Adobe just wrapped up its Max keynote, which means its time for its biggest free competitor to announce its own set of new features. While Adobe’s done its best to keep up with Canva by adding its own free, web-based tools to its lineup, the simple browser-based editor has become a key part of my creative routine. Now, it’s coming for more of Adobe’s lunch by launching a “creative operating system,” which while largely a rebrand of existing (but expanding) tools, smacks of the Photoshop makers’ “creative cloud” branding. As part of the update, Canva’s introducing a bunch of—say it with me—AI to its products, but is also taking a big swing by making popular Photoshop alternative Affinity free for everyone.
AI will hold your hand while designing
Credit: Canva
Adobe made its own AI promises during its Max keynote, with the biggest one being “AI Assistant in Adobe Express.” The feature essentially lets you create or refine whole designs from an AI chat box, all in the company’s Canva-like free web editor. Not to be outdone, Canva is also bringing an AI assistant to its browser-based designer, but it’s promising finer control than Adobe’s version.
AI Assistant in Adobe Express is a bit odd, in that toggling it on takes away your toolbar. The idea is to simplify things, but it also adds a bit of a barrier to asking for help. Meanwhile, Canva’s trying to naturally integrate AI into its entire workflow by upgrading its existing Ask Canva chatbot.
Right now, Ask Canva simply sits in one spot on your screen, where you can ask it to generate text or images for you. Now, Canva says you can summon it anywhere in your design, and it’ll be able to give you feedback, make suggestions, or make edits for you, all related to specific design elements.
Alongside an updated AI model, the idea is to make it a “true creative partner,” but personally, I’m just glad that accidentally bringing it up won’t dismiss my tools.
Canva Video 2.0
Credit: Canva
Keeping with the AI theme, Canva’s also redesigning its video editor with a new mobile-friendly interface and an expanded ability to instantly create a publishable video with a single prompt.
You’ll still be able to manually edit a timeline if you like, and you can still generate AI footage as separate clips to put alongside or layered over your other footage, but the new system aims to make it easy to go right from raw footage to posting a video on your timeline.
Called Magic Video, it works like the existing Magic Design feature, but Canva says it’s a bit more powerful. You’ll upload clips and tell the AI what type of video you want, just like with Magic Design, but you’ll also be to select a tone for your video and an editing style from dropdown menus, then navigate through a “new library of on-trend templates” to get your final result. That should mean more control, but also more transition effects and title cards.
It’s all free, and it reminds me of Adobe’s upcoming YouTube Shorts feature for Premiere, which is getting added to the free Premiere iPhone app as well as directly into YouTube. That’s not set to release for a while yet, but Adobe says it’ll come with “exclusive” effects, transitions, stickers, and templates, although no AI to put it all together for you. It will, though, let you publish directly to YouTube without having to leave the app. Canva can do this with a few platforms, like Instagram, but doesn’t have direct integration with YouTube yet.
Whether you prefer having an AI assistant and a more platform-agnostic approach, or an editor with a direct pipeline to publishing, is up to you.
Affinity is now free for everyone, “forever”
Credit: Canva
Moving away from AI and browser-based editors, Canva’s also got some news regarding the popular standalone Photoshop alternative, Affinity. As a downloadable tool, this offers finer control than Canva’s web-based editor, including tools like vector editing, and that makes sense—it wasn’t always part of Canva’s family. Canva actually bought Affinity in March of last year, and while an acquisition of a beloved tool isn’t always good news for existing users, Canva’s latest announcement should go a long way towards earning some good will.
Part of what made Affinity stand out was its buy-it-once-and-keep-it-forever pricing, which made it highly competitive next to Photoshop’s subscription model. Now, Canva says it’s making Affinity free for everyone, “forever.”
That’s an improvement over the app’s prior free models, which were limited to iPad spinoffs and Education accounts. It’s also a shot across the bow at the competition. While Adobe has been making free light versions of its core apps for mobile and web over the past few years, it has yet to take the plunge with a fully-featured free desktop editor.
Aside from pricing, Canva also says it’s combining all of Affinity’s various functions into one program, so you’ll no longer need to swap between Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher based on your needs.
Improvements for businesses
Credit: Canva
While many of Canva’s users are individuals using the free versions of its editors, the company does have an enterprise plan for businesses, and a few of today’s updates are tailor-made for them.
That includes Canva Grow, a new product aimed at marketers for launching ads, as well as a “brand system” that will help teams stay consistent with which apps they’re using.
On a smaller scale, though, you can also now finally use Canva to design HTML elements for email, which could be useful to large and small businesses and individuals. Additionally, Canva is getting its own survey system called “Forms,” which can be added to websites or other designs and will flow responses into your Canva Sheets.
Speaking of Canva Sheets, it can now interact with Canva Code, meaning you can use data from Sheets to power interactive widgets like live dashboards or calculators.
All of that’s a bit more intensive than what I use Canva for, but I’m sure some folks are raising their hands up in relief right now.
When is all of this going live?
Compared to Adobe, where most of the features announced at Max are either still in beta or development, Canva’s newest updates will start rolling out in their live versions today, as part of its Creative Operating System launch.
Personally, I’m not big on using AI in design, but free Affinity could carry the launch for me in and of itself. Add in those quality-of-life features for businesses, and it’s clear Adobe will have to keep experimenting with its low-cost and browser-based editors to keep up.
