Affinity Studio for DAZ Studio Postwork - FREE
hjake
Posts: 1,266
The new Affinity Studio will be free (Pixels, Vectors, and Document Layout)
Post edited by hjake on
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Apparently I need to have a new account for Canva as there is no place to use my existing serif account credntials to login.
also appears that all of the programs have been rolled into a single "app".
the website says all is free to use but the AI features cost.
V1 and V2 of the serif versions will no longer get updates.
Need to be online once to activate the new licence, and need remain online to use the AI, online lessons, Stock LIbrary, things like that.
Theres a number of things some will want to check in thier new account Under "Personal Privacy".
Mostly all the data sharing for AI training and the sahring of your creative works with 3rd parties.
Theres options to turn it all off.
I'm looking through it all right now.
So it apprears that the dekstop app is just the portal to their cloud based services.
If I logout of the app it closes.
I just lost all interest in this new version of Affinity Photo.
I'll switch back to gimp, this isn't worth the headaches.
Thanks for checking. If I have to be online (i.e. logged in), I have no interest in using this app. Will stay with my V2 Affinity for as long as I can then.
Edit: It seems that they claim in the FAQ that you don't need to be online, but what you mention before, with all the options for the data sharing and AI training, I think I'll pass.
yea, I went through the whole making a new account, installing the program, and was looking through everything before I even started testing the software.
There is an option to logout of the app, but then it becomes unusable asking you log back in.
I've already deleted my account and uninstalled it. I'll use V2 for as long we can then switch to GIMP or other software for things it can't do.
Yeah, I don't really want a Canva account. I think I'm staying on the last paid version.
Ignorantly, I didn't know this change was happening. Is there any way to download the install files for last versions of V2?
If you bought them directly from Serif, just log into your Serif account and you should be able to download them (and everything you ever bought from them):
https://store.serif.com/fr/sign-in/
If you have already bought them, yes. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the new page, and the way to log into your old Affinity account is there.
If you haven't bought them, you're out of luck.
Also, if you already have Affinity V2 (or V1) installed, this won't affect you. You actually have to make a new account with Canva to download the new version, and (as far as I know) link your Affinity account to have access previously bought addons for it.
1. Yes you do need a FREE Canva account and you can select opt-out for marketing when registering. A paid Canva account is only required to use the AI options in Affinity.Studio and in my opinion the Canva paid AI tools still at the stage of toys or preview of future development stage. I think the AI is very hit and miss so the the free account is all a DAZ Studio Postwork user would require.
2. Once installed you can click on account settings within Affinity.Studio then go to privacy setting of your Canva account and turn off all data sharing.
3. You do NOT need to be online to use Affinity.Studio. Skip to 20:10 in the video of the first post in this discussion. I did test this.
4. You can still download an executable (.exe) instead of an MSI file so you can associate file types with Affinity.Studio (Affinity-x64.exe is version v3.0.0.3791)
5. The new universal file type for Affinity.Studio is *.af which replaces the previous file types. All your previous file types can be open by Affinity.Studio.
6. Now instead of switching between and updating 3 apps, you change work on Photos, Designs, and Publishing (pdf) documents in a single app.
See attached images for more information.
Didn't work for me.
I logged out of the app and it closed.
After restarting the app there was a banner saying I needed to login to use it.
Maybe the license servers are having first day issues, I don't know, but I gave up as soon as I saw that and uninstalled it. Then on the webpage it had opened wanting me to login I instead chose to delete my new Canva account instead.
What happens when you sign out of the app?
To access your content previously purchased from Serif for Affinity with the new Affinity.Studio, then you will need to link your Affinity account to your Canva account.
UPDATED NOTE: When you link your Affinity account to your Canva account you have to go uncheck all the data sharing prviledges under your Canva privacy settings.
See attached images.
Affinity.Studio can be an excellent and affordable method to do postwork on your DAZ Studio renders.
Well, drat. I was hoping to pick up Affinity programs in a bit. I passed last time I looked because they hadn't accommodated HiDPI screens yet (which wasn't a good sign, that late.)
That gives me Krita for 2D painting and general graphics, and Inkscape for vector graphics, but I wanted a replacement for InDesign too.
I did not log out (sign-out) of the app, I chose Exit.
Big news for me is that Affinity.Studio includes image trace (pixel image converted to vectors). Before I had to use Inkscape.
I had purchased the Affinity Suite for V1 and V2 plus several add-ons. The problem with perpertual licencing is once your software is mature and the user adoption market is saturated it is very difficult to continue funding development because costs increase but your revenue stream does not.
I think this is a reasonable solution and generally most people can afford free software. The owner made the classic mistake of saying "never" would they be acquired back in 2022, but that was unfortunate because the world, especially in business, is always changing and market realities can enemies into partners. Old axiom, never say never, has been true since the first ape threw a bone into the air. What an odyssey!
