Adobe XD is now free (sort of)*

XD could be as big if not bigger than Photoshop someday

Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer and leader of its Creative Cloud software

Where to get it

The free version of Adobe XD can be downloaded from the Adobe XD free download page at https://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html?promoid=K42KVXD5&mv=other

*What’s the catch?

Well, it’s not much of a catch but the free “Starter” version is stand-alone software that limits users to one “Active shared prototype”, one “Active shared design specs”, 2GB of cloud storage, and “Typekit Free (limited font set)”.  See the chart below for comparison or visit Adobe here.

Who is this for?

Art Directors, designers, product designers UX/UI designers — anyone who wants to design, prototype, and share user experiences.

Why this is cool

Well, it’s free — and you can learn the software and work on as many designs as you like. And Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer and leader of its Creative Cloud software says that “XD could be as big if not bigger than Photoshop someday” and “This is the center of design. We believe the product is at a point where the world really needs to see this.”

My thoughts

This is Adobe’s cross-platform (Mac and PC) answer to Sketch (Mac only).  I’ve been a beta tester since early days and have witnessed the evolution of XD and they are constantly improving it.  And this moment in time reminds me of when Adobe launched InDesign to compete with the then industry standard QuarkXPress.  Today InDesign is the industry standard.

For a long time now many art directors and designers have been using Photoshop and InDesign to design interactive experiences.  Photoshop is purpose built for photographic imaging and InDesign for print page layout. XD is purpose built for interactive experience design from UX to UI to Prototyping. It’s easy to use, and promises to create efficiencies that can result in competitive advantages to designers who adopt it’s workflow vs. Photoshop and InDesign.