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Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator are household names for creative professionals on Mac and PC (though Affinity is trying hard to steal those paying customers). But now, Adobe is gunning for the tablet drawing and painting market by making its Fresco digital painting app completely free.
While Photoshop and Illustrator are on iPad, Procreate has instead become the go-to for digital creators there. This touch-first app was designed for creating digital art and simulating real-world materials. You can switch between hundreds of brush or pencil styles with just a single flick of the Apple Pencil, and while there are other competing apps like Clip Studio Paint (also available on desktop), its $12.99 one-time fee makes it an attractive buy.
Released in 2019, the Fresco app, Adobe’s drawing app for iPadOS, iOS, and Windows, attempted to even the playing field where Photoshop couldn’t, but only provided access to basic features for free. A $10/year subscription provided you with access to over a 1,000 additional brushes, more online storage, additional shapes, access to Adobe’s premium fonts collection, and most importantly, the ability to import custom brushes. Now, you get all of these for free on all supported platforms.
Even with this move, Adobe still has an uphill battle against other tablet apps that are already hugely popular in digital art communities and on social media. Procreate makes it quite easy to share, import, and customize brushes and templates online, giving it a lot of community support. Procreate is also very vocal about not using Generative AI in its products and keeping the app creator-friendly. With its influx of Generative AI tools elsewhere in the Creative Cloud, Adobe cannot make that promise, which could turn some away even if Fresco itself has yet to get any AI functionality.
What Fresco brings to the table is the Adobe ecosystem. It uses a very similar interface to other Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, making Adobe’s users feel at home. You can even use Photoshop brushes with it. Files are saved to Creative Cloud storage and are backed up automatically, making sure you never lose any data. Procreate, on the other hand, stores files locally, which makes it easier to lose them. Procreate is also exclusive to the iPad and iPhones (through the stripped-down Procreate Pocket) while Fresco works with Windows, too.
It’s unclear whether all of that is enough to help Adobe overtake years of hardline Procreate support, but given how popular Photoshop is among artists elsewhere, Fresco could now start to see some use as a lighter, free Photoshop alternative. At any rate, it’s worth trying out, although there’s no word on Android or MacOS versions.