@joanna Thank you. I was able to access my purchase history/downloads.
Here's how to install the add-ons you bought at Affinity into Affinity.Studio v3.0.0
Inkscape's tracing is pretty good, though. I've used it before.
Yes but now I have an integrated solution which will have accelerated development. It had crashes when Affinity Photo 2 would flip my project over to Affinity Designer 2 and now it should not.
I can a completely customize the user interface to be task oriented.
GIMP and Inkscape are nice programs but Affinity.Studio is as close as I can get to Adobe Photoshop-Illustrator-InDesign for a reasonably low price. In addition, Ron's photoshop brushes I bought in the DAZ store work seemlessly in Affinity.Studio.
For now, I shall continue to use what I've got. None of this suits me. Exiting without logging out indicates you're still logged in and bleeding info to canva. Can one even use the new program without an internet connection? Suspicious minds want to know!
Yes, as I mentioned above, I physically disconnected my computer from the network so big brother could not spy on me and Affinity.Studio worked just like Affinity Suite v1 and v2.
Also, go to 20:10 in the video announcement I posted in my first post for this discussion.
For NordVPN, I "Quit the App" from the taskbar after I disconnect from a VPN server and the NordVPN task service shuts down because I do not have it set to autorun. I don't "Logout" of NordVPN, I "Exit" it.
When I "Exit" Affinity.Studio app, I do not see any services running in Task Manager related to it. Therefore if no services related to Affinity.Studio are running when I exit the app how are they spyting on me?
In addition, Canva bought Serif (Affinity) for pocket change. Canva is a multi-billion dollar company that bought Serif to expand its product portfolio ( https://siliconangle.com/2024/03/26/canva-acquires-adobe-rival-serif-expand-graphic-design-software-portfolio/ ) so it could be better positioned as an alternative to the Adobe empire.
It is not the customer base that Canva wanted, which is tiny in comparison to Adobe or Canva customer base. It was the technology. Therefore what is the advantage of spying on a small customer base?
Why can't you use Affinity.Studio for free? How is setting your Mac's (HiDPI) screen resolution related to running the app? Do Mac computers lack the ability to do display scaling like Windows computers?
Well, I'm glad it's here. I wasn't paying the significant monthly increase in Photoshop. It just could not be justified. I tried Paint Shop Pro as I had it many years ago, but after several weeks I finally uninstalled. I just couldn't stand it. I was always lost. Affinity is as close as I'm going to get to a Photoshop likeness and I've already been playing around with it. I wish it had smart layers options unless I'm missing this feature. Scratch that, it has Live Filters which is pretty close to the Smart Object feature in Photoshop. So far I was not able to import any PSD file with smart layers and keep those layers intact. I need to play with it more and get used to the options, tools, etc, but so far it does almost everything I need it to do. Lordy, it's so much faster than Photoshop and doesn't have a dozen or more tasks running in the background.
And as hjake has noted, you do not need to be connected. I don't know what I did. Maybe it was denying data sharing during the setup process, but I've tested it and it works as expected. I don't sign out, I simply close the program as I would any other.
I don't have a Mac. The last time I downloaded a demo of V2 there was no HiDPI setting I could find and the text was thus uncomfortably small on my 4k monitor. I looked at it again recently, without downloading, and saw that they still seemed to be the same, or a similar, version. It was a bad time for me to buy anyway, so I was waiting for some sign that they'd changed anything before downloading another demo.
@hjake you're enthusiasm is undeniable. I'll take what you've said into account. Thanks!
If you are using Windows 10 or 11 you can scale your display size for your 4K monitor. I have mine set at 150%. You can see from all the screenshot I have done that Affinity.Studio has a legible user interface on a 32" 4K monitor.
GREAT ... he said ... with just a tad too much enthusiasm.
Besides it is free and you can remove it and delete your Canva account if it is not for you.
I believe this is a great opportunity for non-Adobe users. Serif would have eventually had to sell, merge, or close on a perpetual licence model. As I mentioned as software matures gets harder to get people to upgrade. Just look how many people say they use old versions of PaintShopPro or Photoshop. How does a business fund development without revenue. Serif Affinity Photo user base is not even a tenth of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe had to move to subscription because it could not maintain its revenue stream on a shrinking base of users willing to upgrade every 2 years for minimal enhancments.
DAZ Studio and Poser are built on the razer and blades model and Blender gets donations from major corporations and does consulting work. Something has to fund the development and nobody wants to pay for anything anymore.
... All right, I should look at it ... Nope. Will not sign Canva Terms of Use.
For 2D graphics I'm happy enough with Krita and inkscape. I detest GIMP.
It looks like, for print publishing, if I ever decide to do that, it'll be Scribus or (never saw this one before) VivaDesigner. I'm not ready to try that now, though.