> I don't think they have an image of high quality software either, they do some amazing things and bring killer features, but I harldy heard anyone being loyal to Adobe itself.
Having worked with designers I'm going to disagree. For most designers Photoshop or Illustrator are the only tools they'll even consider using because they're so much more powerful than the competition. That's changing a little with things like Pixelmator, but even then people have to learn a new workflow after decades of using Photoshop.
Photoshop and Illustrator are not quality software in many ways, but for professional designers they contain features that competitors do not. And a bigger issue locking people in is that if you are collaborating with anyone, everyone has to use the same thing. Competitors to Illustrator are generally not fully compatible and can't perfectly open an Illustrator file.
I agree with the power of Photoshop or Illustrator. But do you consider it highly well designed, solid and polished software ?
I am not a Photoshop user so my image is from hearsay, feel free to state your opinion. But what I heard was it's bloated, doesn't fully integrate/take advantage of the OS and hardware potential, crashes every once in a while and you'll have nothing to do about it.
To make a parrallel with coding tools, I feel it's on the same league as Eclipse. It's the very obvious choice for some application stacks, has tons of feature and it's plenty powerful. But I don't think most people love working with it (at least I don't), there's just no good enough alternative for the thing they want to do.
Having worked with designers I'm going to disagree. For most designers Photoshop or Illustrator are the only tools they'll even consider using because they're so much more powerful than the competition. That's changing a little with things like Pixelmator, but even then people have to learn a new workflow after decades of using Photoshop.