If you're still using Adobe's products, stop. Better late than never. Adobe had some great products. Then they over charged for them. Then they required a "cloud" subscription. There are alternatives. Support one of the startups or open source projects that are competing with them. Don't give Adobe another cent.
I went Adobe-less a few years ago; can't recommend Affinity enough. [1]
I know there's some concern since Canva bought Affinity a couple of months ago, assuming they're going to turn the Affinity suite into a subscription product. I don't share those concerns; Affinity huge rise in popularity is because it's not a subscription like Adobe's core offering.
A one-time payment gets you Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher for macOS, Windows and iPad.
I wouldn’t even look at startups if there is a viable open source alternative. Most startups are just looking to get a big enough user base to get bought by the big players.
Agreed, though personally if their product is open source or source available, I'm much less concerned since I'm not screwed if/when they enshittify or go belly up.
I think it's already dead; the vestiges of life it exhibits are basically the electrical tethers of AI editing, cloud 'collaboration', and various other "tweaks" trying to justify a yearly release of a product that feature-peaked years ago.
I went a very long time not using Adobe's products but I hit a wall when I went to do some motion-based projects. What's the After Effects alternative?
Not one-to-one (node vs layer metaphor) but Fusion is stupid powerful and free within Davinci Resolve.
It’s an incredible piece of software that, in addition to being best in class color correction, has fully replaced Adobe in my professional video workflow (Premiere, AE, AME, etc)
I discovered this when looking at video effects options within envato elements. There are now over 6,000 templates there, that many moons ago I assumed were only really feasible with after effects.
I also see they have some for apple motion and final cut - but I don't do mac so they stay off my radar.
More using davinci and demanding effects that work with it, the better!
I remember a number of years ago getting a cheap 1-year Lightroom susbscription as part of a promo.
Got it installed, loaded up a few photos. Then went back to the directory to load the photos in a different program for comparison.
The photos were deleted from my hard drive!
They were loaded into Lightroom's cloud service, and without my knowledge or permission (and I was using the just-installed defaults) it had deleted those files I had touched with Lightroom and "helpfully" uploaded them.
Ah, the new Lightroom CC! I was a happy, delighted, enthusiastic Lightroom user from the moment it originally came out and threw Aperture into the bin where it belongs. Lightroom was fast, brilliant to use, a fabulous wrapper around ACR and managed all the photo files perfectly.
It was, to me, as perfect a piece of consumer software that has ever existed.
The moment CC turned up, not only was it a cut-down version in terms of features, but the file management side was gone too, and this whole cloud functionality took over. A complete workflow change.
The main benefit that I found, ok, the only benefit, was that I was able to easily create web galleries for client approval etc. Everything else was gone. Lightroom Classic came back, kind of, but the direction of travel was fixed.
It took me years and years to finally get close to that one-stop-shop workflow, using Photo Mechanic and Capture One, both of which have gone subscription-based and offering close to zero value in return.
My strategy now, I shit you not, is to never ever perform a major upgrade on this Mac and hold out until all the root SSL certificates expire with my current setup.
We used to have such stable computing environments and now everything is a cloud-connected, exposed and defenceless security shitshow.
Agreed. This is I think the single biggest contributor to my now fairly radical approach to software. Unless the app is at least source available, I will only use it if I really need it. One of the most valuable things about open source to me now is simply that nobody can take it away. Sure maintainers can disappear, but (aside from accreted cruft/bitrot) I can keep using whatever version as long as I have hardware to run it on.
I dedicated four hours to learning GIMP a few years ago, and many times now I've been so glad I did. There are a ton of books and courses out there for people looking to do the same. Kdenlive is another one I'm super glad I took the time to learn.
Ditto. Commercial software turned out to have limited headroom.
GIMP is here but I can’t quite get my head around the lack of integration with open and save dialogs, even while I recognize your reasoning. The dumbest stuff becomes the biggest obstacle sometimes.
