
Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe? - pacavaca
Adobe has sort of a monopoly on the creative tools market. Nobody seriously considers an alternative for their Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, etc, and for some people, these are truly the only products which can satisfy their sophisticated needs. However, there are more and more small (independent) creators of all kinds, who do not need all the uber features of the professional products but would rather appreciate an intuitive UI, cheaper price, and friendlier customer support. Every kid today is either a blogger, vlogger or web designer and it seems to me like quite a big market that would easily turn away from Adobe, had anyone created an alternative product with 40% of functionality that works flawlessly (!).<p>I recently had to interact with Adobe support, and my experience was quite terrible. I was also looking for a simple software to stitch together my GoPro videos but was left out with either free iMovie&#x2F;Quick, which are too basic or a super-expensive Premiere.
Both times I was wondering, how come there&#x27;s only Adobe on the market, why nobody dares to compete with them. So, HN, what do you think, why?<p>P.S.
I tried using Pixelmator (non-free), GIMP, OpenShot and a few more open-source editors - they don&#x27;t stand the competition.
On the other hand, I use and love Sketch, and would really appreciate Sketch-grade competitors for the above mentioned Adobe products.
======
hyperpallium
Adobe has been in the game for a long time, and they know how to play. For
example, early on in postscript days, they had proprietary fonts... which they
made free at about the right time to have reaped profits without fueling a
competitor. A short-sighted company might have hung on; a non-profit might
have given it away from the start.

\- they allow photoshop to be pirated - removing fuel for competitors

\- it's difficult (and uninteresting/not _technically_ challenging) to make
UIs easy to use; hence the gimp

\- pdf is free-to-read, pay-to-write. They keep adding new features, so
companies will keep buying it

\- maybe I read too much into this: but I once noted that postscript/pdf are
the only mainstream "vector" graphics on the market (well, splines, not
vectors, but I just mean that they're drawn)... apart from flash, which (to
me) it seemed could make inroads on publishing. Then... adobe acquired flash
(macromedia), giving them a monopoly on vector graphics. They let flash
languish, consistent with my view...

Adobe know what they're doing, to maintain digital standards/monopolies
throughout the lifecycle.

~~~
samspenc
This. Plus network effects. Once you have people sharing files in Photoshop,
Indesign and AE formats, everyone who's working with you has to adopt Adobe as
well.

GIMP proves that it's possible to build a competing product that has all the
features, but doesn't come with the same ease-of-use or shortcuts or support
for proprietary file formats. Which means slow adoption, and ensures that it's
hard to compete with Adobe in this field.

~~~
solarkraft
There are many products able to somewhat import psd, but due to its (perhaps
intentional) complexity many fail to fully support it.

See Xee developer Paracelsus:

> Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the
> attic of your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark
> attack on his 58th birthday... I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing
> fates for the people responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/30/xee_photoshop_psd_c...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/30/xee_photoshop_psd_code_rant/)

------
blt
Photoshop is feature-complete, and the features are implemented well. For
example, compare the speed of applying a 200px-radius Gaussian blur in
Photoshop vs. Gimp.

To make an analogy with more hands-on trades: buying Photoshop is like getting
the entire Snap-On tool catalog for $500. Buying Pixelmator is like getting
1/4 of the Craftsman tool catalog for $50. If you can spare the extra $450,
you get a _lot_ for your money.

Professional mechanics spend $xx,000 on Snap-On tools because they can justify
the cost. Most DIY mechanics buy cheaper tools. But if the Snap-On tools only
cost $500, why not get the best?

(edit: GIMP is like getting the entire Harbor Freight tool catalog for free.)

Also, most instructional material for image editing assumes Photoshop.

~~~
nugi
Slightly OT, however; Pros buy snap on because of convenience. Most know there
are cheaper, better made tools available for the last 25 years. The tool
trucks, and big lines of credit, and bling factor are their only remaining
upsells. The 'made in usa' stamps are even disappearing from their tools as
more come from tiawan and china. It is hard, if not impossible, to justify the
markup without some huge ego stroking, tradition and deliberate lack of
comparison shopping.

~~~
chasedehan
I really don't understand the amount of money spent on those tools. My cousin
is a mechanic and has a $10K MAC tool box(similar to Snap On) - that's just
for the box without a single tool. Apparently he has >$25K in total in his
tool box. We really have it quite good in tech.

