as if they are gonna send it to Vogue”. AI is the next big thing, so paid packages will definitely offer cloud+AI generative features + AI tools like auto edits and prompt-like user interface where you literally type in “I wanna have a YouTube thumbnail, can you make it for me? Or how do I do?”

It would be good for people like me if they leave the base/legacy Affinity Studio free because future generations are too lazy to actual create things on their own, but that seems unlikely to me.

Why would any business give away an entire suite of software for free ifthey don't make $$$ selling hardware? (Time will tell if your theory is correct...)

- You don’t really have to use Affinity for YouTube covers. Canva (ironically) is enough, free version has templates like “youtube cover” or you can just google the youtube cover dimensions and copy this image into a template as your guideline so you will make an ideal template.

Don’t worry, all you need is some stock photo website (like Pexels or Unsplash) and a bit of time to prepare it all together in Canva.

Right, but a few concerns I have about the free Canva...

1.) Your work gets stored on Canva's Cloud
2.) I believe Canva trains their CanvaAI on your work created on the free, web-based Canva
3.) I don't want my photo on "The Cloud" of in Canva's AI

The idea of using a photo-editor that isn't Cloud and/or AI-based, is that I retain greater control over my image and designs.

While I am with image editing software since I was 10, I think it is not so problematic to figure it out in modern interfaces like Canva. You don’t really need Affinity for that since it is more of a lightroom and offers powerful “grading” tools for images, but you can surely try and learn. Software is quite powerful and offers layer-based editing workflow which imo is the greatest image manipulation mode since you don’t really need RAW to make images good in this mode.

But learning Affinity Studio will also teach me photo-editing and vector-based design, and I need those for my website.

If you can find a good AI generator, why not?

Privacy and Security concerns. Helping someone's A.I. make $$ off my work. Getting output that doesn't reflect reality. And missing out on a chance to learn photo-editing and graphic-design.

I see many small businesses using them now. For example just yesterday saw an invintation card for 10 years anniversary of opening of the local beer brewery and it was kinda ChatGPT AI slope-ish with that old plastic generation style🤣 But yet that works, people earn money, new gen of graphic designers all scream that “function>form” (which is kinda weird), so they outsource their own tasks to AI: let it generate elements and then combine them manually, or even full-blown image generations, whichever works best.

I even saw Instagram targeted ad where a girl said “you gotta start using AI for your graphic design! Stop wasting your time, while others already did their work, you still work with your hands. You are losing money!”. So yeah, we can all see where it is going…

But I don't want to follow the latest trends. I want to be a true "creator".

As I said, try Canva. Not very professional as a free version, but I used it extensively back when I worked on my previous job, as well as also it was the app where I made my resume, so it kinda works for many things.

I am hoping that I can learn things that Canva makes much easier (e.g. removing backgrounds) in Affinity Studio and not have it be a year-long learning process.

I don’t know your strategy, but think about replacing YouTube with Instagram. YouTube is a dying medium these days. Ad slop is ruining it, as well as people are hating clickbait nature of the platform and that it gives more views to huge creators and doesn’t care about smaller ones. No matter if you gonna promote your channel or not, on YouTube it would be very hard to make algo work for your needs.

Instagram is much easier and straightforward in that sense, as well as can work as a mini website too. Most people have migrated here or on TikTok, but I don’t recommend TikTok since its algo is very wrecked up, it is similar to YouTube and also can be blocked any day in US or Europe, unreliable.

So if your strategy allows for it, add Instagram or replace Youtube with it. All these header images, descriptions, video cards, time wasted for every upload and clearing of copyrights for music… I mean, doesn’t it already sound dinosaur?

A lot of younger people tell me similar things. All very valid points, but...

- I don't think YouTube is dying for long-form content
- YouTube caters more to my target audience (i.e. I am not targeting 16 year old boys/girls)

My medium-term plan is to host my own video content so I am not sharing the profits with YouTube, and I retain much more control. But to start off, it is much quicker (ad cheaper) to just upload YouTube.

The copyright issues on YouTube really bother me as someone who relies heavily of "Fair Use".

But regardless of whether my videos are on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or I host them myself, I will still need professional looking thumbnails...

 

[Ambrosia7177]

It's a trick. Wait until they capture enough of the market and you'll see exactly what they are up to.

I appreciate your honesty.

