Use Affinity Publisher, Photo, and Designer instead. Looks like it’s USD $165 for a universal license at the moment. Very few of the more exclusive features Adobe provides are worth the cost of doing business with them. The only thing I missed at first is Photoshop’s timeline, but apps like Krita or Aseprite (if pixel art is your jam) have that covered.
Edit to add: one great feature of Affinity is that, if you have Publisher and at least one of the other apps, Publisher will unify the workflows of the others into the same screen. In other words, you can switch between Publisher, Designer, and Photo without minimizing or opening the other apps individually.
Art and design, regardless of medium, need not be gatekept by corporate goons to stuff greedy pockets.
I’d add that they often have steep sales, and Black Friday is coming, but also while affinity is an underdog their formats are just as closed source if not more so than Adobe
Until GIMP gets nondestructive adjustment layers, Krita is the closest. And it’s definitely not good enough. But Inkscape is very good. Blender is very good, even it’s broken VSE editor. Though Resolve is amazing and the pro version is ridiculously cheap at $300.
Yeah there’s no easy win, Affinity is the closest competitor but it’s worth keeping in mind that they’re not the anti-adobe, they’re not fighting for accessible open software, especially not since they’ve sold out to Canva.
I am still happy with my purchase and I think it’s a good deal tho esp on a sale, just worth the consideration.
To anyone promoting Affinity, they’ve sold out to Canva, a Venture Capital fueled mega corp looking for a public offering. Enchittification is inevitable.
Please look for FOSS alternatives instead.
