For several years now, Canva has been one of the benchmark tools for any digital professional working within the field of content creation. In our case, we use it for (almost) everything: from editing the images that enhance our articles to creating advertising banners or posters for our events. It is a paid tool, yet its simplicity and universality make it one of the most practical solutions available on the market.
And now, Canva intends to take this “universality” to a whole new level.
Quite simply, it wishes to compete head-on with the giants of graphic design.
And for free.
Affinity is a professional design tool that combines three key areas of visual creation within a single environment: photo editing, vector design, and editorial layout. Until now, these components have been distributed across three different apps (Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher), but the latest version, presented alongside the most recent suite of Canva updates, unifies all these functions into a single tool.
Its objective is clear: to enable designers, illustrators, photographers, and creators to develop complex projects without switching between programs, without sacrificing control, precision, or performance—whether illustrating, retouching, developing visual identities, or laying out books.
In 2024, Affinity was acquired by Canva, and of course, the new owner has decided that the time has come to fully realize its potential.
As the company explains in its official press release, “When Affinity joined the Canva family last year, we pledged to preserve its power while expanding its possibilities. Today, that vision becomes a reality with the new Affinity: a professional-grade creative application that brings together vector, photo, and design tools in a high-performance platform. Comprehensive. Ultra-fast. And completely free.”
Affinity is already available for Mac and Windows, and will soon be available for iPad as well. To download it, you simply need to create a free account on Canva.
In recent years Affinity has become a tool favored by professionals: graphic designers looking for versatility and precision, illustrators who value advanced vector control, creative studios interested in seamless workflows, and photographers working with advanced editing.
However, the new version greatly expands its target audience thanks to two key factors:
This move by Canva marks a turning point for Affinity. The most relevant innovations include:
Affinity now brings together vector, photo, and editorial design tools in a single application. This enables users to avoid constantly switching software, maintain creative flow, and, of course, work more efficiently. As the company explains, the aim is to facilitate work quality and guarantee tool stability; for this reason, every change processes in real time, even “when working with thousands of layers or zoom levels up to 10,000,000%.”
Every designer works differently, and Affinity recognizes this. That is why it has introduced various features:
This enables users to adapt the interface to each type of project or professional requirement, from illustrators to layout designers.
Canva Premium users also gain access to artificial intelligence tools within Affinity, thanks to Canva AI Studio. Among these are some of Canva’s most popular features, such as:
Their inclusion promises to accelerate repetitive tasks without sacrificing control over details.
The company explains that Affinity leverages a high-performance engine, designed to guarantee smooth operation even with large files, as well as instant panning and zoom effects and GPU acceleration. This may prove especially valuable in complex illustration projects, advanced photo retouching, or dense editorial design.
Affinity can now open and edit files from widely used formats such as PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, or TIFF.
And of course, there is also what is probably the most striking innovation: Affinity is now completely free. There are no cut-down versions, no subscriptions, and no fine print.
Now then, having reviewed this, let us evaluate it from a business perspective—Affinity’s own business strategy.
It seems clear that Affinity’s free status is a strategic shift following its integration into Canva. Rather than being software required to generate revenue independently, it now serves as a gateway to attract professional designers into the Canva ecosystem. Its free availability removes a historic barrier to advanced tools (cost) and positions Canva as a genuine alternative to Adobe, while tremendously expanding its user base. The strategy resembles that of other technology platforms: offering a powerful product free of charge to drive adoption and foster integration with complementary services.
From this standpoint, profitability does not stem directly from Affinity, but rather from the added value it generates around it: Canva Premium subscriptions, use of AI tools, collaboration services, a resource marketplace, or solutions for teams and enterprises. In other words, Affinity serves as a catalyst that increases Canva’s presence in the professional market, strengthens its brand, and creates monetization opportunities at other points within the ecosystem.
Clearly, this presents a considerable challenge. Keep in mind that Affinity now competes against giants such as Adobe Creative Cloud, especially Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, which until now have dominated photo editing, vector design, and editorial layout. It also faces competition from CorelDRAW, another long-standing graphics suite, as well as specialized solutions such as Figma for UI/UX design. Within the free software arena, its only significant rival is GIMP, although GIMP covers only photo editing and does not offer advanced vector or layout capabilities.
The result is a hybrid tool that combines the power of a professional studio with the accessibility of an open platform. An ambitious undertaking that promises to democratize advanced design.
We shall see what the outcome of this endeavor will be.
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