But no matter, because said commercial software companies are finding new paradigms for shrinkflation while reaching new heights in fiction and fantasy.
Ah, but C1 has completely changed the offer by not including a single new feature update on the one-time perpetual purchase, only bug fixes, and no upgrade pricing at all. So it completely removes any kind of incentive for customer to stay loyal.
I migrated away from Adobe after Photoshop CS6 which I believe was the last release before they switched over to a subscription only pricing model.
If you're looking for a Photoshop alternative to break away from the incredibly user hostile relationship with Adobe I can heartily recommend either Krita (open source) or Pixelmator (Mac only).
Pixelmator Pro is my daily driver for image related work and is incredibly snappy and surprisingly full featured for an application that costs a fraction of PS - $50.00 onetime fee.
Another happy Pixelmator user, migrated across from Photoshop and Illustrator. For the relatively small cost ($30 on sale) its most of the way as good for my semi-professional work creating content. It has some rough edges but has so far been improved with every update.
I'm a user/subscriber to Skylum for the past few years and it integrates well with macOS Photos. Both Affinity Photos and Pixelmator Pro also integrates with Photos.
I'm not a professional. DxO PhotoLab does looks good especially with their focus on RAW. I plan to start shooting mostly in RAW.
Do DxO plays well with macOS Photos and how does it compare to Skylum's (Neo)?
Yeah, I ran Mojave on one of my Macs for years, until the very last moment to be able to use CS6! It is a shame they didn’t do one more version that had 64 bit support before they went to the crappy subscription model or I could still use it in Rosetta 2!
I can also recommend Pixelmator Pro, it’s been really good for what I use it for!
I second both statements. I used Pixelmator Pro on a Mac for maybe a decade (before it became Pro), and it’s very good. I would highly recommend it to anyone on a Mac. Long ago they had 50% discount, I don’t know whether they still do discounts these days. It’s a one-time payment, so even without a discount they worth what they ask. If you work with the app all day long, every day, it’s such a pleasure after the ugly Photoshop. Pixelmator allowed me to forget Photoshop for good. And even allowed me to move to Linux, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40572874
Pixelmator Pro doesn’t work on Linux (it’s macOS exclusive, afaik), but it allowed me to stop being dependent on Photoshop and look for other alternatives. Krita is quite good on Linux. I cannot compare them as I’m not an artist myself, but for my use case Krita is good enough. Since it’s FOSS you can start with that easily.
Adobe Photoshop was one of the tools that helped me earn money professionally during my school and college days, so I had a nostalgic relationship with it. Then, I had a good relationship with Adobe in various ways for a long time in the 2000s.
I stopped using such tools long back, but I wanted to keep one handy to remind me of the old days. I found Serif's Affinity[1] to be a good alternative so far. I've been a customer since its beta, and I had to buy once, then an upgrade with their recent v2.0
The other good, light, quick, and easy-to-use alternative is Pixelmator Pro[2]. In the last 4-5 years, I think I have only had to pay for it twice.
> The other good, light, quick, and easy-to-use alternative is Pixelmator Pro
Unless you want, e.g., a destructive crop[0] which they have been not adding for at least 4 years and counting. Since my graphic work generally involves cropping, that kinda rules out Pixelmator Pro for me and forces me back into the Adobe Tax Hole.
[0] There are undoubtedly many other deficiencies but this one really irks me.
Isn't this achieved by enabling the "Delete cropped pixels" option?
From Pixelmator help:
> Select "Delete cropped pixels" to permanently delete the cropped areas of an image or deselect it to crop the image nondestructively and hide the cropped areas of an image instead.
Does this only relate to things you put into their cloud, or does Photoshop now upload your offline files to Adobe servers as well?
By the way, it's always morally correct to pirate Adobe software for personal use. Which also allows you to fully firewall it because it no longer needs to talk to the activation server.
I agree with you, but on a practical level, private trackers are moderated, and so, reasonably safe and secure. Convenience is case by case. Often, the official stuff puts up such a fuss that the pirated copy is more convenient to use.
