> But public perception of Adobe has dipped in recent years.
I agree with the quoted tweet (or Threads post, whatever) that Adobe is a brand many or most creative professionals spit on, even if we have no choice but to use their software. They've lost so much good will that if there was literally any other comparable tool suite out there, Adobe would be out of business faster than it takes to boot up their horrible software. I do my best to avoid them, but sometimes even I have to put a clothespin on my nose and do certain tasks in Illustrator or Photoshop.
I have been hearing this exact line for the last 15 years, and yet the company continues to be the industry standard and increases revenues year after year. I don't see that changing any time soon.
And, in general, the FOSS communities (including on HN) are often incredibly ignorant of how deficient GIMP and other tools are compared to Photoshop.
Let me put it in programmer's terms: Using GIMP is like telling you to build a website with a COBOL backend. It's technically possible - the IRS has all but done it - and it's Turing complete, so why can't you?
> Would programmers listen to an artists opinion on programming languages and IDEs? Of course not.
I'll address that question in just a second, but as far as I can tell, the makers of GIMP have failed to listen to anybody about how that name turns people off and it's failed to gain acceptance because it's got such a terrible name. Ow heartbreaking to see such hard work wasted because horsecocks and panty-dropper, or other equally bad names could have been chosen instead. As far as listening to artists opinions, where do you think easier to use languages like Python or Ruby came from? By listening to curmudgeons that C syntax is totally fine, pointers are easy, it's fun to lose hours looking for a semicolon, and people like the author of "Real programmers use Pascal", so no need to make any changes? Or were there people, some of whom make art, who said, this crap is too confusing, and easier to use programming languages and IDEs came along? The ethos that everyone should be able to program comes hand in hand with listening to users, no matter what their day job. Programmers universally write for two classes of people. Themselves, and others. Talking to users and getting feedback (now that LLMs can write the code, but also before) is job #1 for a programmer. In order to do a good job, before you write a single line of code, you gotta find your users and see how they live, before you can write software that helps them. Find me a software project that didn't engage with its users and I'll find you software that has failed to gain wider acceptance. Like, say, Gim Paint, as I call it, since the name Gimp is such trash.
If your first instinct is to down vote this, I urge you to articulate your counterargument, because I think this comment is spot on. I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable. E.g., by illustrating comprehensive experience using both the open source applications and the commercial competitors and demonstrating through example the relative merits of each.
Open source tools (outside of Blender, which has an amazing reputation among creative professionals) are not discussed at all in creative circles, there is no mirror image of creative professionals bashing open source tools.
what about the comments in this very thread? every argument about gimp vs photoshop has claims that photoshop is so much better. i don't dispute that, but i am still waiting to see the evidence
I think the dilemma here is trying and failing. Many of us tried the open source alternatives and failed, there's nothing really useful to say about that. It might just be a failure on our part, i.e., someone else with a better approach might succeed. But what you really need is someone who's an expert in Photoshop, to move to an open source alternative and succeed and then weigh the advantages, and this needs to happen in aggregate to start getting a real sense of what the difference are. Note that I don't think even the commercial Affinity apps have crossed this bar, so it's nothing against open source, it's just photo editing at the high-end is just a one-tool market. Contrast this to Final Cut Pro X vs. Premiere vs. DaVinci Resolve, where you can find countless comparisons of the individual advantages of each of those platforms, that's a market with healthy competition and options. Same with DAWs, same with 3D packages.
GIMP is awesome on Linux. GIMP runs like ass on OSX. I still use GIMP on OSX anyways, but I see that weighing heavily on someone considering their options.
I've published a game on the Apple App Store. All graphics were produced using non-Adobe commercial and open source software. I even used relatively ancient software.
Here's a list:
- Creature House Expression: a competitor to Illustrator, which has a way better UI than anything Adobe, and still (AFAIK) unique features (eg. "skeletal strokes").
- Synthetik Studio Artist: has no competitor, and outdoes anything that Photoshop can accomplish in its niche;
- Vue d'Esprit 4: landscape and plant generation, which worked well enough that I didn't need any resource-hungry later versions;
- Candy Factory (for the Amiga, running under emulation): I'm sure some PS plugins can do the same, but why bother when I had this already from way back?
- GIMP: STFU about the UI. If you're used to Photoshop, get used to something else; PS is not the pinnacle of UI excellence.
Other superb software:
- VectorStyler, which might be a practical successor to Expression;
- Escape Motions software collection.
I've also tried Affinity Photo and Designer, but I definitely prefer the software I mentioned above.
So, YES, I am qualified to bash Adobe, and I unashamedly do so.
Not to detract from your post, which I found super interesting to read. I hadn't heard of most of the software you listed and most of it was pretty interesting.
But I wouldn't find it convincing as a list of Adobe alternatives, the main thing that seems missing is expertise with Adobe software.
The type of review I'm primarily interested in is from folks who have used the software semi-daily for a long time, often at least a decade. The feedback usually looks something like this (e.g., something I'd imagine reading comparing NLE packages): "I edit ~10 documentaries a year in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci's color workflow is clearly superior, the UI is deeper, and the way the color wheels work makes it easier to make fine-grade adjustments. The node-based color workflow also makes it easier to separate making color corrections from actually color grading. But on the other side, Premiere's Dynamic Link integration, makes it easier to maintain and iterate on shots that involve a lot of 2D motion graphics."
A couple of points that I look for:
- Someone that's done something so many times that they no longer care about anything other than the best tool for the job. Often times the best tool is different if your goal is quality vs. speed, it's a good sign if that's specifically called out.
