Affinity goes free! - Is this an end to the subscription tax?

If you’re a photographer, graphic designer or creative professional tired of subscription-models, the recent upgrade of the Affinity suite is not just big news; it’s potentially game-changing. How to get off the Adobe subscription train and onto a more affordable editing platform and workflow is one of the most common questions I get on photographic workshops.

As a result I have long been on the lookout for tools that don’t burden you with monthly fees but still give you serious editing ability. Now, Affinity has taken a bold step — combining its photo editing, vector design and layout-publishing tools into one unified app - just called Affinity - and making it free for everyone.

A stitched panoramic image of Madeira's Pico da Arieiro edited on Affinity

What's Changed 

For several now years, the Affinity brand has stood as a solid alternative to the big subscription software: Affinity Photo for image-editing, Affinity Designer for vector work, Affinity Publisher for layout. In March 2024 Canva bought Serif, the company responsible for Affinity and its suite of products. A fair amount of conjecture and theorizing could be found on the internet fora over the next dozen months. Come October 2025 and Affinity (now under the umbrella of Canva) announced the new version: one app that covers raster, vector and layout. 

The big news for any photographer wanting to cut down on their monthly costs is that Affinity (and this includes the unbundled earlier Affinity Photo 2) offers a full photo editing workflow from RAW conversion through to layered final editing. What’s more, if you require layout tools for creating brochures, or a more professional looking photobook, these available in the Affinity Publisher 2 app which is very similar to the Adobe inDesign package. For web-designers and illustrators there is also the Affinity Illustrator 2. The new Affinity app (more fully names as ‘Affinity by Canva’) essentially places all three apps into a since platform. You can switch between the apps by selecting between Vector, Pixel and Layout in the top left of the app’s interface. There is of course, an additional tab for ‘Canva AI’. More on that later though. 

The combination of the Affinity apps into this new all-encompassing app means that there is a huge scope for compatibility of files. Not only will the Pixel mode open up RAW files, through to PSD, DNG, and the usual PNG, TIF and jpeg files, but if you select Open and choose an idml file (Adobe inDesign), it’ll automatically open that up in the Layout mode. 

The kicker in all of this is that Affinity by Canva is absolutely free. No once off cost, no subscription. Free! 

I have been using Affinity Designer for a while now, and this now comes bundled in the new app and seemlessly integrates with Affinity Photo (now called Pixel mode)

Why this matters for photographers 

In my world of photographic workshops (in places like Madeira, Namibia’s dunes, Madagascar), software tools play a large role. Not only is there the usual worksflow of editing RAW files and creating finished layered images in post-production, but there is also the prepping layouts for workshop materials, branding and designing social media content that we create to get photographers to notice Nature’s Light and join us on workshops in the first place. I’ve already completely ported over to Affinity Designer 2 for creating out workshop brochures.  The new Affinity setup gives you:

• A high-quality editing and design tool without the overhead of a recurring cost.
• The flexibility to handle everything from image retouching to designing booklets or phonebooks in one app.
• A future-facing system: because it integrates with the Canva ecosystem (for those who want to go further into collaboration or AI features) you’re also aligned with newer creative-tool directions.

There are a range of innovative tools in the Affinity Photo app, some of which you have to dive out of PhotoShop for into 3rd party apps when you are using the Adobe suite.

The Gotcha…if it really is a Gotcha

If you already own older Affinity apps (Photo 2, Designer 2, Publisher 2) you can continue using them, but future updates/support may centre on the new unified Affinity by Canva app. Apart from a few small changes to the app interface there is currently little change between the standalone apps and the new all encompassing one. 

Currently the Affinity app is available for Windows and Mac OS. There is apparently an iOS version in the works, but it isn’t out just yet. 

The biggest Gotcha for the average photographer, is that it’s missing one rather important part of the photographic pipeline: the management and culling of images. If you are using PhotoShop as a standalone, you get the very capable Bridge app as well. Then there’s the excellent and still industry leading Lightroom (which is bundled into the Photography package with Adobe - now at $20 a month) which is a RAW management and editing platform. I’m a strong proponent and user of Adobe Lightroom’s biggest competitor; Capture One. However this too requires a not insignificant tax of over $25 per month (or the slightly easier to swallow $179 per annum). If Affinity/Canva bring out an alternative then both Adobe and Capture One may have a user retention on their hands. 