I've been doing it all my life. I've literally never paid for a software license, I don't know any better. In general, I usually download from reputable sources. Haven't had any problems so far.
> If I've actually unknowingly downloaded a virus, it's honestly less malevolent than the paid version.
This is a remarkable observation on the sad state of paid software. It's so sad because it's so true.
I don't mind buying software, but I do mind pretty much all DRM implementations. Even simple license checks have bitten me in the past when I had no internet access and the software just decided that time was up and it needed to verify me. Nothing fills me with rage more than software that I paid for refusing to run while I'm camping or on a plane or somewhere else without internet, for software that doesn't need any networt functionality whatsoever to operate.
:) reputable torrent sources usually have a comment section and viruses are found and the torrent nuked faster than you get around to downloading the stuff...
Wtf? Obviously you can't post slurs like this to HN, regardless of which population you're slurring. Since we've asked you before not to do this and you've continued to do it, I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Was this comment targeted at me or other commenters that are [flagged] or removed right now? Sincerely, I don’t understand, as it’s my comment you replied to.
If that is targeted to me, I don’t understand which slurs are you talking about. Calling Russians Russians is a slur now? Explaining other parts of their culture, maybe? Explain me please. To me that looks like you (or ycombinator which policy you follow) side with Russians. Are you even aware of the genocidal war they place at Ukraine right now for over two years? Is it allowed to mention on hacker news? Besides that, I’m not calling names. I’m just telling others, ‘look he’s Russian, unfortunately they don’t understand the concept of paying for software, respecting its license. Since, after all, they don’t have human rights to start with’. I would prefer to get your public explanation of these policies rather than telling me in email in private. I remember similar occasions in other threads, one with me, and with others as well. So my assumption is that some kind of policy I didn’t get from the rules.
The previous ban was on a similar occasion. So my assumption is that you just chose your side already. And it’s not allowed to say not even some bad words about Russians, but just mention the true parts of their culture here on hacker news. That’s how I see the issue, if your comment was targeted at my communication. Not my opponents that are obviously harassed me for expressing my point of view. As they’re flagged, I don’t understand if I interpreted you correctly.
Thanks, looking forward to your comment.
P.S. As I was allowed to comment, looks like the whole ban thing is targeted at someone else, isn’t it? I am perplexed.
What you posted was obviously a slur—this was not a borderline call. You can't make pejorative generalizations about entire populations like that on HN, no matter which population, nor how you feel about them. I'm surprised to have to spell this out.
HN's rules don't change during a conflict. On the contrary, they become even more applicable: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> So my assumption is that you just chose your side already
People frequently assume that they got banned because the moderator just disagrees with them, rather than because they broke the rules. We hear this from every side of every argument. All I can tell you is that what you posted would be just as unacceptable if it were about any other nationality. Like I said, this is not a borderline call.
Banned accounts are allowed to comment on HN, but their posts are killed by default. Users can vouch for the good comments posted by banned accounts, so the posts don't necessarily stay [dead].
> You understand the copyright, but you don’t respect it. That’s the idea.
I understand stupid ideas, but I'm not required to respect them. Make the copyright last 3 years instead of an eternity, or make copyright holders pay an exponentially increasing tax, per copyrighted work, to extend it every year, then I'll reconsider.
> You’re okay with having your Photoshop, but for free.
Yes I am. Proudly. Why should I care? Adobe won't sell me a subscription even if I wanted one, btw. Because I'm Russian.
If I were into making compromises to prove things, I'd be using desktop Linux.
And Adobe isn't a small startup struggling to make ends meet. They would've still been profitable even if no one paid for their products for personal use and their only paying customers were businesses.
> As Russia is a democratic country indeed. And that is the way of overthrowing a dictator, voting against him on the next ballot. Doing anything else is futile, obviously.
I'm open to suggestions. You can also come here and try to overthrow him yourself if you think we're doing such a poor job of it. I'll be sure to take a picture of you getting arrested.
