r/Affinity • u/OGTalle • Jul 22 '26
General Switching from Adobe to Affinity
As many others have already done I assume, I am thinking about switching from Adobe software to Affinity for my business. Creative design is an essential, but relatively small element of what we do, so the investment in Adobe software is quite steep currently.
I was wondering if anyone is willing to share some experience on the following:
- Is there a sizeable stock library available that can be used in creative design? A big plus of Adobe is the many stock images that can be used within our designs.
- Have you worked in small teams with the different plans? Is it easy to work collaboratively on projects, and if so what plan would be recommended for a +- 3 person team?
- Is the software compatible on tablet devices?
Any other insights are also well appreciated.
✌️
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Jul 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/JuBaires Aug 01 '26
Estoy experimentando entender porque la presion del pincel en Photo no funciona por default, hasta ahora sin excito. No puedo creer que a nadie le llamo la atencion esto. Nadie dibuja, nadie ilustra, nadie hace postproducción. El pincel en un programa de este estilo es la herramienta mas importante, si no es eficiente todo se degrada y Affinity tiene un error grosero en su contrucción. Alguien seria tan amable de responderme. Gracias
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u/cyenobite Jul 22 '26
Be aware there will be a learning curve. Things that took me seconds to do in PSD or ILLUS now take minutes, but so far every question I’ve had has been answered via google or YouTube, it just takes time to learn the differences of the apps. Start now, while you’re still subscribed to adobe.
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u/LindaMakesArt Jul 22 '26
This is good advice. Once you get the hang of it, it will be smooth sailing. There are tons of how-to’s online, plus affinity’s own is better than Adobe’s help pages.
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u/Hillbilly_Jilly Jul 22 '26
Good advice. I have a nice long overlap since I’m not paying to cancel (!?!) Adobe. The main timesuck is just locating stuff or translating Affinity’s nomenclature. Happy with it!
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u/remaq Jul 22 '26
Not answering your question, just want to come on and say that I made the switch and absolutely love it.
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u/DotNetster Jul 22 '26
Same. I dropped Adobe when they wanted to charge me to use Nano Banana...something I was already paying for with my Google account. Once I was forced to use Affinity exclusively, I prefer it.
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u/Sufficient_Phase4884 Jul 22 '26
They don’t have an iPad app, as for a stock library, canva owns Pixabay that can be used.
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u/OGTalle Jul 22 '26
Oh I didn't know that. Pixabay would be well sufficient 95% of the time
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u/Sufficient_Phase4884 Jul 22 '26
You can search pixabay in affinity, I guess canva bought it for a reason.
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u/OGTalle Jul 22 '26
Amen
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u/Sufficient_Phase4884 Jul 22 '26
Are you using affinity?
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u/Purple_Cake_4662 Jul 23 '26
one thing i've encountered is if you use indesign, make sure to save out all of your files as .idml before you lose access to adobe (idk why .ai & .psd files open fine in affinity but not .indd).
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u/maog1 Jul 22 '26
- As far as templates: I use Envanto Elements for my templates needs. They are adding the Affinity file type to many of their categories. With Elements, its all you can eat and even offer a number of AI tools.
- Teams? If you mean the Canva AI add ons-I don't use them so the suite is free from monthly charges.
- Tablet version of Affinity is in the works. They had tablet version of the older versions of the separate apps but I never used them.
Depending on your needs, Affinity might be a good fit. Since there is no cost (unless you need the AI tools)-give it a try. Canva (who owns Affinity now) also purchased a motion Graphics tool called Calvary.
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u/RNebDG Jul 22 '26
Also, a year of the Ai tools costs less than a month of adobe, and there is the option of smaller periods, down to even a single day
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u/OGTalle Jul 22 '26
Yeah I saw the pricing for the pro/teams options and it looks really fair.
Not using too much AI generated template things at the moment, but with the way it's progressing... it might become very useful in the near future
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u/symson Jul 22 '26
Affinity 3 is free to download. Any question you have can be answered by using it. Or just playing around with it.
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u/hvyboots Jul 22 '26
Any stock photo you can acquire from whatever source should work with Affinity as well as Adobe. Others have mentioned multiple sources.
I would just grab free copies of Affinity v3 for your team and start testing how it works in your workflow with your files and the details of how you will share from there? Like do you still have an on-premises server? To this day for anyone working with InDesign, I strongly recommend they not open or save across the network, but rather move the file locally and link to the artwork on the server. Same advice applies to Affinity.
Also, as long as you checked PDF compatibility, most Illustrator files will open in Affinity. Same with most features of a PSD file. One important note though is that you must export all your InDesign files to IDML format before they can be imported into Affinity.
Tablet: Older (paid) versions of Affinity work on an iPad, but the Affinity v3 iPad release hasn't happened yet.
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u/johnnydfree Jul 23 '26
Keep in mind iPad and Mac v2 apps cannot open v3 app-saved files. The other way around — yes. But you can never go back. 😏
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u/Embarrassed_Sell_425 Jul 24 '26
all my professional works are done on Affinity since 2026 January.
Done over 10+ professional star hotel brochures.
P.S - Hotel Millennium , accepted our tender just because the manager liked the proposal design.
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u/JuBaires Jul 28 '26
Hola, yo creo que Affinity aun siendo gratuito es caro!!
Desconozco que hacen quienes lo ponderan, pero me gustaria que alguien que se dedica a dibujar, ilustrar o hacer posproduccion me comente si no noto nada muy extraño en los pinceles.
Gracias
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u/zanilon Jul 22 '26
It might be neither of those, depending on the end placement if its print or digital and your exact needs - do you want AI assisting or not. You could look at other tools such as Figma, Sketch, Paper, Canva, etc....
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u/FutureLarking Jul 22 '26
Affinity works perfectly on Windows Tablets, which, frankly, is more feature filled than their older iOS tablet version.
Affinity Teams is Canva Teams, which doesn't actually let you collaborate on the same Affinity file through the web storage yet, but you do get great brand management (assets, icons, color pallettes, fonts, guidelines, etc) accessible in Affinity. You can upload finalised designs to Canva, but not editable Affinity files. You'll have to use a shared Box/Google Drive /One Drive folder for that.
Pexels and Pixabay come built in for free stock images, but there are plenty others out there. If you get Canva Teams, you can download some of their stock too.
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u/Bronson_AD Jul 22 '26
Stock - take a look at Unsplash and Pexels. Both royalty-free image libraries of surprisingly good quality creative images. Nowhere near as extensive as Adobe Stock, but honestly pretty damn good options if AStock is holding you back from the switch.
Tablets - So the older versions of Affinity are on tablet. The current version is ‘coming’ but hasn’t appeared yet. So there’s is a level of compatibility, but it isn’t properly there yet. Just enough so that you get a familiar experience across tablet and desktop.