For the time being though, if you are looking to save as much as possible on your monthly software tithe, you could look at purchasing the one-time offer of On1 and bundling that together with the Affinity app. That would meet the photographic image management and editing tools of the vast majority of photographers out there. 

Above is an example of the videos that I produce using Da Vinci Resolve (along with short documentary films that I shoot while wearing my commercial photographer/videographer hat)

The Da Vinci Resolve Case

What Affinity are doing is not new. Several years ago Black Magic Design decided to make their in-house video editor free in the form of a ‘Lite’ version (simply called Da Vinci Resolve) and paid for in the form a ‘Studio’ version called Da Vinci Resolve Studio. The amazing part of all of this is that the Da Vinci Resolve Lite is a fully-fledged video editing powerhouse. It gets about 90% of the features of the Studio version, but doesn’t skimp of the core editing features. So you get the ability to work with numerous RAW video codecs, up to 4K UHD export (at up to 60fps), multi channel audio and tons of features of what professional video editors would consider essential. If you upgrade to ‘Studio’ you get more export options, ai filters like noise reduction in visuals and audio, 3D graphic rendering and better performance out of your graphics card. Do the vast majority of video editors need the Studio version? No. The new up front cost of $295 makes it attractive enough that a lot of serious editors will simply opt for the more fully featured Da Vinci Resolve Studio. 
The result of Black Magic’s decisions is that Resolve has become one of the top three most popular video editors (with Premiere Pro and Final Cut X being the other two) on the market and is rapidly outstripping Adobe for users. That major Hollywood blockbuster movies are being edited with Da Resolve Studio further enhances Black Magics ‘chops’ in the game. While working as a lecturer at Vega College I would continually see students opting to learn Resolve despite Premiere being part of their course work - the realisation being that after college, paying the $20 a month for Premiere (on top of any Photoshop subscription) would be a bitter pill to swallow. 
Canva have basically taken the same model and applied it to their purchase of the Affinity suite. Affinity is free, sure. If you want to get any AI tools or specific AI filters, then you have to subscribe to Canva ($12,99 a month or $120 annually). I personally don’t use Canva, but Jackie (my wife and another Nature’s Light instructor) does on a daily basis. She uses it for instagram posts, social media advertising, print layout, reels, lecture presentations, motion graphics and more. For her workflow it makes absolute sense to subscribe. For the majority of photographers not working as content creators, it isn’t necessary. 

An image of Madeira's Fanal Forest edited in Affinity

My take (and how I’m going to use it)

From a workshop leader’s perspective, this move by Affinity is exciting. It aligns with my belief that great creative tools shouldn’t be hindered by cost, especially when you’re teaching, collaborating and producing visual work in the field. A large number of photographers who join us are looking to minimise the cost of photography, which for the last few years just seems to be on an upward trajectory. 
I’ll be looking deeper into using Affinity for editing. I’m not likely to leave the Capture One fold as I have just become so used to its tools. Plus Affinity is still missing the DAM (Digital Asset Management) component of the image-editing workflow. This is something that I lean heavily into with Capture One and which other photographers rely on in Lightroom. But there are more affordable options (On1) and even free alternatives (Dark Table) to both Capture One and Lightroom. 
So we’ll hopefully get enough experience with Affinity to be able to offer sessions and advice to participants on our future workshops. From my limited use of Affinity Photo 2 and my more regular use of Affinity Designer 2, I will definitely be recommending the app to photographers who don’t want to spend their money on subscriptions to app services that they rarely use. 

Final thoughts

The creative-software landscape is shifting. With Affinity going free and all-in-one, it sends a message: you shouldn’t have to compromise on editing ability just because you’re not paying monthly. For photographers and creatives in general, this is a moment worth noting — and perhaps embracing. It’s also a shot across the bows of the established software industry.