Affinity 3.0 or Canva/Affinity?

 It's been 40 years since I first saw Serif Publisher.  At the same time, I saw Timeworks Publisher, Ventura Publisher, and Adobe PageMaker.  I ended up using Calamus on the Atari ST but I became familiar with practically any available graphics software and even designed some of my own.

Today, Affinity announced that they are combining everything into one application, including Canva AI.  You can mix things a bit through Personas, but I don't know if it's going to be so capable.   What I know of all-in-one graphics software is that it has never worked well enough.

 I'm skeptical but I don't have any huge projects.  After the announcement that they were to be acquired last year, it was obvious that changes were on the way.  If you want the Premium version, there is a subscription, as I understand that there has been with Canva.

For typical users, it's free.  When upgrades are available, what will happen? 

Update  2025.11.18: I downloaded the Windows version.  They actually had four different downloads and  I downloaded one of the x64 versions.  Hopefully, I got the correct one.

In any case, it's installed and I took a look at the first tutorial, which was way too small to be useful.

I tried to bring up a raw photo that I had and tried to re-size it after expanding the application's window.  The frame for the photo went one way and the image stayed where it started when I tried to increase the magnification past 25%.  Maybe, it will be ready in a few months.

 Unfortunately, going back to Affinity Photo didn't work.  I still have the version 2.x Affinity applications on my Mac, and Affinity Photo worked on that machine just fine. 

Update 2025.12.19: Got the first update and it looks better.  I'll make an effort to test and hopefully, I'll be able to transition to the new application. 

Update 2026.02.01: There is a second update to the application and I'm sure it's safer to use now.

I've seen some videos talking about Adobe being afraid of the comparisons.  They should have been afraid for several years.  Serif's Affinity applications have been good.  They're different and we used to have a lot of different graphical applications out there in the 1980s, including Serif Publisher.

Around that time, I was teaching an executive how to use Aldus Pagemaker on Windows 2.0.  That was a trip.  I had used many different applications, but for publishing, I was using Calamus SL on Atari ST.  Pagemaker on Windows 2.0 was hobbled by not being on a Mac and the fact that Windows 2.0 was a bit of a joke for anything graphical.  Sorry to go off track but I miss the days when we didn't depend solely on one software vendor.  I'm a bit amused that 40 years later, I've got the descendant of Serif Publisher on my machine.

I was watching a video on using Affinity Designer to create motion graphics to be use in Davinci Resolve.  It seemed a good way to remove Adobe from the workflow.  Considering the prices for using Adobe products now, alternatives should be considered.  I'm not sure Apple Creator Studio is enough for more than a "one man shop" kind of business but it's a possibility.  Apple has not kept up since they dropped Aperture.

 I'm not convinced that AI tools are completely helpful, but people seem to be freaking out about being replaced by them. Of course, once you're comfortable with them, you're stuck.

I'm wondering when/if Canva makes the Affinity application a subscription.  Someone has to pay for the  development work. 

Update 2026.02.28: Learned about Cavalry motion graphics software that has supposedly bought by Canva.  This is a big deal for many.  Also, I viewed some videos using Affinity with Davinci Resolve Studio.  This may make it much easier for work to be finished without Adobe. 

 

Update 2026.03.16: Affinity 3.1 is out.  I had some weirdness with a non-secure connection when I used the application to initiate the download.  I deleted that download and started again from the website itself.  There was also some weirdness about modules being updated and Overwrite was the option I took, but I'm 1% unsure about the application.  That's why it's only on Windows 11 and not on the Mac. 

Update 2026.04.26: Application keeps asking me if I want to overwrite certain modules and I have no idea whether it's supposed to work this way or something else is happening.  I'm 99% unsure about the application at this point. 

Video seems so intensive in contrast to still photography

The Panasonic GH4 hasn't really made my life easier.  Yes, it's great equipment.

I've taken roughly 49 video clips since getting the GH4.

Hold the camera steady.  Follow the motion.  Oh, and remember to remove the lens cap and power on the camera.  Yes, that's it.

