this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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I'm a creative. I've used InDesign since version 1.0. I've built my career with Adobe tools.
Adobe Creative Cloud peaked around ten years ago. Since then, it's totally jumped the shark. I'm not even talking about the company, just the software and its features.
When I open InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator I'm trying to work. It's software I've used for, in some cases, 25 years. My point is, I know it inside and out.
The past few years, every new "feature" gets in the way of my work. Adobe has been changing things that already worked very well, or has added extra steps to do something that used to be easy.
Even worse, Adobe has started to fill its software with notifications that can not be disabled. Invasive blue dots. Invasive blue buttons. Invasive blue overlays that stay visible on the screen even when the software is minimized. Rich tool tips that aren't disabled by the option to disable rich tool tips.
Adobe has lost me as a devotee. It's been taken over by venture capital. The company only cares about adoption of new features.
Now, I use it out habit. Because my workplace provides it. Because it's what folks on my team are used to... but because they've come to the ecosystem so late, they only know a fraction of its capabilities.
If Adobe faces demise, I will mourn what if once was. But not what it has become.
Been using Photoshop since 3.0 released on windows. I knew when they went cloud that shit was going sideways, but it was the acquisition of substance painter that did them in for me. Even though CC was kind of a mess, instead of building on the value proposition and including substance, they decided to have it as a separate charge.
Fuck adobe. Fuck subscription software.
"Fuck Adobe" is my near-daily mantra. I actually utter it out loud at least once a day, if not more. I used to teach PS and worshipped at the temple of PS. These days, FUCK ADOBE!!!! I cannot wait for ANYTHING to replace Photoshop/Adobe. Adobe MUST die!.
I was like the other commenters in the thread, but I grew up on even somewhat liking Gimp (yet with PhotoGIMP plugin). It’s good enough for me, and in some places it’s even better. All I want from it is to have a bit better UX here and there, but that’s not too critical.
Consider supporting ArmorPaint. It’s not a full Substance replacement yet, but it’s affordable and evolving well.
yeah I haven't spent any time with it for about a year, it's time to circle back. Thanks for the reminder.
Interesting to read. Since I never used Adobe products much (aside from PDF) I can only notice the parallels: it's not only there.
It's everywhere.
Even excel is a hot mess when doing basic things like scrolling and it redraws a. Simple worksheet. Everything has degraded to total inefficiency.
We can always use older versions. I stayed in cs6 until I migrated full FOSS
Not if it's for work, generally speaking.
As someone who has a full FOSS stack, can you explain to a non-graphic-design techie like me why people are so allergic to the FOSS alternatives? I just don't know enough about design to understand why people will put up with so much abuse from Adobe when there are completely free alternatives that are not weighed down by AI and actually respect your privacy.
Because I spent an hour trying to figure out how to make a clipping mask in GIMP recently, gave up, loaded Windows and Illustrator, and did it 35 seconds.
This is a real answer
I remember now. I did figure out how masks work, that was pretty simple. But I wanted to mask, and then resize the whole thing, and that seemed to be impossible, and very very strange. I still don't get exactly what was happening.
It's because Adobe truly does have the best feature set. It's partly because they spent so many years building good software, and partly because they own patents that prevent other tools from operating in some of the same ways.
Adobe applications are interoperable. I can seamlessly move content between them. They all have the same interface and work in basically the same way. I can (and have) put together a 300 page book while taking advantage of many advanced automations. And back before Adobe went to shit, they really did put a lot of effort into making their interfaces intuitive.
And when you have 25 years of muscle memory dedicated to a set of tools, it's REALLY difficult to completely replace your whole tool set.
Allergic? No. Need certain features for my work that FLOSS software either doesn't have or takes a lot more hassle to achieve? Yes.
Dude, you keep asking this question throughout the post and I don’t think you’re going to get an answer that satisfies you.
The short answer is industry inertia and professionals not realizing the amount of power they gave away to toolmakers of their profession through the computer age.
Long answer is most people use these tools to work and the vast majority of paid professional work doesn’t happen in a vacuum and is, in fact, a team effort. So that effectively sets the floor and ceiling for use and adoption. Remember, most real people who get paid real money don’t give a shit about which software package or which version of whatever-the-fuck. In fact, they’d rather most of that bleed away so that they only have to think about what they got hired to think about. Also Bob the CISO really fucking hates anything that ends in .py.
That is the most satisfying answer yet.
Sorry for soapboxing. I get a little spicy when discussing intellectual property rights.
What wait? You can mourn what it was even now. 🤷♂️
While their boot is on your throat, it is difficult to mourn what your oppressor used to be.
A software giant like that can only go two directions:
They are still trying to be 2 when a lot of people would like them to be 1, and they have to show new feature adoption statistics to prove that all their expensive employees are still worth paying.
See, that's a false dichotomy.
Modern corporate America demands expansion and growth. But expansion and growth do not need to be required for innovation.
That's where Adobe is a victim of the vulture capitalists who've taken it over.
Both of them can grow profits, which is what’s demanded. Yes, investor demand for constant growth is the pressure that causes it, but the dichotomy is all too real.
I agree. Try telling them this. They just gaslight you. “We can’t replicate this issue.” Always blaming your device.
Have you tried Gimp and Inkscape?
Gimp and Inkscape are excellent programs, I LOVE them. But, they are not Adobe replacements.
Inkscape and Gimp developers, although busy, have still implemenyed some of my feature requests. That's less likely with Adobe. If there is something you need in the open source ones, it's likely already on their list to do. If not, request it.