The fact that something is a law doesn't automatically make it good and worthy of respect. And, after all, is it even a proper law if it's hardly ever enforced, and if so many people are not on board with it? Or would you call the police if you found out your neighbor is pirating software?
I'm a software developer myself, by the way. And because of how much I despise the current idea of copyright, I release all my projects under The Unlicense, and since 2016, I no longer work on anything proprietary and/or requiring an NDA.
> A racist? Do you even know what a race is? Is Russian a race now, huh?
In other words: "I'm not racist, I don't categorize by race. Do you even know what a race is? You have categorized Russians wrongly. It is part of a race, not it's own one..."
I'll take my chances. Adobe have proven they want to spy on me 100% of the time and shake me down for as much cash as possible. Pirates ostensibly have to compete on the quality of the product they offer.
>"Do you want to allow this app from an unknown publisher to make changes to your device? PiratedGameFromRussianTorrents.exe"
>ok
The biggest problem with piracy is the entry barrier. You need to know what sites are safe, what aren't. Also, Google hides results from torrent sites, so yeah, it's kind of an underground club. If you're a newbie you're going to get ransomware, if you know the basics it's trivial. Piracy isn't as popular as 10 years ago, but it's still there, mostly powered by poor countries.
I strongly disagree with it being morally correct to pirate Adobe.
You still help grow their near monopoly. Alternatives, both paid and free, lost growth. Your professional choice will still be Adobe, because that's where you spent your training effort.
I'm pretty sure Adobe prefers you pirating over leaving.
A large swathe of professionals campaigned on behalf of Adobe when they switched from perpetual to subscription licensing. They willingly turned over control and this is merely the consequences of that willingness, which Adobe will continue to take advantage of. I don't see this leading to any changes, just pointing it out.
Adobe, like Apple, has a strong fambase. They don’t need material kickbacks to shill for their favorite corpos, the thrill of shouting loud-and-proud for a cause is enough.
can someone zoom in and erradicate this behavior on a genetic level? It is going to be the demise of humanity. or more weight on teaching critical thinking in schools
> The user agreement also leaves open the possibility to train AI using user-generated content, saying they can use the content they retrieve to “improve our Services and Software“.
I will hold on to my activation-free fully-offline Photoshop CS3 until the day Win32 finally dies. Still using it daily with an equally-old Wacom tablet to clean up all my flatbed scans :)
You can't compare Photoshop CS3 to the newer versions.
I've been using Photoshop since CS2, it's incredible how far it went. Of course if it does the job you need, then that's great. I use the latest version of Photoshop to cleanup family photos, and to design video games. In both cases it would take me much longer to do the same thing in CS3. Time is quite valuable, and Photoshop is cheaper than Netflix every month.
I am guessing this needs to be taken with a grain of salt since the author did not get a reply from Adobe. Doesn’t look like they bothered to get it either.
As I am reading it, this should not affect NDA work.
"Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software...we can access and use your data, even for marketing our Software or services."
I stopped using Adobe a couple of years ago, replaced it with the Affinity suite. Publisher still lacks a lot of InDesign features but it gets the job done.
For photography I'm using FastRawViewer for culling and Photomator for editing.
Unexpectedly fantastic news! My wife makes extensive use of the adobe PDF editing tools, which is has been a major blocker for getting her onto linux. What is a good replacement that works on windows and linux? Non-free is fine.
Xournal++ is my go to. It has a few quirks to get used to, but once you do it's quite functional. Biggest thing to watch out for is exporting and overwriting the source file. It will usually let you, but it often blanks out the source and loses your changes. So just make sure to export with a different filename than the original is. If you accept the default suggestion, it will work fine.
It's also made to be used well with wacom tablets, so if you have one of those you can make use of it in xournal++.
The older "Xournal" (no ++) is mostly functional but also dead, so I would go with Xournal++.
PDF was not created to be edited, but as a final output format ready to be printed as-is.
OTOH, XournalPP has basic editing tools. So does LibreOffice.
