Affinity announce a new product - Free

Affinity Photo has always been inexpensive, and a good value. I've kept it installed and updated for five years at a total cost of $65 - only about $13 per year. Dropping the price to zero is pretty nice, but another welcome benefit is the inclusion of Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher as well. The latter will be very useful to us, as Microsoft is going to discontinue MS Publisher by October of next year. We have dozens of MS Publisher documents and will likely need to produce similar publications going forward. It was already my intention to acquire Affinity's version as a replacement, so I'm happy to see this development.

maybe im just dumb, so you get the free program but cant even change levels without a layer 🤔why cant you just use global standard corrections instead of the complicated mess.

Hi Donald, I think it's an interesting way of working: each adjustment with its layer (which, if necessary based on other adjustments, can be modified later) and used, if desired, with a mask (which allows adjustment by zones)...

Competition is good.

From what I've read you need a subscription to use any AI features. Also you get vector, layout and pixel editing. To me it sounds no RAW conversion or DAM. Also not sure how is a printing module.

I'm also just starting to learn Affinity. For me, the thing I insist on with an application is that it support Topaz plugins, which take care of my AI needs. Affinity does, although it takes some rummaging around to figure out how to do it. So I expect to give Affinity a decent workout and will probably switch over to it -- I've been using PaintShopPro for years and have never really liked it (change is hard for me...) Recently, I've pretty much limited my usage to minor tweaks and a front-end to Topaz. Affinity appears to be a much more serious PP application. The modal aspects of the UI and the need to activate groups of functions with a checkbox before they work so far are the kludgiest aspects of the program for me. We'll see how it holds up over time.

What AI features are included?

AI Object Selection, which is used for creating masks. That's about it, and it works pretty well.

The AI features that require a Canva Pro subscription are lackluster anyway, compared to some alternatives. You can find reviews that discuss this if you look. Or you can get a 30-day free trial of Canva Pro and see for yourself if they're worth the cost.

(And just to confirm, RAW conversion is absolutely one of the app's capabilities.)

I am not aware of a function called "AI Object Selection" in the Affinity application. There is an "ML [machine learning] Object Selection. If that is what you are referring to, there is a list of machine learning functions available (all requiring downloading additional files that are free) that can be accessed from the Edit/Settings/Machine Learning option while in the Pixel Studio. FWIW

Machine learning (ML) is a subset of AI (artificial intelligence). AI is now ingrained in colloquialism, so that's the term that people recognize..

How do they make money if it is free?
Thanks,
barondla

Ah, a loss leader. Makes sense now.
Thanks,
barondla