New Affinity app now live and accessible for free

In case you missed it, an all-new version of Affinity has gone live and is now free to access. This was announced in a blog post by Canva, who acquired the creative software suite in March 2024.

The new app is a merged version of Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher. This eliminates the need to switch between different apps when working on a project.

Notably, there are toggles in the app for Pixel, Vector, and Layout modes. These correspond to Photo, Designer, and Publisher, respectively.

This move answers concerns from the public about whether Canva would hide Affinity features behind a paywall. Canva said they’ve accounted for user feedback, hearing users out on rising software costs, subscription models, etc.

The new Affinity app is free, although it comes with extra features that are only accessible with a Canva membership. The extra additions include AI tools, automatic background removal, and portrait lighting.

The app also provides layer support and file support for PDF, PSD, and more. For those curious, it’s basically a more advanced version of Canva.

Be sure to check it out on Mac or Windows. It also has an iPad version in the works that we’ll keep an eye out for.