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After CS6 did Adobe started going downhill, beginning with subscriptions replacing paid licenses.
Currently using Krita, and sometimes Paint(dot)net for touchups.
People pay for Adobe?
Haven’t used PS in ages. Gimp, Audacity, Inkscape, etc
My organization pays over $200,000 a year for Adobe products :( I swear most of it is just for the ability to edit PDFs
I mean isn’t it more of that the industry is just recognizing the war that Adobe started years ago?
full disclaimer all I’ve read is the damn headline
'bout time
A few years ago I replaced Photoshop with Affinity. Affinity’s user interface is pretty awful, even compared to Photoshop, but it does at least run a bit better. A few years ago I switched from premiere pro to da Vinci resolve, and though resolve has a bit of a learning curve, overall I think it’s better than premiere - it’s definitely faster and crashes a lot less.
I’m hoping that audacity 4 is a good enough audio editor to replace audition - we’ll see, audition is actually pretty good imo but I’d accept a slight downgrade if it means I can get away from Adobe entirely.
Have you tried Reaper daw? I’ve been using it for years at this point. It has a free unlimited lifetime demo, or you can pay them $60 for a lifetime license.
It’s not a lifetime license though. The license is valid for one major release meaning if you buy now, at v7.69, you’re covered for the last v8.x release.
You are correct. It’s been so long since I bought my license it feels like a lifetime. I checked the website and if you buy now it’s valid up to v8.99. That could be years from now. I bought my license in 2020 at v6.05. 6 years is extremely generous considering the software subscription environment we live in today.
Reaper for DAW if you’re okay with a learning curve.
If you think Canva won’t pull the same shit Adobe does once they have the market dominance to do so, you’re deluding yourself.
The only future-proof, user-respecting, dignified alternative is FOSS.
Canva surely would become assholes if they had a monopoly, but it’s a loooooong way from “gaining some market traction” to “Adobe is defeated and powerless to compete”
If only gimp wasn’t garbage… Tbh I’m also kinda wondering how Affinity did pull off the move they made with their 3 programs turning into one, at the same time redoing so much of it.am And why foss can’t do it.
Of course there’s money and closed source is probably messier in a lot of places than foss is (or at least targets to be), but is that it?
Unironic question: is it possible to explain to a non-artistic, non-graphic-design techie like me what makes GIMP so inadequate? I hear this refrain a lot but have never heard an explanation for why it falls SO short that it’s not a viable alternative for most people.
A few years ago I tried putting text on a path (think “curvy text”). First tried gimp, quit frustrated after about a hour. While at some point I “kind of” got it to work, it looked like shit. Then I opened photoshop, was done in about three minutes. Note that I never did it before in photoshop nor gimp.
Luckily, nowadays I just open photopea whenever I would have used photoshop in the past. The fact that one single guy built a better photo editor than gimp should tell you everything.
It’s been a long time since I last used it so I don’t remember specifics, but I found really basic stuff that would take a couple of seconds to do in photoshop were a lot more difficult in gimp. Krita is better…
Was it more difficult or just unfamiliar? Like, if you’d given it a couple of weeks maybe it would have become intuitive? Or was it just bad UX?
I use gimp at least weekly. The UX isn’t great imo, but I’m used to it now, and I’m sure Photoshop would boggle my mind. It also has improved quite a bit in the past years.
I know its not realistic, but I just imagine how great GIMP would be if people donated just 1/20th of what they pay Adobe to the GIMP devs.
Same with LibreOffice vs Office.
We are really missing out on some potentially fantastic software so that a few people can be in the centibillionaire club and it makes me sangry
I know that’s true about more than just software, but the way to “fight back” here is so easy and low risk compared to fighting the other cartels that farm us for $$. It is as easy as not using their products and services if there is a viable alternative that respects your humanity.
it’s difficult to tell if it’s bad ux or unfamiliarity when you’re good at using one and not the other, and not really worth the effort when switching to krita was easier.
Good, fuck Adobe.
good
Good. Adobe is crap
Good
I’ve been using Affinity since 2016 and it has been a good decision so far. Since Affinity Publisher also replaced InDesign (Affinity Designer had already been sufficient for most things), I retired my old CS5.
At work I introduced the programs to my bosses; afterwards all the computers were switched to Affinity, and none of my colleagues miss the old Adobe stuff.
Only one old machine still has an old CS version installed, just for checking and viewing legacy files — it doesn’t cost anything anyway.
Swapping out one proprietary app for another is just delaying the inevitable.
Sometimes buying yourself time is a valid strategy, as long as you understand that it is only a delay and not permanent.
