OK look. This sales holiday is a good time to re-look at the landscape of illustration apps and A.I. Maybe you can help me — I’m not fully across what’s out there and avail in 2025. Let’s go:
😈Adobe Creative Suite
Constantly I am seeing people on socmed whining that Adobe upped their subscription price AGAIN, and replies along the lines of, “If ye beg the Duke of Adobe for leniencie he shall offer a small discounte!” It’s pa-the-tic.
A subscription model might make sense in some situations (and some of you are bound to Adobe by not being the purchaser of your software (you work in corporate, .edu, etc) but it’s kind of irresponsible to just take this treatment, and advise younger artists to take it, when there are alternatives.
On top of that, they’ve been pretty egregious in joining the “inevitable A.I.” camp and advertising their software as capable of inventing art for you. I’m not against graphics software that actually helps artists accomplish specific stuff (i.e., act as a tool) using ethically built “A.I.” features, but Adobe’s marketing droids pitch A.I. the way tech bros want it: as a replacement for illustrators and photographers. They can suck eggs.
🤢Affinity “By Canva”
For years, Affinity has been a good “clone-ish” alternative to Photoshop (haven’t used the other apps in the suite) and made it possible for me to ditch Adobe suite for good.
They’ve now been bought by Canva, the web design company, and Affinity has been released by them For Free***.
Proviso one, which they make clear, is that if you want their “A.I.” features, you need to pay for them. Which makes sense, since A.I. is so power-intensive, and presumably has to employ cloud-based tools Canva are providing, they could never offer them for nothing (unless, like the rest of the A.I. companies, they are funded by VCs and expect to make a loss for the next ten years while praying for a profitable use case).
Proviso two, which is not clear at all, is that they probably harvest your data for A.I. training as part of your agreement to use the service. I’ll probably stick to the old version of their software that I bought with actual money. However, I have installed the new free version on an older machine just to see how it goes.
🤨Clip Studio Pro and EX
Celsys, who sell Clip Studio, announced a while back that they were going to switch from a buy-your-software-and-own-it model to subscription. The outcry was such that they have made regular yearly buy-and-own versions available, while enticing people to switch to a subscription in order to get the latest upgrades and features as they’re rolled out.
I wasn’t impressed with this (especially as Celsys make buying/upgrading fairly confusing, and it’s now moreso) but I’m glad they backed off subscription only, as well as A.I. integration (there are “A.I. tools” integrated into Clip Studio, but these were being advertised as part of the software back in 2017, and, unlike Adobe’s, are designed to, y’know, actually make an artist’s job a bit easier, rather than replace one).
For Black Friday 2025 you can get 60% discount on Clip Studio Pro (the basic version) and 30% on EX (the version with dedicated manga, 3D modeling and animation features).
🫤Stuart Semple’s Abode
The well known UK artist had a successful kickstarter for his alternative to Adobe suite in 2023, and according to the kickstart page it’s currently in beta testing, which is good to hear. I’m keen to check this out when it becomes available. No A.I. involved in it that I’m aware of.
Anyone know of anything else? Where’s the A.I. hiding in the free Affinity? Any skinny on Abode’s betas? Feel free to tell me (as people have done for 20 years) that I should switch to Linux and GIMP! I won’t be, but somebody else might?
If anyone tells me anything interesting on socmed, I’ll update this post.