The CEO of Affinity Just Admitted You've Had No Real Choice. That Changes Today.

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]So, Melanie Perkins, the CEO of Affinity, just said something in an interview that I just can't stop thinking about. I'm reading a direct quote here. She said, "In the design market, there hasn't been a strong challenger for a long time. It's been a little bit of a one-horse race, and I don't think that works out well for anyone, certainly not well for the consumers of the designers specifically." And she's not wrong.

[00:00:16]She's not saying Adobe's powerful, she's just saying it's the only choice that people have had for a long time. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly what she meant, why Photoshop 27.7 is relevant to that conversation, and what it means for you. By the way, I'm Ethan. I've done millions of views across the various channels I've made content for. I use Affinity every single day, and I left Adobe in 2022. So, I have a horse in this race. All right, say bye to Cleo. I'm going to go put him up. So, Perkins, the CEO of Canva, was the one who made the decision to purchase Affinity and make it free to everyone. Just in case you don't know who we're talking about. What Perkins was describing was that for decades, serious motion designers and visual artists have only had one option in terms of software that's available to them, just because it's not the best, but it's just because it's what they grew up on learning, it's what they have had the most experience with, and it's been the most accessible to them up to that point. existed, but it was small.

[00:01:01]Everything else was consumer grade or super niche. And because of that, Adobe could then charge whatever they wanted, they could lock you into their ecosystem and lock you out of your previous work, they could change their terms whatever they wanted, they had free reign to do whatever. And so, Adobe at this point isn't succeeding on merit, they're succeeding because the exit door is locked. Like, wherever else you want to go, you can't, because you only have one option, and it's to them. Right now, Adobe Creative Cloud is $70 a month.

[00:01:21]That's $840 for the year. $840 for the year is a lot of money. And that's what a one-horse race costs you is $840 a year because you have nowhere else to go. So, Photoshop 27.7 shipped on May the 19th, and the headline feature is that there's on-device AI Remove Tool.

[00:01:36]And Adobe's presenting this as some sort of major announcement, and the AI that runs locally on your machine, right? So, you don't have to upload your images to their cloud servers and whatnot. What this means is that for the Remove Tool up to this point, Adobe's been taking your images and uploading them to their cloud servers. That means your client images, stuff you've had NDAs for, specific sensitive information or specific sensitive images and all that, it's in their servers. It's not just on your computer anymore. And so now they tweaked it just for the remove tool in 2026 and call it a breakthrough. The hardware catch though is that if you're on Mac OS, they require at least an M1 Max chip and if you're on Windows, at least a 3000 series RTX card from Nvidia. And while that's not a huge ask, there are still going to be some people that don't have that hardware just because I for example have an M1 Pro machine for my laptop. I don't have an M1 Max. So the framing here is that Adobe charging you $840 a year just announced an upgrade that's going to require at least a $3,000 computing machine for. And they're calling that innovative and they want credit for that. It's crazy. This isn't a product update. It's a company scrambling to match something that their competition already does for free. And that's because since day one Affinity has processed everything locally since they launched. It's been a foundational design decision for them before Adobe even acknowledged that there was a problem. There's no cloud uploads.

[00:02:45]There's no images leaving your machine or anything like that. It's just on your machine. It's local. And I think this is what Perkins was pointing at when she was saying that the industry needs a challenger. It needs competition. That challenger had to be built on a different philosophy, not just a different price. And not only that, but Affinity's local AI processing works on any computer. Uh you don't have to have an M1 Max. You don't have to have at least a 3000 series uh RTX card. It's just whatever computer Affinity's on, it'll run. And this is significant because when Canva purchased Affinity, uh Perkins oversaw that they acquired it and made it free for everyone. Not premium. Uh it's not like limited features here and there. It's the full software for free. And if you do want AI features, the more complex stuff, well then you have the option to pay $15 a month in order to get those features.

[00:03:28]And then you can cancel whenever you want. You don't get locked out of your previous work. It's nice. So Affinity is free and the more complex AI features are $15 a month if you want them. And then there's Photoshop. I believe the photography package is $23 a month and the full Creative Cloud is $70 a month or $840 for the entire year. That's a massive price gap between those two products. Affinity is free and it comes with photo editing, photo manipulation.