Once I got the clips onto the drive, I was confused about what to do next.  I started iMovie (I have Adobe Premiere Elements on the way) since that's my only video editor.  Suddenly, I need to deal with Events and Projects and Importing.  Am I confused?  Am I.

I managed to get a video onto YouTube and Vimeo.  That seemed a little problematic, but not horrible.  Horrible was the description for dealing with Instagram.  It saw my video, but refused to process it, possibly because it was too wide.  The solution?  Dropbox on Android was extra helpful in exporting to Instagram.  It somehow found the face in the video and kept the person in the video, regardless of the location.  That was quite amazing, and better than I could have thought to do at this point.  The iOS version of Dropbox didn't have such an option (or any export to Instagram) that I could find.

After getting the first, very raw video on all three networks that I use, I felt better.

The next day, I tried working with iMovie further, without any extra support.  I made mistakes, and learned.  Finally, I managed to learn enough to put a bit of the video into slow motion.  Then, I found that iMovie could immediately send the final product to Vimeo and YouTube without much more than e-mail addresses and passwords.

I still have something like 10 videos to process--out of 49 I took.  Some of the videos need pieces thrown away.  I should be able to learn.

Update 2014.12.13: Finally worked with the last nine of the videos, added some transitions, and wrapped them into one video of slightly under two minutes.  Am I proud?  Am I accomplished?  I don't know.  I'm satisfied to be able to finish something else, and do more.

I got my copy of Adobe Premiere Elements, along with Photoshop Elements, today.  I'm not sure it's easier or better but the multiple levels of assistance will probably be useful.  (I use Photoshop so little since working through Phase One Capture One that Photoshop is all but obsolete for my workflow.)

Apple doesn't seem to care about helping the user, except through some videos.  They'd started a tutorial system way back in Mac OS 8.x but they killed it fairly quickly on the way to Mac OS X.

Still, iMovie is more confusing than difficult to use.  Hopefully, Premiere Elements is also more confusing than difficult.

Update 2015.01.15: Premiere Elements is similar.  It's just giving me a load of new user problems, as is iMovie.  Why am I not going for a professional product?  It really doesn't matter at this point.  I still have to learn to work with taking the video, working with equipment, and processing the clips, understanding the software.  If there is magical software to help do what I want without requiring learning something, I need that kind of software.  I don't believe it exists.

Also, I'm looking at which lenses might help me.  It matters about whether I'm going to take video clips or make films.

What does that mean?  Serious equipment will require more than just a monetary investment.  It will require a mental investment, planning any move.

I'm more of a run-and-gun type of photographer.  I'm ready at any moment.  I don't tell people what to do--I ask what they want to do or use what they are doing.  Sports photography is like that, though working around skate parks requires even more flexibility.

I've been thinking about cine lenses.  I can use those in a way that isn't completely different from the way I work now, but these are adapted or otherwise, manually-operated lenses.  There is a recent crowdsourced group Veydra that will be able to provide supposedly high quality cine lenses at low prices, in contrast to Zeiss--US$900 vs US$5000 for each lens.

What's different is actually setting the various parameters of exposure, which may not change a lot from minute to minute, and focus.  This should not be a problem because, as I've found photographing sports, auto focus isn't always all that reliable, unless maybe you're using a camera body over US$5000.

However, I'd found that the Olympus E-M1 and 12-40mm f/2.8 lens was fairly good for run-and-gun situations.  Perhaps the GH4 with Panasonic's 12-35mm f/2.8 lens would be equally good.  The really great solution would be for Panasonic to work with Olympus and vice versa, to add the higher end Olympus lens profiles to the GH4 for Depth from Defocus application.  It doesn't feel as though the 35-100mm f/2.8 lens from Panasonic is all that great with the GH4 but it wasn't all that great with the GH3 either.

I'm still considering all of the options, but quick auto focus is certainly effortless, mindless--if it works.

Update 2015.03.26:  In January, I bought the Panasonic/Lumix/Leica 15mm f/1.7.  It's been very good for video, staying focused.