I can't answer windows/linux, but I use pdfexpert.com for mac and it's great. It was a one time $100 charge when I bought it several years ago, and it gets updated regularly.
> Use this tool to paint an ellipse. The currently selected brush is used for drawing the ellipse outline. Click and hold the left mouse button to indicate one corner of the ‘bounding rectangle’ of the ellipse, then move your mouse to the opposite corner. Krita will show a preview of the ellipse using a thin line. Release the button to draw the ellipse.
I can :o) But I completely agree, it's very non-obvious. It beggars belief that they haven't fixed that issue. Another poster suggested Krita - that's a good suggestion IMO (even thou I still like Gimp too)
Even if this is not what Adobe are doing, the author of the tweet is not incorrect to make such an interpretation from the terms.
Now would be a good time for Adobe to do away with vague "catch all" language, because we now live in an era where user data is being swept up for AI model generation and governments are leaning heavily into tech companies for policing.
However to play the devil's advocate we can see how these terms have come about without rounding up to tweeter's interpretation.
Note: There is also good reasoning to believe this interpretation because using software that collects data indiscriminately would significantly impact the ability of Adobe's large customers to use their software. Since service agreements and various compliance standards forbid as such.
First up are Adobe's online terms that relate to CSAM, abiding by subpoenas, security, and feedback/bug support. Those are all pretty standard for hosted services. So while some may not like that, this is a "nothing to see here" clause.
However the "gotcha" for users comes about because a lot of Adobe's features rely on their cloud infrastructure which they may use unintentionally. This extends beyond using their cloud storage allowance or the Behance social network. Here are some examples:
- Generative AI: in & out painting will send image data to Adobe for matching.
- Farm rendering: Some apps, such as Dimension, feature off-site processing options. These of course mean that your content, textures, logos, etc are then on Adobe's servers for processing.
- Forms dissemination: Hosting forms means that Adobe will have not just your content, but also that of people that fill out the form.
- Review features: Review features are all performed through the cloud.
- Moving documents between devices: Using the app's built into tools to move a document/graphic between devices is performed via the cloud.
There are many more scenarios, but I've tried to choose a range to demonstrate variety, and how that extends beyond actions where the user is deliberately using online storage.
The next part of Adobe's terms is noting that they don't specifically call out online versus offline processing, rather they use the terms "Services" and "Products". This would appear to be explainable as Adobe's apps include algorithms that enforce certain types of document security, such as anti-counterfeiting measures, watermarking, Content Credentials and copyright embedding. The vague language of this clause is the source of the problem, as Adobe don't demarcate where and why the processing is performed.
So in summary the overly vague language can be chalked up to legal brevity, but in this era that is insufficient for peace of mind.
> Now would be a good time for Adobe to do away with vague "catch all" language, because we now live in an era where user data is being swept up for AI model generation and governments are leaning heavily into tech companies for policing.
100%.
The thing is, I've seen in B2B sales, one business handling another's data will have to very explicitly say who will be acting as subprocessors and storage of data. You might have to disclose that you're using AWS and Snowflake to store and process data.
Maybe it's time for B2C to start doing that, too. Instead of "We may send your data to 3rd parties for processing", say WHICH 3rd parties and WHY.
> legal brevity
An exceptionally rare thing to see. "Legalese" exists because people create loopholes by exploiting the slightest ambiguity.
I invented a story of a mom telling her kid to stop jumping on the bed, and the kid says "I'm not jumping, I'm hopping!" and goes into a diatribe on the difference between jumping and hopping, the mom says "well quit it!" and leaves, only to come back later and the kid is still jumping, the mom is angry, and the kid says "I'm not jumping or hopping, I'm bouncing!" and eventually the mom has to say something like "Do not jump, hop, bounce, spring, leap, or otherwise use your feet or any other body part, nor any object, to propel yourself upwards or laterally from the bed".
And then later, the mom checks on the kid, and he has removed the mattress from the bed and is still jumping on it.
