What are the most important changes?

The new software includes the 3 previous ones in one app.

You know that up to and including Affinity v2, these 3 software can be used separately:
Affinity Photo – Photo editing and digital painting
Affinity Designer – Vector graphics
Affinity Publisher – Publication editing

The new Affinity includes these in one. Switching between the 3 (or even more) so-called Studios is possible in the upper left corner.

The new Affinity also includes Canva AI, but its use is completely optional.

In addition, the app has Slice, Retouch and Colour Grading studios.
You can also create your own Studio, which can be completely customized.

You can find the most frequently asked questions on the official website, here is an excerpt:

Can I still use the v1 and v2 software?
Yes, support will continue and the activation server will remain available, but new licenses for v1 or v2 can no longer be purchased.

Am I able to open and edit the files created with Affinity v1 and v2 in the new app?
Yes, the new desktop version can open them.

Can I re-download my previously purchased Affinity products?
Yes, you can download them by signing-in to your account.

New features in nutshell

• pigment blend – a different type of transition option for gradients
• mesh fill type – a mesh can be used to fill shapes with a gradient
• an adjustment brush has been added to Pixel studio
• live filter brush – live filters can be painted directly on the image with a brush
• new filters: glitch – aberration, distortion, pixelate and similar effects can be added to the image in a non-destructive way
• A big new feature in Layout studio is that you can vectorize pixel images (this is called tracing, which has existed in Corel Draw for a long time, for example)
• in general, it is easier to find the panels we need (panel search function)
• quick menu: right click on the pasteboard to show it

A brief overview of AI Studio:
general AI functions are available, such as:

• generative expand
• generative fill
• generative edit
• generate image
• select subject
• remove background
• portrait blur and lighting

AI studio is available with Canva Premium Plan.

No internet connection is required to use the new Affinity, only when logging in for the first time and downloading the app.

Personally, I still don’t fully understand how they made this great software free.
Which partly explains this decision, that it seems that the AI ​​studio will be a paid service.

In the first look video, further developments were also briefly introduced:

• live blend tool
• creating custom scripts (programming)

Conclusion

Overall, these new features are interesting and I definitely recommend trying the new Affinity.

The new app can be downloaded from https://www.affinity.studio/ for Windows and macOS users. We should wait a little for the iPad app.

For your information: when you first launch the app you should decide whether you want to share usage data (turned off by default):

I created the cover image with the new Affinity desktop app. (I used a custom font with glitch filter and one layer with motion blur, other layer with gaussian blur effect)

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I would like to list here the most useful and budget-friendly (possibly free) tools for graphic design.

3D Software

Blender – an open source creative software for modeling, sculpting, lighting, rendering of 3D images. Completely free. It has a long learning curve, but lot of free learning materials are available on the web.
It contains also a professional video editing tool.

Digital painting

Krita – Free and open source painting software. User friendly UI, huge set of brushes, ability to create tilable textures and patterns and a lot more.

Procreate – this software made for Mac users. Not free, but on low budget if you have an Apple product. The Procreate team clearly defines that they don’t plan to implement any generative AI functions to their apps, which can really support the real artists and creative, human made artwork. Read about this on their the official site.

Sketchbook – I really like this drawing software because of the good drawing tools like pencil, pens, brushes and much more. If you have a stylus then using this tool can be a very good drawing experience. Sketchbook is available for desktop and mobile devices (Mac and Android and even Windows). Free for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. It has a Pro Mac version which is not free.

Photo editing

Canva is an online, web-based graphic design and photo editing tool. Canva has a free version, but it has also premium plans. This software contains an inbuilt AI image generator (with limited usage in the free plan), so not clearly a “noAI” tool, but it has many traditional design features.

GIMP – free image editing and painting software. Similar to Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo. Adobe and Affinity products are more user-friendly, but GIMP is free and it doesn’t have AI features, just the classic selecting and painting tools and image filters.

Web design

Placeholder image generator – use this excellent free tool if you would like to create photos in different categories, in custom sizes for your website design or prototype. More image formats are available like jpeg, png and even webp.

Vector graphics design

Affinity Designer – not free, but relatively cheap and not subscription-based.

Inkscape – this is probably the most popular and free vector graphics editor for Windows, macOS and Linux

Video editing

Shotcut – free and open source video editor. Fast cutting, wide range of video and audio effects, 4k video editing and much more. I recommend to watch the tutorials on the official site to get familiar with the UI.

Do you have a great tool which is not on this list? Write a short sentence about it and send the link in the comment section below or send it to our mail address: hello at aiartblog.com.

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