The other day, I tried my Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 lens.  The OIS was enabled and it was worse than the two lenses I use that don't have any image stabilization.  What's worse, they recently updated the firmware to improve the OIS during video, and I'd applied that fix.  It was absolutely jumpy.  I suspect it would have been much better with the OIS disabled, as I'm usually only slightly shaky.

Building a workflow has been interesting.  I organize the clips into folders.  Delete the bad clips.  Combine the good clips.  Add transitions and titles.  Shorten clips to remove unwanted material, and quicken the unwanted material in the middle.  (I might be able to split the clip, and delete the bad section, but right now, this makes the process less complicated, and the speed up might be entertaining.)

Since I'm using iMovie at the moment, there are a lot of simple ways to add effects, as long as I can figure out how to select the correct segment.  I'm taking baby steps to avoid making an unsophisticated mess of my finished videos.

Update 2015.11.20: I have over 120 videos on YouTube and only a few on Vimeo.  Vimeo wanted me to pay to upload more and I would not.

I'm using the Panasonic GH4 and GX8 for video, but I have used video from the E-M1 and it's not as bad as people say that it is.  It's just not as good as it should be.  The Pentax K-50 is also not bad.  The fixed display isn't helpful though and the fixed display on the Nikon D7200 has kept me from using it for video, especially when I already have some powerful equipment.

 I'm still using iMovie for video production.  Yes, it is the free one.  I recently bought a Windows 10 machine and paid for Sony Movie Studio Suite.  This is a cut-rate version big package and it is confusing.  To start a new project, it has various categories of the type of video--you're importing or producing--I can't tell.  Nothing in the DV or HDV category seems to be 1920x1080p 60fps, which is what I use.  They have AVCHD which is something the cameras support but I don't use.  The package supports 3840x2160 but not 4096x2160.  Shouldn't the application read the files you're importing to determine the project and ask you what you want to output?

In any case, iMovie has been amazingly quick and easy to get reasonable skate park videos out of it.  I put together a final project, a best of video, that started with 42 minutes' worth of clips that ended up at 14:55, with music and effects.  Even with iMovie, it was a task but at least, it's not difficult to remember how to split a clip, change effects, or even import from multiple folders.  It took a while.

Apple stopping development of Aperture raw development application

I'm not surprised that Apple are quitting on this application.  They were really developing it early, and slowed their enhancements quickly, sitting on their laurels.

I saw the app when the released it, and it wouldn't run on my then current machine.  The system requirements pushed desktop machines, and my older desktop machine wasn't a match for my laptop computer.  Aperture made great use of graphics through OpenGL and few of their machines were capable of giving it enough.

Apple has a terrible habit of producing good hardware or good software but rarely produces good matches on the desktop.  It's as though they don't communicate with themselves.  If you look back at the early PowerPC machines, they were very powerful, yet Mac OS 7.6.x (or Mac OS 8.x or Mac OS 9.x) didn't take advantage of them properly.  When I installed BeOS on my PowerPC 604e machine, I was shocked at the display of power--power Apple were wasting.

In photography in 2004, there weren't good raw development applications.  Thankfully, Olympus' JPEG engine created really good JPEG files, and the E-1 also created TIFF files, which were definitely useful in business.

Time passed, and I was part of a discussion that led to the Silkypix raw development application.  I downloaded it and tried it.  I found it to be odd.  It wasn't Japanese odd--I'm Japanese.  It was like so many programmers' projects--great on the inside, lousy on the outside.

I tried Adobe Camera Raw through Photoshop.  I really don't believe that Adobe ever understand that their applications should work with you, not against you.  They just don't seem to want to fix anything, and it shows up when you're trying to finish work.  I got some beta trial for Lightroom and that was interesting, but didn't encourage me, as it was extremely buggy.

At some point, I had an offer for Capture One from Phase One, version 2 or 3.  I downloaded it, and tried to use it.  It was a bit of a pain.  However, it produced reasonable results.  As the versions have come and gone, the application has become as important as the camera body to me.  Version 7 has been on a bumpy road, with the integration of media storage, but it now is easy to use and has produces high image quality, likely second to none.

