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:
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.
It’s true that Affinity going free will attract more users, but I think GIMP still has a strong foothold, especially in the Linux community. Its open-source nature and focus on the Linux ecosystem make it hard to replace, even with Affinity’s new pricing model.