- They don't have chip on their shoulder. A lot of folks don't like paying at all, so will always prefer the cheaper software. Or they prefer open source software inherently. Or they have some other priority, like not wanting to install Adobe Creative Cloud (which starts a permanent process always running on your machine, which is icky). All of those are perfectly fine priorities for someone to have, but care absolutely zero about anyone else's opinion on any of that stuff, because I can already gauge for myself how I feel about those things. I.e., I already know how I feel about the price of software, so I don't care about someone else's opinion. What I want to know is if I invest in learning this software for a decade daily, how am I going to feel about it then? Would I have preferred investing in another package? The only way to gauge that is hearing from folks that have already done that. Note they don't need a decade of experience in the second package to compare, but they definitely need it for the first.
Just for completions sake, the other thing I noticed about your list is a lot of the packages were for one specific niche, which is a different category of software. All of the Adobe flagships are general purpose.
I have two decades of experience in Creature House Expression...! It's my go-to for anything vector.
What I love about it: foremost, the UI. It was made for the software, not based on any existing library (as far as I'm aware). (I particularly love the 'dials' which work equivalently to sliders; and which, when double-clicked, allow the user to enter precise values in a text box.)
It's organized intuitively, with a great balance between simplicity and features. And features! It seems that Affinity Designer still hasn't caught up to this 2003 software. CorelDRAW is clunky in comparison too. While Expression's isolated bugs and annoyances will never be fixed, it's a joy to work in: grids and guides are perfectly 'good enough' (not the equal of Inkscape); onion-skins are invaluable for animating; fonts have simple but comprehensive controls (although OpenType doesn't work properly); brushes are unrivaled, even by Illustrator; and the (optionally) bitmap-style vectors enable a different kind of work flow.
Unfortunately, there's no SVG output, so I export as PDF and use Inkscape to convert. However, Expression also allows saving in a text-based format, which could be the basis for a file converter.
It can also use Photoshop plugins! Since I work mainly with vectors, I haven't had occasion to try this feature yet...
Expression is still available as a free download. It works in Wine on (Intel) Mac and Linux. The manual is great! And the sample files (together with the old website) are delightfully whimsical. It's stable, mature, and (in my opinion) outshines Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW, and Inkscape.
I used to use photoshop and Lightroom a lot. I got pretty good at it.
The Linux equivalents are quite good. I currently have 2 pieces in an exhibit I created with GIMP (manipulated photos). It’s got layering and the filters I needed. I’ve started to use dark table somewhat (it’s like Adobe Lightroom) but there are a few other photo organizers to try.
The UI is on these tools is different.. different and not great. But workable. The docementation is a little lacking. To be fair there is a whole industry based around teaching Adobe product (I went to one of their conferences years ago)
The 2 standout application for art creation in Foss seem to be blender(3d modeling) and Krita (painting).
while i concede that i don't know how good photoshop is, based on my experience of building websites and using gimp for photo editing, i find the suggestion that gimp is as bad as cobol disturbing, unless cobol is much better than its reputation.
try finding a better comparison please.
everytime i look at a discussion of gimp vs photoshop, i fail to find anyone articulating exactly why photoshop is so much better.
Consider the expressive power of GIMP over ImageMagick, then imagine that Photoshop is an increment of expressive power over GIMP.
As you become familiar with Photoshop you will experience a usage gestalt that is unattainable with GIMP.
But why? Compared to Photoshop, GIMP's UI is a continually unfolding disaster by comparison.
Plus Photoshop includes Adobe Camera Raw which in and of itself is a UI majesty compared to anything available in Linux and its just an adjunct capability.
The programming language analogy is a good one. There's no point in arguing which language is the best, but everyone knows that language features have an obvious bearing on productivity in particular domains: this is demonstrated beyond all doubt via the enormous efficacy of levels of interface abstraction over the innate capabilities of a physical computer.
If you regard PS and GIMP as GUI languages for image manipulation, the expressive power and smoothness of operating PS compared to GIMP is obvious to any diligent user.
The joy of GIMP is that the advantage of GIMP over no image manipulator is infinite, while the advantage of PS over GIMP is merely incremental. This is the profound philosophical basis of Linux: it's something that can't be easily taken away from you. Photoshop is much more tenuous.
As to being able to appreciate the distinction, there's an old joke about advertising the advantage of color TVs on TV: if you can see the advantage, you already have a color TV. And if you don't have a color TV you can't see the advantage.
I can't speak for pros but as a hobbiest IMO Lightroom has improved more in the last 5 years than in the 5 before that. Some of that is the industry as a whole (HDR displays, for instance, allowing Lightroom letting me process old raw files in HDR). Some of it is their new AI based stuff (the new noise reduction is a particularly dramatic jump over the old one). Apple's tools certainly aren't close (currently).
15 years ago I've tried PaintshopPro before settling with Photoshop for image editing. And my impression about it was that it was good enough. I switched to Photoshop because there were more learning resources for it.
It's sad it lags so much behind now, as I hate paying for Adobe's subscription.
All open source software gets endless amounts of vitriol and hate from people who are used to their particular commercial tool and aren't willing to learn a new way to work. Blender is probably the prime example of this.
I think this is the biggest problem with FOSS alternatives, and it's a people problem (the type of problem FOSS devs are rarely equipped to solve). It doesn't matter what the technical merits of Krita or Blender or whatever are, because the same complaints from the same people will never go away. The only reasonable way forward is to ignore that demographic of people and their complaints, and just focus on doing their own thing.
This isn't a new phenomenon, it has always been this way. If you're a professional who uses Photoshop in their daily work, consider that maybe your assessment of FOSS alternatives isn't fair, and try dedicating some time to learning a new workflow with new tools with an open mind. If you're not willing to do that much, then you're going to be stuck with Adobe forever, and will be forever grouchy.
