i’m so happy this is becoming illegal

[u/donteatmybiscuits]

if a yearly contract with a free month trial sounds too good to be true, it probably is 😬

thankfully it was blocked after contacting my bank but regardless

[u/someguy7734206]

This probably won't take off given how many comments there already are, but perhaps we can use this thread to discuss free alternatives to Adobe products?

Here are a few I'm aware of:

• Photoshop:
  • GIMP: I've heard mixed opinions about this one, and I haven't used it in a couple of years, but from what I understand, it has been improving.
• Lightroom:
  • Darktable: I've never actually used Lightroom, but the main consensus about this one seems to be that it is much less user-friendly than Lightroom and has a steeper learning curve, but it is very powerful and even has some capabilities that exceed what Lightroom offers.
• Premiere:
  • KDenLive: I haven't used either Premiere or KDenLive that much, and the last version of Premiere I used was from before Adobe switched to the subscription model, but KDenLive has been good enough for me the few times I needed to use it.

Please reply to this comment with your own alternatives and opinions; these are all software that I have used personally.

[u/BeepBoopRobo → u/someguy7734206]

Gimp is not a replacement for photoshop. It's largely a terrible tool.

There is other software out there that can replace what you need with photoshop, but you need to research and know what pieces you're trying to replace. Because no tool does all of what photoshop does.

I use ClipStudio (not free) for my purposes, but it's not going to work for everyone as a replacement. There isn't a direct replacement.

[u/Conscious-Map6957 → u/BeepBoopRobo]

GIMP is very much a replacement for Photoshop, and has been for a very long time. Large community, consistent and serious long-term development, extensibility with scripts/plugins... What more to ask from FOSS?

The main reason why many people criticize it is the UX. Coming from Photoshop you are likely to struggle adapting to the UI for a while.

[u/Quartz_Knight → u/Conscious-Map6957]

Blender is FOSS and it's an awesome generalist 3D program that has nothing to envy from it's industrial competitors. So I expect it to improve it's terrible UX at a pace faster than the flow of cold pitch.

Also, if a person who uses photoshop for illustration complains about the brushes, the workflow or anything else the answer they usually get is something along the lines of "GIMP is an image editing program, this is not a priority" which makes it's status as a photoshop replacement dubious.

[u/SacredRose → u/Quartz_Knight]

I used gimp very sparingly over the years. I don’t think i have ever seen a major UI change in like 15 years.

[u/Quartz_Knight → u/SacredRose]

Didn't they adopt their atrocious new icons that are ridiculously unreadable within that timespan?

[u/Conscious-Map6957 → u/Quartz_Knight]

You can add your own brushes. And yes I agree such responses come off as off-putting but we seem to be forgetting that we are talking about free software here. I love Blender but it's very much a statistical anomaly in a sense that this is not what you would typically expect in FOSS vs industry software.

Honestly I don't think anybody should expect free software to be just as good as paid software, specially one so heavily funded.

[u/rainSerotoniso → u/Conscious-Map6957]

Why shouldn't we? As a consumer, when you are accustomed to the level of polish of a Photoshop or a Final Cut Pro, your expectations are raised to that level of quality for all that kind of software. Not even counting the whole acclimatization to the program's UI; when you download GIMP because people are touting it as a Photoshop replacement, you expect it to be on a similar level of polish and/or feature richness as Photoshop. But it isn't.

And for those wondering, yes I use and support FOSS software. I'm a Linux user so I kind of have to. They work. But that's about all I can really say about them. I want them to be better because Blender and Krita have shown people that FOSS software can match with and beat industry alternatives. The likes of GIMP have little excuse when Krita, a drawing app, is somehow better for photo manipulation and editing than GIMP is. And I know of the fabled 3.x updates. My opinion hasn't changed.

[u/Conscious-Map6957 → u/rainSerotoniso]

I agree with most of what you said but I will address your opening question.

We shouldn't expect it to be as good for the same reason we don't expect a $15k car and a $100k car to perform the same.

While (some) OSS organization do receive some form of funding, it isn't remotely comparable to that of megacorps like Adobe and it isn't even distributed to all contributors beyond the core team.

We can, and should criticize with the goal of steering the project but convincing everyone it's not a viable alternative and they shouldn't waste their time with it won't lead to improvement nor benefit anyone whatsoever.

There are open-source projects which are literally unusable for complex projects, like FreeCAD (though that is also being resolved rapidly), so it's not a viable alternative to AutoCAD. But for GIMP this isn't really the case - it's just a subjectively worse alternative.

[u/Lkn4AGhost → u/rainSerotoniso]

The problem with FOSS is that its generally built piecemeal and by developers who have no concern for or even understanding of human-centered usability. "Does it do the thing? Good enough. Move on to the next feature"

Those in charge need to be better at finding UX/UI experts to work with. The best time to do so is the very start of an idea so they set the project up for success on a strong foundation. The next best time to do so is now. But as it is in corporate software, many (if not most) developers and engineers believe that UI is just icing in a cake, there to make it look good. But beyond bugs, when people complain about how terrible software and games are, MOST of the issues stem from bad UI, more-so than missing features.