Canva's Affinity goes pro for free, offering creatives a new alternative

Creatives and brand marketers now have a new option for their design toolkits, with the launch of the all-new Affinity: a professional design app that combines photo editing, vector design, and page layout tools, now completely free. The platform aims to fill a gap for those who find Adobe’s suite cumbersome or subscriptions costly, or for teams looking to step up from web-based editors such as Canva.

Built with speed, precision, and flexibility in mind, Affinity allows users to personalise their workspace, mix and match tools, and even share custom studios. Every adjustment updates in real time, and the platform handles complex projects with thousands of layers, making it suitable for both independent designers and full creative teams.

“For too long, professional designers have had limited choices, often forced to compromise on speed, performance, or cost,” Canva said in a statement. “We’ve built something better. A studio-grade creative platform that adapts to how professionals actually work.”

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Affinity’s vector tools let designers create precise illustrations and complex brand systems effortlessly. Its award-winning photo editing suite allows for non-destructive adjustments, while layout tools keep typography, graphics, and images consistent across multi-page publications. Whether it’s a detailed brand identity or a brochure, creatives can work in one seamless environment without switching apps.

The launch also marks a new chapter for Affinity under Canva, which acquired the platform last year. Canva premium users can now access Canva AI tools directly within Affinity, including generative fill, expand & edit, and remove background features, designed to speed up repetitive steps while maintaining full creative control.

“Affinity has always been for professionals who care deeply about craft,” the company said. “Now, with Canva’s technology, users can experiment more freely, work faster, and keep their creative process uninterrupted.” Existing projects can be imported from formats like PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, TIFF, and IDML, so users don’t have to start from scratch. The all-new Affinity is available today on Mac and Windows, with iPad support coming soon. 

Announced on 30 October, Canva said that the relaunch of Affinity was just the beginning. "We’re continuing to invest in both Affinity’s professional design tools and Canva’s all-in-one platform, building a future where everyone can design at the highest level, without barriers." For creatives frustrated with bloated software or looking for a step up from simpler web editors, Affinity offers a fully featured, high-performance alternative — free of cost, flexible, and designed to keep up with the way professionals actually work.

Design platform companies have been ramping up their race against, and with the advancements of AI. Just last week, Figma announced that it acquired AI-powered image and video generation company Weavy, which will be joined under a new brand called Figma Weave. 20 people from the Israel founded company will join Figma, but the valuation of the deal was not disclosed. Weavy’s web platform lets users integrate multiple AI models and provides professional editing tools to produce high-quality images and videos, ideal for product mock-ups or brand visuals.

Meanwhile, Adobe has unveiled a major wave of AI updates across its Creative Cloud suite, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, and Illustrator, at Adobe MAX 2025. The updates introduce new AI-powered tools designed to help creative professionals save time, work with greater precision, and manage repetitive tasks more efficiently. Highlights include Photoshop’s AI Assistant for automating workflows, Firefly Boards for collaborative ideation with image upscaling and prompt generation, and new Firefly Creative Production tools for batch editing thousands of images at once.

Adobe is also integrating top AI models from partners such as Google Gemini, Topaz Labs, and ElevenLabs directly into its apps, alongside its own Firefly Image Model 5 for photorealistic, high-resolution image generation. For creative teams, the updates include enhanced object masking in Premiere, AI-assisted culling in Lightroom, and new Firefly Custom Models that allow users to generate assets in their own visual style. Together, these innovations aim to streamline the creative process while giving professionals full control over output quality.

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