That’s what big tech companies do, they buy small and promissing companies they think that once can become a competitor and then… destroy it.
The young startups just take the money and can retire early.
I made my personal homepage with Dreamweaver and got my first job with it.
Also the first job: after 3 days of us using Dreamweaver to finalize the website, the PM rushes in and forbids Dreamweaver use, because it was garbling the parts with java.
I never even worked with HTML before, “raw” in a text editor lol.
I’m thankful for this first experience. It made me buckle up and catch up in the hotel, at night.
I (distantly) knew an indie software developer who was putting up a pretty good Photoshop alternative in 1996: ONE GUY alone in his bedroom was making a decent living selling a Photoshop alternative that he wrote himself. And he wasn’t exactly a super-wunderkind coder, just a guy who knew the photo manipulation space well enough to get enough customers to float selling his software for a few years - in direct competition with Photoshop.
Adobe isn’t selling magic dust ground from precious gemstones by thousands of artisans. They had a decent product that they marketed the hell out of and eventually got overly greedy.
GIMP, Krita, and many others are right up there if you haven’t been sucked into the Adobe addiction vortex.
I moved to Affinity early this year, and it has been amazing!! I was expecting a long adjustment period after decades with Photoshop, but it’s so similar that I picked it up super quick!
Just an FYI that you might want to get some practice in with some Affinity alternatives, because they’ve been purchased by Canva, and so enshittification might set in any time.
I still remember when they bought Macromedia Flash and all my animator friends and I simply couldn’t stand Adobe Flash CS3 or whatever it was called. It used more resources, crashed more often and didn’t exactly bring anything revolutionary to the table in terms of new functions.
I use Affinity Suite for work. Paid for it once, have it forever. Free updates until new editions, which are discounted if you own an older edition. Buy it for one platform (Windows), that’s a license for that edition of any other platform too. AND they regularly go on special, often to 50% off.
It doesn’t have AI content generation, but it does a few things Adobe doesn’t - like being able to use Photo and Designer from INSIDE Publisher, seamless like its a single program!
Affinity Photo (Photoshop), Designer (Illustrator), and Publisher (InDesign). Then Krita for raster illustration. That’s all I need as a professional
I have some artist friends who saw the writing on the wall after Adobe told Apple to fuck off with the iPad and Affinity said hold my beer. One owns her own publishing company and as of a few years ago all new projects were Adobe-free workflows. She still has Adobe but will only use it for older shit that might still need something later. Going forward, she (and therefore her entire operation) are fucking done with Adobe. Another friend learned both so he could adapt to whatever the market has in store for him and since the market sucks for artists he’s going freelance too and has said absolutely no to Adobe.
Adobe is officially legacy software. Vendor lock in won’t save it as the creatives don’t need industry titans to survive.
Moat of the teams I see hiring designers are still using Adobe, and printshops take .ai files. But most of the solo designers I know use Affinity, and I’ve heard of one (albeit small) team that has swapped to Affinity for their whole team.
Affinity was just bought by Canva so idk how it might evolve over time, or if v3 will make compromises I don’t agree with. But I got v1 during Covid, loved it, converted to v2 as soon as it was available, still love it. Using all of them on the same file in the same window feels amazing.
Another downside is that designers rarely make asset packs for Affinity. But I’m pretty sure Affinity is able to import brush pack formats from one of the other big names, just not sure which (likely Adboe’s .abr)
I don’t like painting in Photo though, but that might be because I’m so used to Krita, which is designed for illustration in the first place. (They’re great, I might donate to them again actually)
Big GIMP fan. That being said, Adobe needs to start promoting some of their actually good stuff, like their investment in the open C2PA spec for proving content authenticity, vs constant AI crap that is the exact opposite.
Ok, so I’ve tried gimp in the past, but had a hard time with it. Honestly, my Photoshop skills are mostly self taught (and not all that impressive), but that’s the interface I know. How similar to Photoshop can one make the interface in gimp these days? Because that’s probably my biggest hurdle.
