Our favourite free graphics suite gets supercharged as Canva’s Affinity gets a flurry of upgrades in a bid to rival Adobe
- Canva ProSuite connects Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish, and Leonardo into one ecosystem
- Affinity and Cavalry stay free as ProSuite gains over 100 additions
- Scene Decomposition uses AI to split flattened pictures into separate editable components
Canva is giving Affinity a major set of upgrades as it tries to make its professional creative tools more useful against established competitors.
The free software now adds photography, design, automation and file compatibility features alongside deeper connections with Cavalry, Canva and other creative products.
The changes form part of Canva ProSuite, which brings Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish and Leonardo together while keeping Affinity and Cavalry available without payment.
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Affinity gets a major photography and design update
The photography changes are particularly extensive, adding batch importing and an improved RAW processing system for users handling large collections.
Preset looks can now be applied across multiple images, while new correction tools address mixed illumination and camera movement during editing.
Scene Decomposition uses AI to separate flattened pictures into editable components, allowing photographers to modify individual elements without rebuilding images manually.
A dedicated Astrophotography Studio adds specialized controls for photographers working with night skies and astronomical subjects during detailed image processing.
Affinity is also expanding the range of files it can handle, including support for bringing InDesign documents directly into the application.
The company says this gives users access to major industry file formats while reducing obstacles when moving projects between different creative applications.
Integration with Canva Brand Kit and Canva Sheets also adds a route for connecting design work with brand assets and structured information.
Other additions cover vector editing, typography, brushes, noise reduction, high dynamic range processing and export controls, giving professional users more options.
Sony ARW6 support, OpenColorIO display emulation, and improved output matching also extend Affinity’s capabilities for photography and color-managed production workflows.
The release includes more than 60 Affinity additions, while Canva says ProSuite brings over 100 additions and changes across its connected products this year.
Canva is also connecting Affinity with Cavalry, its software for creating motion graphics and animations, as part of the new ProSuite.
Cavalry receives more than 50 changes, including new shape controls, lighting effects, graph editing improvements, and expanded SVG handling for motion designers.
The integration lets selected elements within Cavalry projects become editable inside Canva, while keeping the underlying animation protected.
This arrangement could allow teams to make limited changes without repeatedly sending modification requests back to motion designers and animators across team workflows.
Affinity and Cavalry can also connect with AI assistants through ProSuite’s AI Connectors, allowing repetitive operations to be handled from natural-language instructions.
“We’re genuinely excited to be releasing such a huge swathe of new tools for professional designers, animators, photographers and other advanced users,” said Duncan Clark, CEO of Pro Design at Canva.
“We asked professionals what they actually needed to power their creative work…there’s a lot of noise right now about AI replacing human creatives, but we believe professional craft matters more than ever. We want the Canva ProSuite to be where that craft lives and thrives.”
Affinity’s new features, the Cavalry improvements and tighter connections across Canva’s products give the free software a significantly larger professional toolkit.
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Canva ProSuite connects Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish, and Leonardo into one ecosystem Affinity and Cavalry stay free as ProSuite gains over 100 additions Scene Decomposition uses AI to split flattened pictures into separate editable components Canva is giving Affinity a major set of upgrades as it tries to make its professional…
