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. 

Digging up my Mac past

I've been on Windows since spring 2018 and it hasn't been all that great.  It smoothed out until update 1809 and 1909 was even more rocky.  The most recent updates managed to eat my drive data.  Even after a visit to a repair service, I ended up with a reset all the way back to factory.  At this moment, I can't really use the machine and it's a shame with all those games.

For two years, I haven't had my music or a recent backup of my music, which has led me to some frustration.  I also left some projects undone and I just wanted to get an inexpensive Mac that would allow me to revive things.  I've been searching a very long time.

On OfferUp, I wasn't sure whether the machines were stolen or not but the prices weren't all that good for the damged look of some of the machines and the distance I'd have to travel.  Apple, of course, has only machines three years old or newer, which would be too much money for minimum wage me.  Newegg has had machines, but they often have third parties with poor ratings, and I'm not very trusting.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a mid-2012 quad core i7 with a GeForce 650M, almost like mine--one step down.  The price was acceptable, but the 4 GB of RAM left me unsure as to whether it would be able to restore my final backup, although the 500 GB 5400 rpm disk drive was sufficient.

I ordered it on a Sunday night.  By Tuesday, they had finished packaging and its status was "Label created".  It stayed that way, even after it arrived several days later.

The machine looked almost new.  The display hinges are a little weak, but since I've got my (dead) machine, I can probably have those switched.  The machine has only 512 MB of VRAM, in contrast to my machine having 1 GB.  It probably doesn't matter a lot because how many games are available for an 8 year old machine?  GOG has some, though.  What's more important is using that GPU to speed up photo and video processing.

Getting the machine up and running was a struggle.  It complained about the backup being from a newer version of the operating system.  Sadly, the Mac App Store pointed me to the current, rather broken, Catalina/10.15.4.  I didn't realize that it was completely 64-bit, so nothing 32-bit would run.  I complained about Apple not doing this in the past, so it's amusing that it was such a kick in the pants.

Loading Catalina wasn't awful.  The 500 GB hard drive had to be converted from HFS+ to APFS.  It didn't take long to be downloaded.  The installation wasn't horrible, either.  Trying to boot it with a hard drive from 2012 and only 4 GB of RAM was difficult, at best.

Once it was running, I was tossing out software and hoping that upgrades would be simple.  Several upgrades were extremely expensive and I'm considering them still.  Those things purchased through the Mac App Store didn't come with upgrade fees.  However, getting things to run was almost impossible.  Firefox would initially run and would fail, apparently because of the 4 GB of RAM restriction.  It displayed some sort of dialog box, but I couldn't manipulate it to see the contents.

There were some system functions that were running constantly, possibly because the hard drive was converted from HFS+.  It disabled the machine for all intents and purposes, especially with a file system that wasn't happy on a hard drive and a system with a shortage of RAM.

Enhancements Matter

I bought a 1 TB Western Digital SSD (2.5 inch) and 16 GB of RAM.  Considering that eight years have passed, the total for the enhancements was negligible.  I remember that the Other World Computing 6G Extreme SSD was something around US$500 for 480 GB and the RAM might have been about the same price in early 2013.

Just inserting the RAM made a huge difference in performance with macOS Catalina.  I wanted to get an external enclosure in order to clone the drive and the enclosure had not arrived at that time.  I ended up finding a compatible enclosure and macOS did all the cloning, once I could get the SSD partitioned and formatted properly.  There was some error at first, which isn't a surprise with 10.15.4.

Making sure the SSD was set to be APFS made a positive difference.  When I booted from the drive, the previous system tasks from when the hard drive was present were not taking over the system any longer.  The system seemed about as fast as my Windows 10 system with the 7th generation quad-core i7 and 32 GB rather than the Mac from 2012 with a 3rd generation quad-core i7 and 16 GB of RAM, just as my other machine had been.  Obviously the GeForce 1050 GTX versus the GT 650M difference is really displayed in applications which use hardware acceleration.

It's taken some time to update applications to current versions, but everything runs quite well.  Most games are not possible because time has left the 650M with 512 MB in the past, and those games that could run need to be converted to work under 64-bit operation.  I tried to get The Witness to work, but it got just past the graphics settings and died.  The Epic Games Launcher seems flaky.  Steam won't run even though it's the 64-bit version and ran once.  GOG Galaxy 2.0 runs occasionally.  MacGameStore can run.  Obduction runs, if a bit glitchy!  Things are running somewhat better and I've found more games.

Thankfully, the Affinity suite by Serif seems fine, along with Capture One Pro 12, Luminar 2018, Swift Publisher 5 and more.  I was concerned with being able to retrieve projects, photos, and music.  My music is up to date on my phone, but it's been tedious getting Finder (not iTunes) to sync things.  My TV and movie downloads are currently not on the phone because Finder had them removed.

I didn't think that a machine from 2012 would be so useful in 2020, but for graphics work, it seems quite capable.

Update 2020.05.01: Is it sad that a mid-2012 MacBook Pro with flaky 10.5.4 is more stable than a late-2017 Omen by HP laptop computer with the latest Windows 10?