Why I Left Adobe and Found My Creative Home in Affinity

For a long time, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign from Adobe were simply part of my creative life. I grew up in an era when you bought the software once and it was yours, no timers, no monthly reminders, no creeping feeling that creativity was being rented by the hour. When Adobe shifted to Creative Cloud, I understood the logic. It is a powerful, beautifully built ecosystem that keeps evolving. But understanding it does not make the price any easier to accept. If you are running a business, the subscription can be justified and written off. If you are creating out of passion rather than profit, that recurring cost starts to feel like a weight rather than a tool.

At some point, practicality wins and you start searching for other options. I went down that rabbit hole, testing just about every alternative I could find. Some were promising, others frustrating, and many demanded more patience than I had to give. I spent a good amount of time with Inkscape, GIMP, and Scribus. They were free, capable, and in theory covered most of what I needed. But day to day, the experience felt fractured. Each program lived in its own world, and moving between them never felt seamless. I could make it work, but it never felt natural, and over time, that friction chipped away at the joy of creating.

Finding Affinity felt different. It was one of those rare moments where something just clicks. For the first time since stepping away from Adobe, I felt like I was not compromising. Affinity did not feel like an alternative or a workaround; it felt like a real home for creative work. By 2026, the Affinity Suite had grown into a single, unified application simply called Affinity, bringing Designer, Photo, and Publisher together under one roof. Built by Serif, now part of Canva, the platform is available for free on Windows and macOS, with an iPad version as well. That alone still feels a little unreal.

What really hit me, though, was the sense of coming full circle. My earliest digital artwork was done in DrawPlus, a Serif product I turned to because Adobe and CorelDRAW were out of reach at the time. Serif has been quietly building creative tools since 1987, and in 2024, the company was acquired by Canva for roughly US$380 million. Seeing Affinity offered freely now feels like a quiet thank you to people who have been creating for the love of it all along. There is an optional subscription for the AI-powered component of the suite, but even with that, the cost feels fair compared to the alternatives.

We have paid too much for too little. — Ash Hewson

Affinity covers everything I need. Designers handle vector work like logos, illustrations, icons, and web layouts. Photo is a powerful image editor with non-destructive workflows, RAW processing, and serious depth, easily standing shoulder to shoulder with Photoshop. Publisher brings it all together for books, magazines, and complex layouts, allowing assets to move fluidly between tools. I love the speed, clean interface, and professional feature set, while noting a few missing advanced AI tools and the occasional hiccup with very complex publishing tasks. For me, those trade-offs barely register.

Most importantly, Affinity feels intuitive. If you come from Adobe, the transition is smooth rather than jarring. The tools make sense, the workflow flows smoothly, and the software stays out of the way, rather than demanding attention. I did not expect to feel this way about a creative suite again, but I genuinely love working in it. It feels like I have returned to where I started, only now with better tools, fewer barriers, and a renewed sense of freedom. After all these years, it feels like I am finally back home.

If you are searching for a truly professional alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud that does not cost a dime, the Affinity Suite stands out as the clear and confident choice. It delivers powerful, polished creative tools without subscriptions, compromises, or hidden catches, making it the best free option available for serious designers and creators.