> This isn't a new phenomenon, it has always been this way. If you're a professional who uses Photoshop in their daily work, consider that maybe your assessment of FOSS alternatives isn't fair, and try dedicating some time to learning a new workflow with new tools with an open mind. If you're not willing to do that much, then you're going to be stuck with Adobe forever, and will be forever grouchy.
If you think folks haven't done this, then you're not paying attention. They've tried that and failed. That's the whole problem, they're failing to migrate to the open source options. That we can just take as a given, look if you can't compete with Adobe in 2024, then you're not ready to be at the table yet. There have never been better conditions to compete in these areas than there are right now.
Note that none of your complaints hold up with Blender, sure I occasionally see folks suggest that Blender's UI is a bit janky. But the overwhelming sentiment in creative circles toward Blender is heartfelt gratitude that application exists and is so capable. From my own personal observations, I'd put Blender as one of the most loved GUI applications in existence today.
I'd even go as far as to say Blender is over loved, I don't think it gets enough pushback for not having a dedicated GPU-renderer which is tablestakes feature today. So I'd actual say your entire point is actually inversed, FOSS gets too much leeway for being less capable because folks value the FOSS (and free-as-in-beer) points too much, which causes the software to be recommended in contexts where it really shouldn't be yet.
Blender is an even better counterexample, because it had a truly terrible GUI that everyone complained about, worked hard at it, launched a new version with a much better GUI that made things much closer to how commercial apps do it, and this helped it tremendously. Now, it is beloved and used fairly widely throughout industry.
(Note: I'm not a 3d professional, though I am somewhat connected to it. I am mostly observing the community from the outside, so if I'm wrong about this I'll welcome the correction.)
Yeah accurate, I'd just note Blender is still by no means a conventional app regarding its GUI today. E.g., there are a lot of two sequential letter key bindings, and a lot of other modes. (The other 3D packages I've used also have their own UI quirks, but there's still a difference worth noting.)
> (There's also the fact that any professional image editor, paid specifically to do image editing, will tell you GIMP is a toy.)
To be fair, this is because they are, ironically, professional image editors.
GIMP has historically very bad GUI. This is common in open-source projects, where technical people develop the software based on the capabilities. There is rarely UI/UX designer in the project that makes sure that average Joe can do the thing as well. So, technical people likely would disagree with these professional image editors, and they could demonstrate the same end-results with GIMP as these professionals do with other software. Professionals just had no idea how to.
Just FYI for people with a background in Photoshop, trying to evaluate the accuracy of the comment I'm replying to. The GIMP just added non-destructive editing (adjustment layers) in 2024.
> In the case of GIMP, the very name itself means it cannot be used in commercial enterprises.
I have no idea where you got this info from but it is 100% wrong. Of course GIMP can be used for commercial purposes. Or any purposes you want, really. The GNU GPL does not prevent commercial use.
Nobody bats an eye when we say we edited their pictures with GIMP. Even our British customers, who are more likely to understand what "gimp" means, I guess.
I mean, they already often use mac OS after all, which means pimp, in French. And who cares.
My question is, all these people who spit on Adobe. What is Apple doing differently that would make it a good option? Apple is even more rent-seeking than Adobe. The fact that their software only runs on exorbitantly expensive hardware being the least of those methods.
It's too late for this former user of Apple's productivity software. Killing Aperture and nerfing the iWork suite destroyed any willingness I could have ever had to go back.
I like their OS, but it would be a hard sell for me to ever choose to migrate to their productivity software again.
> When Apple shuttered development of Aperture, there were rumors it did so because it entered into a gentleman’s agreement with Adobe to give Lightroom the space it needed to take over the photography software industry. That worked, and Adobe applications ran great on Apple computers.
I’d not heard this theory (though the only pro-space app I care about is Logic for audio). I’d love if Apple started smashing the funding button for their pro apps again, but they’ve already caused a lot of distrust when they killed Aperture.
Not to mention other products that don’t get ongoing updates (HomePod, Mac Pro for about a century, Xserve line that was killed, and other more recent items that aren’t top of mind atm). Justifying the risk of conversion will be an uphill battle.
I wonder how much would Adobe benefit from porting its suite to Linux for example. Do a Steam move and pick a fave distro, use some translation layer and bam. I vote for the unholy matrimony of Adobe+Steam to break the stronghold of MS+Apple.
That is pretty much the chicken and egg problem of Linux in regards to Apps and Games.
Many years I asked a very wise person: "what would happen if adobe port photoshop to Linux?"
The answer was "nothing". I asked why; the answers was: "no Photoshop user will migrate for Linux because of it, no gimp user will migrate to Photoshop".
Also, I've read in HN once: that are more people using Linux on the desktop than there are Photoshop users. People overestimate photoshop as a killer app.
I get why subscriptions are a thing but it's insane how much Lightroom costs if you're just a casual photographer. Especially the blatant push for yearly commitments and hoop jumping to cancel the trial.
I guess Adobe only wants professionals and very serious amateurs to use their products these days.
> I guess Adobe only wants professionals and very serious amateurs to use their products these days.
To be fair, OS-native (and free 3rd party) apps are very good for the average amateur photographer, unlike 15 years ago. I think the market size of that segment has shrunk as a result.
I've used Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects constantly for 15 years. There have been no significant improvements and no meaningful competitors. The AI stuff is junky. The movement to expensive subscription plans sucks for artists. Shocked no one has moved into this space.
Procreate has been an amazing and affordable alternative to drawing in photoshop/illustrator, and Figma filled a space that Adobe ignored, and Blender can do some amazing video editing things. But with PS, AI, and AE there is so much opportunity for competition.
Unless Apple is planning to release any of the said software for Windows as well then I don't see Adobe being cornered. Apple wants to sell hardware so its unlikely to port to Windows. Creatives are no longer exclusive to Apple hardware as it used to be 15 years ago.