Fair, but why not put energy into learning to use the FOSS tools now instead of getting used to another interface that will eventually betray you?
Is there a light room equivalent
The most fitting app from my point of view would probably be “Dark Table.” I tried it once but found it a bit too complicated for my needs. I’m not sure whether it offers the same feature set as Lightroom these days.
Maybe not a good look to go “AI! AI! AI!” when the actual creatives who use the product get attacked for using AI:
Fuck Adobe & their subscription model. I switched to affinity & never looked back
I’m a creative. I’ve used InDesign since version 1.0. I’ve built my career with Adobe tools.
Adobe Creative Cloud peaked around ten years ago. Since then, it’s totally jumped the shark. I’m not even talking about the company, just the software and its features.
When I open InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator I’m trying to work. It’s software I’ve used for, in some cases, 25 years. My point is, I know it inside and out.
The past few years, every new “feature” gets in the way of my work. Adobe has been changing things that already worked very well, or has added extra steps to do something that used to be easy.
Even worse, Adobe has started to fill its software with notifications that can not be disabled. Invasive blue dots. Invasive blue buttons. Invasive blue overlays that stay visible on the screen even when the software is minimized. Rich tool tips that aren’t disabled by the option to disable rich tool tips.
Adobe has lost me as a devotee. It’s been taken over by venture capital. The company only cares about adoption of new features.
Now, I use it out habit. Because my workplace provides it. Because it’s what folks on my team are used to… but because they’ve come to the ecosystem so late, they only know a fraction of its capabilities.
If Adobe faces demise, I will mourn what if once was. But not what it has become.
A software giant like that can only go two directions:
- suck the installed base tit for paychecks while cutting costs as much as possible
- grow, innovate, expand
They are still trying to be 2 when a lot of people would like them to be 1, and they have to show new feature adoption statistics to prove that all their expensive employees are still worth paying.
See, that’s a false dichotomy.
Modern corporate America demands expansion and growth. But expansion and growth do not need to be required for innovation.
That’s where Adobe is a victim of the vulture capitalists who’ve taken it over.
Both of them can grow profits, which is what’s demanded. Yes, investor demand for constant growth is the pressure that causes it, but the dichotomy is all too real.
Been using Photoshop since 3.0 released on windows. I knew when they went cloud that shit was going sideways, but it was the acquisition of substance painter that did them in for me. Even though CC was kind of a mess, instead of building on the value proposition and including substance, they decided to have it as a separate charge.
Fuck adobe. Fuck subscription software.
Consider supporting ArmorPaint. It’s not a full Substance replacement yet, but it’s affordable and evolving well.
yeah I haven’t spent any time with it for about a year, it’s time to circle back. Thanks for the reminder.
“Fuck Adobe” is my near-daily mantra. I actually utter it out loud at least once a day, if not more. I used to teach PS and worshipped at the temple of PS. These days, FUCK ADOBE!!! I cannot wait for ANYTHING to replace Photoshop/Adobe. Adobe MUST die!.
I was like the other commenters in the thread, but I grew up on even somewhat liking Gimp (yet with PhotoGIMP plugin). It’s good enough for me, and in some places it’s even better. All I want from it is to have a bit better UX here and there, but that’s not too critical.
We can always use older versions. I stayed in cs6 until I migrated full FOSS
Not if it’s for work, generally speaking.
As someone who has a full FOSS stack, can you explain to a non-graphic-design techie like me why people are so allergic to the FOSS alternatives? I just don’t know enough about design to understand why people will put up with so much abuse from Adobe when there are completely free alternatives that are not weighed down by AI and actually respect your privacy.
Dude, you keep asking this question throughout the post and I don’t think you’re going to get an answer that satisfies you.
The short answer is industry inertia and professionals not realizing the amount of power they gave away to toolmakers of their profession through the computer age.
Long answer is most people use these tools to work and the vast majority of paid professional work doesn’t happen in a vacuum and is, in fact, a team effort. So that effectively sets the floor and ceiling for use and adoption. Remember, most real people who get paid real money don’t give a shit about which software package or which version of whatever-the-fuck. In fact, they’d rather most of that bleed away so that they only have to think about what they got hired to think about. Also Bob the CISO really fucking hates anything that ends in .py.
That is the most satisfying answer yet.
Sorry for soapboxing. I get a little spicy when discussing intellectual property rights.
It’s because Adobe truly does have the best feature set. It’s partly because they spent so many years building good software, and partly because they own patents that prevent other tools from operating in some of the same ways.
