Canva acquires Affinity for $380 million to take on Adobe

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? Australian startup Canva has acquired the British creative software company Affinity (formerly Serif) in a deal worth around $380 million. Canva expects that Affinity's photo editing, design, and publishing tools will help it compete with Adobe's Creative Cloud suite, which many consider the gold industry standard.

Canva confirmed the acquisition this week, saying that adding the Affinity suite to its portfolio will help empower companies, organizations, and smaller teams "to achieve their (creative) goals." In a separate announcement, Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson said he is excited and looking forward to starting a "momentous new chapter" in the company's journey. Hewson added that Canva's massive user base will help the company reach more customers than it could have alone.

Affinity is one of several companies Canva has bought out recently. In the last few years, it has acquired online design and photo-related services, including the Austrian visual AI platform Kaleido.ai and stock photo repositories Pexels and Pixabay.

Canva is known for its cloud-based design service, with over 175 million users globally. Affinity's suite of professional design software, available on Windows, Mac, and iPad, has more than three million users globally, making it one of the biggest challengers to Adobe's dominance in the sector.

Affinity offers several creative apps, including photo editing programs and complex graphic and vector design solutions – usually offered at a fraction of Adobe's app prices.

The deal is good news for Canva users since the company plans to eventually add Affinity's creative tools to its online photo editing service. While the company's web app typically targets beginners, co-founder Cliff Obrecht says that acquisition should attract users with more advanced photo editing skills, including professional designers.

Constellation Research analyst Ray Wang told Bloomberg he believes Affinity's software suite will help Canva become more competitive with Adobe. Canva's immediate target is Adobe Express, an all-in-one design, photo, and video tool that makes content creation easy, even for people without graphic design skills. Wang also thinks that the companies' cultures are well aligned, meaning the 90 Affinity employees that will join Canva following the acquisition should not have any problems transitioning.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102412-canva-acquires-affinity-380-million-take-adobe.html

 

[Squid Surprise]

Adobe has gotten more bloated and less useful for years... not to mention expensive... would be nice to see some competition, but not holding my breath.

 

[Calsun]

Adobe has been able to buy up each of its competitors without any opposition from the U.S. Justice Department. I have had three graphics applications that were gobbled up by Adobe and then the prices increased dramatically.

A key problem with Adobe Photoshop is that the architecture is poor with each new feature layered on and so more and more memory is used regardless of whether the end user will be using these features. It is very much like what Microsoft had done over the past decades.

 

[redgarl]

Photoshop and all the ADOBE suite products are now SERVICES...

You know what you need to do if you want to challenge this... don't be a SERVICE.

 

[b00ka]

Just switched from Affinity to Pixelmator, and it is personally much better, simpler and "all-in-one-ish".
Affinity (old and new versions) has a bug/feature that when you open it, it takes about a minute+ to start on a M1 Mac and others. Tried fixing it - on their forum, the official response was in the likes of "it is what it is".
Now I know some will say why can't I wait a minute, but when I need it, I need it to run and start, it's 2024. And there are tons of more complex software that just runs better and in 6 seconds.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

 

[toooooot]

Adobe has been able to buy up each of its competitors without any opposition from the U.S. Justice Department. I have had three graphics applications that were gobbled up by Adobe and then the prices increased dramatically.

A key problem with Adobe Photoshop is that the architecture is poor with each new feature layered on and so more and more memory is used regardless of whether the end user will be using these features. It is very much like what Microsoft had done over the past decades.

Not long ago it tried to devour a British platform that has some similarities. Their gov. did not allow it for this reason.

 

[dangh]

Photoshop and all the ADOBE suite products are now SERVICES...

You know what you need to do if you want to challenge this... don't be a SERVICE.

They already said they want to offer it as a web tools, sooooo... It will be another service.
And I only wanted to get a Linux version of their product...

 

[Theinsanegamer]

They already said they want to offer it as a web tools, sooooo... It will be another service.
And I only wanted to get a Linux version of their product...

You will own nothing, and you will be happy.

