Adobe releases its painting app completely for free to compete with Procreate.
The full version of Adobe Fresco no longer requires a subscription.
Adobe aims to attract illustrators to its creative software platform by offering its drawing and painting app, Fresco, completely free to all users. This app represents Adobe's response to tools like Procreate and Clip Studio Paint, which provide a variety of instruments for digital artistic creation and the simulation of real-world materials such as pencils and watercolors.
Fresco is designed for touch-supported devices and stylus input and is accessible on iPad, iPhone, and Windows computers. Although there was previously a free version, premium features, which included access to the complete Adobe font library, a wider selection of brushes, and the option to import custom brushes, required a $9.99 annual subscription. While this cost was relatively affordable for an Adobe service, it could not compete with Procreate's one-time purchase model, which is priced at $12.99.
From now on, all premium features of Fresco are available at no cost. Launched in 2019, this app has not achieved the same recognition as other more established Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, which offer more complex options for professional design. However, Fresco has attractive features in its own right, such as reflective and rotational symmetry, which allow for the creation of mirrored artworks while drawing, as well as the ability to quickly animate drawings with motion presets like “bounce” and “breath.”
Competing applications like Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, and Krita are already popular in the digital art community, as they are affordable, easy to use, and supported on iPads, which tend to be much cheaper than purchasing a computer along with professional graphics tablets. It is likely that most amateur art, web comics, and illustrations from independent designers seen online were created with these tools rather than Adobe applications, including Fresco.
It is noteworthy that Fresco has not integrated any of Adobe's generative AI features and has certain advantages over Procreate, such as having a desktop application and support for cloud storage, while Procreate files are stored locally on the device. By making the app completely free, Adobe could capture the attention of new users, despite the broader challenges the company faces with certain sections of the creative community.