Exactly, macOS is ~20% market share vs Windows worldwide. It's not a competition if you're only competing for a small slice of the pie on your own platform. I don't see this driving further adoption of macOS much, but even if it did, it would only be making up ground lost due to the Final Cut X shmozzle.
Aperture to me was the perfect photography software and was sad to see it discontinued. It did seem a bit niche in a competitive area that may not have justified porting to Apple Silicon and supporting.
Now the play seems to be for Apple to dominate all creative professional software and make Windows+Creative/Pro software as much an oxymoron as Mac+Games.
> When Apple shuttered development of Aperture, there were rumors it did so because it entered into a gentleman’s agreement with Adobe to give Lightroom the space it needed to take over the photography software industry. That worked, and Adobe applications ran great on Apple computers.
If all of this speculation is true, I wonder what they'll do to compete with Lightroom? - either bring back Aperture, or something similar but completely new
Not quite. Photomator + Photos is sort of a Lightroom alternative but it’s not a fully integrated photo management system to the level of aperture or Lightroom.
There’s a lot of organizational workflows that neither photos nor Photomator even attempt to include today. Ratings, multiple tags, quick selects, rapid export presets, multiple version handling etc
I'm going to sidetrack this a little and shit on ON1 before anyone mentions it.
I searched high and low for an Adobe competitor, even using Aperture with Reactive until it became too unstable. ON1 was the only other thing close to being usable.
For a few releases, it was nice. But it's unstable as hell these days. So unfortunate because it's powerful and has a nice interface. Unfortunately they prioritize new features over fixing things. Whoever the product manager is should be fired over the crap AI features they shoved in.
Final Cut Pro X was an example of how a complete rewrite almost always being a mistake. Now if Apple was really committed to rearchitecting the app (which is fair), they should've done it in parallel. That is, release both versions at the same time. Yes, it's more expensive but it's simply not worth killing your audience by cutting back features because they aren't imported yet. Brand the two versions differently but have the same licnese activate both.
So I will defend the idea of software subscriptions, not Adobe's implementation thereof.
You may like software you purchase but you don't really purchase software anymore. It may rely on online services that can go offline. There is a constant need for bugfixes. Old versions may not get those fixes. Vendors will gate new features behind major versions that you have to buy and the threshold for what constitutes a major version gets lower and lower over time.
Adobe was guilty of all of this. Photoshop has a Camera Raw plugin. Back in the day, new RAW formats (which came out all the time) were added to later Camera Raw versiona and those versions required later PS versions for literally no reason, other than to force you to buy the upgrade.
Purchasing software just isn't the panacea many think it is.
Subscriptions have a better incentive model to continuously fix and develop the software without artificially creating major versions to push sales.
Jetbrains is really the gold standard for subscriptions. Adobe... isn't. Adobe uses dark patterns for renewals and subscription periods. They keep jacking up the prices. They hide these price hikes in bundles.
> But public perception of Adobe has dipped in recent years.
I agree with the quoted tweet (or Threads post, whatever) that Adobe is a brand many or most creative professionals spit on, even if we have no choice but to use their software. They've lost so much good will that if there was literally any other comparable tool suite out there, Adobe would be out of business faster than it takes to boot up their horrible software. I do my best to avoid them, but sometimes even I have to put a clothespin on my nose and do certain tasks in Illustrator or Photoshop.
I have been hearing this exact line for the last 15 years, and yet the company continues to be the industry standard and increases revenues year after year. I don't see that changing any time soon.
The vendor lock in is extremely strong.
And, in general, the FOSS communities (including on HN) are often incredibly ignorant of how deficient GIMP and other tools are compared to Photoshop.
Let me put it in programmer's terms: Using GIMP is like telling you to build a website with a COBOL backend. It's technically possible - the IRS has all but done it - and it's Turing complete, so why can't you?
Your comment is very spot on. So many people here bash Adobe but don’t actually use their products professionally.
Would programmers listen to an artists opinion on programming languages and IDEs? Of course not.
The opinions themselves may be valid as relative to the individual but they’re not scalable beyond that.
> Would programmers listen to an artists opinion on programming languages and IDEs? Of course not.
I'll address that question in just a second, but as far as I can tell, the makers of GIMP have failed to listen to anybody about how that name turns people off and it's failed to gain acceptance because it's got such a terrible name. Ow heartbreaking to see such hard work wasted because horsecocks and panty-dropper, or other equally bad names could have been chosen instead. As far as listening to artists opinions, where do you think easier to use languages like Python or Ruby came from? By listening to curmudgeons that C syntax is totally fine, pointers are easy, it's fun to lose hours looking for a semicolon, and people like the author of "Real programmers use Pascal", so no need to make any changes? Or were there people, some of whom make art, who said, this crap is too confusing, and easier to use programming languages and IDEs came along? The ethos that everyone should be able to program comes hand in hand with listening to users, no matter what their day job. Programmers universally write for two classes of people. Themselves, and others. Talking to users and getting feedback (now that LLMs can write the code, but also before) is job #1 for a programmer. In order to do a good job, before you write a single line of code, you gotta find your users and see how they live, before you can write software that helps them. Find me a software project that didn't engage with its users and I'll find you software that has failed to gain wider acceptance. Like, say, Gim Paint, as I call it, since the name Gimp is such trash.
I know a company that decided against CockroachDB because the CTO had a roach phobia.
If your first instinct is to down vote this, I urge you to articulate your counterargument, because I think this comment is spot on. I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable. E.g., by illustrating comprehensive experience using both the open source applications and the commercial competitors and demonstrating through example the relative merits of each.
I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable
i also would like to see someone defending all that gimp bashing do the same.
the problem comes from both sides.
