Affinity 3 Review – State of the Art or End of the Road?

So at the beginning of October Affinity startled the world of photography by withdrawing all products, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher from sale via their website and promising to make an announcement on October 30th that would change the way we did creativity forever.

Naturally this announcement spawned feverish speculation, it was the end of Affinity, the beginning of a subscription model, a subtle plan for the evil empire, Canva, to absorb Affinity into its AI powered universe.

Nobody predicted what came next.

Affinity 3

The announcement, made late on the evening of October 30th was that the three flagship products, Photo, Publisher and Designer were to be bundled into a single app that would be free to download and use, forever.

Naturally this was only food for the rumour mill “There’s no such thing as a free lunch!” speculated the internet – “Where’s the Catch?”

The reality appears to be that there is no catch, unless you count optional paid access to Canva’s less than spectacular AI tools as a catch. The Machine learning modules are included in the free download (you actually have to download the module separately but it is free) so Intelligent masks are still available.

Other than that and the addition of a few filters, what we appear to have is Affinity Photo 3 with an updated (improved) interface. And that is fine by me, everything that was in Affinity Photo 2 is still there in Affinity and works just the same.

The question of what happens in the future is very interesting. Here is my take..

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What Just Happened?

Canva acquired Serif, the company behind Affinity in October 2024. There was a lot of speculation at the time that would lead swiftly to a subscription model but that has not happened. To understand what is going on, or at least to take an educated guess, we need to look at Canva, what their direction of travel is and who they are competing against.

Canva have cornered the market in Content Creation for social media. Their apps are capable of churning out any number of memes in short order using a mixture of AI and hundreds of user selected templates. This market is huge – Canva have 220 million active monthly users, 21 million subscribers. Adobe by comparison have just north of 37 million subscribers. Of course Adobe subs cost way more than Canva’s but the reality is that while Adobe might want Canva’s market, they won’t get it because Adobe tools are professional level, high quality tools for geeks whereas Canva supply near instant gratification for influencers at a reasonable price.

The question is more around whether Canva are interested in Adobe’s market. The high end designers and photographers that rely on Adobe’s industry standard tooling to make a living. I think Canva are playing a long game here. In purchasing Serif they got their hands on a set of tools that their users can grow into. Without getting into positional arguments, functionally the two products Affinity and Photoshop offer very similar capabilities. Moreover, Affinity can export psd files making it possible for me, for example to deliver photographs in psd format to any client that has bought into the Adobe platform.

The Future for Adobe

If I were Adobe, I’d be worried at this point, this looks like a real problem for them. Their aggressive and some would say amoral business model has alienated many photographers, and it’s going to take more than AI being levered into the product to get them back. Note for Adobe – Real photographers detest AI. It’s not going to happen this year, or even next, but the future for Adobe products is looking shaky. They have ignored user’s complaints about interface issues for years and persist in pursuing a direction their more sophisticated users recognise will destroy their jobs. Let’s be clear about this, AI is not enabling us to enjoy leisurely retirement early. It is being used aggressively by people like Adobe to replace people in creative occupations. Not only that but the material used to train the AI is being sourced from the very users it aims to replace.

Why is Adobe so Unpopular?

There is a much larger point at play here. The wave of cynicism that greeted the Affinity launch has its roots in not only Adobe’s horrific business tactics, but also in the rise of social media and algorithm driven apps like Instagram and Threads. Add to that toxic landscape the rise of populism across Europe and North America. People have been promised the earth by a succession of charlatan’s and frauds – in Europe, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Gert Wilders, etc etc, in the US, Donald Trump. Not one of these idiots have delivered on any of their promises. In some cases, (take a bow) Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, what was delivered was so miserably thought through that one might be forgiven for thinking the promises were in fact the end game, not the policies. People are not entirely stupid and people who realise they have been scammed in the past are wary in the present.

Adobe have long championed the use of AI to create art. The tools they have provided are reasonably good but the way they have gone about it rankles. Nobody asked for AI generated skies. Not one photographer I know has bemoaned their inability to introduce cartoon characters into their photographs or even to create their photographs by judiciously chosen prompt.

Adobe are behaving as though they believe the skills we have learned in decades of work are an encumbrance that we will willingly cast off at the first sign of a craft free alternative. They mat have been emboldened in this belief by the meteoric rise of Canva. What has happened of course is that the corporates using the Adobe software suite have willingly cast off the creatives that used to know how to use it. It is unlikely that Adobe didn’t foresee this possibility.

We digress. What has business and politics to do with Photo Processing Software? Quite a lot as it happens. Creative people are often university educated, capable of critical thinking and resistant in most cases to propaganda and abuses of the type carried out by Adobe. We are looking, actively for alternatives.

Conclusion

So I wish Affinity well. They may just have come up with a genuinely game changing strategy. We have a year to find out. Let’s see what improvements are made to the Affinity suite over the next twelve months before we rush to judgement. There are of course alternatives to Affinity if this all goes pear shaped. Apple’s Photomator is excellent and the addition of Pixelmator rounds out the Photoshop equivalence. That is one to watch. As an alternative to Lightroom, DxO PhotoLab offers a compelling argument. I have long advocated a dream team of PhotoLab + Affinity to meet my own requirements and the tow do sit very well together. In addition to the layer based experience that is not supported in PhotoLab, Affinity offers Panorama stitching, Astro Stacking, HDR stacking and Focus Blending, all of which it performs better than Lightroom. As a free addition to the arsenal, Affinity is looking like a very good bet indeed.