I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough!
I use Procreate, Affinity and Figma and all of these tools are cheaper, easier to use, and still support my (often more advanced) use-cases.
Same with Lightroom vs. Capture One.
PS. If you fell for the same "annual but paid monthly subscription" scam with an early cancellation fee, try changing your payment method to PayPal, and then use it to block the payments.
I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough!
Coincidentally, I just finished a session with Affinity Photo 2 before reading your comment.
I, too, recommend Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement for many people. It's probably good enough for 80% of people out there.
I switched to Affinity because I don't do subscription software. But I'm still up to speed with Photoshop because I have to use it at work.
Photoshop is still better than Affinity in a lot of ways, and for all the confusion in its interface, it's still more polished than Affinity.
One of my biggest problems with Affinity Photo is that it can't save files in the background, which wastes a lot of time when you're working with multiple large images.
Worse, though, is that Affinity Photo is just buggy. Affinity Photo 2 is better, but many bugs persist. Things like images loading, but simply not rendering on screen. Or selecting a tool, but the tool has no effect, and you have to quit the program and restart for it to work again.
Unfortunately, Affinity's official forum is not what it should be. I'll be polite and call responses from official Affinity people "brusque." Also, be very gentle in your criticism and reporting of bugs, because they're quick to delete even minor complaints. More than once I've been following a discussion where someone is having the same problem as I am, and I get an e-mail notification containing another person's response. By the time I get to the actual forum, it's all been deleted by the admins. Not a good look.
Affinity’s forum community is truly bizarre. I posted a feature request for WebP support some years back; for a couple years later, people would regularly reply to chime in that I was an idiot for thinking I needed it.
Don't pay attention to overexcited forum trolls - they are literally everywhere, however it is rare for them to have any actual wisdom or even the basic sense of reality.
All Affinity software (AFAIK) these days makes extensive use of 3D graphics hardware. The problems you're experiencing may be due to insufficient systems memory, or perhaps insufficient video memory. The reason I'm suggesting this is because I have a very old Intel CPU in my system (6-core) 5820K and I'm pretty sure some of the CPU pins are bent because I only see 50-75% of the physical memory that's actually inside the system--and even with that, I never experience any of the problems you described. FWIW, I also upgraded my graphics card to an RTX 3090 with 24Gb of VRAM, when they were clearing out their inventories to make room for the 40x0 series at the end of last year--and I did it predominantly because the GTX 980ti I had been using until then "only" came with 6Gb of VRAM, which was reduced to less than 5Gb by Windows' window manager and was responsible for frequent hiccups and crashes involving 3D software.
TBH, Affinity is slowly adapting Adobe's practices. They have released second generation of every their app and these apps don't have any significant changes. They just wanted to get some money from their users second time.
Affinity was accepting and incorporating so much feedback from users like myself after releasing version 1 of their software suite--which were subsequently added to incremental versions that were free of charge, up to v1.8X IIRC--that I for one was amazed they were actually still able to make a living at all--the software was (is) too high quality to be selling permanent licenses for such a low price. It's also worth mentioning that at least during the first iteration of their range of products, they frequently had substantial sales that allowed you to buy all their software for what seemed like a pittance.
Still, v2 is an improvement. While I cannot pinpoint the exact improvements (there are quite a few of them), my sessions with Affinity v2 are more productive than they used to be with v1. I do not complain on v1, I was quite happy with it, but I am even happier with v2.
One aspect gives a red flag though: they implemented internet activation in v2 as opposed to a prior simple licensing model based on license keys. So maybe one day they will start to force "cloud" junk upon the throats of their customers, and at that point I will probably just leave.
This is very helpful. I haven't heard of Affinity before but I am really excited to try it, especially given the one-time cost model. Seems like Affinity + Capture One could be a great non-subscription pairing for photo work.
Affinity Designer is a very good vector editing app. Switched to it from Inkscape due to performance and UI issues. To me, it's more convenient to use than vector things in Pixelmator Pro.
