Serif

and he will take it from there so that's quite handy just because like I'm able to do some vector artwork but it's just like it's a bit of a faff because I don't have the software so I'd have to find some kind of free software and then it's not something that I'm used to and then or I just have to wait until I'm back at work

Affinity is not free but it is cheap and it's a lifetime license and

it

is free now It is free now.

At the minute, I'm kind of...

Because I used to pay for Adobe, and then I saw that, and I was like, I should probably not be wasting money on Adobe for how little I use their software.

I should just learn how to use Affinity.

So I'm still getting used to that as well.

I don't want to derail too much here, but I might have to find a new image editor soon.

Affinity has really gone to shit.

Oh, I'm still using V2.

So am I, but I just discovered last week that it's abandoned.

They have end-of-life Affinity 2 because they got bought by Canva.

I don't want to turn this into a big rant, but Affinity appears to be in shitifying at a record pace.

They got bought out by Canva not that long ago and immediately made Affinity photo both free but requiring a login, basically.

You have to make a Canva account now to use like they just immediately turned it into kind of a loss leader for getting people into the canva ecosystem where the whole point the whole appeal of affinity was that they were good low-cost alternatives to adobe that you paid for once and just had like every version you had to pay for like i bought a v1 license and then when version two came out i And they offer a nice discount, or did offer a nice discounted upgrade fee, so I was like, yeah, sure, I'll pay $65 to upgrade to the version 2 of all your stuff, even though I really only use Photo.

I need to do this with it.

And what it's using on the backend is whatever, um, capabilities that Affinity exposes through this interface, right? And so, you know, I'm sure people who use this will still use Affinity, the app, but I also think over time the goal is that that's not the That's not the app anymore, right? It's the AI thing.

So whatever, it's interesting to see them just kind of embrace this.

But it's worth, look, if you haven't tried this, dear God, please try it.

You know, as you just said this, I'll tell you how I got to this, but it sort of occurs that This model, this thing I'm talking about, maybe we're talking about it, where you're talking to an AI and it's using some backend feature of an app.

And so, of course, that's great when the app's there, but when you're not buying the app anymore because this thing's just doing this, like how does this work and whatever.

And actually, it could be like music streaming, right? And it could be a little bit like what they're doing now with usage-based billing where whatever that backend thing is, whether it's Adobe or Affinity or Canva, whatever they are, if there's some little, you know, micropayment that occurs and, you know, I mean, I, maybe that's the, that's how this will eventually work, you know, instead.

So instead of, you don't buy the software anyway, but I, which is weird, but I guess they're trying to sell you on this subscription, but if they could do these micropayments for, you know, on the fly access to capabilities, you know.

It's available, you know, free download, whatever.

Um, and then I, uh, last year, probably, um, uh, Affinity, which had been acquired by Canva at some point, had three separate apps, and I used one of the three all the time.

It was, uh, Affinity Photo as sort of a Photoshop...

Not sort of-

Me too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then sometime last year, they announced, uh, that they were combining those three apps into a single app, and it's just gonna be called Affinity, and it will do everything that those apps did, which is not quite true, but pretty much true.

Caitlin, if we think back to the technical aspects of quilt pattern editing, what software recommendations do you make? Can you work with like any format? I think new designers get hung up on, do I have to use Adobe Illustrator? You know, what programs do we need?

I am a big fan of the Affinity by Canva suite.

So it is what came from the Affinity.

I think their original company name was Serif.

But so there was like Affinity 1, 2, and 3.

And they had a publisher and an illustrator.

They were kind of the lower cost version of the Adobe suite.

But now they've been bought out by Canva.

Even though a lot of people will probably know me as the kind of organised, streamlined person, I still couldn't tell you what I was doing with all my time.

I clearly was just not as streamlined and as simplified as I thought I was because now I'm like, no, no, there's a lot of room for improvement here with how streamlined I could be with my business basically and so there's a lot of things i've done in terms of stripped back the tools and softwares that i use i'm paying for way less subscriptions now because i just consolidated everything i've been looking at tools that can do lots of things rather than having to pay for separate things been looking at tools that are free rather than having to have a subscription cost For example, using Affinity, which is a free design software that can basically replace Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, all of that stuff.

So I now use that.

I don't pay for any overcomplicated onboarding and automation software anymore because I just have stripped that back and made it simple.

And there's been like the shift from Adobe to what you call...

Affinity.

Affinity.

Yes.

Yes.

Affinity.

And companies, you know, from time to time will like...

I think Adobe in a year or so will change like the terms of service and stuff like that to kind of... make things easier for designers and not have those strict subscription policies and whatnot.