karaterobot
a day ago
> 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.
paxys
a day ago
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.
throwaway48476
a day ago
The vendor lock in is extremely strong.
gjsman-1000
a day ago
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?
dagmx
a day ago
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.
fragmede
20 hours ago
> 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.
enraged_camel
19 hours ago
I know a company that decided against CockroachDB because the CTO had a roach phobia.
robenkleene
a day ago
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.
em-bee
a day ago
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.
robenkleene
a day ago
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.
em-bee
a day ago
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
robenkleene
a day ago
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.
antifa
16 hours ago
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.
fractallyte
17 hours ago
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.
robenkleene
16 hours ago
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.
fractallyte
9 hours ago
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.
robenkleene
5 hours ago
Sounds pretty cool, thanks for sharing!
acomjean
12 hours ago
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).
intelVISA
a day ago
Sad but very apt analysis :(
shepherdjerred
21 hours ago
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.
em-bee
a day ago
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.
_wire_
a day ago
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.
majormajor
a day ago
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).
DeathArrow
a day ago
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.
bloopernova
a day ago
I'm not a frequent user of Photoshop, so I was wondering what it does that Krita doesn't? (Or gimp)
nicce
a day ago
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.
jrvieira
a day ago
I used Affinity tools as a better alternative. Are they not a player anymore?
bogwog
a day ago
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.
robenkleene
21 hours ago
> 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.
edanm
21 hours ago
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.)
robenkleene
21 hours ago
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.)
DeathArrow
a day ago
>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.
kyriakos
a day ago
Same goes for Lightroom, many competitors, none of them has the full feature package that Lightroom Classic has.
DeathArrow
a day ago
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.
Tomte
a day ago
Photo editing. Krita is for painting.
gjsman-1000
a day ago
[flagged]
nicce
a day ago
> (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.
robenkleene
a day ago
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.
mebassett
a day ago
> 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...
ajoseps
a day ago
pretty sure OP meant the naming itself of GIMP is poor and hard to sell in an enterprise environment
gjsman-1000
a day ago
[flagged]
seszett
a day ago
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.
FredPret
a day ago
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!
cowsaymoo
a day ago
Use photopea.com
It's an open source near perfect clone of photoshop
myworkinisgood
a day ago
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.
freeone3000
a day ago
Apple charges an up-front fee that you pay once. This makes a huge difference.
FredPret
a day ago
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.
hollandheese
20 hours ago
>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.
FredPret
19 hours ago
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
hollandheese
18 hours ago
Not probably less, vastly less.
mh-
a day ago
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.