For photo editing, I don't like Affinity Photo. It seems powerful, but too much for me to learn, so I use Pixelmator Pro for simple photo editing (although I can never remember where the tool I need is). Maybe it's better for pros, though.
For quick pixel editing/cropping I use Acorn — it's fast and the UI is not overloaded.
I've been using Pixelmator Pro a little recently, and I turn to it now for its AI features. Cutting a subject out of its background? It makes the "Magnetic lasso" feel like MS Paintbrush. I had to design a heavily 'shopped Christmas card recently, and those features cut down my work by a lot.
I own both Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro. I find the UI using Pixelmator to be more user friendly. This could be because I come from many years of using Photoshop and I found the way Affinity deals with layers and effects to be counterintuitive to me.
That being said, both products are solid and likely a matter of personal preference or specific feature needs.
> “We have recently discontinued certain older versions of Creative Cloud applications and and a result, under the terms of our agreement, you are no longer licensed to use them,” Adobe said in the email. “Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.” Users were less than enthusiastic about the sudden restrictions.
> “As we had shared in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media marketing, strategy, and global partnerships at Adobe in a statement to The Verge. “To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.”
If you continue to use Pantone colors that were available in an older version of photoshop, a third party (Pantone) may sue you - not Adobe suing you.
So, Adobe will not anymore sue users for using old versions? This is not relevant anymore? Can you provide a link that shows that Adobe retracted of this practice?
Despite being 4 years old, this is news to me today. So thanks OP for posting it, because some of us don't see everything on the internet on day one, like gammalost here.
I imagine this is a sign of what's coming for everything outside of software as well. Can't wait to not find my car, bicycle or fridge one morning, because the model is no-longer supported and they decide to get themselves repossessed and walked away. Or they just brick themselves.
I remember seeing something here, can't recall if it was satire but it was about some EV manufacturer's future plans where your vehicle would drive itself back to dealer or something if you miss a payment. Auto repo.
Coming from Photoshop (and no longer doing any serious graphic work), I've found https://www.photopea.com/ (an in-browser photoshop clone) to be really great for 99.9% of my needs.
It's free, has the same UI as photoshop so no re-learning hotkeys, and is browser-based.
Online-based tools rarely gain any professional trust as they can just disappear without a trace one day. Some occasional editing - maybe, putting a trade at the mercy of an online-only solution - never.
Another aspect is privacy. Medium- and high-caliber professionals are reluctant to share the innards of their work with anyone.
edit: I've downloaded and installed Photoshop CS2 from the Archive.org link. Activated with the provided key. Works flawlessly on Windows 10. Thanks a lot for this!
edit2: "Adobe has not officially released the CS2 software for free. Instead, it has canceled its CS2 license management servers because of a technical glitch, so for those with existing licenses it is now offering downloads that do not require contact with the licensing servers. While Adobe admits this may be seen as it giving its software away for free, this service is intended for those with existing Adobe CS2 licenses."
It is, I have a dedicated PowerPC Mac running old versions of software that are now free to use (including CS 2). Check the Internet Archive or “Macintosh Repository” (Mac only, of course) for other software or downloads.
The caveat is that you’ll likely need an old OS to run EOL software.
I don't understand. Every once in a while we get a mention about Microsoft being super retro compatible allowing you to run old win32 binaries on even the latest windows and how much better it is to linux with its glibc incompatibilities.
And then this, you would need an old OS to run an old Photoshop.
Thanks. People tend to fantasize so many problems that doesn't really exist, or not anymore that it gets sometimes annoying and frustrating. Like on that other thread where people who don't use Gnome desktop environment were complaining of a missing feature...except that feature did in fact exist.
I hope pre-CC versions of PS aren’t covered by the linked article. I was hoping to one day set up a “comfy” creative corner machine running OS X 10.4-10.6 and PS CS1/CS2, because that combo is the one I’ve found least obtrusive and most productive. Affinity, Pixelmator, and Krita are nice and all but I can’t use them in my preferred environment.
