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I don't want to pay for a subscription for software I use thrice a year. I was looking forward to having Affinity's suite be the replacement, where I could buy

I don't want to pay for a subscription for software I use thrice a year. I was looking forward to having Affinity's suite be the replacement, where I could buy it, and use it. However I don't want to support another company that is inevitably going to go subscription. Since they've been bought by canva, it's just a matter of time. I even went so far as to get Affinity Photo being able to start on Wine. But lost interest since their acquisition. (I'm sure people will question why I don't just use inkscape, krita, or gimp. And its because all of them have a subpar vector experience IMO)

tombert 2y ago
Corel's (or whatever they call themselves now) stuff is generally pretty ok, and most of their stuff still lets you buy it outright. I don't know much about Affinity Photo but Paint Shop Pro and Aftershot have been "good enough" for the limited uses I have for photo editing (though I'm definitely far from a professional). CorelDraw is, I think, a very decent vector drawing program if nothing else.
- SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
  CorelDraw is great, but for years they were also subscription-only. In the last six months or so they finally started offering a single-price license again--at a prohibitive level. I bought the previous single-price version years ago, and it's so stale that I prefer to use Inkscape, despite the more limited feature set, and I've been using the Affinity suite as a more professional replacement. Now it looks like they let you buy it again, but at $550, I'm still giving them the finger. Their upgrade price used to be ~$200; I would pay that once ever 3-4 years or so, and consider that a reasonable expense to get a good product and have it available when I did need it. But for $550, I'd need to be planning on keeping it for something like a decade to get a similar value--and it's too much to justify buying at my limited usage level. All of these subscription services should get over themselves and allow you to rent them for occasional usage for a reasonable amount of money. If I could give them $20 for intermittent (time-limited? operation-limited?) use, with no "auto-renewal", I might do that every time I actually needed the product. But no, they need to be greedy and demand that you pay for a year of usage in advance (or by using deceptive practices like Adobe above). I've used Paint Shop Pro, and I really don't like it. I can use Corel PhotoPaint and Affinity Photo, and they're fine, but PSP makes me crazy when I try to use it. I'd almost rather use Gimp.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Fair enough. I've never paid full price for any Corel product. They're frequently on Humble Bundle where you get a bunch of them on the order of like $30 total. It looks like right now there's even a sale going on: https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-creativity-essentials-software?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_2_layout_type_threes_tile_index_2_c_corelproductivitycreativityessentials_softwarebundle https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-cre... My CorelDraw license is for 2020, so not super up to date, but I've generally liked it. I've not tried the Essentials package.
    - SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
      I'm stuck with CorelDraw X8 which dates to 2016. If they were selling a buy-it-once license in 2020, I wasn't aware of it. I swear they had switched to subscription-only by then? But maybe it happened that year and I missed the last opportunity to buy a permanent license. Last time I looked at Essentials, it looked to me like they had hamstrung it too much. I don't remember the specific restrictions they put on it, but I didn't want what they were selling. Might be worth another look with the Humble Bundle though.
gmjosack 2y ago
I ended up grabbing the Affinity bundle since it's half off despite concerns about Canva. I'd expect even if they end up moving to a subscription I'd at least have the versions I bought for an extended amount of time. I still have a working copy of Photoshop CS 5 as well. Hopefully we see Affinity remain committed to affordable non subscription plans but if they don't I think the one time purchase will last me a long time. If they put out a version 3 without subscription and it's compelling i'll upgrade, if not i'll continue to use 2 for I'm sure years to come.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Completely agree! I also refuse to put gas in my car because I know that prices will go up later... Or on a more serious note: I use Affinity professionally (previously PhotoShop). Why would I care the slightest about what they might or might not do with their pricing model in the future? I need software that delivers right now.
- earthling8118 2y ago
  I don't want to pay for the car nor the gas. Let's not let the same hostage situation extend to other aspects of our lives it we can avoid it.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    If you don't want to pay for the car, why are you complaining about car dealerships? I don't think anyone here is opposed to the concept of paying for professional tooling in any way, shape, nor form.
- anonymousab 2y ago
  For the same reason that you would care with Photoshop or Premier or Lightroom; you're investing money in learning and building your workflow around a tool that is guaranteed to go down the subscription and enshittification path.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Your computer will not explode if or when Affinity changes to a subscription model. You'll still have the software and can use it until the next ice age if you please.
    - roughly 2y ago
      Well, until there's an OS update. Most of us have gone down this road before - the old software works until it doesn't, it runs on the old hardware until that doesn't, it's usable until it's not. The actuarial table for any given software release is north of 5 years and south of 10.
technothrasher 2y ago
I bought the Affinity suite and have gotten good value out of it. If at some point in the future new versions go to a subscription model, I just won't buy them.
duped 2y ago
Is that the exact situation that subscription pricing (in principle) solves? If you only use it thrice a year then you can pay for it as you go instead of needing pay for the thing outright.
- paulmd 2y ago
  none of these companies offer monthly subscriptions - they offer a 12-month subscription billed monthly or annually (with a slight discount), your choice. This is adobe's whole schtick with the cancellation fees for example. You pay 50% of your remaining subscription balance as a termination fee. So if you subscribe 3 times a year for a month and then immediately cancel you are paying more than a yearly subscription.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
    Even a 1 month subscription for 2 hours of need is too much though. Thrice a year, for a few hours each... But have to pay 3 full months usage is nuts. 12+ months is even crazier. Bill per hour would be OK. Or buy once, give me 1 year of free updates but I can use it as-is forever (like intellij) is also fair.
  - ketzu 2y ago
    > none of these companies offer monthly subscriptions Adobe does offer monthly subcriptions, but for individuals only.
- protocolture 2y ago
  You would think wouldnt you. But some of these subscriptions, including the one I think this thread is about, will obligate you for a period of time. This happened to me, signed up to a trial of Adobe to test a graphic designers pc, once it ticked over to paid, I was told that I had a 12 month sub, just billed monthly. (I screeched and pulled my hair out and went all karen and they ended it, but they wouldnt do it twice) The "Apps on Tap" enthusiasts got absolutely mogged by Adobes commercial reality.
  - 2y ago
shostack 2y ago
I use Lightroom and Photoshop very irregularly. I now can't access Photoshop 5 that was installed on my Macbook because it doesn't work with the current MacOS. So now not only can I not deauthorize the license to free it up for my Windows machine, I can't actually use it either.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  I keep older hardware running older OS's for just this reason. There was one version of Apple's Photos for MacOS that has not been topped in terms of its retouch tool (actually got much, much worse). Since I restore a lot of old scanned-in family photos I keep this aging iMac just for photo editing.
  - sureIy 2y ago
    > one version of Apple's Photos for MacOS that has not been topped in terms of its retouch When? Do you have any articles/videos showing the difference? I can’t find any. The only major loss I’m aware of is when they left iPhotos and Aperture in the dust.
    - JKCalhoun 2y ago
      It might be a bit esoteric ... but the Photos that shipped after macOS Sierra introduced a clever new editing view built upon, I think, CoreImage so that it could do all the processing of levels, temperature, etc. extraordinarily fast — leveraging the hardware — for real-time changes as you dragged the sliders. Unfortunately the retouch tool in Photos for cloning, fixing scratches, etc. took a huge step backward in performance. Like it became unusable. So simply for dealing with old scanned family photos that have lots of scratches, tears, etc., I have stuck with Sierra Photos on my one machine.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>However I don't want to support another company that is inevitably going to go subscription why not buy Affinity now and use it until you need to upgrade? unless there's some horrible TOS, I'm sure that tool as is will last you 5+ years before some new hit feature drops in.

