Affinity vs Adobe

Recently purchased an entry level MacBook Pro, 1.4ghz processor, 8gb memory

As no longer work in the graphic design industry due to age and disillusionment but had meet my hand in with ad hoc freelancing. I decided not to splash out on a better spec MacBook Pro as I couldn’t see the sense in paying £50 per month for the Adobe Suite.
I’m now aware of Affinity which seems to be a cheaper option so am thinking their photo editing and vector software could be a way to keep my hand in.
What do people think about Affinity, transitioning from Adobe, cost and performance on my MacBook? I always felt that Photoshop was a behemoth of a program and usually only used the photo editing and compositing functionality.
Thanks in advance.

I’ve been using both the Adobe and Affinity apps.

The Affinity applications are great and show lots of promise. However, they don’t have some of the lesser-used and more recents features of the Adobe apps, but the critical features are there and they’re well-implemented.

Fans of those Adobe features, will be disappointed in the Affinity products. People like me, who concentrate on the core functions of Adobe’s products, will likely find the Affinity apps to be totally adequate.

The problem that’s kept me from severing the cord with Adobe (and their hated subscription fees) is that these Adobe applications are the industry standard. Moving exclusively to Affinity would push me out of the mainstream and result in constantly needing to deal with compatibility problems of various sorts. Until Adobe starts losing significant chunks of the market share (which I wish would happen), I don’t see this problem going away, so I’ll keep letting them dip into my bank account.

For someone like you who just needs a good, fully capable photo editor and vector drawing app, the Affinity offerings just might be all you need. There’s a bit of a learning curve given that they’re not duplicates of the Adobe equivalents, but once you get used to them, they’re really pretty good.

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Thanks for the reply.
I’ll be looking further into Affinity apps as working with the Industry standard is no longer a caveat for me so it sounds very promising :grinning:

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there a lot of free design programs, some good, some okay. Nothing compares to Adobe CS mainly because the program rarely crashes.

If you can find an older or used copy of CS4 that will still run great in your MacBook Pro.
I am learning how to draw via a tablet right now using the CS4 illustrator on the 2010 Macbook air instead of Krita on the 2019 dell xps because Adobe is just better.

Anything under CS6 (old disks) will require a Java patch for OSX up to Mojave. Once you get to Catalina, the older CS programs will no longer run. Most of them are 32 bit, if that. Catalina requires 64 bit.

Between Adobe and Apple it seems to be a rush over who can decommission software faster.
Given the trouble I’m having with both at the moment, as a printer trying to get work done, maybe Affinity isn’t such a bad idea after all. I may have a talk with some of my cohorts in crime out there and see what they think on the subject. The key is to get something else up to speed. To some extent, that has to come from the vendor side as well as designer willingness to use something not quite up to par.
Bear in mind though, Adobe is massive. Their strategy has always been to buy up threats and shelve them. Macromedia is a case in point. I’m kinda surprised they haven’t gone after Quark, but that might be the threshold where the Feds step in to prevent a total monopoly. Adobe can keep pointing to Quark as “competition” and they can’t tell the difference.

(I can expect the Adobe gremlins to step up their crash-and-burn tactics of late after that comment, LOL. Sigh.)

iI agree with you, I am learning that adobe illustrator paint brushes have their own paint brushes, and the painting experience is massive, compared to an iPad app.
From an Artist point of view having time and effort put into a design to have a program suddenly quit is exhausting as well as non-productive.
These CS4 dvds from 200? still work and with the proper java script and a great investment.

For the photographers, as far as photo-editing, i use Nikon View NV2 to enhance, crop and convert photos. the software is free, available on all platforms and does everything PS can do.

I agree that few groundbreakingly useful improvements have been added the core Adobe applications since CS, but CS is locked in a time capsule that sealed off with Mac users with the release of Catalina. I hung onto the CS suite for as long as I could before moving to CC, but it eventually got to the point where various issues made doing so more trouble than it was worth.

My own personal opinion is that it’s important to stay current and not let changes get too far ahead of me — even when I’m less than excited about those changes. Lagging behind makes the inevitable catching up even more painful. Unless someone is content to freeze their computer hardware/software upgrades and limit any new software to that compatible with old equipment and operating systems, I just don’t see decade-old CS software as being a viable option for me. I suppose it depends on one’s situation.

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I was referring to the original posters quest for info on Adobe or Afinity
since i never used Afinity, i remarked on how someone in 2020 is using past software to create on a system similar to theirs.

thanks for the reply tho, im sticking with CS4 because i can’t use CS3 anymore. after spending 2 years composing on an IPad i felt i lost some passion for designing on a laptop and need to redraw as I used to.

recently there has been debates over “old” which seems to me if one can create printable and web-ready graphic, the old is still new today.