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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Nov 2025
Posts: 174
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OP
Apprentice
Joined: Nov 2025
Posts: 174 |
Canva's "Affinity," folks. Affinity was a line of three products, Photo, Designer, and Publisher, and as a graphic designer, I found those to work every bit as well as the Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator...). Canva has put Photo, Designer, and Publisher into one package and it is entirely FREE. For making your album and single covers, it works beautifully and is the best going. Look up Canva. For images, Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons are good places to look. John
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,566
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,566 |
I go back to Serif Page Plus in 1990. Terrific low-cost Photoshop. That became Affinity Publisher, and other graphic programs, then most recently the Affinity serious by Canva. The fact this is now free is incredible.
Highly recommended.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Mar 2025
Posts: 1,166
Expert
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Expert
Joined: Mar 2025
Posts: 1,166 |
Hi John!
Canva - an Australian success story! I use it for making my Soundcloud and YouTube thumbnails. Easy to use.
Andrew
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Jul 2000
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Joined: Jul 2000
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I didn’t know about Australia. Serif is in England.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Nov 2025
Posts: 174
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OP
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Joined: Nov 2025
Posts: 174 |
I'm hoping Canva's Affinity gives Adobe a great big headache!
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Jul 2022
Posts: 3,037
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Joined: Jul 2022
Posts: 3,037 |
Canva's "Affinity," folks. Affinity was a line of three products, Photo, Designer, and Publisher, and as a graphic designer, I found those to work every bit as well as the Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator...). Canva has put Photo, Designer, and Publisher into one package and it is entirely FREE. For making your album and single covers, it works beautifully and is the best going. Look up Canva. For images, Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons are good places to look. John Looks interesting. Do you know if the AI-tools need an internet connection?
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,566
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,566 |
Looks interesting. Do you know if the AI-tools need an internet connection?[/quote] I don’t. I am connected to the Internet all the time and did not notice because I have Gigabit Internet.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Feb 2023
Posts: 101
Apprentice
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Apprentice
Joined: Feb 2023
Posts: 101 |
I'm a paranoid IT Manager . . . I'll stick with my single purchase / no subscription Photoshop 7 which *still* works fine on my new Win 11 machine. Been using it for everything I need for over 20 years now I guess.
And any number of other issues including requiring me to be online. My DAW is NEVER online for a number of reasons but primarily because I'm a paranoid IT nerd who sees damage from "free" stuff all the time. My company uses cloud based subscription software and I can't tell you how often any glitch in the internet somewhere has shut us down hard. Sometimes for multiple days.
Why would affinity provide you a software for free?
If something is "free" you pay with your data. And in other ways. Most people would be shocked at what's actually going on under the hood.
Don't ever try and be like anybody else and don't be afraid to take risks. -Waylon Jennings
PC-Win 10 Pro-Intel i9 9900 3.6 GHz-32 gig ram-SSD (X3)-AMD RX 550
AUDIO INTERFACE-Presonus FP10/Firepods
SOFTWARE-Sonar X3 / BiaB 2026 UltraPAK
~Russell~
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 21,093
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 21,093 |
...
Why would affinity provide you a software for free?
If something is "free" you pay with your data. And in other ways. Most people would be shocked at what's actually going on under the hood. Often if a product is free, then you are the product...
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Nov 2025
Posts: 174
Apprentice
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OP
Apprentice
Joined: Nov 2025
Posts: 174 |
I'm a geek as well having built my own computers and worked with the three big operating systems. If Photoshop 7 still works well for you, there's no need to fix it with any newer software. There are a lot of freebies that I wouldn't touch. If a free software is very reputable I'll give it a go and I haven't had trouble with those, particularly open source. A lot of online softwares and services do grab your identity and sell it. I consider Facebook to be a great offender and I got rid of my profile though I suspect that it's still there for always. I will not get on Instagram or Linked In. Suno is a problem for songwriters in that it will take your work and put it in its database for anyone else to use. If you don't mind copyright infringement of your work, well okay. But back to Canva...Serif has been very reputable and they sold to Canva. I still use my Serif software since I paid for it. Canva is based in Australia so they may not have the greed and security holes like Swiss cheese that America has. Naturally, they'll want to include you on more lists and sell more. No matter how careful you are, you'll still wind up on the dark web one way or another. I will lay odds that you're probably all the wiser, Sawmill, than many of us, as you've been in the business of IT.
Cheers! John
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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XPro & Xtra Styles PAK Sets On Sale Now - Until May 15, 2026!
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Mac Videos
With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
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Check out this forum post for "One Stop Shopping" of our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 Mac Videos!
Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Mac is Here!
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac is here and it is packed with major new features! There’s a new modern look, a GUI redesign to all areas of the program including toolbars, windows, workflow and more. There’s a Multi-view layout for organizing multiple windows. A standout addition is the powerful AI-Notes feature, which uses AI neural-net technology to transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI—entire mixes or individual instruments—making it easy to study, view, and play parts from any song. And that’s just the beginning—there are over 100 new features in this exciting release.
Along with version 2026, we've released an incredible lineup of new content! There's 202 new RealTracks, brand-new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two new RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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Holiday Weekend Hours
As we hop into the Easter weekend, here are our holiday hours:
April 3 (Good Friday): 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM PDT
April 4 (Saturday): Closed
April 5 (Easter Sunday): Closed
April 6 (Easter Monday): Open regular hours
Wishing you an egg-cellent weekend!
— Team PG
Update to Build 10 of RealBand® 2026 for Windows®!
If you're already using RealBand 2026 for Windows, download build 10 to get all the latest additions and enhancements.
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac® users: Build 904 now available!
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