All empires eventually fall, and it seems the creative software industry has collectively decided that Adobe’s time has come. The Creative Cloud provider’s suite of design tools have been considered the industry standard for decades — despite unpopular decisions to fully embrace generative AI and abandon software licenses in favor of expensive, complicated subscriptions.
Pricing in particular has given competitors an opening to attack. Some of the best alternatives aren’t just undercutting Adobe’s price — they’re available for free. People love free.
One example that was announced this week is Autograph, motion design software akin to Adobe After Effects. Autograph was acquired by Cinema 4D maker Maxon last year, and has now been relaunched with free access for individual users. It initially cost $1,795 for a permanent license (or $59 per month on subscription) when it launched in 2023, which was a hard sell compared to the $34.49 per month standalone After Effects subscription that Adobe demanded, and continues to charge today. And while Autograph isn’t directly comparable, it provides a similar suite of animation and VFX tools and doesn’t charge a dime.
Perhaps coincidently, Canva also dropped its own bomb on Adobe’s After Effects this week. Canva has made the full version of Cavalry available for free instead of locking the motion graphics software behind its own user subscriptions, after the design platform acquired it back in February. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Canva did a similar thing last year with Affinity — a trio of apps it acquired that provide similar features to Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software. While Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2, and Affinity Publisher 2 were each a one-off $69.99 payment before (or $169.99 for all three), they’ve since been combined into a single, entirely free app.
Other Adobe apps also took a hit this week thanks to the latest DaVinci Resolve 21 update. The free multipurpose post-production software — which is already considered a rival to Premiere Pro — now includes photo editing features like color-correction, masking tools, and import support for Apple Photos and Lightroom Catalog files. The update also adds support for Affinity’s .af file format, making it easier to use another free app alongside DaVinci Resolve.
Even when the Adobe alternatives aren’t free, they’re becoming more attractively priced. Apple launched its Creator Studio suite in January, which includes access to a whole host of editing apps, including Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage. The $12.99 monthly Creator Studio fee is more affordable than Adobe’s $69.99 monthly Creative Cloud Pro subscription by comparison, and Apple isn’t forcing users into a subscription plan. You can still buy one-time licenses for individual apps on Apple’s App Store. Take that Adobe.
When we covered that announcement, several themes appeared in our comment section. One was the collective shock at how low Apple’s pricing was compared to Adobe’s despite being, well, Apple. The other was that all the Creator Suite needed was a suitable Lightroom alternative to seal the deal. Apple may yet find a way to make it happen, but DaVinci has filled that gap in the meantime.
When you pair these recent announcements with creative software that was already free, or at least subscription free, then you have an industry movement that should give Adobe something to worry about.
Procreate has made a name for itself for being staunchly anti-AI and releasing incredible digital illustration and animation software for iPads that you can buy once and keep forever. It’s also pledged to bring them to Mac desktop devices. Blender, the free open-source 3D computer graphics software suite, is continually gaining new features, and has proved capable enough to be used in Oscar-winning feature film releases. And Figma was so good that Adobe killed its own XD product design tool in favor of trying (and famously failing) to acquire the platform, which offers a free-to-use Figma tier.
Freedom from Adobe’s app ecosystem is actually starting to look plausible. And making that freedom increasingly free is the icing on the cake.
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