I've used Adobe products for over 25 years, first picking up Photoshop 1 whilst studying Graphic Design at college. Since then, much has changed. New programs come and go, new features are added and and old ones improved. Today, the three core programs any respected design agency uses - Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are powerful, feature packed pieces of software.

Previously at Connect Creative we updated our software suite yearly (costing well over £1,000 a pop) in order to take advantage of new features, updates etc. all designed to make us more productive and work more efficiently. The in came the subscription model. Gone was the yearly purchase, replaced with a monthly fee.

And this is where things started to go downhill.

If you're selling a software package for around a £1,000 every year, you need to make damn sure its an attractive purchase. And traditionally it was - Adobe updated pretty much everything. But on the subscription model? Why bother? Adobe has its guaranteed income and users are tied to the Adobe ecosystem simply because its the industry standard. There's no solid alternatives and every college leaver HAS to be able to use them if they want to stand any chance of getting a job in the industry.

Until now that is. Serif, a small British company (well, small compared to Adobe) have created a new suite of apps - Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. Effectively direct competition for Adobe's key apps, Serif have worked incredibly hard to produce genuine alternatives. And they're good. Very, very good. Good enough for us to cancel our Adobe subscription. There's no subscription model and the apps are reasonably priced.

When using these apps, it makes you realise just how lazy Adobe have become over recent years - Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign have become slow, bloated and stagnant apps.

Adobe has been caught napping. Serif are only just getting started...