tombert 2y ago

Corel's (or whatever they call themselves now) stuff is generally pretty ok, and most of their stuff still lets you buy it outright. I don't know much about Affinity Photo but Paint Shop Pro and Aftershot have been "good enough" for the limited uses I have for photo editing (though I'm definitely far from a professional). CorelDraw is, I think, a very decent vector drawing program if nothing else.

SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
CorelDraw is great, but for years they were also subscription-only. In the last six months or so they finally started offering a single-price license again--at a prohibitive level. I bought the previous single-price version years ago, and it's so stale that I prefer to use Inkscape, despite the more limited feature set, and I've been using the Affinity suite as a more professional replacement. Now it looks like they let you buy it again, but at $550, I'm still giving them the finger. Their upgrade price used to be ~$200; I would pay that once ever 3-4 years or so, and consider that a reasonable expense to get a good product and have it available when I did need it. But for $550, I'd need to be planning on keeping it for something like a decade to get a similar value--and it's too much to justify buying at my limited usage level. All of these subscription services should get over themselves and allow you to rent them for occasional usage for a reasonable amount of money. If I could give them $20 for intermittent (time-limited? operation-limited?) use, with no "auto-renewal", I might do that every time I actually needed the product. But no, they need to be greedy and demand that you pay for a year of usage in advance (or by using deceptive practices like Adobe above). I've used Paint Shop Pro, and I really don't like it. I can use Corel PhotoPaint and Affinity Photo, and they're fine, but PSP makes me crazy when I try to use it. I'd almost rather use Gimp.
- tombert 2y ago
  Fair enough. I've never paid full price for any Corel product. They're frequently on Humble Bundle where you get a bunch of them on the order of like $30 total. It looks like right now there's even a sale going on: https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-creativity-essentials-software?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_2_layout_type_threes_tile_index_2_c_corelproductivitycreativityessentials_softwarebundle https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-cre... My CorelDraw license is for 2020, so not super up to date, but I've generally liked it. I've not tried the Essentials package.
  - SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
    I'm stuck with CorelDraw X8 which dates to 2016. If they were selling a buy-it-once license in 2020, I wasn't aware of it. I swear they had switched to subscription-only by then? But maybe it happened that year and I missed the last opportunity to buy a permanent license. Last time I looked at Essentials, it looked to me like they had hamstrung it too much. I don't remember the specific restrictions they put on it, but I didn't want what they were selling. Might be worth another look with the Humble Bundle though.

