The new Affinity is aimed directly at the visual arts, products, and services sector professionals who are the Canva main audience. The AI tools are now almost mandatory in that sector, making the idea of a free non-AI “starter kit” with rental AI add-ons a sensible business strategy. Photographers are a secondary (if that) audience.
If you browse Canva’s web pages you will find they have many other tools/apps besides Affinity. I can see their strategy of giving away Affinity to gain market share then charge a rental for the AI tools for those (professionals) who need it.
Casual users like myself and many others can benefit from a very powerful set of apps.
Unfortunately earlier this year I forked out dollars for the suite of Affinity apps which are now updated and free 
I am not angry as I think they were a very worthwhile investment for what I use them for.
I do not recall seeing that during the download & installation of Affinity?
As far as I am aware unless, within Affinity, you sign up/subscribe to Canva AI Affinity is is not ‘connected’ to Canva
Yes, you can download the ML models for Object Selection the same as was available in Affinity Photo v2.6 but that is all handled locally on the PC or Mac and not Cloud or subscription based.
When I look on the Affinity Studio website I cannot actually see a Login button ???
Let this spectacular consolidation inspire DxO to finally unify its constellation of apps into 1 single full Monty PhotoLab app to replace the current scattered cluster of interoperable apps and plug-ins (the 7 separate tools of Nik Collection are especially frustrating). To preserve choice (and avoid price hike), they could offer several versions or tiers, and sell plugins for non-DxO apps separately.
Yes, if DxO, want to sell FP, VP and even PR plugins to users of LR, PS or other why not.
But whether this is also the case for PL users, I don’t understand. PL must be a single complete software.
Trouble is… I don’t want FilmPack!
Making PL a complete software by including FilmPack would inevitably mean it costs more for every upgrade.
That said I’m already forced to get FilmPack to get hold of core functionality like contrast controls and Luma masking.
It’s a silly situation yet all too obvious what DxO are playing at there. Milk customers as much as possible.
BlackMagic Design, with DaVinci Resolve, for example.
PL seems bloated and slow enough already so for me, just include the necessary editing functions you mention.
I have made a test on trial version about stitching panoramas.
It is a very trivial and unuseful function and I am always fearing that Autopano stops to work…
Unanswerable question isn’t when is editing software have to many functions features to many for some like me a hobbyist but never enough for the consummate professionals who need functionality for there business and livelihood
Hi Fineus. Your overview of Affinity is pretty sound, I too have been using Affinity products for years. I think we need to be careful though, in that Canva Affinity is an image pixel editor in the main, not primarily a RAW editor such as DXO PL. The two complement each other very well indeed. So much so that I’ve completely dropped Adobe Apps after some 15 years of usage.
I just wish that either had a decent AI removal option, this is where Adobe Apps really shine. All in good time no doubt.
I still use PhotoLab 8 for RAW development and -sometimes- for the integration with Nik Software. Although after creating one’s own ‘Studio’ in Affinity so that it almost looks like your Studio in Affinity Photo 2.6.5, it’s very easy to upgrade to Affinity V3, the integration with Nik Software (whose individual apps can be accessed through Affinity V3 is far from perfect yet. You cannot save back to Affinity! So currently either I go through DxO PhotoLab to Nik, or I use the Nik apps as standalones.
I also ‘switch back’ to Affiinity Photo 2.6.5, if need be, but that requires exporting a file from Affinity V3. The .afphoto files (created by Affinity Photo 1 & 2) can be opened and further edited in Affinity V3, but the .af files created by Affinity cannot be opened by lower versions.