I don’t like Adobe, but you have to understand that their business is not selling software, it’s keeping people locked into their platform.
A rival being free matter not a jot when you’ve got decades of work in Adobe formats, and no end of experience with Adobe software. Especially when the company is paying for it all anyway.
Fuck Adobe & their subscription model. I switched to affinity & never looked back
Same. Just waiting on a native Linux version.
Yeah, same. I hear using wine affinity kinda works, but if they release a native Linux version I can wave goodbye to microslop windows
Good, fuck Adobe.
After CS6 did Adobe started going downhill, beginning with subscriptions replacing paid licenses.
Currently using Krita, and sometimes Paint(dot)net for touchups.
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
Good. Adobe is crap
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.
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.
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.
I’m already an fl studio user, I was more interested in an audio editing program instead of a daw
Oh, you can edit audio with it.
Affinity is good, and runs OK on Linux with recent versions of wine. Resolve is very good. A credible alternative to Premiere, though Fusion isn’t all that compared to Ae.
Ardour is great right now. As is Reaper.
Reaper for DAW if you’re okay with a learning curve.
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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Wonderful! Now I need an Acrobat alternative that my work will accept, and I can kick adobe to the slims from which it came.
That depends on what you do with PDF, for simple viewing I switched to web browsers
Adding images, adding text (not editing existing text), resorting pages, extracting pages, adding and deleting pages, and signing (less important).
Libre office draw is pretty competent.
Affinity layout is also quite capable.
Have you tried Firefox or one of its offshoots like Librefox? They are surprisingly good at viewing and editing PDFs. Just drag the PDF into an empty tab. But I’m sure there are other ways to open them.
I have. But it’s not a replacement for what I use Acrobat, regrettably. I think it’ll get there eventually, though.
Adding images, adding text (not editing existing text), resorting pages, extracting pages, adding and deleting pages, and signing (less important).
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:
We’re in a mature software stage for these art software applications. Easier to catch up than create new features that people make essential to their workflow. Today it’s commercial alternatives that have closed the gap well enough. Someday in the future open source stuff will. It’s inevitable
But now Adobe has generative tools. Every wannabe artist and ass CEOs will look into it as a primary feature.
It’s only a matter of time before the open source stuff gets those features too, if people want them. There’s plenty of decent open source generative AI out there. I’m sure people can find creative ways to incorporate them.
They’re not stock, but both GIMP and Krita have had generative AI plugins for a couple years now. I don’t know how well they match up to the Adobe stuff, but they seemed quite powerful and well-integrated the last time I looked.
Autodesk next, please
Dassault too. Solidworks runs like a dumpster fire and the backwards incompatibility is a daily frustration for me. Their ham-fisted attempt to pivot to online products is so divorced from the reality of how their products get used that it’s abundantly clear no engineers were consulted when defining the new product.
The situation would be laughable if any of the alternatives weren’t also garbage in their own unique ways. Solidworks is only dominant because it’s the least shitty, not because it’s good.
'bout time
good