Could it still work with wine? I once helped a coworker setting up a rather old version of Photoshop because we still had a physical copy with license lying around and saw no reason to waste that. Once we found an external CD Drive everything seemed to work.
>“Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.”
So Adobe was never planning on suing anybody, but any third-party license agreements may have expired. Such as those with Pantone.
Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? (also the fact that the article is 4 years old...)
I mean is obvious to me, say you sell me some software, and next week you tell me, "hey sucker, I might have used some third party shit that I should not have, you should stop using the stuff or you might be in danger of lawsuits".
Something like this happened with some video games where they autoupdated and removed some contentment, this should be illegal, you do not change a deal a few years after , this products should not be sold but say clear "rent for 1,2,3 years" and then maybe people might decide that would be worth it to do something like Blender and finance an open project then getting screwed like this.
It's just the nature of software license agreements. You say that they used third party shit that they should not have, but why should they not have? The inclusion of Pantone swatches in Adobe products was of huge benefit to users, and therefore Adobe, and also to Pantone themselves.
You're missing the point. The "shouldn't have" in the GP is purely from a legal standpoint.
It's not important whether it was a net good to have Pantone integrated into Adobe products. What's important is that Adobe provided something under a certain set of terms, then changed those terms to the detriment of all their users not because of anything the users did, but because of their own failure to get a perpetual license from Pantone from the start.
I still own the CS6 suite, the last one before Adobe went mad with subscriptions. Even back then they tried to switch CS6 users to CC users by accepting some ridiculous license agreement that would lead to losing access to CS6. Adobe became truly horrible when the current CEO took the reins.
Its cool how adobe has web scraping robots like bots that scans countless computers in search for adobe software that doesn't have a ongoing subscription.
Oh wait. They can't.
As a person who doesn't need to do adobe software, I'd pirate their software just out of spite. Let them fight me.
I’d be curious to know what folks generally think of Photopea?
As an individual, I love it. But I only use it sporadically for surface level features. I’m not a professional that needs this kind of software on a daily basis.
How does it hold up to that? Or does it not?
I could use Photoshop in my art creation, but I refuse to. Affinity Photo is good enough and doesn't cost a lot. I might miss a few features but my life is more pleasant without Adobe.
Due to my past experiences, I have not used it in a while, but I have always hated it (and that is not something I usually feel towards software). Such a terrible UI for a product related to art development is baffling.
That said, I understand there is a ton of open source engineering that goes into it, and I have a great respect for the effort.
It is not like people couldn't create beautiful pictures before those non-destructive layers.
People tend to complain about some so called missing features while they were living happily without them when their favorite software didn't have them too.
It’s about subscription, but not like you think it is. This is about users who started paying the subscription years ago, continued paying the subscription through the present day, but some time between then stopped updating one of the apps because the update would remove a feature. But that version of the app used a third party module that Adobe no longer pays for, so Adobe doesn’t have the right to let the users use it anymore, so Adobe is demanding they stop using the version that includes the module.
I think it assumes knowledge that the subscription is called "Creative Cloud". It is not immediately clear that older pre-subscription versions were not also "Creative Cloud". So, no, the article doesn't explicitly say it's about subscription versions becoming unavailable, even though that's what the article is about.
I believe the underlying issue (vaguely mentioned in the article) is that some older versions of some of the Creative Cloud projects had licensed sub-modules which have fallen out of licensing. So continued use of the subscription requires an "upgrade" which might remove needed functionality for some users.
Likewise you comment without actually saying whether it is or not.
When a large software company puts the warning on their cloud software "You Should not use this in production" you become the idiot and fool if you continue to pay to use it and use it. Adobe became irrelevant years ago due to this BS.
> Adobe became irrelevant years ago due to this BS.
Think what you will about Adobe's practices but it seems strange to say they're irrelevant. They're still the industry standard in many industries by leaps and bounds.
