As was predictable, Adobe’s intent to move to a rental-only system translated into a strong demand for an alternative that would offer permanent licensing and comparable features. This gave a boost to potential competitors, Serif saw the opportunity and has been investing heavily in the development of Affinity Photo and Designer (alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator). Their focus on quality has been paying off and due to being swamped with requests for porting the software to Windows, the company has now announced that both applications will be available for that OS later this year. According to a recent blog post, porting of the applications is advancing fast. A public beta of Affinity Designer is expected to be available in the coming months.
It will be interesting to see Adobe’s reaction as it tries to compete in this new landscape. Also, it will be interesting to see if other companies that have taken the rental-only road against the will of many of their customers can read the signs in time. The most positive result, however, is that more artists will continue to be able to own the tools they use to work.
Affinity Photo and Designer are priced at £39.99 (US$63) each. More information on Affinity’s blog.
That is really great news. And their pricing makes those tools really affordable. I am curious to see if many designers are about to switch from Adobe.
fantastic news..the mac version looks amazing so great to get this on windows
I just can say: AWESOME 😀
We will be acquiring them for sure 🙂
Simply put – SOLD.
Can’t wait for this!
Hope this is the time I can say “Goodbye Adobe!”
I was one of those who were really pissed when Adobe moved to the rental only model but I can only say that their pricing is not that greedy as we all assumed it would be. Adobe, unlike AutoDESK, is really oriented towards improving their software. I am subscribed to the full CC Cloud and for the same money I pay AutoDES Kfopr 3ds max I get the whole Adobe product line. I do not use most of it but still it pays for itself.
i will however consider moving to affinity should it prove itself.
NIR: “Adobe, unlike AutoDESK, is really oriented towards improving their software.”
Really? When i upgraded adobe CS few times I did it always because it had something what I really needed, new useful features, and most important: it work, no need for wait updates – I upgrade when I needed something new and that was the way to show adobe that they are offering something to me, this keep them upgraded and creating useful features what was really requested by users. But now with CC – I have see nothing impressive, they get money even if they won’t do any single update for years (unless people will realize that they are paying from nothing), but because Adobe is industry standard and they know it – We really need to have CC and pay for it – it is like a hostage, pay or lost your tools and customers/job offers because CC is industry standard.
I’m going to definitely test Affinity products line, hope it will replace all Adobe software and I wish that all big companies will also adopt it for their production / workflow.
Adobe is slow antique software with that old core architecture (I guess because of the speed, even the GPU acceleration was poor, it’s like some kind of bubblegum hack) – Affinity is new and that’s why the core design should be new and take care from all new features what these day hardware can offer. I hope they won’t make same mistake than other software developers and forget update their core code frequently/regularly.
Take my money. I hope AP will be faster, more modern and more user friendly than PS.
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes!!!!
@NIR are you not aware that your moving to the creative cloud has been an incentive to other greedy companies to bully their customers and do the same? How can you complain about ADESK afterwards? We all have a personal responsibility here. You say Adobe’s price is not that greedy, you accept their conditions. You never know what they’ll do next.
@Uli
Adobe has to do a lot of price increases to even come close to rent a single product from Autodesk. Heck if Autodesk would go the Adobe route and say 50$ a month for our whole catalogue that wouldn’t be a bad deal.
I personal don’t see rental systems as fundamentally bad (if they’re one of the available options).
At the moment Adobe’s pricepoint is pretty fair. The barrier of entry to use their software is way lower than before (legal route) and is in my opinion actually great for multitasker or smaller companies. Their available software covers alot of ground and you can easily software hop depending on upcoming jobs.
I am not ignoring that you’re paying more in the long run but in terms of what we sadly have to deal with right now it could be worse.
Nonetheless I am super excited to check out the affinity programs especially affinity designer, it seems like a solid purchase for me once its available!