A day to celebrate, thanks to Serif and its permanent licensing policy, artists using Windows have once again the choice to purchase and own one of the main tools they use in their daily work: a quality image editor with professional features. After going through open beta testing, the Windows version of Serif’s photo editing software has now been officially released. Affinity Photo is being offered through permanent licensing and is currently available with a 25% launch discount at an introductory price of $39.99 / £29.99 / 39.99€ until December 22. As an extra bonus a pack of macros is offered for free to all users who purchase during the promo period. More information on Affinity’s website.
It should be noted that the great demand for Affinity Photo and Designer, as could be seen in comments posted on Serif’s blog, the activity on its beta forums and comments on its Facebook page, has been largely driven by Adobe’s move to a rental-only licensing system, a move that left many of its Photoshop users dissatisfied. The result was predictable: Serif took the chance, but it could have been any other company, as the demand for it was too strong. It remains to be seen how Adobe will react to compete with the new contestant.
One thing can be safely said, the demand for permanent licenses is strong. Those who ignore it will highly likely create or boost competing software.
