Remarkably, they didn't even need vibe coding to drive their software into the toilet. Their decline started long before AI started writing code for us.
Affinity, mentioned in the article, was acquired by Canva and had its entire UI redone to work just like Photoshop. It's also entirely free with no gotchas.
Not only this, but it's like Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign all mixed up into one super-app. This beats Adobe's cross-app functionality by miles.
Free (as in beer). There's always a catch.<p>Though, it's success does make me wonder if a GIMP based editor with a similar interface would work well
> <i>It's also entirely free with no gotchas.</i><p>How is this sustainable for a for-profit entity? How do they pay the bills/developers?
I paid for the entire Affinity suite in one shot, was worried when Canva took over, but glad to say everything's working together just fine.
There have been some good alternatives mentioned in the comments here, like Affinity or Photopea.<p>Does anyone happen to know if there is a similarly good alternative to Lightroom?
Capture One.<p>Also, Davinci Resolve has added photo editing functionality since 2
V21 iirc, but it’s not a drop-in replacement. It’s Davinci Resolve though, so expect to be blown away.
Eh, using resolve for photo editing seems a bit like using blender for video editing. It <i>can</i> be done, and it isn't <i>that</i> bad, but there are so many better options
Darktable (<a href="https://www.darktable.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.darktable.org/</a>) has become very good and continues to be my go-to solution for digital photography.
Rawtherapee, CameraBag Photo.
BMD just added their Lightroom-competitor to resolve studio. It’s pretty new so I imagine it is not as feature rich as Lightroom, but could be worth looking at currently and I’m sure it’ll improve
Since you've got Photoshop muscle memory but you're no longer a heavy user, have you considered Photopea[1]? It's very similar to PS in terms of UI, and even has the same keyboard shortcuts, so you'll feel right at home. At least more "at home" compared to Pixelmator, IMO.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.photopea.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.photopea.com/</a>
This software is rotting, was trying to edit frames of a gif this week and the previews are just broken in the timeline on Mac, literally had to boot up my PC, sign in which required restarting photoshop 3 times it just straight up closed itself each part of the process (once to sign out, once to sign in and once to actually use it signed in). Luckily the timeline still works on Windows but completely broken on MacOS so if you're Mac only you can no longer use Photoshop to remove frames from a gif and who knows what other software you should use instead for that thanks to Photoshop monoculture.
Yeah, Adobe's annual paid monthly plan that auto-renews and locks you in is pure evil.
One hallmark of poor quality software is the existence of a separate cleanup tool in case the uninstall doesn't work
GIMP.<p>How do you feel about it? i know people were sometimes quite critical, it has different workflow than PS, but it seems it gets the job done.
World would be in a better place if GIMP hadn't ever existed, the existence of GIMP is part of why we don't have an actual viable alternative. Constant claims of "good enough", 20+ years to implement adjustment layers after dismissing their value for many years a team that doesn't really care at all about it.<p>If GIMP had never existed maybe the Blender team or someone else who actually has passion for the problem would have made the Linux image editor and we'd be in such a better place.
I share the sentiment, a lot of open source alternatives can't decide whether they want to be a replacement, a professional tool, a beginner user-friendly tool or just a playground for software devs. GIMP is awkwardly in the middle and has been stuck for a long time, it never met expectations, but became the default answer to any questions involving photoshop alternatives.
GIMP is very good if you never touch photoshop. It seems using photoshop for any significant amount of time ties you to that software, much like how using emacs for any amount of time ties you to emacs
After ~30 years of Photoshop, I now use Acorn for things where pixel-perfect editing matters and Affinity for everything else. I miss absolutely nothing.
Photoshop on mac has gotten worse over time. On the latest version its possible to trigger multiple save-as dialogs. Also it has this focus-stealing issue where it drags me back to the desktop I have it running on when I'm working in another desktop.
> Adobe started silently updating my /etc/hosts file<p>This has indeed things like "!!1! MALWARE !!!!" written all over it.
> It turned out that my subscription, which had been going since 2013, was on an “Annual Paid Monthly” plan. Even though I was getting billed monthly, I couldn’t actually cancel any time I wanted.<p>I've been wondering for a while what happens if you just block the transactions on your credit card. (Can't test it myself because I'm not an adobe customer and never will be)
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