It’s now a dozen years since Adobe became the poster child for what marketing folks and techies used to call the “software-as-a-service” model. This subscription-based approach has its advantages—you, the user, always get the latest features delivered to you—but it also means you’re constantly paying Adobe for as long as you want to use its products.
Now, it used to be the case that Adobe was an inescapable software provider for many if not most creative professionals, but some viable rivals have come up in recent years, such as Affinity (now owned by Canva) for photo editing and publishing layouts, and Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve for video. Not only are these options hugely cheaper than Adobe’s Photoshop and InDesign and Premiere Pro respectively—DaVinci even has a free version that's more than enough for most users—but they only require one-off payments.
