I left Adobe for Affinity

Going out on my own means I have a little more flexibility to choose what programs I use – so I took the opportunity to test out Affinity against my 15+ years of using Adobe. For context – I used to be fully embedded in the Adobe suite as graphic designer, but today I use Figma for the majority of my work, with light use of Illustrator for logos, Photoshop for editing, and InDesign from time-to-time.

Overall Affinity has been great. I found some snags, not really with Affinity, but with how reliant I was on Adobe (without even knowing it). Mostly, it opened my eyes to some of Adobe’s slippery business practices and made me want ‘out’ even more.

A little tangent on Adobe’s business practices

I’ve been in the industry long enough to see turnover on tools and programs. Archiving work started for me on discs, then drives, then physical servers and now cloud servers. The intention was to be able to return to this work later – but the real longevity of the work depends more on the file types than the archiving.

XD for example, Adobe’s UI program, lasted just 7 years before Adobe pulled the plug with a gently phrased ‘Maintenance mode’. UI professionals everywhere invested time in learning the program, and created real work with it. Today, you’re hard-pressed to get your hands on a copy of XD, and .xd files have to be converted using third-party plugins that don’t always work.

Microsoft, as contrast, has open specifications on file types and mandates backward compatibility. While not completely future-proof, they do take the longevity of files seriously.

Another huge shift for Adobe is that everything is now subscription-based, making one-time purchases obsolete. Along with this comes a whole other level of reliance. Possibly the worst being Adobe Fonts, which can infect any number of projects and ongoing work. Some Adobe Fonts are only available under subscription (and you can bet you aren’t warned about that while using them).

These subscriptions are also offered at a lower cost to students – getting you hooked early on the proprietary file formats and then bleeding you with ~$1,000+ yearly costs. Adobe also got hit with a $150M FTC settlement in March 2026 over hidden early-termination fees on annual plans.

Some practical tips and findings if you’re looking at switching

If you have a stash of .indd files only, start saving .idml today

If you use InDesign on a regular basis, you’re going to be hard-pressed to replace Adobe with Affinity. Unless you were religious about saving .idml files in your packages, you won’t be able to open historic files. I also didn’t do a deep dive into Affinity as it lines up with InDesign capabilities, so do that first.

Photoshop to Affinity Pixel surprised me (in a good way)

I was worried about old layered .psd files being a mess as soon as I brought them into Affinity – don’t be. I tested out PSD layers and PSD mockup files for templates and had no issues using them similarly to Adobe Photoshop. The shortcuts are different, there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s all there. 

You may need to relearn some production basics

Export options were a lot to figure out again. In my old programs I had my settings and knew what worked, but had to relearn what they meant to create them in Affinity. Shortcuts are all a little different, tools are slightly off, it’s all there but it takes a bit of work to find again. You have to force yourself to google a fair amount to start.

I also miss the colour conversion process in Adobe Illustrator because it was what I was used to – I’d tested the conversions and Pantone libraries and knew what worked. Having seen wild differences between RGB and CMYK conversion tools in the past, it will take time to establish a workflow I trust in Affinity.

Adobe has a pretty big monopoly with Acrobat

Interactive form creation, filling, and signing without a subscription is more complicated than I realized. While not irreplaceable, I’m fumbling through a workflow and trying to find a solution that’s manageable. If this is a big part of what you do, spend some time looking into alternative options.

Adobe Fonts will come back to haunt you

If you run into a client that uses an Adobe font, you have limited options – purchase it separately, or give in and get a subscription. Some fonts (Adobe Originals) are only available with a subscription. Pro tip: Adobe Fonts are included as part of some lower cost software like Adobe InCopy (cost at time of writing was $6.99 cad/month).

How to make the switch from Affinity to Adobe

I took an abrupt approach to switching to Affinity, and it worked fine but it was a little bumpy. I would recommend taking a transition approach if you’re still intertwined in the Adobe Suite.

• Keep track of which Adobe Fonts you use
• Make a habit of using more inclusive file formats
• Audit what you rely on Adobe for
• Start learning Affinity while you still have your Adobe subscription so you can use it in a pinch for any compatibility issues

Nothing is future proof, but at least you can avoid some headaches by thinking about programs from a longer-term perspective, and being selective in how you use them.