 

[ZedRM]

I haven't used anything Adobe in over 15 years. Anything is better than that trash...

 

[Abaidor]

I haven't used anything Adobe in over 15 years. Anything is better than that trash...

We use Adobe Creative Cloud and it's the industry standard when working in professional environments - you just can't not have it.

 

[ZedRM]

We use Adobe Creative Cloud and it's the industry standard when working in professional environments - you just can't not have it.

Absolute nonsense. Total myth. There are many alternatives to Adobe, many of them better than anything Adobe has to offer. Go explore the world.

 

[Abaidor]

Absolute nonsense. Total myth. There are many alternatives to Adobe, many of them better than any Adobe has. Go explore the world.

Are you working with Agencies, professional Offset Printing, Video production for advertising etc? Because we do and they use Adobe a lot. I guess its that myth you are talking about that makes Adobe 10X the size of its largest competitor.

 

[ZedRM]

Are you working with Agencies, professional Offset Printing, Video production for advertising etc?

You're picking nits. Adobe is not the only game in town, not by a long shot.

Because we do and they use Adobe a lot.

But not exclusively.

I guess its that myth you are talking about that makes Adobe 10X the size of its largest competitor.

That's your come-back? LOL

 

[Squid Surprise]

Are you working with Agencies, professional Offset Printing, Video production for advertising etc? Because we do and they use Adobe a lot. I guess it’s that myth you are talking about that makes Adobe 10X the size of its largest competitor.

I agree it’s the Microsoft Office of the creative world but… there ARE programs that work better and are compatible with the end results of most of the Adobe workflows…. Just because everyone uses one piece of software doesn’t necessarily mean you have to…

 

[Abaidor]

I agree it’s the Microsoft Office of the creative world but… there ARE programs that work better and are compatible with the end results of most of the Adobe workflows…. Just because everyone uses one piece of software doesn’t necessarily mean you have to…

I do not say that other programs do not exist. But when you are running a business, you have deadlines, and a team working you want seamless integration not just compatibility.

All the apps in Adobe Creatrive cloud work perfectly with each other, the cloud integration is there too, team collaboration is there, client sharing is there, Behance is there, huge community is there....I can write an essay about why at the age of 50 I can't be bothered with looking for alternatives because I am focused on "selling", increasing production and managing a team to deliver results to our clients.

The cost is not an issue and that is because of the scale otherwise we would be paying much much higher for all this software.

Show me a suite that covers ALL of the following:

-Generative AI within the suite & let's be honest equal with Photoshop capabilities, resources, tutorials, community, and on, and on.....
-Font Management & 3rd party Font Managers with autoactivation plugins for your design suite - managing 40,000 fonts for example.
-Video, Video Effects like Premier & After Effects while interchanging assets from Photoshop & Illustrator
- Professional Color Management across all apps sharing custom profiles
- Publishing tool like InDesign
- A "Bridge like" App integrated
- Adobe Acrobat Pro equivalent with preflight checks and all the pro features
- Social media post scheduler (Adobe Express now supports multiple client accounts)
- Adobe Stock Integration (huge library!)
-
-And,on and on

I can make a huge list and the I need 50 apps to do the same. -- No time.

Sure there are apps that serve specific categories equally or better but there is no single suite with that level of integration and cloud capabilities for collaboration like Adobe's though. If one comes out (I doubt it) I will check it out. For now, I will focus on delivering wokr rather than searching.

 

[ZedRM]

I can make a huge list and the I need 50 apps to do the same. -- No time.

This is the opinion of someone who;
A. Hasn't actually chosen to live life without Adobe, for whatever reason.
B. Because of point "A.", seems to have no idea just how easy it is to do so.
And finally,
C. Is speaking from a place of inexperience with a level of authority that is very clearly, and strikingly, ironic and very much a disservice to readers here.

Adobe is NOT the end-all-be-all of media editing. It is an option, and if you're willing to live with the software subscription model nonsense, a good one. There are better options that take nothing more than what you needed when you first started with Adobe, a bit of time to learn.