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Graphics Software

Adobe Made Its Painting App Completely Free To Take On Procreate 27

Adobe's Fresco painting app is now free for everyone, in an attempt to lure illustrators to join its creative software suite. The Verge reports: Fresco is essentially Adobe's answer to apps like Procreate and Clip Studio Paint, which all provide a variety of tools for both digital art and simulating real-world materials like sketching pencils and watercolor paints. Adobe Fresco is designed for touch and stylus-supported devices, and is available on iPad, iPhone, and Windows PCs. The app already had a free-to-use tier, but premium features like access to the full Adobe Fonts library, a much wider brush selection, and the ability to import custom brushes previously required a $9.99 annual subscription. That's pretty affordable for an Adobe subscription, but still couldn't compete with Procreate's $12.99 one-time purchase model.

Starting today, all of Fresco's premium features are no longer locked behind a paywall. The app first launched in 2019 and isn't particularly well-known compared to more established Adobe apps like Photoshop and Illustrator that feature more complex, professional design tools. Fresco still has some interesting features of its own, like reflective and rotation symmetry (which mirror artwork as you draw) and the ability to quickly animate drawings with motion presets like "bounce" and "breathe."
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Adobe Made Its Painting App Completely Free To Take On Procreate

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  • by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @05:44PM (#64888743) Journal
    I use it for vector drawings for illustrations/cartoons for my grandchildren. I'll have to check and see if they've added any way to import vector stuff, or export in an easier to deal with format than PDF.
  • If it's only free as in beer, it's not completely free.

    • If it's only free as in beer, it's not completely free.

      Given Adobe's history, it's also only "free as in beer" for as long as it takes to rope in enough suckers who end up relying on it in a big way and have a lot of time and effort invested. Then the rental charges will begin.

      Anybody who's not already hopelessly in hock to Adobe's extortion rac... er, ecosystem, would be a fool to swallow this bait.

      • I'm a heavy user of graphic design products and, for me, 15 years ago, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator were essential. No more.

        Other folks have released comparable products for much, much cheaper prices (or free) and much less hassle. In many ways these products are better than Adobe's. All they have now is their cross-product ecosystem and their AI, neither of which I care about.

        Because of these things I don't see myself buying (or renting) an adobe product ever again.

        • Re:Its over Adobe (Score:4, Interesting)

          by dwywit ( 1109409 ) on Thursday October 24, 2024 @01:33AM (#64889523)

          "cross-product ecosystem"

          You may not care about it, but there's plenty who do. I hate, hate, hate the subscription model, but I have to give credit to that ecosystem.

          The improvements and time-saving features in video production are fantastic.

          The only product that comes close (outside a studio budget for something like Avid), is DaVinci Resolve (which is currently better as a one-off purchase, and free if you buy a Blackmagic camera).

  • by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @06:15PM (#64888815) Journal

    One question is - are you able to save in standard, commonly accessible file formats, or is the file format proprietary? Because if it is proprietary, one common way of forcing people to upgrade to a newer version (which may no longer be 'free") is to change the file format and make it incompatible with the older version. Microsoft Word anybody? Even SketchUp eventually removed the ability to save files in an older compatibility format, putting another nail in the "free" desktop version that existed before Alphabet sold it to Trimble.

    Given that the rest of the Adobe ecosystem long ago transitioned to subscription format, it's pretty clear that they primary goal is to get people on that subscription treadmill.

    • One question is - are you able to save in standard, commonly accessible file formats, or is the file format proprietary? Because if it is proprietary, one common way of forcing people to upgrade to a newer version (which may no longer be 'free") is to change the file format and make it incompatible with the older version. Microsoft Word anybody? Even SketchUp eventually removed the ability to save files in an older compatibility format, putting another nail in the "free" desktop version that existed before Alphabet sold it to Trimble.

      Given that the rest of the Adobe ecosystem long ago transitioned to subscription format, it's pretty clear that they primary goal is to get people on that subscription treadmill.

      I agree with everything that you said, except for that last phrase. I propose we all start calling it a "rental treadmill". You see, when I cancel a magazine subscription, I still get to keep and read the old magazines. When I stop paying companies like Adobe, I no longer have access to the products of my own work and creativity.

      "Subscription" sounds both innocuous and fair, and neither term applies to companies like Adobe. "Rental" makes it clear that when you stop paying, you'll be evicted. We need to sto

      • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        " I no longer have access to the products of my own work and creativity."