Gimp is a little steeper learning curve but if you already know photoshop it’s not that bad.
The tricky thing is knowing what to do when you get stuck. Luckily they wrote a manual that assumes you’re only reading the manual because you got stuck and you’re so frustrated you’re actually reading the manual.
Some brilliant people invented photoshop
It was a good product but expensive
Some asshole coke head CEO decided to make it more expensive and worse.
Fuck adobe.
GIMP 3 FTW
And they bought Macromedia’s suite and destroyed it.
I miss macromedia flash so bad, actionscript for life
I once built a website preloader that was so large that I made a pre-preloader for it. Good times indeed.
A flash preloader was my first real tech job! As I recall, they stiffed my last paycheck and went under later.
But it was incredibly fun and I made connections that steered my career to a new direction for the next decade.
Awesome, what’s keeping you busy these days? (If this is an account where it’s OK to share that on)
<insert outdated xzibit meme here> Agreed, the wildest of wests.
Fireworks for me. I miss that whole suite though.
Now there’s a name I haven’t seen in a while and that makes me a little bit sad.
RIP Fireworks…
Fireworks had so much potential as a web design app and they threw it away.
Illustrator and InDesign were too focused on print media and Photoshop could barely comprehend anything unless it was rasterized.
That’s what big tech companies do, they buy small and promissing companies they think that once can become a competitor and then… destroy it. The young startups just take the money and can retire early.
And they bought Cool Edit and destroyed it.
And they bought Paintshop pro and destroyed it
Corel bought Paint Shop Pro and destroyed it, not Adobe, though it was an Adobe-style move to be sure.
I think he is old, like me and means aldus photostyler. Which was light years ahead of adobe in background separation.
deleted by creator
That was part of the macromedia suite wasn’t it?
Were they talking about Dreamweaver or Flash?
Freehand
The one i never used.
I made my personal homepage with Dreamweaver and got my first job with it.
Also the first job: after 3 days of us using Dreamweaver to finalize the website, the PM rushes in and forbids Dreamweaver use, because it was garbling the parts with java.
I never even worked with HTML before, “raw” in a text editor lol.
I’m thankful for this first experience. It made me buckle up and catch up in the hotel, at night.
That was around 1997…
GIMP 3, Krita, Darktable, Inkscape, Kdenlive
Photopea, Shotcut
if you poke around graphic design as a hobby, these might be fine, but not for professional use from what I’ve read :/
e.g. apparently Inkscape still can’t really do CMYK
I (distantly) knew an indie software developer who was putting up a pretty good Photoshop alternative in 1996: ONE GUY alone in his bedroom was making a decent living selling a Photoshop alternative that he wrote himself. And he wasn’t exactly a super-wunderkind coder, just a guy who knew the photo manipulation space well enough to get enough customers to float selling his software for a few years - in direct competition with Photoshop.
Adobe isn’t selling magic dust ground from precious gemstones by thousands of artisans. They had a decent product that they marketed the hell out of and eventually got overly greedy.
GIMP, Krita, and many others are right up there if you haven’t been sucked into the Adobe addiction vortex.
Krita is awesome with a drawing pad
And I’m not like even good at doing anything
Yeah, I got my son a draw-on monitor explicitly for use with Krita. It’s a normal PC too, but it makes Krita much easier to use well.
I use GIMP, but you can’t compare it to Photoshop. GIMP has a horrible GUI and it has very strange design choices.
The Affinity suite is comparable to Photoshop, but it’s a paid product.
I compare today’s GIMP to the Photoshop I used in the 1990s, and they’re not very different at all.
Photopea represent
Affinity Photo for me!
I’d prefer FOSS but…GIMP ain’t it.
Have used Photopea in* a bind in the past, it’s also pretty good especially the clone GUI.
I moved to Affinity early this year, and it has been amazing!! I was expecting a long adjustment period after decades with Photoshop, but it’s so similar that I picked it up super quick!
Another vote for Affinity. Excellent Adobe alternatives 1-time reasonable price. Such a breath of fresh air after so many subs.