Open source tools (outside of Blender, which has an amazing reputation among creative professionals) are not discussed at all in creative circles, there is no mirror image of creative professionals bashing open source tools.
what about the comments in this very thread? every argument about gimp vs photoshop has claims that photoshop is so much better. i don't dispute that, but i am still waiting to see the evidence
I think the dilemma here is trying and failing. Many of us tried the open source alternatives and failed, there's nothing really useful to say about that. It might just be a failure on our part, i.e., someone else with a better approach might succeed. But what you really need is someone who's an expert in Photoshop, to move to an open source alternative and succeed and then weigh the advantages, and this needs to happen in aggregate to start getting a real sense of what the difference are. Note that I don't think even the commercial Affinity apps have crossed this bar, so it's nothing against open source, it's just photo editing at the high-end is just a one-tool market. Contrast this to Final Cut Pro X vs. Premiere vs. DaVinci Resolve, where you can find countless comparisons of the individual advantages of each of those platforms, that's a market with healthy competition and options. Same with DAWs, same with 3D packages.
GIMP is awesome on Linux. GIMP runs like ass on OSX. I still use GIMP on OSX anyways, but I see that weighing heavily on someone considering their options.
Sure, I can do that.
I've published a game on the Apple App Store. All graphics were produced using non-Adobe commercial and open source software. I even used relatively ancient software.
Here's a list:
- Creature House Expression: a competitor to Illustrator, which has a way better UI than anything Adobe, and still (AFAIK) unique features (eg. "skeletal strokes").
- Synthetik Studio Artist: has no competitor, and outdoes anything that Photoshop can accomplish in its niche;
- Vue d'Esprit 4: landscape and plant generation, which worked well enough that I didn't need any resource-hungry later versions;
- Candy Factory (for the Amiga, running under emulation): I'm sure some PS plugins can do the same, but why bother when I had this already from way back?
- GIMP: STFU about the UI. If you're used to Photoshop, get used to something else; PS is not the pinnacle of UI excellence.
Other superb software:
- VectorStyler, which might be a practical successor to Expression;
- Escape Motions software collection.
I've also tried Affinity Photo and Designer, but I definitely prefer the software I mentioned above.
So, YES, I am qualified to bash Adobe, and I unashamedly do so.
Not to detract from your post, which I found super interesting to read. I hadn't heard of most of the software you listed and most of it was pretty interesting.
But I wouldn't find it convincing as a list of Adobe alternatives, the main thing that seems missing is expertise with Adobe software.
The type of review I'm primarily interested in is from folks who have used the software semi-daily for a long time, often at least a decade. The feedback usually looks something like this (e.g., something I'd imagine reading comparing NLE packages): "I edit ~10 documentaries a year in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci's color workflow is clearly superior, the UI is deeper, and the way the color wheels work makes it easier to make fine-grade adjustments. The node-based color workflow also makes it easier to separate making color corrections from actually color grading. But on the other side, Premiere's Dynamic Link integration, makes it easier to maintain and iterate on shots that involve a lot of 2D motion graphics."
A couple of points that I look for:
- Someone that's done something so many times that they no longer care about anything other than the best tool for the job. Often times the best tool is different if your goal is quality vs. speed, it's a good sign if that's specifically called out.
- They don't have chip on their shoulder. A lot of folks don't like paying at all, so will always prefer the cheaper software. Or they prefer open source software inherently. Or they have some other priority, like not wanting to install Adobe Creative Cloud (which starts a permanent process always running on your machine, which is icky). All of those are perfectly fine priorities for someone to have, but care absolutely zero about anyone else's opinion on any of that stuff, because I can already gauge for myself how I feel about those things. I.e., I already know how I feel about the price of software, so I don't care about someone else's opinion. What I want to know is if I invest in learning this software for a decade daily, how am I going to feel about it then? Would I have preferred investing in another package? The only way to gauge that is hearing from folks that have already done that. Note they don't need a decade of experience in the second package to compare, but they definitely need it for the first.
Just for completions sake, the other thing I noticed about your list is a lot of the packages were for one specific niche, which is a different category of software. All of the Adobe flagships are general purpose.
I have two decades of experience in Creature House Expression...! It's my go-to for anything vector.
What I love about it: foremost, the UI. It was made for the software, not based on any existing library (as far as I'm aware). (I particularly love the 'dials' which work equivalently to sliders; and which, when double-clicked, allow the user to enter precise values in a text box.)
It's organized intuitively, with a great balance between simplicity and features. And features! It seems that Affinity Designer still hasn't caught up to this 2003 software. CorelDRAW is clunky in comparison too. While Expression's isolated bugs and annoyances will never be fixed, it's a joy to work in: grids and guides are perfectly 'good enough' (not the equal of Inkscape); onion-skins are invaluable for animating; fonts have simple but comprehensive controls (although OpenType doesn't work properly); brushes are unrivaled, even by Illustrator; and the (optionally) bitmap-style vectors enable a different kind of work flow.
Unfortunately, there's no SVG output, so I export as PDF and use Inkscape to convert. However, Expression also allows saving in a text-based format, which could be the basis for a file converter.
It can also use Photoshop plugins! Since I work mainly with vectors, I haven't had occasion to try this feature yet...
Expression is still available as a free download. It works in Wine on (Intel) Mac and Linux. The manual is great! And the sample files (together with the old website) are delightfully whimsical. It's stable, mature, and (in my opinion) outshines Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW, and Inkscape.
Sounds pretty cool, thanks for sharing!
I used to use photoshop and Lightroom a lot. I got pretty good at it.
The Linux equivalents are quite good. I currently have 2 pieces in an exhibit I created with GIMP (manipulated photos). It’s got layering and the filters I needed. I’ve started to use dark table somewhat (it’s like Adobe Lightroom) but there are a few other photo organizers to try.