Why is that? Is it just the user interface? Performance? Or are they missing features that you need?
Well, as I stated in a sibling comment, Gimp did replace Photoshop for me. I’m a semi pro user for two decades. My only issue is with its UX, but PhotoGIMP helps a great deal here.
Please explain to non-artist techies like me why? I keep hearing that refrain but no one can ever explain to me what these FOSS alternatives are actually missing that keeps people from switching.
Based on my experience with Office -> LibreOffice I have to assume it's some combination of laziness about learning something new, "the interface looks old" nonsense, and being unwilling to work through bugs/quirks (even though Office has plenty of its own bugs/quirks - they're just different from LibreOffice's and again, people don't want to learn something new).
Am I wrong? Am I missing something? Specifically, what makes Photoshop not just better than GIMP, but SOOO MUCH BETTER that people are willing to give their money to bourgeois a-holes for the privilege of running software that they will never truly own, that spies on them, that injects unwanted AI into everything, etc.
Or Krita
Is krita closer to gimp or inkscape? How does it compare/contrast to that one?
I find it to be a useful blend of Gimp and Photoshop.
Does it do bitmaps or vector images? Or both?
Neither was worth the time it took to uninstall them when they proved almost unusably inferior to the industry standards.
These things are the standard for a reason, OSS hobbyists who are not graphic designers or admin workers generally will never be able to make something that is in the same league for the exact same reason that I couldn't build a compiler better than the industry standard one, even if I technically had the coding skills to make it, because I haven't spent decades using one professionally, so I wouldn't know what an industry pro would want from it.
The great thing about open source is that it's generally developed by people who use it. Proprietary software is just developed by people who get paid by someone who's just doing it to make a profit...
Then that's even worse, because the design of the OSS "alternatives" to everything I use daily for work screams "hobbyist who just needed the basic functions of a word processor and spreadsheet editor for school".
Wow, imagine an .ml trying so hard to go to bat for corporations and proprietary software. Hilarious...
I hate that it is the way it is, but OSS "alternatives" are not serious tools for professionals. That said, I'm 100% in favor of nationalizing Adobe and Microsoft, since they've created a world where only their tools are good enough to do the job, but that's not the conversation we're having here.
Here's a simple test: take all formatting out of a copy of Ulysses or some other doorstopper of a classic novel so it's just a giant wall of text. Give two publishing pros each a copy of that wall of text, have one turn it in to a publishable book using the industry standard tools and one do the same task with the OSS "alternatives" and see who's done first, and which version is the better looking final product.
Wanna place any bets?
I think your argument is a little outdated because libre software has come a long way in the past few decades. I couldn't imagine not being able to turn a manuscript into a publishable product with FOSS software in the state they are today.
If your argument is that it would take longer because someone has to relearn the interface, that's just because they're used to one and not the other. If it's because they prefer features that the other doesn't have, that's just preference but easily circumvented.
The only other way I could see there being a difference is because of patented features, but that's a discussion that's already been had in this thread. And it's not about open-source developers being in any way worse than closed-source developers.
I'll confess to not having compared them in the last 10 years or so, and I'd be happily surprised to be wrong, but I'm betting that "long way" is mostly in terms of features used by casual/home users, not power users who use the software on a professional basis to do professional work. .
Yes.
How do they compare, in your experience?
They are better than they were. But they are still at least 10 years from being able to match Adobe software - partially because we need to wait for Adobe patents to run out, so that other software can replicate an intuitive software experience.
Ugh, nothing "intuitive" should ever be patentable. Can you imagine if "horizontally-ruled paper" was patented? Or "handles on cooking pans," "shirts with two sleeves," or anything of that sort?
Like, why should anyone have to avoid an obvious feature just because someone else did it first? It's insane.
Also, FOSS projects and non-profits should be exempted from patent restrictions.
I think my CS6 - the last non subscription Adobe Suite from 2012 - is still more intuitive and better to use than the newest GIMP version
Can you elaborate on this? The first time I hear there are patents regarding some intuitive interface. What is that?
Even if so, why not replicate the best of all similar apps, Affinity and Pixelmator too.
Not interface. Experience.
Do a quick web search and you'll learn all about Adobe patents on features.
All I could find is some statistical overviews without much detail, and a more list of recent patents which are all related to AI.
Is there a specific feature that you wish was in the others? I don't really understand the difference between UX and UI
Well, I do understand the difference between the UI and UX, but I have no idea what they are implying. I asked that question precisely because I have no idea what to search for.
The difference between UI and UX is simple. The UI is just the interface: it’s how the app, service, anything, interacts with its user. The experience is … well, the experience of it. E.g. Gimp is awful at UI, but the UX is not that bad, because if you’d get some basic ideas, it’s quite useful, even despite its ugly UI. Sometimes it’s not that easy to distinguish one from another, that’s why the two are usually combined. Interface can be pretty, and most people would call it good, but the experience of using it could be just terrible. Also, experience is what transfers from your experience, so, for a graphics editor, it’s expected that it would follow some de-facto conventions, even if they’re pretty stupid. Once you’d delve into it, it gets difficult to separate, but if we’d simplify, I’d call a UI is just how it looks, and the UX is how it works. At least that’s how I see it. If there’s someone who can explain these better, I’d appreciate to be corrected.
What do you mean? I have no idea what to search for. I’d appreciate some links, or some unfolded explanation. Can you patent features? Sounds a bit absurd.
Can I patent booting the OS from a USB drive? That’s a feature, isn’t it?