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Tag: Adobe Creative Cloud

  • Affinity resurfaces as an all-in-one illustration, photo editing and layout app

    The future of Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher, subscription-free alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud, was uncertain after the apps’ developer Serif was acquired by Canva in 2024. Now, over a year later, the changes Canva has introduced are big, but not necessarily unwelcome. The newly relaunched Affinity by Canva combines all three apps into a single piece of illustration, photo editing and layout software, and rather than move to a subscription model as many feared, Canva’s made it entirely free. Or, at least, freemium.

    Affinity is available now as a desktop app for macOS and Windows, with an iPadOS version on the way at some point in the future. The basic functionality of the app doesn’t seem all that different from the three separate apps Serif offered before, only now you can toggle between their tools via separate Vector, Pixel and Layout tabs. Canva stresses you also have the option to mix and match tools, and save custom toolbars to use for specific types of projects, if you want.

    Beyond layering in chunky serif fonts, Canva’s touch seems relatively light. The Affinity app now requires a free Canva account to use and offers integrations with the company’s suite of tools, with a new option to send an Affinity project directly to Canva. The company is also making its Canva AI Studio tools available in Affinity, giving users the ability to automatically remove a background or use Generative Fill to edit part of a photo. How well veteran Affinity users will take to these changes remains to be seen, but they’ll at least be able to continue using their existing copies of the old Affinity V2 lineup.

    Free sounds good, but one of the draws of the original Affinity creative suite is that you could purchase a license for Serif’s individual apps and not ever have to think about it again. Canva is promising that the new Affinity will be free going forward, but a free app that requires an account and might try to upsell you on subscription-based AI features is not quite the same thing.

    Affinity wasn’t the only Adobe competitor to be acquired in 2024. Pixelmator, a developer of popular photo and image editing tools for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, was absorbed by Apple in November that same year. The company’s apps continue to be maintained, but it’s still not clear if Apple plans to shift them to a subscription model in the future.

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  • Photoshop-maker Adobe has a third of its global innovations happening out of India   

    Photoshop-maker Adobe has a third of its global innovations happening out of India   

    A third of Adobe’s global innovations, including those on key products such as Acrobat and Illustrator, are happening out of India as the country has grown as a critical strategic focus area for the Photoshop-maker, according to Adobe India MD Prativa Mohapatra.  

    “In terms of innovation, Adobe India contributes about a third to Adobe. So, our engineering and product development teams become very relevant for the global strategy. Most of them are based out of Bangalore and Noida,” Mohapatra told Business Today recently. Besides, the India team is the second largest globally after the US, with around 7,000 employees. Adobe has more than 26,000 employees worldwide. The firm reported $15.79 billion in revenue as of the fiscal year ended December 3, 2021.  

    Apart from its Creative Cloud, which includes softwares such as Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe India is also going big on providing customer journey management, data analytics, content personalization, commerce, and marketing workflows to businesses under its Adobe Experience Cloud as enterprises are digitising, especially post-pandemic.  

    The firm counts among its clients’ well-known brands across verticals such as travel & hospitality (Vistara, SpiceJet, Indigo, Taj Hotels), Telecom (Airtel, Vodafone-Idea), e-commerce and retail (Flipkart, ABFRL, Myntra-Jabong, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Tata CLiQ, Nykaa), BFSI (HDFC Bank, BFL, Tata Capital, HDFC Life, IDFC Bank, Reliance General Insurance). 

    But apart from consumer-driven sectors such as airlines, hospitality, banks, and retail chains, traditional B2B is the new category going in for digitisation, Mohapatra said. “Companies manufacturing steel and cement never thought they would need digital portals. But the trend now is to have marketplaces. For instance, a steel company maybe making steel rods and sheets, but they are selling the house design and not just their product to the end customer. Cement firms are using the experience of building a house as the experience strategy rather than selling cement,” she said, adding that B2B firms are also targeting the end customer rather than the godown.  

    Also read: Economic instability, inflation a major concern for Indian workforce, Adobe warns

    Also read: Adobe to buy Figma for $20 bn; leads to drop in $30 bn market value of Photoshop maker

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