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Is Adobe Finished?
Recently I wrote a piece titled Affinity, The Photoshop Alternative, Is Free Now where I said:
Well, one thing’s for sure. You don’t need Photoshop anymore. There have been a lot of people saying how Adobe will be hurt a lot by this move. And yeah, they’re probably screwed. But it’s great for the rest of us. It means there will — finally — be a lot more competition in the image editing space.
In that post I discussed how Affinity was free, how Photopea was free, and how I suspected Apple may make Pixelmator free soon. Although since writing that Apple has introduced their Creator Studio which is a paid plan that bundles in Pixelmator so I think it’s unlikely. Still, why would anyone buy Photoshop when there are so many alternatives? Oh, sorry, pay monthly to use Photoshop.
But Adobe is not just Photoshop. They also make a lot of other apps. They make Illustrator, their vector art tool. Although Affinity makes a vector art tool that is now also free. Plus there’s Inkscape which I use. Inkscape has gotten really good since its 1.0.0 release. It’s still a bit janky but way better now.
There’s InDesign, but Affinity also has their publishing tool (also free). There’s Adobe XD but there’s Figma. Adobe actually tried to acquire Figma but after they failed to do so they announced they would not be investing further in XD.