Their version 7 imaging engine has even given me better quality from older images, at least, with the E-5.  Noise doesn't seem to be a factor, unless you're working in really low light.  That said, current digital sensors all seem to be better than the best film, and many have come to have a grainy look when they produce a lot of noise toward their limits.  That isn't much different than film.  (At this point, I don't even need Photoshop, as Capture One does so much, especially with additional Pro version features.)

In any case, I'm sad for all of the Aperture users who will not be getting upgrades.  I think it speaks volumes about choosing Apple for applications.  Will Final Cut Pro go away?  Did they make a deal to keep Adobe applications on (Mac) OS X, killing Aperture?  It seemed that Adobe responded very, very quickly to the announcement, as if they already had plans.

Lytro Illum upsetting to some, bringing the future closer

I was just looking at another article on the Lytro Illum camera, where they put it into the hands of a few professionals to see what could happen.

What gets to me is the negative comments about the camera, its technology, and how they show the hidden fear of the unknown.

Are people so afraid to change?  If Nikon and Canon were to stop making cameras, would they fall apart?  (That reminds me of people who were panicking during a BlackBerry blackout.)

I'm still a bit skeptical about using the camera, but at least the Illum model is shaped like a camera.  I want to use one, and given that I'm moving to a nearby area and can be there in a couple of hours, I'd like to test one, if the company is willing.  They can go with me while I try it.

On display at a local store

I think it's selling for US$1599.99.  That doesn't sound horrible.  My Olympus D-300L was $US999.99 and my C-2500L was originally $1499.99, though I only paid $850 for it because it was an open box deal.  They were experimental, as far as I'm concerned.

I don't really do a lot of casual photography.  I generally do sports or business photos, but there are times when I try to take a walk and find something interesting to photograph.  Since I'm moving to another area of the country, to a place I've never lived, I should have plenty to photograph.  I might as well try something totally new, correct?

I'm sure I'll have a handy, conventional camera with me at all times.  When I was walking up and down San Francisco, California, I was using my Olympus E-5 and 14-35mm f/2.0 combination--something small, correct?  :-D  I also had my bag of goodies on my shoulder, including the Panasonic GH3.  Nothing was light that day and I was dragging by the time I returned to the motel.

So, it might be good to go light, especially if I'm in a somewhat difficult environment.

What the Lytro people are doing is nothing short of amazing.  They're collecting a massive amount of information to allow the photograph to be re-constructed.  Of course, this can't be done with some Adobe product at this time.  They're still having trouble with FujiFilm's X-Trans sensors.

Next month, I will have moved and will be close to the San Fran Bay Area, so I could be at the Lytro headquarters in Mountain View (I think), to see what they're doing, and hopefully, they'll agree to a visit and a trial.

Update 2014.05.23: I've seen plenty of fearful comments about mirror-less cameras, also.  It seems that those who really don't know photography that well are afraid and speaking out about it.  I rarely see professionals who are afraid to try new equipment.  They may not like it, but they're willing to try it.  Wedding photographers seem to be the most resistant of professionals but I understand that.  When you have a whole wedding party yelling at you, you've got to deliver what they want, no matter what it is.  I've been asked to do two weddings and I wouldn't even consider photographing them.  I would do things my way, and that would not be the correct way.

I'm still wondering what all these hobbyists are going to do when they have no choice but to change.

If you've seen a Star Trek series, you've probably seen a holo-imager--a camera that apparently goes beyond 3D capture.  I see Lytro's technology as a start to get to such devices.

Update 2014.12.11: It was interesting to see Intel advertising Lytro's technology as their own.  Do they have no shame?  It reminds me of all those early 80x86 processors with the divide errors that never happened.

Update 2015.11.19: I've seen the Lytro Illum available at about half the price.  I'm concerned about buying one because the company might not make it.  Without the computer-based software, how would it work?  Would I have to keep an old computer to use it?

Besides this, quite a while ago, Panasonic revealed a patent about multiple focus planes.  Today, there was a rumor that a few days from now, they'll be implementing the patent in the GX8 that I have.  What's more is that Olympus has been ready to do this in the E-M1 firmware, version 4.0, which is about to be released.

