TL;DR Adobe is going through a rough patch. Affinity, competitor to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, offers a six month trial to their products. No credit card required!
It’s a rough time for Adobe and the customers are very interested in jumping ships. Not going to get into the AI Fiasco and how the abusive customer model they’ve been holding for a very long time is catching up to them, but this is a bit funny. Affinity saw the opportunity to strike and they got it.
I might review and compare in detail a couple of Adobe alternatives in the future like Illustrator vs Corel Draw vs Designer but so far doing vector logos in Designer has been a breeze. I saw they were offering a 50% discount for a software license (not a subscription) so I took it.
The Coup de Grâce #
I had a big chuckle when this morning while I was checking my email and saw this funny piece of text. “We’ve never done this before… 👀”…
Alan, with all the discourse in the creative community at the minute, we’ve had quite a few mentions on social media and in the press naming Affinity as one of the best alternatives for those looking to switch up their photo editing and design software – which has of course been absolutely amazing to see.
But as you may already know, it can take time to adapt working methods to a new software, and potential customers have said they’d value an extended trial period to get used to the differences and really take the time to see what Affinity can do.
That’s why we’ve decided to do something unprecedented in the industry and extend our trial period to six months (yes, six whole months!) without any strings attached. There’s no subscription requirement, no obligation to buy at a later date, and triallers don’t even need to enter their card details to sign up.
As an Affinity user, we know a free trial doesn’t exactly apply to you – you already own the apps – but we hope you’re enjoying them enough to want to spread the word with any friends, family and colleagues who may be interested.
I don’t particularly have a vendetta against Adobe since I really grew up using Corel Draw, then moved on to use them during their CS6 era. Only grudges I hold is when Illustrator randomly crashes and how expensive it is for anyone to use their software.
I’m no designer or creative but it’s definitely handy to have these tools under my belt and I’ll keep using it from now on. My only gripe with it so far is the lack of a quick trace feature (or could it be just hard to find?), or they way Designer treats SVGs. It just adds a couple of extra steps.
Some of you might be feeling at home with this UI, and it’s notable to mention that (at least to a newbie user like me) some shortcuts translate from Illustrator to Affinity Designer.
I’ve only used Affinity Photo 2 to play around and enhance a couple of photos, shadows, highlights and those things. As well to render pictures in a more web friendly manner.
The Verdict #
There really is no downside to give this software a try, it’s a 6 months trial and it doesn’t even ask for a credit card. They even provide their own tutorials when you first launch the software. I thought that was a cool feature.
Needless to say this is not a sponsored post, for the 2 readers that might stumble upon this forsaken site. Just some guy enjoying this chaotic moment.