Tool loyalty is loosening — Adobe still strong
Investor and practitioner pieces say Adobe remains profitable and central, but alternatives with free or compelling AI features are luring users and weakening strict tool loyalty. The practical upshot is that employers care less which single suite you use and more about whether you can deliver consistently across ecosystems—building systems in Figma, producing assets in Illustrator, and handling image work in other tools as needed. That mix changes how you talk about tool fluency in interviews. (seekingalpha.com) (makeuseof.com)
Adobe is still a giant business, but the old idea that one creative suite owns your whole workflow is slipping. Adobe reported $6.40 billion in revenue for the quarter ended February 27, 2026, with subscription revenue up 13 percent, so this is not a collapse story. (adobe.com) What is changing is the edge of the workflow. Adobe’s own pricing page now sells Creative Cloud Pro at $69.99 a month in the United States, while Figma’s Starter plan is free and its Professional full seat starts at $16 a month. (adobe.com) (figma.com) That gap matters because design work no longer starts and ends in one place. Figma’s paid plans center on shared libraries, design systems, and developer handoff, which is why many product teams build interfaces there before anyone opens Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop. (figma.com) Adobe still owns a lot of the production layer. Its Creative Cloud Pro bundle includes more than 20 apps, and Adobe says that bundle now includes unlimited access to standard artificial intelligence features like Generative Fill in Photoshop plus 4,000 monthly generative credits for premium features. (adobe.com) The pressure is coming from tools that attack one job at a time instead of replacing the whole suite. Krita’s open-source artificial intelligence diffusion plugin adds image generation, inpainting, and outpainting inside Krita, which gives artists a free way to do some of the work people once associated mainly with Adobe Firefly. (github.com) (makeuseof.com) Adobe is answering that pressure by widening Firefly rather than keeping it narrow. Adobe’s Firefly page says the service can generate images, video, audio, and designs and can use models from Adobe, Google, OpenAI, and more, which turns Adobe into a hub instead of a closed island. (adobe.com) That is why “Adobe or Figma” is the wrong argument in a lot of hiring conversations now. A product designer might build a component library in Figma, export brand artwork from Illustrator, and clean up campaign images in Photoshop or Krita, all in the same week. (figma.com) (adobe.com) (github.com) Employers are buying outputs, not vows of loyalty. Figma sells team libraries and developer inspection, Adobe sells depth across image, video, and print production, and newer tools keep offering free or cheaper shortcuts for single tasks. (figma.com) (adobe.com 1) (adobe.com 2) So the strongest interview answer in 2026 is usually not “I am an Adobe person” or “I am a Figma person.” It is “I can keep a design system clean in Figma, produce final assets in Adobe tools, and switch when a cheaper or faster tool does one job better.” (figma.com) (adobe.com)
