Adobe unexpectedly makes Fresco drawing app free

Adobe is looking to attract artists to its creative software platform by making its dedicated drawing and painting app Fresco completely free for everyone. Fresco is Adobe’s answer to programs like Procreate and Clip Studio Paint, which provide rich capabilities for digital fine art and the imitation of real-life drawing tools like pencils, pastels, and watercolors.

Image source: Adobe

Adobe Fresco is designed for touchscreen and stylus-enabled devices and is available on iPad, iPhone, and Windows PC. The app first launched in 2019 and is overshadowed by its more famous siblings like Photoshop and Illustrator, which offer more sophisticated, professional design tools. However, Fresco does offer some ingenious features, including reflective and rotational symmetry and the ability to quickly animate using motion presets such as “bounce” and “breath.”

Previously, Fresco was free to use, but access to the full Adobe Fonts library, an expanded set of tools, and import of custom brushes required a $9.99 annual subscription. This amount is relatively low compared to other Adobe subscriptions, but it still can’t compete with Procreate’s $12.99 lifetime license. Starting today, all Fresco premium features can be used without a subscription.

Competing apps like Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, and Krita are quite popular in the digital art community: they’re affordable, easy to use, and supported on the iPad, which turns out to be cheaper than buying a dedicated PC or professional drawing tablet.

Chances are, most fan art, webcomics, and general illustrations from hobbyists and independent designers available online were created using these tools rather than Adobe applications. Procreate is especially attractive due to its dedicated user base, humane pricing, and refusal to introduce any generative AI tools, which appeals to many artists and illustrators.

Fresco, like Procreate, doesn’t offer generative AI features, but does have a PC version and supports cloud storage, while Procreate files are only saved locally on the device. Perhaps the current complete freeness of Fresco will attract new users to the Adobe platform, despite the general decline in the company’s image among part of the creative community.