These are both simplistic versions that require several photos but the technology will be a decent compromise for 2015.  The Lytro technology will likely prevail 10 or 20 years from now, although I hope that it will be sooner.  As soon as mirror-less interchangeable lens cameras will be dominant, things can go further.

At the Apple Store, connected by their Ethernet, I couldn't make a Mac App purchase

I regularly criticize the people behind the Mac App Store.  I call them all sorts of names because simple things don't work and if you ask for help, the support people know almost nothing and handle almost nothing.  For a company whose service is supposedly a high point in the industry, the company should be fixing this weak point.

e.g., I had a situation where the Twitter and Typist applications could not be downloaded.  Other applications could be downloaded within the same time frame, but (only) those two downloads would not happen for anything.  System software updates were fine.  I was told that my connection was the problem.

So, yesterday, I was at the Kenwood Towne Center mall, at the Apple Store to buy AppleCare for my almost 1 year old refurbished MacBook Pro.  While I was there, I talked about buying Final Cut Pro, and the associate went to some lengths to get me an Ethernet cable and a direct connection to their intranet, so that I could buy and download it.

I had not updated my debit card's information.  The Mac App Store looped and looped and looped, as I furiously attempted to update the information again and again.  I finally disconnected, put things away, and left the store.  I never saw that associate again, so I couldn't thank him once more.  Once I was home hours later, I was able to fix the information.

Seeing MacRumors earlier, there appears to be a widespread issue: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/05/some-users-unable-to-log-in-to-app-store-due-to-fatal-error/

Apple is such a mix of great design, haphazard testing, and a don't-care attitude.  That they're ahead of the rest of the industry suggests that we should all feel sad that things are that pathetic.  I noticed that a lot of my co-workers in various software development assignments weren't disciplined, and the code they wrote was sloppy in the extreme.  You would think that Apple, Google, and Microsoft would have the best design, coding, and testing procedures in the business, but none of them do.  A smaller company like Adobe should be better, but they're even worse.  At least, when John Warnock was there, they seemed to care about more than money.

In any case, Apple missed a sale, although I doubt they're crying about that.

Adobe, what are you thinking?

I'm cynical, okay?

Adobe's announcement about the end of Creative Suite tells me just one thing: Adobe want more money.

They can put a spin on anything but they have a habit of not fixing their products.  They add features but they don't fix long-standing issues.  It's rather obvious with the Flash runtime that they aren't doing things correctly because there seems to be a new security issue almost every week.  They dress it up by saying "performance enhancements" but they know the truth and are unwilling or unable to tear things apart and make them work correctly.  They're like Apple or Microsoft, but worse.

Of course, there really aren't modern alternatives to Photoshop.  Live Picture was good and so was PhotoStyler/xRes but they're gone.  You could call Corel's Photo Paint an alternative, but it would be difficult to take it any more seriously than The GIMP.

I'm seriously considering getting involved in The GIMP.  The last time I tried it was painful and problematic, much like many open source-based tools.  If it could work as smoothly as a commercial tool, people might take it seriously, but it has to work on the creator's desktop (as a native tool, not as a well-yeah-i-know-but-it-works kind of software), as well as that of the print house's desktop.  That's a huge trick.

I've become so disenchanted with Adobe, and their decisions, that I'm barely a customer now.  That said, I picked up a copy of Photoshop Elements 11 (based on Photoshop CS5, apparently), just to have something a bit more modern than my Photoshop CS3, which probably isn't happy on Mac OS X 10.8.x.  (If that seems a crazy switch, I'll still have Photoshop CS3 on an older machine and I don't need Lab Color and I'm not sure who needs it these days.)

Update 2013.11.14: Adobe continue to send me e-mails, telling me that they've sweetened the deal, or they've got an alternative deal with just Photoshop and Lighroom, but if I don't need Lightroom and barely need Photoshop, what good is it to me?

I wonder how many others can get by without support for newer features.  I suspect it would be the majority.