At the end of last year I finally made the decision to ditch Adobe Photoshop. My disgruntlement started with a very large Brexit-related price-rise, from £9.98 to £14.99 per month. Then I felt more and more uncomfortable as AI features crept in, almost weekly it seemed. Then another price rise was announced - up to £19.97, a second big jump within less than two years.

A little earlier, in October 2025, Affinity/Canva released their new, and free, combined design/publisher/photo app, replacing the three individual Affinity apps (which I had bought at version 1 in 2015). I also owned ClipStudio Paint (I originally bought Manga Studio EX 4 in 2009, updating it eventually to ClipStudio) and used it very occasionally, mostly for their perspective rulers, severely lacking in Photoshop since I had largely moved to digital in 2016.

I'd been a Photoshop user since version 3, circa 1997 (version 4 was out by then but I bought a second-hand copy to begin with), and worked my way through at least a couple of huge manual-guides, becoming - if I do say so myself - quite proficient in it. For the next 28 years Photoshop was my right arm - I used it every day in a multitude of ways, it became a natural environment I hardly had to think about.

To leave that behind has been painful - more than I thought actually. Ending my Photoshop subscription caused them to offer me a couple of free months, so I kept it on as I tried to familiarise myself with a new work flow. I thought it would be relatively easy, but - as similar as Affinity is - it's different enough to get frustrating very quickly, especially when you're so familiar with the alternative. I haven't quite taken to it.

Photoshop disappeared from my hard drive for good in April of this year and I've struggled to slot into a new work-flow. Now, July, I think I'm just about there. ClipStudio has become my drawing app - actually it has a lot more going for it as a drawing app than Photoshop did, not surprising really as it was originally created specifically as comics creation software, and remains that today.

I'm not a fan of many of its short-cut manga tools and don't use them - but I'm beginning to get used to the interface at last. My process remains essentially the same as when I drew on paper, just now it's on a glass screen instead.

ClipStudio's lettering tools don't work well for me - I have a style for that already in place and can't replicate it in CS. So that's when I move over to Affinity, where the master page is assembled and I layout the balloons and lettering in its Vector Studio.

So far this year has not been productive for The Brambletye Box - it has partly been this work flow upheaval, but my schedule has also been kept off-track through some work (much-needed), some family health issues, and, yeah, some creative struggles here and there due to all of the above. But you can't regret what's been, so I'll move forward, refine the workflow more as I go, and carry on - I'm still as excited about this new Julius Chancer story as ever.