Worth also noting that if software has any of the following, you always need an exit strategy:

1. Sign in that is mandatory
2. License key activation
3. Auto upgrades.

Valid points!

But even with that being said... If my goal is to quickly get up to speed re-learning photo-editing and also learning graphic design, then would Affinity Studio maybe make sense for a 1-3 year solution?

One thing I feel that might make Affinity Studio a good choice is that not only is it free (for now), and a local install, and I can (apparently) opt to not use A.I., and (apparently) not train Canva's A.I., but the assumption is that there will be a ton of online training resources / guides / videos.

Also, I am hoping - and maybe others can confirm - is that most concepts and metapors in layer-based photo-editing and graphic-design are transferable to other software?

So if I could quickly learn Affinity Studio, then maybe in a year or two it would be easier to switch to an open-source solution like Photoline or GIMP or whatever?

 

[cjsuk]

I appreciate your honesty.




Valid points!

But even with that being said... If my goal is to quickly get up to speed re-learning photo-editing and also learning graphic design, then would Affinity Studio maybe make sense for a 1-3 year solution?

One thing I feel that might make Affinity Studio a good choice is that not only is it free (for now), and a local install, and I can (apparently) opt to not use A.I., and (apparently) not train Canva's A.I., but the assumption is that there will be a ton of online training resources / guides / videos.

Also, I am hoping - and maybe others can confirm - is that most concepts and metapors in layer-based photo-editing and graphic-design are transferable to other software?

So if I could quickly learn Affinity Studio, then maybe in a year or two it would be easier to switch to an open-source solution like Photoline or GIMP or whatever?

I am of course a hypocrite here as I am totally locked into the Adobe ecosystem. Mostly because I’ve been in it for 20 odd years.

If you want to get out of it stay away from Gimp. It’s really an awful piece of software. Photoshop really is about 100 years ahead. Use Darktable if you want to go open source photos only but the learning curve is incredibly steep and the UI is crap. It does a better job than lightroom but it’s difficult to move out of lightroom when you have 2TB of catalogues lying around.

Make sure you are fully aware of the differences between a generic image editor (photoshop/gimp) and “darkroom” processors with catalogues (Lightroom/darktable). They are very different beasts.

It’s complicated as always. Just buy Lightroom/Photoshop once a year and wince. It’s probably easier if your time is worth money (lots of decent tutorials). I’d rather pay for the certainty of Adobe than the uncertainty of Serif now.

Full circle that. Sorry 😂

 

[r.harris1]

Would prefer to create without AI.




Indeed!




Well, I hate AI-generated YouTube thumbnails - along with "A.I. slop"

Am hoping that I can use Affinity Studio to create professional-looking YouTube thumbnails - plus editied photos for my mobile website - and not have it take me years to learn.

I would like to think that if I put in say 40 hours, I could be well on my way to achieving those goals?




Not following what you mean?

Also not understanding Canva's "angle"....

I believe Black Magic Design makes DaVinci Resolve free because they make their $$$ off of hardware - similar model to Apple.

I don't see the benefit of Canva - a software company - of giving away 80-90% of their product for free?!

have done some research, and it appears that I could use Affinity Studio - without the paid/subscription "CanvaAI" and still learn to make professional-looking YouTube thumbnails, plus edit photos and create vector graphics all for free. But I still feel like there is some "catch" that I am missing...

And, yes, I am a "little fish" in a big ocean full of important people. This I know!

Canva isn’t giving away 90% of their product for free. They were a multi-billion dollar going software concern before picking up Affinity, which is a negligible portion of their current business. Affinity will bring them a few new paying subscribers, sure, but even more than that, it will get them a better toehold in the corporate publishing market where Adobe remains the only real player and where there’s A LOT of money to be made.

As to whether it will take you 40 hours or 400, you won’t know until you start. Probably on the order of you learning Resolve, I’d think.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I’ve lost faith in Serif now. Canva is a web based, subscription based platform. No way they care how Serif did.

Time to ride the high seas yet again now that another hold out of fair/high value one time purchase software has fallen.

?? Why, specifically, have you "lost faith in Serif now?" Seems to me that the previous excellent apps Affinity Designer/Publisher/Photo are now one app and free.

I went to Affinity from Adobe when Adobe CC stole our IP, but I see no reason to expect Canva to screw us like Adobe did/does. My guess is that if at some point the [new, currently optional] Canva product becomes so very useful that it is cost-effective I would just buy it and be happy to do so. TBH the only thing that scares me about the new Canva/Affinity is the "free" part, but unlike Adobe, Serif/Affinity has always been righteous so far and I will give them the benefit of the doubt moving forward.

