Why Affinity Studio’s free-for-everyone photo editor probably won’t tempt me away from Adobe (yet…)

It’s been a huge few days for video and photo editing software, what with the annual Adobe Max having been brought to a close last week and then the bombshell announcement that, under new owners, Canva, Affinity Photo has been reborn as the free-for-everyone Affinity Studio. 

I’ve always been a fan of Affinity Photo 2. I still think it’s the best like-for-like alternative to the juggernaut that is Adobe Photoshop, but it was definitely time for an update.

With Affinity Studio situating all of the brand’s design programs under one roof, not to mention the promise of a fully customizable interface, and no payment plan, sort of (I’ll get to that in a minute), I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of dropping Creative Cloud altogether and launching myself at Canva with open arms. But that thought didn’t last long, because my Creative Cloud account isn’t going anywhere for the time being, and the reasons are twofold.

Firstly, I’ve been using Adobe software for the past 15 years, and during that time, I’ve gotten extremely used to it. And while I moan about price increases, pricing structures, and bits and bobs that never seem to get fixed, I’ve got a soft spot for Adobe. I feel at home using Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, and if I’m entirely honest, I love the heritage. It might seem odd to talk about a modern software company’s heritage, while it might not be Rolex or Jaguar, it is the editing-software OG, and 1990 was millennia ago in the tech industry.

The second reason why I’m in no hurry to move on from Adobe is that it’s still the industry standard. And that means it’s unrivalled as a platform for plug-ins. If you buy into Photoshop or Lightroom, you’ve got the ability to access a plethora of plug-ins from the likes of DxO, Skylum, and more, whereby Adobe software acts like a hub for more specialist types of photo-editing software. And as the industry standard, you're more likely to come across Adobe users if you collaborate, too.

All that said, the next few years will be a testing time for Adobe. It’s enjoyed several decades, largely unrivalled, at the top of the image-editing food chain, but the rise of generative AI has presented the industry giant with its biggest challenge, arguably since its inception. It’s no longer vying for supremacy against other image-editing software, but Big AI, too. And as we know all too well, the AI industry moves fast, very fast. I’ve no doubt that the image-editing landscape will look very different in just a couple of years’ time. Heck, it’s already changing. Affinity Studio is a case in point.

It seems like it was just yesterday that Canva acquired Affinity, and now, all of a sudden, with the might of a multi-billion-dollar company behind it and an unusual free-for-all model, Affinity has emerged as one of Adobe’s biggest competitors. What a difference a day makes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Affinity’s free model, though, and while I think it’s great, I do see a way that Canva can introduce payment plans while saving face. You see, to access Canva’s AI models within Affinity Studio, you need a premium Canva account. With that in mind, I can only presume there’s nothing to stop the design-software company from adding more features by way of Canva that require a premium subscription to be accessed within Affinity Studio. Technically, Affinity would still remain completely free...

I digress. My point is, as things stand, there’s more than enough room in the industry for Adobe Creative Cloud and Affinity Studio. I dare say I’ll be using both. But in the words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changing, and it seems to me as if Affinity Studio is just the beginning.

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