Adobe applications are interoperable. I can seamlessly move content between them. They all have the same interface and work in basically the same way. I can (and have) put together a 300 page book while taking advantage of many advanced automations. And back before Adobe went to shit, they really did put a lot of effort into making their interfaces intuitive.
And when you have 25 years of muscle memory dedicated to a set of tools, it’s REALLY difficult to completely replace your whole tool set.
Adobe faces demise, I will mourn what if once was
What wait? You can mourn what it was even now. 🤷♂️
While their boot is on your throat, it is difficult to mourn what your oppressor used to be.
I agree. Try telling them this. They just gaslight you. “We can’t replicate this issue.” Always blaming your device.
Have you tried Gimp and Inkscape?
Neither was worth the time it took to uninstall them when they proved almost unusably inferior to the industry standards.
These things are the standard for a reason, OSS hobbyists who are not graphic designers or admin workers generally will never be able to make something that is in the same league for the exact same reason that I couldn’t build a compiler better than the industry standard one, even if I technically had the coding skills to make it, because I haven’t spent decades using one professionally, so I wouldn’t know what an industry pro would want from it.
The great thing about open source is that it’s generally developed by people who use it. Proprietary software is just developed by people who get paid by someone who’s just doing it to make a profit…
Or Krita
Is krita closer to gimp or inkscape? How does it compare/contrast to that one?
I find it to be a useful blend of Gimp and Photoshop.
Does it do bitmaps or vector images? Or both?
Gimp and Inkscape are excellent programs, I LOVE them. But, they are not Adobe replacements.
Why is that? Is it just the user interface? Performance? Or are they missing features that you need?
Please explain to non-artist techies like me why? I keep hearing that refrain but no one can ever explain to me what these FOSS alternatives are actually missing that keeps people from switching.
Based on my experience with Office -> LibreOffice I have to assume it’s some combination of laziness about learning something new, “the interface looks old” nonsense, and being unwilling to work through bugs/quirks (even though Office has plenty of its own bugs/quirks - they’re just different from LibreOffice’s and again, people don’t want to learn something new).
Am I wrong? Am I missing something? Specifically, what makes Photoshop not just better than GIMP, but SOOO MUCH BETTER that people are willing to give their money to bourgeois a-holes for the privilege of running software that they will never truly own, that spies on them, that injects unwanted AI into everything, etc.
Inkscape and Gimp developers, although busy, have still implemenyed some of my feature requests. That’s less likely with Adobe. If there is something you need in the open source ones, it’s likely already on their list to do. If not, request it.
Well, as I stated in a sibling comment, Gimp did replace Photoshop for me. I’m a semi pro user for two decades. My only issue is with its UX, but PhotoGIMP helps a great deal here.
Yes.
How do they compare, in your experience?
They are better than they were. But they are still at least 10 years from being able to match Adobe software - partially because we need to wait for Adobe patents to run out, so that other software can replicate an intuitive software experience.
Ugh, nothing “intuitive” should ever be patentable. Can you imagine if “horizontally-ruled paper” was patented? Or “handles on cooking pans,” “shirts with two sleeves,” or anything of that sort?
Like, why should anyone have to avoid an obvious feature just because someone else did it first? It’s insane.
Also, FOSS projects and non-profits should be exempted from patent restrictions.
I think my CS6 - the last non subscription Adobe Suite from 2012 - is still more intuitive and better to use than the newest GIMP version
Can you elaborate on this? The first time I hear there are patents regarding some intuitive interface. What is that?
Even if so, why not replicate the best of all similar apps, Affinity and Pixelmator too.
Not interface. Experience.
Do a quick web search and you’ll learn all about Adobe patents on features.
What do you mean? I have no idea what to search for. I’d appreciate some links, or some unfolded explanation. Can you patent features? Sounds a bit absurd.
Can I patent booting the OS from a USB drive? That’s a feature, isn’t it?
All I could find is some statistical overviews without much detail, and a more list of recent patents which are all related to AI.
Is there a specific feature that you wish was in the others? I don’t really understand the difference between UX and UI
I mean, I use every alternative I can. Vapoursynth scripts, libraw-based projects, random GitHub repos, DaVinci…
But there are some features I just can’t get great support for outside of definitely-not-high-seas Lightroom Classic:
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Good lens profiles for weird lenses.
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Proper HDR PQ/HLG editing and AVIF/JXL export support.
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RAW support for newer cameras, like my little R50V
I have yet to try DaVinci’s photo editing mode though. That’s very interesting.
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Obligatory comment: we’re never getting that hbomberguy video
I choose to believe, one day he shall return
