Affinity looks like the most promising replacement for Adobe applications like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

The Affinity applications get a lot of things right, and do some things better than Adobe already. And obviously the pricing and permanent sale model are much more attractive than Adobe's subscription model.

They do also have some almost unbelievable limitations, where what you'd expect to be entry-level functionality simply doesn't exist, and they lack any sort of plug-in ecosystem and all the extensibility and customisation that brings.

But saying that, it's not as if Adobe's applications haven't had bizarre omissions over the years, and they've had much longer to fix them. Hopefully Serif can keep up the momentum and community good will it's built for the Affinity suite and in time they'll close the gaps.

>They do also have some almost unbelievable limitations, where what you'd expect to be entry-level functionality simply doesn't exist

Are there any specific examples that come to mind? I recently heard about Afinity and am planning to give it a try next time I need a Photoshop or Illustrator replacement.

It's mostly just dumb little things. You can transform elements using exact numerical values in some contexts, but sometimes you just get a drag handle and can't be precise. You can put tables in a document as standalone frames, but you can't include them within your text story so they reflow properly. This is basic stuff for graphics and DTP software respectively, yet Affinity can't do them.

But then again, for a very long time very basic search and replace options were missing in InDesign, so as I said before, it's not as if Adobe's software hasn't had its share of bizarre limitations over the years as well.

Same. But I switched because I felt that Adobe got very abusive with customers that paid for a $2,000 and had the misfortune of having a serial number tied up in a crashed machine that wasn't deactivated. The interrogations and scoldings were ridiculous. The lack of an online deactivation instead of having to call every time was annoying as hell too. For a company like that, the subscription model was a "no deal" because then they'd have zero incentive to improve. I don't miss Adobe at all.