Video editing isn't even remotely their strongest presence. Photoshop, illustrator, indesign, substance painter, lightroom, acrobat... I mean come on now. Just because something is irrelevant to you doesn't mean it's generally irrelevant. Even within video editing, Resolve's capability and amazing free-tier functionality doesn't render Adobe irrelevant by any reasonable estimation. You either need to grab a dictionary and look up 'relevance,' get a better understanding of how superlatives work, or briefly peek outside of your own software usage before making sweeping declarations about pan-industry practices.
Photoshop will be eaten by generative AI in the next few years. Lightroom is still the best, Illustrator is in a duopoly with CorelDRAW. I used to be a pro photo/cinematographer and I can replace most of my Photoshop needs with stable diffusion + ControlNet + ClipSeg. DaVinci with plugins made After Effect irrelevant for my needs as well. Certainly Adobe still has momentum but their future after they switched from engineering/art company to rentier monopoly company doesn't look that rosy.
> Photoshop will be eaten by generative AI in the next few years.
This is a laughable idea.
Even if professional artists want to use generative AI in their workflow, it won't be by replacing a tool like Photoshop. It will be by enhancing it.
And if you think the entire art profession will be "eaten by generative AI", then you clearly know very little about human nature.
People will always want to create art. People will always want to see and own art.
Even if some of that latter desire is satisfied by generative AI in the future, I guarantee you not all of it will be. For one thing, there will also always be people who feel that the human touch is more important—that AI art isn't "real" art—and thus, in a world where AI-generated art is ubiquitous, human-created art will become even more prized.
You are missing the point. It's fairly easy to replace Photoshop's layering, color correction, filters etc. by a regular software engineering. Where Adobe had extra edge was their retouching, masking and content filling ability. That is now going to be possible to incorporate anywhere by stable diffusion et al. Now Adobe will still have foothold in "legacy" projects with proprietary formats but all the new entrants will have no need to use it. Suddenly folks in Affinity/Serif can add those missing features and continue carving out more from Adobe's market share the way Japan went from crappy manufacturing in the 60s to bleeding edge tech in 80s.
I mean, this is a very different version of "being eaten by generative AI" than what it sounded like you meant. This sounds much more like "Adobe will lose their moat and be outcompeted by other art programs (because generative AI is becoming ubiquitous)".
There are a lot of people out there saying things like "soon there won't be any more programmers/artists/writers because we'll be able to get generative AI to do all that stuff" (with, often, an implication of "screw those lazy/hippie art kids" from those talking about the latter two). This is very much what it sounded like you were saying.
Sorry, the message was probably obfuscated in my original post. I didn't mean that generative AI would replace art producers, just individual tools and it didn't occur to me at the time of typing it that most people would associate it with replacing art producers (as the tooling aspect was "obvious" to me).
I've been in-and-out of every one of these stacks professionally for years. I was a professional graphic and interface designer for a decade, which involved photography, photo editing, motion graphics and other 2d animation, and digital illustration. I've done a bit of freelancing, specfically with branding, identity and print design, but it's mostly been full-time, in-house work. More recently, I have moved into 3D modeling, 3D animation, and game engine work. I've worked with the current generative tools in professional settings and did procedural art and design work long before the current fad. I've seen their progression, and know better than damn near anyone you'll meet where they stand in the commercial art world.
You're basing unsubstantiated predictions on top of assumptions to form dubious suppositions about the future of these things to change the topic from your patently absurd assertion that the largest player in most creative industries became "irrelevant," "years ago." You're clearly going to continue pretending personal preferences, based on an incredibly narrow slice experience in this huge collection of creative industries, is generalizable to the rest of it. I'd say there's about zero percent chance you're going to start engaging in this conversation in good faith, so I'll let you finish it by yourself: you don't need my help to try and convince yourself that you know what you're talking about.
My business background tells me Adobe Photoshop is going to be commoditized because their main advantage in retouching, content filling and masking can be now done by any 10-year old with a beefier GPU at the same or better quality. Even ridiculously bad GIMP can now get the same state-of-art tools Adobe has so inevitably its value proposition will be only appealing to existing "legacy" customers and dropping everywhere else.