        That's not the whole truth. It's true for some of their file formats like PSD, but not for video or audio editing, and not true for the output of products like InDesign. If you produce a magazine, you still have the PDFs. If you produce an audio track, you still have the output format, whether WAV, FLAC, MP3, or AAC. Ditto video in MP4, MKV, or even DCP.

  • Whatever, Adobe. You've irritated so many.
    • Whatever, Adobe. You've irritated so many.

      Indeed. It took me a *while* to figure out how to disable the tools, crap and background Cloud services in Reader -- using the Windows registry (sigh).

  • Adobe..go away (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sit1963nz ( 934837 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @06:35PM (#64888851)
    As soon as you get people "hooked" the prices start to climb. This is all about competition removal so you can dominate another product area.

    We had already seen this with other adobe products at work, the price just rapidly got jacked up, so the majority of users got swapped to a competing product and we will NOT be going back to Adobe.
    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      As soon as you get people "hooked" the prices start to climb. This is all about competition removal so you can dominate another product area.

      This. It's just a classic example of predatory pricing by a borderline monopolist with massive market power to drive out a competitor so that they can raise prices again.

      Want to know what company I think should be broken up by antitrust regulators? Adobe. They're at the top of my list for companies that abuse their market power to harm consumers, ahead of literally everyone else in the tech industry, and have been since 2013. Regulators, start your brief printers.

  • Adobe will only make it free for as long as it takes to become the market leader. Once their competitors lose market share and Adobe's software and file formats become the industry standard, they'll roll it into their subscription model and charge as much as it can get away with.

  • Was thinking I would install the app just because I like free things. It still has a free and premium plan baked into the app. My free account says it includes just the basics and to subscribe to access premium Adobe Fonts, increased cloud storage, and Photoshop on the iPad.

    The subscription is $12.49 a month with one free month. Not sure if this is just a location issue or if adobe is saying one thing and soing another...
    • To add to this the app store description of the new version makes it clear that only the brushes are now unlocked and makes no mention of the fonts.

      https://helpx.adobe.com/fresco... [adobe.com]
      Transform your creativity with free access to game-changing brushes in Fresco
      Access thousands of previously premium and innovative brushes in Fresco for free. Plus, import your own brushes.
      Select + Add brushes in the Pixel brushes panel and then select Discover new brushes to access the brush collection.
  • How, in a world full of tiny (by comparison) underdog devs, defending me against massive ai theft and predatory pricing, fighting for my rights on a budget harshly limited by the fact that they refuse to fuck all their users in the ass, could I ever go back to the demon king they're fighting against? An adobe employee said in court that hidden cancellation fees were "like heroin to us". That they could not do business on this scale without users being surprised by cancellation fees. That is Adobe's charact
  • Right up to the point of download, they give you no information about the licensing conditions or requirements. At the very end, they tell you that that Creative Cloud app is bundled with the download, so... it's only free "for now". I assume the EULA says they reserved the right to terminate your free license at any time, and unexpectedly start charging you in the future once you're dependent on it. I don't know, because there's no EULA available to read before taking the plunge.

    Nope. It's bad enough p

  • "Adobe Made Its Painting App Completely Free"

    "Free" as in "it's free now, but later (after we've used our market position to crush the competition) we'll add fees and subscriptions"

  • Please to be making with the fucking in the general direction of off. ProCreate is a better tool all around, not to mention, it doesn't attempt to suck you into some cloud nonsense that they'll start charging you for down the road. I'm sure you'll get some suckers, because people let their curiosity get the best of them, but at some point even dogs will turn on a master that beats them. Be smarter than a dog, people. Bite the hand that attempts to feed with greed. Or ignore it.

  • they may not charge you any money, but they stick Adobe Creative Cloud on your system and you can't get rid of it without rolling back to a restore point. Seems Adobe is going back to the old Windows "My software is the only important software on any computer system, so it's OK if I just take over" paradigm it took so long to eliminate. Don't bother with this; there's much better options that don't think they own your computer.

  • Subscription software that runs a cloud app and dozens of resource hogging services whether you're using Adobe products or not.

    I'd rather pay $700 for a single version of an app that I can use offline indefinitely. If you come up with a new feature I actually need, I'll pay again for the new version.

    When FinalCut stopped supporting professionals and came out with FCX, I switched my editing studio to PC and adobe. When Adobe switched to subscription, I went to DaVinci.

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