gmjosack 2y ago

I ended up grabbing the Affinity bundle since it's half off despite concerns about Canva. I'd expect even if they end up moving to a subscription I'd at least have the versions I bought for an extended amount of time. I still have a working copy of Photoshop CS 5 as well. Hopefully we see Affinity remain committed to affordable non subscription plans but if they don't I think the one time purchase will last me a long time. If they put out a version 3 without subscription and it's compelling i'll upgrade, if not i'll continue to use 2 for I'm sure years to come.

carlosjobim 2y ago

Completely agree! I also refuse to put gas in my car because I know that prices will go up later... Or on a more serious note: I use Affinity professionally (previously PhotoShop). Why would I care the slightest about what they might or might not do with their pricing model in the future? I need software that delivers right now.

earthling8118 2y ago
I don't want to pay for the car nor the gas. Let's not let the same hostage situation extend to other aspects of our lives it we can avoid it.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  If you don't want to pay for the car, why are you complaining about car dealerships? I don't think anyone here is opposed to the concept of paying for professional tooling in any way, shape, nor form.
anonymousab 2y ago
For the same reason that you would care with Photoshop or Premier or Lightroom; you're investing money in learning and building your workflow around a tool that is guaranteed to go down the subscription and enshittification path.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Your computer will not explode if or when Affinity changes to a subscription model. You'll still have the software and can use it until the next ice age if you please.
  - roughly 2y ago
    Well, until there's an OS update. Most of us have gone down this road before - the old software works until it doesn't, it runs on the old hardware until that doesn't, it's usable until it's not. The actuarial table for any given software release is north of 5 years and south of 10.

technothrasher 2y ago

I bought the Affinity suite and have gotten good value out of it. If at some point in the future new versions go to a subscription model, I just won't buy them.

duped 2y ago

Is that the exact situation that subscription pricing (in principle) solves? If you only use it thrice a year then you can pay for it as you go instead of needing pay for the thing outright.

paulmd 2y ago
none of these companies offer monthly subscriptions - they offer a 12-month subscription billed monthly or annually (with a slight discount), your choice. This is adobe's whole schtick with the cancellation fees for example. You pay 50% of your remaining subscription balance as a termination fee. So if you subscribe 3 times a year for a month and then immediately cancel you are paying more than a yearly subscription.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  Even a 1 month subscription for 2 hours of need is too much though. Thrice a year, for a few hours each... But have to pay 3 full months usage is nuts. 12+ months is even crazier. Bill per hour would be OK. Or buy once, give me 1 year of free updates but I can use it as-is forever (like intellij) is also fair.
- ketzu 2y ago
  > none of these companies offer monthly subscriptions Adobe does offer monthly subcriptions, but for individuals only.
protocolture 2y ago
You would think wouldnt you. But some of these subscriptions, including the one I think this thread is about, will obligate you for a period of time. This happened to me, signed up to a trial of Adobe to test a graphic designers pc, once it ticked over to paid, I was told that I had a 12 month sub, just billed monthly. (I screeched and pulled my hair out and went all karen and they ended it, but they wouldnt do it twice) The "Apps on Tap" enthusiasts got absolutely mogged by Adobes commercial reality.
- 2y ago

shostack 2y ago

I use Lightroom and Photoshop very irregularly. I now can't access Photoshop 5 that was installed on my Macbook because it doesn't work with the current MacOS. So now not only can I not deauthorize the license to free it up for my Windows machine, I can't actually use it either.

JKCalhoun 2y ago
I keep older hardware running older OS's for just this reason. There was one version of Apple's Photos for MacOS that has not been topped in terms of its retouch tool (actually got much, much worse). Since I restore a lot of old scanned-in family photos I keep this aging iMac just for photo editing.
- sureIy 2y ago
  > one version of Apple's Photos for MacOS that has not been topped in terms of its retouch When? Do you have any articles/videos showing the difference? I can’t find any. The only major loss I’m aware of is when they left iPhotos and Aperture in the dust.
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    It might be a bit esoteric ... but the Photos that shipped after macOS Sierra introduced a clever new editing view built upon, I think, CoreImage so that it could do all the processing of levels, temperature, etc. extraordinarily fast — leveraging the hardware — for real-time changes as you dragged the sliders. Unfortunately the retouch tool in Photos for cloning, fixing scratches, etc. took a huge step backward in performance. Like it became unusable. So simply for dealing with old scanned family photos that have lots of scratches, tears, etc., I have stuck with Sierra Photos on my one machine.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>However I don't want to support another company that is inevitably going to go subscription why not buy Affinity now and use it until you need to upgrade? unless there's some horrible TOS, I'm sure that tool as is will last you 5+ years before some new hit feature drops in.