[00:03:49]It comes with uh vector design. It comes with page layout design. Then you have DaVinci Resolve is also free and if you want the studio version, it's a one-time payment. Cavalry is free, Autograph is free, Blender is free. That is a complete professional creative pipeline for $0 if that's what you want to spend.

[00:04:06]That's really impressive, $0. Adobe charges $840 a year for the equivalent.

[00:04:11]Affinity charges you zero.

[00:04:13]Perkins also said, and I'm reading a quote here, she said that Affinity has such a beloved community that really loves Affinity, the product and their approach. That's not marketing language.

[00:04:22]I think that's a CEO talking about how consumers are choosing to use a product because it's better, not because it's just what was given to them. The The contrast here is that Adobe had and has users because those users feel they have nowhere else to go. Affinity has users because those users chose to be there.

[00:04:39]Also, I use Affinity for every thumbnail on this channel. I haven't touched Photoshop once. Every thumbnail on this channel has been with Affinity. And I haven't needed to go back. The tools are all there, they work. So, here's what I keep coming back to. Adobe in 2026 ships Photoshop 27.7 with on-device AI and they call it a big breakthrough. It's wild. Affinity's been doing that since launch. So, how did we get here? Like, what put us in this position that this is what we see from these companies? The answer, I think, is because Perkins was right when she said that consumers generally had nowhere else to go until now. Now that Now they do, and that's exactly what makes Affinity so special is because it gives them that exit door from Adobe. So, this is what it means for you. This is what you should do now. If you're a photographer paying for the Photoshop Lightroom package or however much it costs nowadays, don't. The this feature that they've added that they're trying to add value to their package with has existed with Affinity since launch.

[00:05:30]Go with Affinity. You can use the hardware and the computers that you already own. The argument for staying with Adobe just got that much weaker.

[00:05:36]And if you're on the full Creative Cloud at $70 a month and Photoshop is the only app you're using for some reason, that's even more of a reason to finally leave Adobe and just just get Affinity. Now, I do want to be honest with you though just because I'm not going to pretend that Affinity does everything that Photoshop does. I do personally think that the raw engine inside of Photoshop is a little more refined than it is inside of Affinity, but that's just me.

[00:05:57]Perhaps it's just their color science and their computational processing or whatever. That's just my personal preference. If I had to pick that one thing out of Adobe and be able to drop it inside of Affinity, I totally would.

[00:06:07]I think it's a great feature. But, I do want to be honest about that because I'm not going to pretend like everything inside of Photoshop is bad. It's not.

[00:06:13]It's just that Adobe's business model isn't the most ethical, I think. But, for 80% of the photographers out there who need really strong, really robust, really detailed masking, background removal, color correction, object removal, just the general photo manipulation with some really strong, really built-out tools, Affinity is your tool. Affinity is the guy for you. And it does it all on your local hardware for free. This goes back to Perkins saying you didn't really have a choice because now you do. And that choice is $840 a year versus zero. The one-horse race that Perkins was talking about earlier is finally gone. So, I know you can feel frustrated with Adobe sometimes. Believe me, I know how that feels, but it's time to feel empowered.

[00:06:50]It's time to finally take advantage of the other options that you have and get a taste of what liberation feels like from this company that's had a grip on you the entire time you've been a creative. It's a wild time to be a creative, and it's never been a better time to be inside of this career path than now just because you have so many other options than what you've been used to for all the last however long. The exit door is open. Affinity is free.

[00:07:11]DaVinci Resolve is free. Blender is free. Autograph is free. Cavalry is free. That pipeline that Adobe's been charging you $840 a year for free. The only thing standing in the way of you taking advantage of this free, very capable software is familiarity, and familiarity is a skill issue, not a tool issue.

[00:07:28]That's something that you can improve.

[00:07:30]The tools are ready. The question is, are you? So, if you haven't met me, I cover a lot of these moments, the exact moments that the industry shifts. We cover a lot of videos on this channel about Adobe alternatives and how to break away out of that ecosystem. If you If you this video, like it, and if you dislike it, please dislike it. Let me know why down in the comments, and let me know in the comments, too, if you liked it. And don't forget to subscribe to the channel for more videos like this. I'll see you guys in the next one.

[00:07:49]Thank you so much.