This popular, cheap Adobe alternative is 50% during Black Friday

Adobe Creative Cloud apps may dominate for image and video work, but its ongoing subscriptions can cost a pretty penny. You could go the free route—or instead grab a fantastic deal on a solid, well-liked alternative for as little as $9.

For Black Friday, Serif is selling its Affinity Photo 2, Designer 2, and Publisher 2 software at 50 percent off. You pay just one time for the software license (no subscriptions to deal with!) for these analogs of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, respectively. And you can choose to buy the app for one platform (e.g., Windows only) or a Universal License that grants access to all apps and platforms.

• Affinity Photo 2 (iPad): $9
• Affinity Photo 2 (Windows, macOS): $35
• Affinity Designer 2 (iPad): $9
• Affinity Designer 2 (Windows, macOS): $35
• Affinity Publisher 2 (iPad): $9
• Affinity Publisher 2 (Windows, macOS): $35
• Affinity V2 Universal License: $83

Users of Affinity version 1 apps can upgrade for less cash—it’ll cost $63 for the V2 Universal License. Serif also throws in four bonus add-ons for existing V1 customers. But both returning and new users will spend hundreds less compared to a 12-month Creative Cloud subscription, even when it’s also on sale for Black Friday

Users online speak well of Affinity as an alternative to Adobe apps, with commenters praising it over free options like Photopea. Some also say that Affinity apps feel most natural to transition to when ditching a Creative Cloud subscription. Our own Discord community members even independently recommended this deal to one another.

This Affinity sale doesn’t have a specified end date, so if you want to grab the software, get your license sooner rather than later. Serif may be timing its sale to match Adobe’s, which ends on November 29, aka actual Black Friday. (You probably still have enough hours left to give the free trial a spin before pulling the trigger though, if you so need).