TL;DR:
Semple, a multi-disciplinary British artist, promised to build “a brand new suite of world-class design and photography tools, with an uncanny similarity to the tools you’ve been indoctrinated in.”
“There’s a really urgent need for a suite of creative tools for creators that they actually own rather than rent. In a way, this first started when Adobe and Pantone decided to paywall the Pantone colors and I created Freetone — which was a free color plugin so creators could continue to access their palette,” he says.
“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,”
“I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”
Affinity is available today. The products are great, the pricing is reasonable, and it is not subscription based.
I’ve used Affinity for many years, I really like it, and for the low one-time price, it’s been a spectacular value. That said, it can no longer even compare to Photoshop given their incredible AI capabilities and some of their other integrated features. In my case, I’ll stick with Affinity because I’m more of a hobbyist, but if I was a graphics professional, I’d most certainly have to use Photoshop.
High-end professionals avoid Adobe like the plague. Photoshop still doesn’t have decent EXR support or 32-bit support.
It’s great for 5-person design studios, maybe.
Didn’t know that. What do the high end pros use?
High end pro’s use any tool that is better suited for a job, including Photoshop.
Affinity is just great and reasonably compatible with Adobe files. It’s been my way out of the Adobe hegemony, after trying for Corel or Opensource tools for years. Without the creative cloud client crashing life has been so much more enjoyable !