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!