------
billconan
I like photoshop and haven't found a good replacement. when muscle memory is
built up, it's really difficult to learn and switch to a different tool.

I have been searching for photoshop alternatives. but so far I haven't found
any. For me photoshop is too expensive.

I have even considered to implement my own (I only need a portion of the
photoshop features)

[https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)

is what I found recently, it looks nice, but I can't get used to it.

~~~
pacavaca
Wow, Affinity looks pretty capable, I think worth trying out. Still, no real
alternative for video editing...

~~~
ReverseCold
On Mac quite a few people use Final Cut.

Davinci Resolve is also getting better over time. Some people say it's already
good enough for them to use daily, I think it's too buggy.

~~~
pacavaca
Final Cut is like $300 - a price of a new GoPro. Btw, I think that GoPro could
be a great company to compete in the video-editing market. They already have a
wide audience, and they just have to make their Quick editor more feature
rich, while keeping it simple enough for average user. They also have money
and are in desperate need of settling on a software market...

~~~
ReverseCold
$300 and DRM free by the way

You can copy the application (or airdrop) to any other Mac and it will work
without and activation process or anything like that.

If $300 is a lot of money for your video editing software then you aren't the
target market for software like this anyway. People at my school only have
FCPx or premiere because of student discounts or because the school paid for
it.

------
kradeelav
I'm a designer that works both on an indie freelancer level and an
agency/corporate level, so this feels apt for input!

Several reasons - you've got part of the answer right in that there are a ton
of other smaller tools for the more specific sections of the market that can
be broken apart and sectioned off. I personally deal with quite a bit of
comics/illustration and there alone you have Corel Painter, OpenCanvas,
PaintTool SAI, Manga Studio, Clip Studio, plus many of the newer ipad sketch
programs that've popped up recently.

However - I think those markets get saturated and weakened too quickly by
those newcomers that gain a foothold and then slowly start deteriorating due
to lack of updates or shiny marketing. Photoshop gets underrated for sheer
versatility in this case - it's less of a high priced transient brand (think
Uber or BMW) and simply a functioning longstanding tool (a car, or a swiss
army knife for that 'tool as a brand' metaphor) for so many kinds of design
related issues that the ease of use is baked in. Software tends to have a
maddening problem of quick degradation and a large slice of older designers
tend to be very picky about their tools. Broke, too.

Additionally, for some of the larger corporations - there's lots of production
chains that rely quite strongly on specific file formats to be exported or
special color management, and most of these smaller programs simply can't
handle that much depth without the team that Adobe has. (Don't ever talk to me
about color management for factory packaging production.)

Finally, factor in the immense marketing team that Adobe has - designers are
innately marketers, after all, and they've saturated most trendy design sites
with pro-Adobe ads and likely have special deals behind the scene to keep
their name relevant. Not a fan of that style of closed garden at all, so I
skate by by using the most outdated version of PS (ie non subscription) I can
find without crippling my workflow, and using others if I can.

------
heldrida
You should definitely check Affinity! They have amazing products, such as
Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo; I remember paying about 30 GBP for each
license. It's way faster to work on, compared to Photoshop or Gimp; Load time
etc. Also, for video editing, you have this other company called HitFilm, you
can use it to Edit or VFX (Yup! Motion graphics) super cheap or you use the
Free version. Also, there's Blender for the past 20 years, for everything
motion, and you can also edit video, and so much more.

Maybe you should criticize the fact that small companies don't have as much
money for marketing, in comparison to Adobe; But a good start is to start use
Firefox and an alternative search engine than Google. You'd be surprised at
what you're capable finding!

~~~
ryanjanvier
I switched from Adobe to Affinity and gave it a few months before I switched
back. I wasn't a fan of the UI, and some of the tools I use often were
missing. I do hope they get there though!

------
mietek
The competition has been assimilated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altsys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altsys)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach_Software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach_Software)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia)

~~~
stevekemp
Seeing those names reminded me of another, back in the day when I ran Windows
all my editing was carried out in Paint Shop Pro - which still seems to exist,
despite having been first released 27 years ago.

~~~
acutesoftware
Yes, PSP did everything I needed to do - though I am not deep into graphics.
Seems they have a new 2018 version ($89 AU), but Windows only.

[https://www.paintshoppro.com/en/products/paintshop-
pro/stand...](https://www.paintshoppro.com/en/products/paintshop-
pro/standard/)

------
starmftronajoll
Seems like the question would be to ask why nobody competes viably with
Photoshop. Premiere is an odd example to single out — Avid and Final Cut, for
instance, are full-featured and both have a substantial user base. The
competition there is healthier than OP makes it out to be.

As for Photoshop, once it became the standard, it stayed that way by virtue of
user inertia and the massive development resources it would take for a
competitor to create a program in the same class. Photoshop is an extremely
complex app and, on the whole, a very good one. It’s not without its
frustrations, but nothing is.