* Edit: it was a different person that posted the initial absurd statement. I'm leaving my response in here but italicizing it.
To be clear, the statement you're defending is that Adobe became "irrelevant" "years ago" which you backed up by comparing Premier to DaVinci Resolve. To be clear about the conversation you've switched to so you don't have to keep addressing that ridiculous statement:
if you think that anybody with stable diffusion or even the paid options can even approach the quality or efficiency of someone using Photoshop with its current set of tools based on the same technology, but targeted for specific professional tasks you really, really, really don't know what you're talking about. If your business background puts you in a business position leading you to any business decisions that have business consequences about this business then you better get busy hiring a consultant with more up-to-date knowledge.
Thanks for ad hominem. I never said 'Adobe became "irrelevant" "years ago"'. I also didn't say anyone can replace Adobe easily, but outlined a path how a motivated company can replace their offering. If somebody offers better UX (and there are many options to do better than PS), lowering the switching costs in required training, then it can happen fairly quickly. Beside being a former pro photo/cinematographer, I also worked for one Adobe competitor and invented a bunch of new geometric and image processing algorithms, then went on to study Deep Learning at Stanford, so maybe I know what I am talking about, or maybe I am just a fallacious idiot who has no clue.
Good grief. I mistook you for the person who made the initial absurd statement because you responded to the comment for which I responded to them. Who would deliberately misquote someone that can fact checked by moving their eyes 4 inches up the screen?
>I also didn't say anyone can replace Adobe easily, but outlined a path how a motivated company can replace their offering.
Ok, let's take a look.
"their main advantage in retouching, content filling and masking can be now done by any 10-year old with a beefier GPU at the same or better quality. Even ridiculously bad GIMP can now get the same state-of-art tools Adobe has..."
a) False. b) Sure sounds like you're saying that a 10 year old or Gimp can replace Photoshop functionality easily. Pretty precise word slicing there, but ok.
> so inevitably its value proposition will be only appealing to existing "legacy" customers and dropping everywhere else.
So... their fading into irrelevance as a legacy product isn't being "easily replaced?" Yeah, ok.
> If somebody offers better UX (and there are many options to do better than PS), lowering the switching costs in required training, then it can happen fairly quickly.
The entire format of the generative AI tools is designed for amateurs to make "gee whiz" images without needing any discernible useful skills but the interface fundamentally abstracts away the repeatability and specificity needed for professional communication work. Meanwhile, Adobe started rolling out generative neural network based tools specifically targeted to professional use cases 3 or 4 years ago. Things might change, but this is not a close competition right now, and won't likely be for the foreseeable future. If you see Photoshop as a static target, you simply don't have current knowledge of the space.
> Beside being a former pro photo/cinematographer, I also worked for one Adobe competitor and invented a bunch of new geometric and image processing algorithms, then went on to study Deep Learning at Stanford, so maybe I know what I am talking about, or maybe I am just a fallacious idiot who doesn't get it.
Well, it sure sounds like you don't know much about the current state of the image manipulation tools I work with on a daily basis, which is what the conversation is about. You could be the former CEO of Adobe with a PhD in ML concentrating in image generation and a wing dedicated to your artwork at the Met and still be too out of touch with current image manipulation tooling to make useful predictions about it. In fact, I'd say nearly everybody I've encountered that's really into AI image generation and says it'll soon best the current professional toolkit couldn't list 5 significant ways Photoshop has changed in the past 10 years. And Photoshop is the most vulnerable too in their kit, by far. The prospect of it replacing InDesign anytime soon is absolutely laughable.
> You could be the former CEO of Adobe with a PhD in ML concentrating in image generation and a wing dedicated to your artwork at the Met and still be too out of touch with current image manipulation tooling to make useful predictions about it.
This was a good one, I love it!
