I started with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I pretty much taught myself everything I know by clicking around, experimenting, and playing with tools that I didn’t have a clue what they were.
Adobe eventually switched to a subscription model. Despite the higher cost without much real innovation, I followed. I started to think this was just it. There wouldn’t ever be anything better than Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign.
But they kept getting worse. Programs didn’t work together as well as they should. They didn’t even share the same keyboard shortcuts. How is that acceptable in professional-grade software at a premium price?
Adobe had no real competition, and it showed. They’d gotten comfortable. There was nowhere else to go, so you were served shit and you had to take it.
Then I came across a company called Serif and its Affinity apps.
Each program is a one-time $50 purchase with lifetime updates. That is not a typo. $50 for life versus $240 for one year of Adobe.
Adobe also only lets me install its software on two computers. Add a third and I’d have to pay double. With Affinity, I could buy the entire suite for all three of my computers for $450.
- Adobe Creative Cloud for ten years: $12,000
- Affinity for ten years: $450
- Again, not a typo.
And the crazy part is I’m not just settling for cheaper software. I actually think Affinity is better. The workflow is smoother, the apps feel like they actually belong together, and they all share the same file format. I can move my work between them in a way Adobe somehow still hasn’t figured out with software that costs thousands of dollars more.
Customer support is better too. If you need help from Adobe, good luck. They don’t care. They don’t want to talk to you. Affinity, meanwhile, will actually let you talk to a real person who wants to help instead of giving you Adobe’s usual “I’ll pass this along to my team.”
So that’s it. I’m leaving Adobe. For the first time ever, I won’t have a single Adobe program installed on any of my computers.
Affinity is better than Adobe.
not sponsored; just love.