Software has this (very convenient) problem of only selling tool chests, not just tools.
So if you just need one or two features of a program, then you still need to purchase...err, rent...the entire thing. Sometimes you even need to rent it for a full year.
Thankfully it seems LLM's are on track to solve this problem at least partially by being able to effectively code very narrow scope solutions. You can't prompt Claude to write Photoshop, but you can prompt it to write a program that scales images and applies a basic filter. (Yes, I know there are a gazillion free photo tools, this is just an accessible example).
So if you just need one or two features of a program, then you still need to purchase...err, rent...the entire thing. Sometimes you even need to rent it for a full year.
Thankfully it seems LLM's are on track to solve this problem at least partially by being able to effectively code very narrow scope solutions. You can't prompt Claude to write Photoshop, but you can prompt it to write a program that scales images and applies a basic filter. (Yes, I know there are a gazillion free photo tools, this is just an accessible example).