~~~
pacavaca
Right, I would even narrow down my question to "why nobody competes Viably in
a non-professional market". Both Avid and Final Cut are overkills for a ski-
trip video editing, while simple things like iMovie and friends are waaay to
stripped down.

~~~
sfifs
Perhaps because sufficient number of non professionals typically won't pay an
amount of money that pays for a top notch development team. So in the non
professional market, you have labors of love like GIMP and DarkTable

~~~
pacavaca
Right, but what about those "indie" content creators, popping up everywhere
these days: YouTubers, Instagrammers, independent musicians and clip-makers,
poor startup founders, needing to create a 1-minute marketing video twice a
year... All those, I think, would spare $50-$100 for a good piece of software
but not more than that. And if someone would analyze how they use professional
products, I'm sure, it would converge to some stable ~30% subset of features
big products offer

~~~
sfifs
If your content makes you significant money, you'll be willing to invest/pay.
Return from even one piece of content will typically very comfortably pay off
software pricing. My wife and her business partners run a completely
bootstrapped startup and they do pay (often others rather than make content
themselves) for wherever is critical for revenue generation.

If your content doesn't generate revenue or revenue generating leads, you have
a hobby and need to decide whether to invest in the hobby.

Edit: in my last trip to China, I actually saw the mushrooming "mobile live
video streaming influencer" industry and looking at their equipment (portable
large battery powered klieg lights, audio gear etc.), it's pretty clear the
influencers were investing.

------
ivanstegic
We stopped using Photoshop and migrated to Sketch exclusively. New designers
we interact with seem to be doing the same thing. One data point. YMMV.

~~~
thecupisblue
Sketch covers only 0.1% of Photoshop's features and it only serves that
userbase.

------
pasbesoin
Bitmap graphics: Paint.NET . Yeah, Windows, but it works quite well. IIRC,
I've read that, at least at one point, it ran under Wine. KDE's Krita just hit
4.0 . I haven't used it, but there are lots of nice comments about it floating
around. In the Linux world, there's also Pinta that I've used a few times. On
Ubuntu 16.04, out of the default repositories, it complains about this or that
missing or not being signed/blessed/something -- or did, last I used it. But
it works ok, at least for the quick and dirty tasks I had at hand at that
time.

Vector graphics: Inkscape

Adobe support is, in my experience, truly horrible. I once spent a cumulative
7.5 hours on support calls before I finally got a front line call center
employee to go back to their supervisor, after being given the wrong answer
once, and prod them into paying attention and looking further and, lo and
behold, generating the correct legacy license code I -- rather, the person I
was helping -- was entitled to as an owner/licensee of the full-blown Creative
Suite.

Basically, I knew more than the support supervisor about this problem. I just
had to find someone in support with the interest and guts to push their
supervisor to actually pay attention and execute the solution.

7.5 hours. For what should have been one 10 minute support call.

After that, I vowed that as for myself, at least, Adobe would never get
another dime from me.

~~~
pacavaca
Right. And the sad part is that they can afford their support being this
terrible - they simply don't care about a few hundred customers fleeing them.
But on the user end - I and my wife were so frustrated by their support today
so that you can see, I've even started this topic :D

P.S. the support question was not even about using their product but about
buying

------
acidburnNSA
For "developing" RAW images (Adobe Lightroom), it appears that the FOSS,
Darktable [1], is a serious competitor. It has a full array of non-destructive
editing features including extremely fancy parametric mask and blending
effects. It also has responsive photo management (works great on at least 10s
of GB), import, tagging, etc. They recently released their first Windows
build.

[1] [https://www.darktable.org/](https://www.darktable.org/)

~~~
dingaling
Dark table, Raw Therapee and even dcraw-ufraw are all considered first-class
tools for RAW work even amongst semi-pro market.

Lightroom is still a common choice for photo pros licensing other Adobe tools
but I know some of them wio fall back to FOSS tools for particular tasks
particularly in astro work.

