David Gewirtz, a long-time Photoshop user, explains why he is switching much of his workflow away from Adobe’s Creative Cloud after Canva acquired Serif Ltd.’s Affinity suite in March 2024. Affinity originally sold its apps as one-time purchases for $50, and the author had previously bought Affinity Photo but kept Photoshop because of decades of muscle memory. Canva has now made the Affinity apps free for everyone and adds Artificial Intelligence features, including generative fill, when you subscribe to Canva Pro.
The article breaks down the subscription math and limits that pushed the change. Adobe moved Photoshop to Creative Cloud (which the article notes started at $50 per month and is now $70 per month), and Adobe further restricts Artificial Intelligence usage by giving you 25 ‘credits’ per month on some plans. Adobe offers a Firefly Pro plan that provides 4,000 generative Artificial Intelligence credits for another $20 per month, and a Photography plan that includes Photoshop and Lightroom for $20. By contrast, Canva Pro (listed as $15/month in the piece) enables Affinity’s Artificial Intelligence features without the same per-credit limits, and the author calculates that keeping Photoshop via the Photography plan and adding Canva plus Affinity comes to $35, about half the cost of full Creative Cloud.
The author also calls out Adobe device restrictions, which limit installs to two computers, and recounts personal pain points such as Premiere crashing “more than 100 times” on one project, which led to a move to Final Cut Pro. He outlines a new creative stack that mixes Photoshop (listed at $19.99/mo), free Affinity apps (with AI unlocked by Canva), Canva ($15/mo), Final Cut Pro (one-time purchase of $299), and other tools like Autodesk Fusion (free for non-commercial use) and Audacity (free). The conclusion: for many creators and marketers, the Canva plus free Affinity apps plus selective Photoshop usage is a lower-cost, capable alternative, while specialist prepress, VFX, and enterprise workflows may still need Adobe. The author plans to try the $35/month Canva + Affinity + Photoshop approach and invites readers to consider their own tradeoffs.