The UI is on these tools is different.. different and not great. But workable. The docementation is a little lacking. To be fair there is a whole industry based around teaching Adobe product (I went to one of their conferences years ago)
The 2 standout application for art creation in Foss seem to be blender(3d modeling) and Krita (painting).
Sad but very apt analysis :(
It's similar to how commenters push desktop Linux/LibreOffice over Windows/MS Office.
Yeah, I love Linux and dislike MS, too. Desktop Linux _has_ dramatically improved, but the average user isn't going to want to use it.
i use gimp, and i build websites.
while i concede that i don't know how good photoshop is, based on my experience of building websites and using gimp for photo editing, i find the suggestion that gimp is as bad as cobol disturbing, unless cobol is much better than its reputation.
try finding a better comparison please.
everytime i look at a discussion of gimp vs photoshop, i fail to find anyone articulating exactly why photoshop is so much better.
Consider the expressive power of GIMP over ImageMagick, then imagine that Photoshop is an increment of expressive power over GIMP.
As you become familiar with Photoshop you will experience a usage gestalt that is unattainable with GIMP.
But why? Compared to Photoshop, GIMP's UI is a continually unfolding disaster by comparison.
Plus Photoshop includes Adobe Camera Raw which in and of itself is a UI majesty compared to anything available in Linux and its just an adjunct capability.
The programming language analogy is a good one. There's no point in arguing which language is the best, but everyone knows that language features have an obvious bearing on productivity in particular domains: this is demonstrated beyond all doubt via the enormous efficacy of levels of interface abstraction over the innate capabilities of a physical computer.
If you regard PS and GIMP as GUI languages for image manipulation, the expressive power and smoothness of operating PS compared to GIMP is obvious to any diligent user.
The joy of GIMP is that the advantage of GIMP over no image manipulator is infinite, while the advantage of PS over GIMP is merely incremental. This is the profound philosophical basis of Linux: it's something that can't be easily taken away from you. Photoshop is much more tenuous.
As to being able to appreciate the distinction, there's an old joke about advertising the advantage of color TVs on TV: if you can see the advantage, you already have a color TV. And if you don't have a color TV you can't see the advantage.
I can't speak for pros but as a hobbiest IMO Lightroom has improved more in the last 5 years than in the 5 before that. Some of that is the industry as a whole (HDR displays, for instance, allowing Lightroom letting me process old raw files in HDR). Some of it is their new AI based stuff (the new noise reduction is a particularly dramatic jump over the old one). Apple's tools certainly aren't close (currently).
15 years ago I've tried PaintshopPro before settling with Photoshop for image editing. And my impression about it was that it was good enough. I switched to Photoshop because there were more learning resources for it.
It's sad it lags so much behind now, as I hate paying for Adobe's subscription.
I'm not a frequent user of Photoshop, so I was wondering what it does that Krita doesn't? (Or gimp)
User interface. Seriously.
The efficiency of these tools is not measured by the capabilities, but by the effort it takes from the user to get the expected end result.
I used Affinity tools as a better alternative. Are they not a player anymore?
All open source software gets endless amounts of vitriol and hate from people who are used to their particular commercial tool and aren't willing to learn a new way to work. Blender is probably the prime example of this.
I think this is the biggest problem with FOSS alternatives, and it's a people problem (the type of problem FOSS devs are rarely equipped to solve). It doesn't matter what the technical merits of Krita or Blender or whatever are, because the same complaints from the same people will never go away. The only reasonable way forward is to ignore that demographic of people and their complaints, and just focus on doing their own thing.
This isn't a new phenomenon, it has always been this way. If you're a professional who uses Photoshop in their daily work, consider that maybe your assessment of FOSS alternatives isn't fair, and try dedicating some time to learning a new workflow with new tools with an open mind. If you're not willing to do that much, then you're going to be stuck with Adobe forever, and will be forever grouchy.
> This isn't a new phenomenon, it has always been this way. If you're a professional who uses Photoshop in their daily work, consider that maybe your assessment of FOSS alternatives isn't fair, and try dedicating some time to learning a new workflow with new tools with an open mind. If you're not willing to do that much, then you're going to be stuck with Adobe forever, and will be forever grouchy.
If you think folks haven't done this, then you're not paying attention. They've tried that and failed. That's the whole problem, they're failing to migrate to the open source options. That we can just take as a given, look if you can't compete with Adobe in 2024, then you're not ready to be at the table yet. There have never been better conditions to compete in these areas than there are right now.
Note that none of your complaints hold up with Blender, sure I occasionally see folks suggest that Blender's UI is a bit janky. But the overwhelming sentiment in creative circles toward Blender is heartfelt gratitude that application exists and is so capable. From my own personal observations, I'd put Blender as one of the most loved GUI applications in existence today.
I'd even go as far as to say Blender is over loved, I don't think it gets enough pushback for not having a dedicated GPU-renderer which is tablestakes feature today. So I'd actual say your entire point is actually inversed, FOSS gets too much leeway for being less capable because folks value the FOSS (and free-as-in-beer) points too much, which causes the software to be recommended in contexts where it really shouldn't be yet.
Blender is an even better counterexample, because it had a truly terrible GUI that everyone complained about, worked hard at it, launched a new version with a much better GUI that made things much closer to how commercial apps do it, and this helped it tremendously. Now, it is beloved and used fairly widely throughout industry.
(Note: I'm not a 3d professional, though I am somewhat connected to it. I am mostly observing the community from the outside, so if I'm wrong about this I'll welcome the correction.)
Yeah accurate, I'd just note Blender is still by no means a conventional app regarding its GUI today. E.g., there are a lot of two sequential letter key bindings, and a lot of other modes. (The other 3D packages I've used also have their own UI quirks, but there's still a difference worth noting.)
