Canva Makes Affinity Free, Introduces Creative Operating System

Canva has decided to make its Affinity photo editing software a free download, and has also overhauled its content creation tools to include a new Video 2.0 NLE.

Canva says its new Creative Operating System is the company's biggest launch to date. It's centred around what it says is a reimagined Visual Suite, which — this is 2025 after all — adds a huge amount of AI tools to all manner of workflows from docs and whiteboards to video and even the old analog technology of print.

Video 2.0

A quick detour to look at the new Video 2.0. Video 2.0 includes a redesigned timeline for trimming, syncing, and layering footage, integrated AI tools that automate edits and effects, and a template library of on-trend designs modeled on the latest content gaining traction on TikTok, Reels, and Shorts formats.

This is, as you will have already deduced, all aimed at quickfire social content. And for those who want to speed things up even further, the new Magic Video feature turns uploaded clips into finished social edits from a short prompt.

Affinity is Now Free For All

Canva purchased the UK company behind the eponymous Affinity photo editing and design software in March last year for $380 million, adding it to a stable of acquisitions that included Flourish, Kaleido, SmartMockups, Pexels, Pixabay, and SlidesCarnival. The cross platform creative suite already had a decent reputation, covering vector-based graphics with Affinity Designer, photo editing with Affinity Photo, and page layout software with Affinity Publisher.

The all-new Affinity app now brings professional vector, photo, and layout tools together in one space, "featuring everything you need to design, edit, and publish without switching apps or breaking flow," says the company. It also features fully customizable studios that allow creatives to mix and match tools from Vector, Pixel, and Layout to build a workspace that fits their unique process.

Key to this is a single, nondestructive file type that covers everything and includes complete editing and layer support. The usual other file types are all supported.

Obviously it features integrations into the rest of the Canva product line and, for users with a Canva premium account, Canva AI’s tools are now included directly inside Affinity through the new Canva AI Studio. But, for everyone who wants it, it's free, "now and forever" promises the company.

One from the Blackmagic Playbook

This is a big move. It's a familiar one too. Blackmagic turned the NLE market on its head when it bought DaVinci Resolve in 2010 and then released a free Lite version soon after. That has gradually evolved too so that it is now essentially the same as the perpetual licence version, DaVinci Resolve Studio, which itself only ringfences some features for properly high-end production behind a paywall.

Arguably, Affinity is starting from an even stronger base point in that it is free in its entirety, with the only monetisation options available to Canva charging $15 a month for the AI tools. Possibly even that might be converted to micro-credits or generative tokens in the future, it depends how the business model works in the real world.

Talking of which, you now have the long-time pole sitter Adobe Photoshop, which is gaining some awesome new tools as the recent Adobe MAX illustrated, sitting on a monthly subscription; Affinity on what is essentially a freemium model when you consider the AI tools; a raft of new AI-centric subs-based upstarts headed by the likes of Luminar Neo and the Windows-focused Zoner Photo Studio X; and whatever Apple is up to with its acquisition of Pixelmator Pro. 

All of which makes what has long been a rather stable digital photo editing market definitely interesting...