Can I have an Adobe-free life?
I’m old enough to remember what a revelation it was when Photoshop added layers. Old enough to struggle learning Illustrator 88 with no YouTube tutorials or even internet. While no expert, I consider myself very skilled in Adobe’s ecosystem especially the big three for me: Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
Today, however it’s time to choose. I was just laid off from my full-time design position I’ve held for 25 years. Needless to say my Creative Suite and lately Creative Cloud expenses were paid by my employer. That’s over. Just before I was dumped I started to learn After Effects via a Udemy course to add a new skill to my Bag of Tricks™.
Luckily a few years ago I bought the v1 Affinity suite of apps on sale; I think it was $75 for all three; to OWN. I really liked Designer a lot and began to do a lot of my illustration work with it. It actually felt like it had been built in this century as opposed to Illustrator. Photo was great too, but I had little opportunity to use Publisher. My pro work needed to be in InDesign to collaborate internally and I had little desire to do page layout at home.
Canva buying Affinity was worrisome, but when they launched Affinity v3 it was impressive and free. Naturally most of us never believed the free part, but Canva seemed to be aware of how their potential customer base feels screwed over by Adobe and their best sales pitch was constantly assuring creatives that they are not Adobe. I believe them, for now, but Canva; be aware! I’m keeping my eye on you!!
Deciding that I was going to make a go with Affinity, the announcement that Canva also aquired Cavalry, an After Effects competitor I’d never heard of, made me more confident I was making the right move. After a few hours trying out Cavalry it was clear that it was way ahead of After Effects in terms of useability. It felt modern just like Affinity had to me before. Even better, this time I didn’t need to unlearn any app habits like I had to with the Affinity suite. I had barely got into After Effects when I lost access to it. Cavalry also appears to play nicely with Blender which I’ve used for years and recently began learning to animate with it.
I’m going to make a go of being Adobe free as a freelancer I think. I plan to chronicle that adventure here as well. If success is in my future maybe this will convince others that they can do the same.
Let’s go make some stuff!