>The only reasonable way forward is to ignore that demographic of people and their complaints, and just focus on doing their own thing.
Sure, if they don't want to have users.
Same goes for Lightroom, many competitors, none of them has the full feature package that Lightroom Classic has.
I can use DXO Photolab or Capture One Pro or even ON1 Photo Raw or Skylum Luninar instead of Lightroom.
It's Photoshop I can't replace with something else.
Photo editing. Krita is for painting.
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> (There's also the fact that any professional image editor, paid specifically to do image editing, will tell you GIMP is a toy.)
To be fair, this is because they are, ironically, professional image editors.
GIMP has historically very bad GUI. This is common in open-source projects, where technical people develop the software based on the capabilities. There is rarely UI/UX designer in the project that makes sure that average Joe can do the thing as well. So, technical people likely would disagree with these professional image editors, and they could demonstrate the same end-results with GIMP as these professionals do with other software. Professionals just had no idea how to.
Just FYI for people with a background in Photoshop, trying to evaluate the accuracy of the comment I'm replying to. The GIMP just added non-destructive editing (adjustment layers) in 2024.
> In the case of GIMP, the very name itself means it cannot be used in commercial enterprises.
I have no idea where you got this info from but it is 100% wrong. Of course GIMP can be used for commercial purposes. Or any purposes you want, really. The GNU GPL does not prevent commercial use.
see also https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#can-i-use-gimp-commer...
pretty sure OP meant the naming itself of GIMP is poor and hard to sell in an enterprise environment
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It probably depend on your environment I guess.
Nobody bats an eye when we say we edited their pictures with GIMP. Even our British customers, who are more likely to understand what "gimp" means, I guess.
I mean, they already often use mac OS after all, which means pimp, in French. And who cares.
The name is even worse than that.
The original meaning is a slur for someone mentally or physically disabled.
The subsequent, sexualized meanings were derived from that.
Pretty much one of the worst things I can imagine, and certainly the worst product name I've ever heard, by far.
And to think they picked it on purpose!
Use photopea.com
It's an open source near perfect clone of photoshop
My question is, all these people who spit on Adobe. What is Apple doing differently that would make it a good option? Apple is even more rent-seeking than Adobe. The fact that their software only runs on exorbitantly expensive hardware being the least of those methods.
Apple charges an up-front fee that you pay once. This makes a huge difference.
Apple only sells high-end hardware, but I wouldn't call it exorbitantly expensive.
It's even kind of a good deal if you compare it to equivalent Wintel-ware / Android (if you can even a true equivalent).
This also depends on where in the world you live.
>Apple only sells high-end hardware, but I wouldn't call it exorbitantly expensive.
$400 for a 2 TB SSD, $1000 for a 4 TB SSD, and $2200 for a 8 TB SSD.
The SSD space is indeed expensive, but:
- top-end SSDs from other vendors are also pricey, though probably less so than Apple
- everything else about that machine is going to be a much better deal than just the drive in isolation
Not probably less, vastly less.
Really? I paid once for Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro. 6 years ago, I think. They've continued to get major new features and updates.
Adobe won't even sell me a non-subscription copy of Photoshop anymore.
It's too late for this former user of Apple's productivity software. Killing Aperture and nerfing the iWork suite destroyed any willingness I could have ever had to go back.
I like their OS, but it would be a hard sell for me to ever choose to migrate to their productivity software again.
> When Apple shuttered development of Aperture, there were rumors it did so because it entered into a gentleman’s agreement with Adobe to give Lightroom the space it needed to take over the photography software industry. That worked, and Adobe applications ran great on Apple computers.
I’d not heard this theory (though the only pro-space app I care about is Logic for audio). I’d love if Apple started smashing the funding button for their pro apps again, but they’ve already caused a lot of distrust when they killed Aperture.
Not to mention other products that don’t get ongoing updates (HomePod, Mac Pro for about a century, Xserve line that was killed, and other more recent items that aren’t top of mind atm). Justifying the risk of conversion will be an uphill battle.
"a gentleman's agreement" is a really nice way of saying market allocation, blatantly anti-competitive behaviour.
I mean isn't Apple as worse as Adobe in subscription models?
FCP X is $300 one time.
Pixelmator is also a one time purchase.
I bought Pixelmator Pro for $60 when it came out.
they don't do any software subscriptions, they've even been making a lot of their software free starting with macOS years ago too.
Provided you buy their hardware. Or can I run macOS on a Snapdragon Laptop?
I wonder how much would Adobe benefit from porting its suite to Linux for example. Do a Steam move and pick a fave distro, use some translation layer and bam. I vote for the unholy matrimony of Adobe+Steam to break the stronghold of MS+Apple.
That is pretty much the chicken and egg problem of Linux in regards to Apps and Games.
Many years I asked a very wise person: "what would happen if adobe port photoshop to Linux?"
The answer was "nothing". I asked why; the answers was: "no Photoshop user will migrate for Linux because of it, no gimp user will migrate to Photoshop".
Also, I've read in HN once: that are more people using Linux on the desktop than there are Photoshop users. People overestimate photoshop as a killer app.
That would require the Year of Linux on the Desktop first :)
Hey haven’t you heard, it’s just around the corner!
Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we may soon see the first images of that corner.
> I vote for the unholy matrimony of Adobe+Steam to break the stronghold of MS+Apple.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic towards Adobe with their expensive subscription model.
I get why subscriptions are a thing but it's insane how much Lightroom costs if you're just a casual photographer. Especially the blatant push for yearly commitments and hoop jumping to cancel the trial.
I guess Adobe only wants professionals and very serious amateurs to use their products these days.