My SWengineering background tells me that many of the tools Adobe has are tedious to replace but doable by many algorithmically gifted folks. Some need some investment to get to pro level like color calibration and correction. Some need camera manufacturer support like initial sensor RAW processing. The ones that were causing awe like their famous patented content aware fill based on complicated differential equations was out of reach for most. So were their precise selection/masking tools and a few more. Now we suddenly can select objects/background/hair fairly easily and reliably using ClipSeg or Segment Anything, removing the masking obstacle. To fill/replace content, we simply select the area and let stable diffusion hallucinate options until we are happy. To simulate puppet tool, we can use ControlNet with stable diffusion though implementing ARAP is also fairly easy. So a dedicated company that wants to get to the parity with Adobe in their most advanced tooling suddenly has a clear road ahead. If they improve UX by e.g. voice or gesture control (plenty of places where Adobe tools are difficult to use for no reason) and do some decent image format compatibility, they can really make a dent in Adobe's market share.
This might sound self-aggrandizing, but given infinite time and energy I alone could replicate most of the CS6 functionality of PS at the same or better quality (and I did create some powerful tools for one of their competitors) and know a few folks capable of the same.
Are you serious? After Effects can still do a ton that DaVinci cannot. It's awesome that Resolve exists for sure but Adobe is still by far the industry standard.
Don't get me wrong I like DaVinci a ton. But for motion graphics After Effects still has an edge. Additionally with things like dynamic linking and integration with Illustrator and etc it's still very much a critical part of a lot of workflows.
That said, DaVinci is improving at a very impressive pace. Adobe really just has the benefit of nearly 30 years of an ecosystem around it.
I'm actually quite surprised at how stagnant After Effects has become, but perhaps Adobe has some stuff coming down the pipeline.
Affinity by Serif: clean, very capable and no subscription BS, so far. If you used to like Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks you will be at home with Affinity Designer. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Serif/Affinity, just a happy customer.
It's a matter of resources and time imo. Blender is currently about thirty people and started in 1994; Krita and Gimp are each currently four people and both started in 1998. (Also, 3D graphics turned out to have a Blender-shaped hole--it's arguably the first generalist's creation app--while the 2D painting space has gotten pretty crowded since the 1970s.)
Even if there were, that wouldn't prevent some one from suing you. In fact it makes you a more attractive target because you have Adobe's bank account behind you, not just your own.
Why? Adobe products have historically always been incredibly easy to pirate. It was almost an implicit part of their business model back in the day - get the kids and amateurs learning on pirated versions of their software, and when they take it professional they'll buy it. It worked really well.
Adobe never really cared about non-pros using pirated versions.
Yeah they're not safe anymore, used to be ways to just get the trial and make it work in a very safe way. Now you have to run some unknown crack while it's in use. Seems a terrible idea considering how often the machines it's running on are powerful so juicy targets.
"Just pirate it" isn't sensible advice for this software anymore if you care about your machine and its contents.
It's all about where you get your trackers. Public sites which list the software will be a minefield of malware. Private trackers tend to have much lower risk.
A number of commercial entities and relevant advocates have made the claim for years. It is certainly the case that infected copies of commonly pirated software exist, though they are not as common as some would lead us to believe (at least not of you chose your sources carefully… ahem…).
For a little anecdata: I know at least one person who has encountered this, having his gaming machine encrypted for ransom after installing a copy of a pirated game (luckily for him the machine had nothing on it aside from the games and some media he had copies of elsewhere, and the attack didn't seem to get hold of any credentials (or if it did, no one tried to use them before he got them updated)). There was also apparently a spate of pirated copies installing crypto miners, though I don't know anyone affected by that, and malware disguised as audio/video files was definitely a thing back in the Napster era.
Another place the impression can come from is that some AV tools pick up on parts of the pirated copies as malware even if they aren't. In some cases this will be because they look enough like it (for instance the installer working as usual then patching executables) for heuristics to kick out a false positive), and some claim that commercial products have been paid to include signatures that match common piracy groups' so they get quarantined & warned as malware even though they aren't.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913362