Affinity, Free

Chris Coyier Chris Coyier on

When people complain about Photoshop or other various Adobe products and the subscription model they require (The Onion had a good one), people tend to reply with two options:

  1. Use GIMP (free, open-source)
  2. Use Affinity (was ~$50, but a one-time cost)

But now, Affinity is free (and all the varieties combined into one app). You can thank the Canva acquisition for that. You might think that would hurt GIMP usage, but I suspect it won’t as GIMP runs on Linux (which neither Adobe or Affinity do) and it feels… Linuxy. I can’t imagine Adobe is happy about it. Canva says “there is absolutely no catch whatsoever”, and also that their mission is to “build one of the world’s most valuable companies” so, ya know, you make the call.

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