> I guess Adobe only wants professionals and very serious amateurs to use their products these days.
To be fair, OS-native (and free 3rd party) apps are very good for the average amateur photographer, unlike 15 years ago. I think the market size of that segment has shrunk as a result.
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> and then pirate the software to top it all off.
Why would you think that though? I'm pretty sure software piracy is less common on Linux than on Windows.
I don't know why the parent comment was flagged dead, but I was typing this reply when it happened:
I'm willing to pay, but I rarely use it, so the price I'm willing to pay has to reflect that, and Adobe is not going to come down that low.
So I will continue to keep an old Windows laptop around with the sole purpose to run Adobe CS6 the maybe 8 times a year when I need it.
Of course it is. Because the software people want to pirate isn't available on Linux for all the reasons parent commenter outlined.
Well, there's at least a bit of evidence from past that linux users are more likely to spend money on software than windows or osx. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/08/linux-users-pay-more-hum...
They could opensource the crap, so 'ze community' could 'gimp' the porting, while management still get their snorting of coke/crack.
Just use the right license.
I've used Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects constantly for 15 years. There have been no significant improvements and no meaningful competitors. The AI stuff is junky. The movement to expensive subscription plans sucks for artists. Shocked no one has moved into this space.
Procreate has been an amazing and affordable alternative to drawing in photoshop/illustrator, and Figma filled a space that Adobe ignored, and Blender can do some amazing video editing things. But with PS, AI, and AE there is so much opportunity for competition.
Have you seen Serif's Affinity products?
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
Still Mac only?
> Award-winning photo editing, graphic design and page layout software for Mac, Windows & iPad.
They've supported Windows and iPad for years, too.
The linked page notes that Affinity supports macOS, iPad OS, and Windows
Unless Apple is planning to release any of the said software for Windows as well then I don't see Adobe being cornered. Apple wants to sell hardware so its unlikely to port to Windows. Creatives are no longer exclusive to Apple hardware as it used to be 15 years ago.
Exactly, macOS is ~20% market share vs Windows worldwide. It's not a competition if you're only competing for a small slice of the pie on your own platform. I don't see this driving further adoption of macOS much, but even if it did, it would only be making up ground lost due to the Final Cut X shmozzle.
Aperture to me was the perfect photography software and was sad to see it discontinued. It did seem a bit niche in a competitive area that may not have justified porting to Apple Silicon and supporting.
Now the play seems to be for Apple to dominate all creative professional software and make Windows+Creative/Pro software as much an oxymoron as Mac+Games.
> When Apple shuttered development of Aperture, there were rumors it did so because it entered into a gentleman’s agreement with Adobe to give Lightroom the space it needed to take over the photography software industry. That worked, and Adobe applications ran great on Apple computers.
Wouldn't this be highly illegal?
Doubtful. There is no rule that you have to stay in businesses and compete with someone.
There actually are laws against anti-competitive collusion in the US. [1]
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
The collusion is the issue, not the decision to not compete.
>no one can touch Adobe when it comes to fast and wide support of camera RAW profiles
I think DXO might be on par with Adobe for camera profiles.
If all of this speculation is true, I wonder what they'll do to compete with Lightroom? - either bring back Aperture, or something similar but completely new
Photomator by the Pixelmator folks is a Lightroom alternative.
Not quite. Photomator + Photos is sort of a Lightroom alternative but it’s not a fully integrated photo management system to the level of aperture or Lightroom.
There’s a lot of organizational workflows that neither photos nor Photomator even attempt to include today. Ratings, multiple tags, quick selects, rapid export presets, multiple version handling etc
> Ratings, multiple tags, quick selects, rapid export presets, multiple version handling etc
I assume this is why they acquired Photomater versus inviting them to the stage.
I'm going to sidetrack this a little and shit on ON1 before anyone mentions it.
I searched high and low for an Adobe competitor, even using Aperture with Reactive until it became too unstable. ON1 was the only other thing close to being usable.
For a few releases, it was nice. But it's unstable as hell these days. So unfortunate because it's powerful and has a nice interface. Unfortunately they prioritize new features over fixing things. Whoever the product manager is should be fired over the crap AI features they shoved in.
Adobe hasn’t been disrupted somehow. The format lock-in is too strong. I’m avoiding it wherever possible.
Why would someone think Apple is better for the customer than Adobe? And why would someone think Apple will reach feature parity to Adobe?
Was the beef here mostly around the subscription model, then cherry on top with the AI?
Catching up with that 1hr interview...
Final Cut Pro X was an example of how a complete rewrite almost always being a mistake. Now if Apple was really committed to rearchitecting the app (which is fair), they should've done it in parallel. That is, release both versions at the same time. Yes, it's more expensive but it's simply not worth killing your audience by cutting back features because they aren't imported yet. Brand the two versions differently but have the same licnese activate both.
So I will defend the idea of software subscriptions, not Adobe's implementation thereof.
You may like software you purchase but you don't really purchase software anymore. It may rely on online services that can go offline. There is a constant need for bugfixes. Old versions may not get those fixes. Vendors will gate new features behind major versions that you have to buy and the threshold for what constitutes a major version gets lower and lower over time.
Adobe was guilty of all of this. Photoshop has a Camera Raw plugin. Back in the day, new RAW formats (which came out all the time) were added to later Camera Raw versiona and those versions required later PS versions for literally no reason, other than to force you to buy the upgrade.
Purchasing software just isn't the panacea many think it is.
Subscriptions have a better incentive model to continuously fix and develop the software without artificially creating major versions to push sales.
Jetbrains is really the gold standard for subscriptions. Adobe... isn't. Adobe uses dark patterns for renewals and subscription periods. They keep jacking up the prices. They hide these price hikes in bundles.