------
kelsolaar
I guess it depends which market you are talking about, Adobe Photoshop usage
in the VFX and Game industries have plummeted. Texturing is done using The
Foundry Mari or Allegorithmic Substance Painter. After Effect is still used
for commercials but most of the high-end compositing work is done with The
Foundry Nuke. As far as editing goes, Davinci Resolve is an amazing piece of
software, I highly recommend it given it is free.

------
Eric_WVGG
I'm one of those sad dorks who bought into CorelDraw back in the late 90s.
Yes, their packaging was tacky; yes, they marketed themselves poorly; yes, a
dozen cd-roms full of shitty clip art and knock-off fonts was a poor way to
court designers. Behind all that was a massively superior (to Illustrator)
vector art software, and a bitmap editor that was easily a peer to Photoshop.
Watching "Creative Suite" (I mean Cloud) features to finally catch up to Corel
1998 in 2015 has been excruciating.

Look at how Illustrator even today doesn't use shift-clicks consistently with
either Mac or Windows; it works like an app from thirty years ago, because it
is a 30-year-old app.

Artists learn a tool, and are more interested in what they can do with that
tool than how the tool works. Thus, they have a uniquely poor ability to
adapt. You can see that with the transition of film photographers to digital.
Also 3D guys: I have a neighbor who was an animator in the eighties, he did a
bunch of those animated logos for NBC and HBO and MTV (with physically carved
models and fancy camera tricks); he's trying like hell to adapt to software,
but he seems to be about a decade late to wrap his head around it.

~~~
jimmiejams
I used to work with a designer who lived and breathed CorelDraw. She could do
everything she needed to in it, and preferred it over Photoshop. The rest of
the designers used Photoshop and there was always some pressure for her to
switch, but she was productive and that's all that really mattered. She used
to have a few digs at them about how quick it was to do something (or even
possible), but all in good fun.

------
jpobst
Ultimately there is very little consumer grade software anymore because modern
consumers won't pay for software.

The only people who pay for software are enterprises and they aren't going to
skimp a few hundred dollars on software that makes their $X0,000 creative
workers X% less productive.

In this space there is basically Pixelmator and Affinity trying to eke out
enough sales to keep their developers paid.

------
madenine
The time to take on Adobe was probably 10-15 years ago. At this point to oust
them or even try to compete with them you would have have to create a feature
for feature better product, and offer it at a lower price point. Your
interface would either have to mimic adobe's to ease transition or be a
significant improvement that its beneficial to switch.

As far as dialed down "40% functionality" \- isn't that what Adobe tried with
their "Elements" line dialed back versions of Premier/Photoshop at a lower
price point?

I get the feeling it would be hard to roll out a "40%" product without a
"100%" as well - or else you risk having the narrative around your product
becoming "use this until you start taking yourself seriously - then learn a
whole new software suite when you graduate to Adobe"

Idk. Lack of competition isn't great, but back when others were actively
trying Photoshop was still king (thinking back to the 4.0/5.0 days)

~~~
besasam
>you would have have to create a feature for feature better product, and offer
it at a lower price point.

Have you tried out Affinity? I'm not sure about the features yet, but it's
definitely just as visually appealing at a fraction of the cost (and non-
subscription).

------
besasam
I'm hopeful for the new GIMP release. There was a thread about it yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16686941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16686941)

Sadly, when it comes to things like context-aware fill, Photoshop still
outperforms any alternative I've tried, so I'm probably going to stick to it
for a while longer.

Bit off topic, but if you're still looking for a video editing software, try
Hitfilm Express: [https://hitfilm.com/express](https://hitfilm.com/express)

It's non-free but doesn't cost anything, and it's really powerful but still
really easy to use.

------
kingnothing
If we're looking at a single program, like Photoshop, I can get the best tool
in the industry for $20 / month. You have three hurdles to overcome...

1\. What would you do better than Photoshop?

2\. How would you price it to be competitive?

