Canva ProSuite Brings Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish and Leonardo Together

Canva has introduced the Canva ProSuite, bringing Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish and Leonardo into a more connected creative ecosystem. The announcement is broader than a normal feature update: Canva is trying to reduce the handoff friction between design, motion, data visualization, generative workflows and team-scale production.

For creative professionals, the useful question is not whether one suite can replace every tool. It is whether the new connections actually remove repetitive export, rebuild and adaptation work while preserving enough control for professional production.

What Canva announced

The ProSuite groups four specialist tools around Canva: Affinity for design and image work, Cavalry for motion design, Flourish for data visualization, and Leonardo for generative visual workflows. Canva says the goal is an end-to-end path from creating an asset to adapting, scaling and sharing it across a wider team.

The announcement also includes substantial product updates. Affinity receives new design, photography and automation features, while Cavalry gets more than 50 upgrades and tighter connections with Canva.

Affinity gets deeper professional features

Affinity's update includes a new Blend Tool, a streamlined Mask Tool, 3D model support and a larger photography workflow. Canva also describes improvements to RAW development, batch imports, reusable looks and image-correction tools.

Automation and scripting become more important

One of the most practical additions is scripting. Affinity can now automate repetitive work across vector, pixel and layout content in the same document. Canva is also introducing an AI connector for natural-language automation of tasks such as batch editing and print preparation.

That matters because professional creative work is often slowed down by repeated production tasks rather than the core design decision itself. Scripting gives teams a way to standardize those repeated steps without turning the entire process into a one-click black box.

Interoperability is a major part of the update

Canva says Affinity now supports native INDD import, tighter Canva Brand Kit and Sheets connections, and direct opening of native Affinity files in Cavalry with layers intact. The company also points to support alongside Capture One and DaVinci Resolve as part of a wider professional workflow.

For teams that regularly move work between applications, this may be more important than any single headline feature. Every manual export, flattening step or recreation of a design introduces time and the possibility of mistakes.

Cavalry is moving closer to Canva

Cavalry is also getting a large update, including changes to its Graph Editor, richer SVG import, new shape and filter options, and Canva Sheets import. Canva says a future handoff will let motion designers choose specific parts of a Cavalry animation, such as text or color, that teammates can edit directly inside Canva while the rest of the scene remains locked.

That is a useful model for production teams: the motion designer keeps control of the animation system while marketing or content teams can make safe variations without reopening the full motion project for every change.

Canva is positioning AI as workflow automation, not only generation

The ProSuite announcement puts a lot of emphasis on using AI for repetitive production work: batch operations, layer renaming, custom scripts, animation assistance and other tasks that are easy to describe but tedious to repeat.

In Affinity, Canva says AI-assisted features include Scene Decomposition, Mixed Light Correction, Motion Blur Reduction, Image to 3D, Generative Upscale and SDR-to-HDR. Canva also states that work in Affinity is not used to train these features and that Affinity files remain stored locally on the user's device.

What stays free and what does not

According to Canva, the core Affinity and Cavalry platforms remain free to use. Some AI functionality is separated from that model: Canva AI Studio features in Affinity require a Canva premium plan.

That distinction is worth watching. A free professional tool can lower the barrier to entry, but teams should still evaluate which parts of their real workflow depend on paid AI, cloud services or integrations before deciding how inexpensive a complete production setup actually is.

Why this matters beyond Canva

The creative software market is increasingly moving away from isolated applications toward connected workflow systems. The winning feature is often not a new brush, effect or model by itself. It is whether the result can move cleanly into the next stage of production.

For independent creators, that can mean fewer format conversions and fewer subscriptions to overlapping tools. For teams, it can mean more controlled handoffs between specialists and non-specialists. For tool makers, it raises the bar: integrations, automation and reliable interchange are becoming part of the product experience rather than optional extras.

What creative teams should evaluate before changing workflows

A new suite is only useful if it improves the work you actually do. Test whether your existing files import cleanly, whether fonts and color management survive the handoff, whether motion projects remain editable, whether automation saves meaningful time, and whether collaboration still works when a teammate does not use the same specialist application.

It is also worth testing the failure cases. A workflow that looks smooth in a demo may behave very differently with a large production file, a complicated brand system or a project that has to move between several companies.

The direction is more interesting than the brand battle

It is easy to frame every creative software release as one company trying to replace another. That is usually less useful than looking at the workflow itself. The ProSuite is interesting because it shows a broader direction: specialized creative tools are being connected into systems where assets, automation and handoffs matter as much as individual features.

For creative professionals, that is the part worth watching. Better competition is useful when it gives creators more control over how they build their own stack instead of forcing every job into one application.

Sources and further reading

Read Canva's official ProSuite announcement

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What is the Canva ProSuite?

The Canva ProSuite is a connected professional creative ecosystem built around Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish and Leonardo, with increasing integration into Canva's wider Visual Suite.

Are Affinity and Cavalry still free?

Canva says the core Affinity and Cavalry platforms remain free to use. Some AI features, including Canva AI Studio functionality in Affinity, require a Canva premium plan.

Can Affinity files move directly into Cavalry?

Canva says native Affinity files can now open directly in Cavalry with their layers intact, reducing the need for manual export between the two applications.

Why does the ProSuite matter for professional workflows?

Its main potential advantage is reducing handoff friction between design, motion, data, generative and team-production stages. The practical value depends on how reliably those integrations work with real production files.