 

[maxoakland]

Seems like the only things you have to pay for are AI functions. Seems like a pretty good deal. It's hard to believe free will result in high quality software, but I use Affinity daily and it's always had a lot of strange, small bugs. For example, it never applies my default grid to new documents. I always have to do it manually. I reported that bug over a year ago and in this new free version, it remains unfixed

 

[r.harris1]

Also, I am hoping - and maybe others can confirm - is that most concepts and metapors in layer-based photo-editing and graphic-design are transferable to other software?

So if I could quickly learn Affinity Studio, then maybe in a year or two it would be easier to switch to an open-source solution like Photoline or GIMP or whatever?

Many of the concepts are similar, if not the same, but all software is different. While this is a master-of-the-obvious statement, there's a point to it. My personal advice is pick a direction and go with it, and avoid overthinking it. If you spend 40 or 400 hours today on Affinity, you're easily going to spend 40 or 400 hours on Tool Z, whatever that is, if you move to it. The concepts and metaphors are the easiest part.

 

[maxoakland]

So if I could quickly learn Affinity Studio, then maybe in a year or two it would be easier to switch to an open-source solution like Photoline or GIMP or whatever?

If you use decently-designed software like Affinity, going to GIMP will feel like torture. If you really want to use GIMP in the end, I recommend just starting with it so you don't know any better

 

[Ambrosia7177]

I am of course a hypocrite here as I am totally locked into the Adobe ecosystem. Mostly because I’ve been in it for 20 odd years.

I'll pray for you! ;-)

If you want to get out of it stay away from Gimp. It’s really an awful piece of software. Photoshop really is about 100 years ahead.

I'm not tied to any software now as I don't own anything. (I got rid of Photoshop in the early 2000's.)

It's sad what yous ay about Gimp, but I fear you are right. ;-(

I tried Gimp maybe 10-15 years ago and it sucked. Spent part of this afternoon reading up on it - and a million other choices - and even though Gimp v3.0 is supposedly a decent improvement, the consensus is that it still sucks. (This is what happens when programmers create a photo-editor.)

Use Darktable if you want to go open source photos only but the learning curve is incredibly steep and the UI is crap.

Sounds like the developers who created DarkTable are related to the Gimp developers!

It does a better job than lightroom but it’s difficult to move out of lightroom when you have 2TB of catalogues lying around.

How is Darktable better than Lightroom? And does it take an act of God to learn it?

Make sure you are fully aware of the differences between a generic image editor (photoshop/gimp) and “darkroom” processors with catalogues (Lightroom/darktable). They are very different beasts.

Actually, I was going to create a new thread on that very topic - based on research today and before I read this post - so maybe swing by?

It’s complicated as always. Just buy Lightroom/Photoshop once a year and wince. It’s probably easier if your time is worth money (lots of decent tutorials). I’d rather pay for the certainty of Adobe than the uncertainty of Serif now.

Full circle that. Sorry 😂

It's not the cost as much as the fact that when you stop paying then you lose access to your projects...

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Canva isn’t giving away 90% of their product for free. They were a multi-billion dollar going software concern before picking up Affinity, which is a negligible portion of their current business. Affinity will bring them a few new paying subscribers, sure, but even more than that, it will get them a better toehold in the corporate publishing market where Adobe remains the only real player and where there’s A LOT of money to be made.

Where does Canva make most of its money now?

And can you explain what you mean by "a better toehold in the corporate publishing markets"?

As to whether it will take you 40 hours or 400, you won’t know until you start. Probably on the order of you learning Resolve, I’d think.

Okay.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

?? Why, specifically, have you "lost faith in Serif now?" Seems to me that the previous excellent apps Affinity Designer/Publisher/Photo are now one app and free.

I went to Affinity from Adobe when Adobe CC stole our IP, but I see no reason to expect Canva to screw us like Adobe did/does. My guess is that if at some point the [new, currently optional] Canva product becomes so very useful that it is cost-effective I would just buy it and be happy to do so. TBH the only thing that scares me about the new Canva/Affinity is the "free" part, but unlike Adobe, Serif/Affinity has always been righteous so far and I will give them the benefit of the doubt moving forward.

That's encouraging.