3\. How will you convince users that your product is worthwhile?

~~~
pacavaca
So, let's take Pixelmator as an example. They easily bought me with their
promise of a streamlined design and simple to use tools. Their demos looked so
cool, that I've easily paid $40 (I think it was $40). Then, when I started
using it, I realized it's missing some super-simple features (that people
request on their forum) + it's not so stable, it freezes and crashes
sometimes. (Also, can't remember the exact features that I was missing) So,
now, even though I have a paid for Pixelmator, I still have to ask my wife to
do simple edits in her Photoshop occasionally, which I hate using.

So, what I'm saying is that selling to me was not a problem at all, if only
they could deliver a good product. I also used Sketch as an example of a
product that works great: it's cheap, it probably misses tons of Corel Draw
features, but it's simple, cheap, and perfectly serves needs of those, dealing
with web/mobile design.

So, should there be a similar product for raster graphics and video? Also, NI
on the audio production market feels to me as up for disruption.

------
josh_bondy
We are working to compete with Adobe (well not them specifically), less trying
to beat them on feature count (nobody would), more taking the things that
Photoshop is overkill for and making it easier/repeatable.

Competitors always seem to focus on a 'canvas' paradigm rather than what
people are actually trying to get done, such as cropping to the same
dimensions for web over and over again, or in your case stitching videos
(sorry we don't support video yet).

We are still pretty early stage but the feedback has been great.

[https://beta.laazy.io](https://beta.laazy.io)

------
MiHi6
Support for @kamphey

Snapseed

Filterstorm - thats the "Photoshop" for iPad / iPhone
[http://filterstorm.com](http://filterstorm.com)

ExifViewer by Fluntro
[http://exifviewerapp.com/blog/](http://exifviewerapp.com/blog/)

SKRWT [http://www.skrwt.com](http://www.skrwt.com)

Slidebox - [http://slidebox.co](http://slidebox.co)

Union - [http://unionapp.co](http://unionapp.co)

And many more. Digital minimalism is the new trend. We don't need 3 million
special effects / features for a happy life. Less is more - more room for your
own thoughts, fantasy. With digital minimalism i invite you that you are a
part of my creativity.

Not Photoshop a hug for your mom is life.

See all the new YT videos. Zero effects, zero style, 2D, a human face in the
middle and realtalk / rants about truth, emotions and what you really feel.The
ppl understand my life is a selflie. I am not myself, i am an actor and dont
tell my friends what i really love / feel / need.

------
scarface74
Is anyone seriously investing in any commercial non SAAS software any more as
a stand-alone product? No one is seriously competing with Microsoft Office
either.

------
smt88
Adobe has tons of competitors, but they're not always obvious because the
market doesn't perfectly overlap.

For example, I used to buy Photoshop and Dreamweaver to do web design for
static sites. Now I use SquareSpace instead.

There are lots of niche products that chip away at Photoshop, including web-
based alternatives that are less powerful but "good enough" and more portable.

------
wgerard
I think you kinda answered your own question:

> P.S. I tried using Pixelmator (non-free), GIMP, OpenShot and a few more
> open-source editors - they don't stand the competition.

It's really hard to do it right, and even if you do you're targeting just a
single segment of the market (people who need more than iMovie but not
everything that Premiere provides). I imagine more than a few people have
looked into this and decided that isn't a good ROI for the amount of
investment involved.

Also, don't forget that Adobe (used to, anyway, not sure if they still do) has
really cheap student licenses so that aspiring designers/editors/etc. get
hooked on their software and carry that preference over into their
professional lives.

My guess is that anyone who really has a passion for this has a regular full-
time job and works on something like GIMP in their free time.

------
solarkraft
While I haven't found any replacement for AfterEffects for motion graphics,
many people I know have switched to Affinity Designer/Photo without looking
back. Not only does it not tie you into a subscription, the interface is
cleaner (without years of baggage) and the whole system feels less cluttered.
Maybe the features are there with Photoshop, but they are more intuitive with
Affinity. Maybe it doesn't do some niche-thing Photoshop can do, but it's
evidently enough for most.

Pixelmator and Vectormator also have very good quality.

In Open Source, Gimp and Krita really don't compete well in Photo editing and
there simply is nothing even close to AE, but for audio Ardour does a good
job.

------
Torn
For consumer (non-expert) ways to design great-looking graphics + materials in
an easy drag & drop fashion, check out Canva.

For the more complicated things, Paint.NET on windows is pretty great (and
still free). I've yet to find an equivalent that works as well for other OSes.

~~~
patwalls
Want to reiterate how great Canva is, and my anecdotal evidence that a TON of
bloggers and people around the web use it.

------
auganov
These kinds of tools are very sticky. Every once in a while I might come
across interesting design software, with features I'd want etc. But at the end
of the day, it's very risky to switch. Takes a long time to develop a good
workflow. And you might end up not liking it anyways. I keep using Illustrator
and Photoshop for the same reason I keep using Emacs.

