I switched out of using Adobe software in 2021 and don't miss a single thing about their tools. Adobe Creative Cloud was costing almost £700 per year for a single license subscription and I could not justify the payments for functionality only used from time to time.
I have replaced all the Adobe Creative Cloud tools with fully fledged Universal applications which are built to take advantage of Apple silicon. I am no expert in all these tools and I'm not reviewing these apps from that point of view and there are loads of feature based reviews out there already. My needs are straightfoward. I need functionality from graphics tools occasionally for example to clean up an image or edit a scalable vector graphic file. I need effective tools that are designed and built for the latest Apple silicon technology. I really dont need a full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription anyway. So if you, like me, have a new Apple silicon based Mac, you might like this list of software that shows its developers are up to date with Apples technology not falling behind.
TL:DR—I did it! I have been so surprised by the depth and strength in the alternatives I have found. They are all really good! With Apple silicon support they are blazingly fast and full featured and the come with an extra feature - they don't have the subscription model and lethargic pace of development of Adobe.I have now standardised on Affinity products and cancelled my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Just take me to the links
PhotoLine, Krita, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, Affinity Photo, Ardour REAPER
Contents
A little background
When Adobe moved to a subscription model in 2013 there was fairly widespread derision at the decision. I'm not going to rake over those coals, but there is hypocrisy in their reassurances at the time which seems demonstably provable now to me. Ashleigh Allsopp reporting for macworld (https://web.archive.org/web/20131029183741/http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/?newsid=3446802) noted that "Adobe's focus on Creative Cloud would also mean that subscribers will have access to new features on a regular basis, as it would allow the company to roll out updates more often." This was a major talking point for Adobe and their VP was quoted saying "We'll be releasing updates as soon as the features are ready, so you can expect to see features rolled out." And yet here we are.
"Adobe is actively working to build apps that run natively on Apple computers using the Apple silicon M1 chip."
So what happened? Creative Suite was resource-heavy, leading to performance issues, and updates could introduce instabilities. They were slow to transition to Apples new chips. Apple announced the transition of the Mac platform to Apple silicon in a press release on June 22nd 2020 and shipped me a developer transition kit with macOS Big Sur running on non production Apple silicon hardware on June 29th 2020. Im no software giant like Adobe, who would have been well aware of Apple's macOS Big Sur and the technologies included with it. Adobe would likely have a much closer development relationship with Apple than most smaller developer organisations. In my experience that would often include prototype hardware far in advance of more general developer availability, so it would be almost inconceivable that Adobe didn't have access to production M1 hardware before these Mac's became generally available. I don't know the details though, and it would be an NDA violation for them to say so I suppose.
This was the signal to me to think about moving on in 2021. Adobe’s market dominance was already making me feeling wary of being locked into its ecosystem. I'm really glad I made the change. Adobe faces continuing criticism in 2024 for its subscription model, which is costly over time and leaves users without access to the suite if they stop paying. Other complaints I have observed online include poor customer support, privacy concerns with its cloud-based system, and regional pricing disparities. Discontinuing popular tools like Fireworks and GoLive has also frustrated previously loyal users like me.
Drop in replacements for Adobe Creative Cloud apps

PhotoLine
PhotoLine is an image and graphics editor. You can edit images or optimize them for the web, and export professional quality PDF. Back in 1996, PhotoLine was developed for the Atari ST computer. In 2021 Photoline Version 22.51 supports Apple silicon. It supports PSD files, PDF files, animated GIFs, Flash animations, and, SVGs.
Photoline is proprietary software subject to an unknown perpetual license agreement not a subscription. The registration fee of PhotoLine is 59 Euros. When you register you get a registration number and an invoice (PDF) by email. Updates within one major version number are cost free, for example 20.01 to 20.5. The upgrade fee for major upgrades, for example 20.5 to 21.0 is 29 Euros. If you are a single user, you are allowed to use one license on more than one computer. Usage on both Windows and macOS is allowed using the same registration number. The software works for 30 days once downloaded and installed so you can try it out. It is blazingly fast to load on an M1 Mac Mini!
Extensive photo editing functions for enhancement, correcting and retouching functions include, Light/Shadow, Connect/combine Images, White Point, Color Temperature, Chromatic Aberration, Image Noise, Red Eyes, Lens Correction and Perspective distortions. PhotoLine also handles digital camera raw data files as well as EXIF and IPTC data, supports professional PDF export, enables the creation of animated GIFs and supports ICC profiles for colour management. Advanced lossless image processing is provided adding effects to the image without changing the original data. A comprehensive set of filters is included.
Using the software I loaded a large PSD file I found on the Internet. It was so fast to load compared to my experience with Photoshop! It was almost instantaneous to change the zoom and scroll around. I used the colour picker and the brush tools to edit out the serial number from the About this mac screenshot which was a png format file. It was simple to discover how to do it, and the result was pixel perfect.


Krita
Krita goes to great length to explain that Photoshop is an image manipulation program with some painting features whereas "Krita is a specialized paint application. It has specialized tools for painting. Similar tools are not found in more generalized image manipulation applications such as Photoshop." Helpfully, they publish a detailed guide to what that means for people coming from Photoshop. What Krita Has Over Photoshop. It is part of an extensive documentation website. Krita has a very active community of artists and developers behind it.
Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. Krita is, and will always be, free software. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone. It can be used to create concept art, for texture and matte painters, illustrations and comics. Krita is powered by KDE. KDE is a world-wide network of software engineers, artists, writers, translators and facilitators who are committed to Free Software development. This community has created hundreds of Free Software applications as part of the KDE frameworks, workspaces and applications. It is a very clean and flexible interface, which is configurable with panels and functionality called dockers to your personal requirements and saved as a workspace.
Krita contains over 100 professional brushes with a variety of effects. Brushes have stabilisers to help smooth shaky hands. Built in vector tools help create comic panels from SVG assets. Brush can be customised using brush engines which provide specific functionality. Seamless textures and patterns can be created with 'wrap-around mode'. Artists can create brush and texture packs and these can be exported an shared. Krita can be used to create 2D animation, exporting the results to video. Of course, Krita can open PSD files, and supports vector, filter, group and file layers.


Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor developed by Serif for macOS, iPadOS, and Microsoft Windows. It is part of a trio of products alongside Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. Affinity Designer is available for 90-day trial and purchase directly from the company website and for purchase in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the Microsoft Store. During the pandemic it is 50% off at just £23.99 for a one off payment with no monthly subscription.
Affinity Designer was selected as a runner-up in Apple's "Best of 2014" list in the macOS app category. It also was one of the winners of the 2015 Apple Design Award.
The current release, 1.9 is a univeral app, which means it supports Apple silicon Macs. All the major image and vector file types are supported, including EPS, JPG, PDF, SVG, PSD, PNG, TIFF and GIF.

The big PSD file test was just as snappy here as in the other Apple silicon apps. It was quick to export the file into my chosen format. The software and documentation is comprehensive and there is a superb quick start guide.

Affinity Publisher
Affinity Publisher is a professional publishing application developed by Serif for macOS, iPadOS, and Microsoft Windows. It is part of a trio of products alongside Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Affinity Publisher is available for 90-day trial and purchase directly from the company website and for purchase in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the Microsoft Store. During the pandemic it is 50% off at just £23.99 for a one off payment with no monthly subscription.
Affinity Publisher was selected as "Mac App of the year" by Apple in 2019. Serif give examples of use for books, magazinesm marketing materials, social media templatesa and website mock-ups. The key feature being the power to combine images, graphics and text to make beautiful layouts ready for publication.
Publisher has essentials like master pages, facing page spreads, grids, tables, advanced typography, text flow, full professional print output and a comprehensive list of other features including data merge from an external data source along with extensive documentation.
The current release, 1.9 is a univeral app, which means it supports Apple silicon Macs. All the major image and vector file types are supported, including IDML (for import and placing content), EPS, JPG, PDF, SVG, PSD, PNG, TIFF and GIF.

The big PSD file test was just as snappy here as in the other Apple silicon apps. It was te same experience exporting the file to png, the resulting file was identical to the one produced by Affinity Designer showing the common code shared between them. The software and documentation is comprehensive and there is a superb quick start guide.

Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is a raster graphics editor developed developed by Serif for macOS, iPadOS, and Microsoft Windows. It is part of a trio of products alongside Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer. Affinity Photo is available for 90-day trial and purchase directly from the company website and for purchase in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the Microsoft Store. During the pandemic it is 50% off at just £23.99 for a one off payment with no monthly subscription.
Affinity Photo was selected as "best Mac App" by Apple in 2015. In 2019, Affinity Photo received 'Photography News' Best Software award.
Again the feature set is strong, with raw editing, panorama stitching, PSD editing, 360 Image editing, unlimited layers and smart object support seemingly directed right at the Photoshop user along with selected plugin support, Text on a parth capabilities stand out as one of those professional features you will quickly need that lesser tools won't have.
The current release, 1.9 is a univeral app, which means it supports Apple silicon Macs. All the major image and vector file types are supported, including IDML (for import and placing content), EPS, JPG, PDF, SVG, PSD, PNG, TIFF and GIF.

The big PSD file test was just as snappy here as in the other Apple silicon apps. It was the same experience exporting the file to png, the resulting file was identical to the one produced by Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, showing the common code shared between them. The software and documentation is comprehensive and there is a superb quick start guide.

Ardour
Ardour is digital audio workstation application (DAW) that runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD and Microsoft Windows. Ardour is intended to be DAW suitable for professional use and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Ardour is free software, you can purchase a subscription for builds.
The current release, 6.6 has an experimental Apple Silicon build and feedback is being solicited. Reading the notes it looke likely to be included in the next major release.

Ardour has extensive if a little Linux focused documentation. On creating music, it directs the end user to a workflow of creating, importing, editing and arranging, mixing and adding effects and finally exporting a finished ready-to-listen piece of work.


REAPER
REAPER (their caps), is a complete digital audio production application for computers, offering a full multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing and mastering toolset. As such REAPER can be called a digital audio workstation application (DAW). REAPER runs on Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. REAPER is released under a proprietary software license.
The current release, v6.28 has an optional beta build for Apple silicon based Macs. REAPER is a very active mature project, with releases seemingly every few weeks recently.
It took seconds to open and play the sample peoject in order to start to get familiar with REAPER. It worked flawlessly and I felt immediately at home.


About the Mac used for this work
It was a 16GB Mac Mini (M1, 2020), with a 34in 3440 x 1440 resolution thunderbolt display.


Methodology
I've downloaded each app, confirmed it is a Universal app running in Apple silicon (I didn't have Rosetta 2 installed on my Mac Mini (M1, 2020). Once loaded I have opened a very large PSD file and exported it to PNG format. Ive completed simple operations in each app like resizing the view to get a feel for application snappiness. I've looked at the apps license, and the support and documentation and the community behind it. I've rejected many potential contenders which do not have a Universal application currently available. That was the whole point of this article in 2021.