Adobe Made Its Painting App Completely Free To Take On Procreate 11
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."
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."
I'll have to check... (Score:2)
Free (Score:2)
If it's only free as in beer, it's not completely free.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Procreate? Never heard of it.
It's what your parents did to bring you into the world. Do try to honour the effort that went into making you... :~]
"Free" (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Pft. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
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.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:2)
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.