Just an FYI that you might want to get some practice in with some Affinity alternatives, because they’ve been purchased by Canva, and so enshittification might set in any time.
It may enshittify, but since it’s a one time purchase and not a subscription, you can keep using your version.
Oh that’s really good.
I have been using it for the past 5+ years. It is good enough, and its perpetual license.
Krita is my graphics app of choice these days. But there are many alternatives that are great (like Gimp and Photopea).
So much of Krita is great and then there is the text tool which is still a heap of trash.
New update coming for that soon!
I’m fully aware of the feature that has been promised for years and is supposed to land in 5.3. I’m still using Krita, just not solely.
I still remember when they bought Macromedia Flash and all my animator friends and I simply couldn’t stand Adobe Flash CS3 or whatever it was called. It used more resources, crashed more often and didn’t exactly bring anything revolutionary to the table in terms of new functions.
I use Affinity Suite for work. Paid for it once, have it forever. Free updates until new editions, which are discounted if you own an older edition. Buy it for one platform (Windows), that’s a license for that edition of any other platform too. AND they regularly go on special, often to 50% off.
It doesn’t have AI content generation, but it does a few things Adobe doesn’t - like being able to use Photo and Designer from INSIDE Publisher, seamless like its a single program!
Affinity Photo (Photoshop), Designer (Illustrator), and Publisher (InDesign). Then Krita for raster illustration. That’s all I need as a professional
I have some artist friends who saw the writing on the wall after Adobe told Apple to fuck off with the iPad and Affinity said hold my beer. One owns her own publishing company and as of a few years ago all new projects were Adobe-free workflows. She still has Adobe but will only use it for older shit that might still need something later. Going forward, she (and therefore her entire operation) are fucking done with Adobe. Another friend learned both so he could adapt to whatever the market has in store for him and since the market sucks for artists he’s going freelance too and has said absolutely no to Adobe.
Adobe is officially legacy software. Vendor lock in won’t save it as the creatives don’t need industry titans to survive.
Moat of the teams I see hiring designers are still using Adobe, and printshops take .ai files. But most of the solo designers I know use Affinity, and I’ve heard of one (albeit small) team that has swapped to Affinity for their whole team.
Affinity was just bought by Canva so idk how it might evolve over time, or if v3 will make compromises I don’t agree with. But I got v1 during Covid, loved it, converted to v2 as soon as it was available, still love it. Using all of them on the same file in the same window feels amazing.
Another downside is that designers rarely make asset packs for Affinity. But I’m pretty sure Affinity is able to import brush pack formats from one of the other big names, just not sure which (likely Adboe’s .abr)
I don’t like painting in Photo though, but that might be because I’m so used to Krita, which is designed for illustration in the first place. (They’re great, I might donate to them again actually)
Gimp sucks. Krita is way better.
They have different purposes.
Krita is more focused on painting but it has most of the same features as gimp.
I feel like I should have switched to GIMP a decade ago.
The best time to switch was 10 years ago. The second best time to switch is right now.
So the real question is whether Photoshop might ever have become successful, if Adobe hadn’t bought it.
It sure is.
Big GIMP fan. That being said, Adobe needs to start promoting some of their actually good stuff, like their investment in the open C2PA spec for proving content authenticity, vs constant AI crap that is the exact opposite.
Ok, so I’ve tried gimp in the past, but had a hard time with it. Honestly, my Photoshop skills are mostly self taught (and not all that impressive), but that’s the interface I know. How similar to Photoshop can one make the interface in gimp these days? Because that’s probably my biggest hurdle.
Gimp is a little steeper learning curve but if you already know photoshop it’s not that bad.
The tricky thing is knowing what to do when you get stuck. Luckily they wrote a manual that assumes you’re only reading the manual because you got stuck and you’re so frustrated you’re actually reading the manual.
Gimp3 just launched and it’s really nice.
And free.
Check out PhotoGIMP
Bluesky has a lot of artists. Posting this video here: https://youtu.be/I4mdMMu-3fc