I actually know an unlikely person that got started with the terrible GIMP and
they're very reluctant to switching too.

------
jbarham
PhaseOne's Capture One is gaining some traction against Lightroom in the
photography market, especially since Adobe basically forced Lightroom users to
a subscription-only model.

------
panic
_> I was also looking for a simple software to stitch together my GoPro videos
but was left out with either free iMovie/Quick, which are too basic or a
super-expensive Premiere._

It sounds like your real question is, why isn't anyone making free or
inexpensive tools with features like Premiere, so I don't have to pay for it?
That's the problem -- everybody wants nice software but nobody's willing to
pay what it would actually cost to write it.

~~~
pacavaca
Not really. My point was that there's a lot of space between MS Paint and
Photoshop (iMovie and Premiere), etc, and there seem to be enough people,
willing to pay half price for the half of features. I'm not saying I want it
for free, all I'm saying is that $500/year (creative suite price) is way too
much for occasional picture/video editing.

~~~
jinushaun
Frustratingly that mythical video editing app you’re looking for was actually
a previous version of iMovie. Apple crippled iMovie with the release of iMovie
08, which removed a bunch of previous features and workflows in an effort to
make it easier to post videos to YouTube. Apple made it easier to create
simple videos, but incredibly difficult to make anything slightly more
complicated. Editing clips synced to music became a frustrating game of Tower
of Hanoi.

I thought there would be hope with switching to FCP, but then they did the
same thing in 2011 with FCP X.

------
omarchowdhury
For UX/UI design, there's Sketch and Figma.

~~~
mhmiles
Was looking for this. I don’t think competition comes as a 100% feature
complete alternative but rather as a splintering into more specialized tools.

~~~
y_molodtsov
Sketch and Figma are actually auite similar from PS, they were adapted for the
particular task and simplified it, that’s why designers love it. Hard to do
something like that fot the general application.

------
IvanK_net
Hi, my name is Ivan and I am competing with Adobe and other image-editing
comapnies :)

You can read about my photo editor Photopea here:
[https://blog.photopea.com/creating-
photopea.html](https://blog.photopea.com/creating-photopea.html)

------
pvinis
I use to work for a company making an InDesign alternative. It's
pagestrip.com. Feel free to try it out!

~~~
peatmoss
I wish them luck. In my undergraduate journalism days I learned page layout in
Quark Express. Then MacOS X happened. Quark basically refused to build a
version that wasn’t tied hopelessly to the old Mac system.

And I remember what a breath of fresh air InDesign was. Here was an upstart
challenger building something that, while less featureful than Quark, had some
niceties and trust built up from their work on Photoshop.

In the blink of an eye Quark was a footnote and InDesign was the juggernaut.

------
maxxxxx
My experience is only with LightRoom and Photoshop and I have to say that
their products are just very good. There is also a ton of learning material
out there for Adobe products.

Hard to compete with that. Affinity photo is quite good but if I were a pro I
would stick to Photoshop.

------
davidnoble12
This was a great post. We are cut off at my university in a licensing fight
with Adobe. I'm not certain how absent that product we are running a digital
media and design curriculum...unless the students are required to purchase
themselves.

------
kyriakos
There's a lot more competition in the photography industry. Adobe has
lightroom but there's a trend now for photographers jumping into Capture One.
Then there's dxo optics, darktable and for the less high end market Acdsee.

------
rajeshpant
I am attending an Adobe conference this week and this was my exact thoughts.
How come no one else build these tools and compete in this market. There is a
huge market potential.

------
weissed
Sejda PDF is a freemium Acrobat alternative:
[https://www.sejda.com/](https://www.sejda.com/)

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the-peter
HitFilm and Lightworks are both excellent professional quality video editors
with free versions.

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el_cid
I've seen lots of pros who prefer Final Cut Pro and Sketch

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joshAg
check out avid media composer for your videos. It's priced reasonably.

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pacavaca
The website says $50/month == full creative suite price. It's probably a very
reasonable price for a professional, who uses the tool every day and makes
money on it, but for my needs, it's way overpriced...

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joshAg
That's fair. Did you check out "Media Composer | First"? I think that's free

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jsfunfun
www.HugoMM.com is a new Mac application in the LightRoom space

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kamphey
Many mobile photo editing apps compete with lightroom.

Snapseed, VSCO, Instagram

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pacavaca
those are too basic, there's a lot of space in between Photoshop and
Instagram...

