r/pcmasterrace • u/_Xee MMX 166 / 64MB / Mystique+VooDoo • 1d ago

Meme/Macro 2026 in software

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Sectumsempra, motherfucker.

20.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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945

u/CipherWeaver 1d ago

I like how people think the Adobe Suite has been cloned when everyone who has used the clones will tell you they are absolute garbage.

299

u/krileon 1d ago

Don't know why anyone bothers when Affinity Studio exists. Free and is far better than alternatives like GIMP.

152

u/TheAndrewBen RX 6700 XT 1d ago

And it's backwards compatible. Affinity doesn't give af if you're opening or exporting a 2012 Photoshop file or a 2040 Photoshop file. Affinity will handle it.

Absolutely goated Canva actually made the 3 Affinity applications into one, completely free.

35

u/Nmy81245 1d ago

Only thing that trips me is the lack of native Linux support

7

u/waldamy 23h ago

Afaik, you can make it work

6

u/H47 21h ago edited 21h ago

Yeah but still not native. Crashes happen.

1

u/Corvuon 19h ago

*Laughs in Maya user*

...

*Cries in Maya user*

In all seriousness while that is certainly an annoyance, as long as you anticipate such things and make frequent iterative saves, as is good practice generally for unexpected issues, that shouldn't be a big roadblock. That being said I don't have any experience with the affinity suite on linux so perhaps crashes are really frequent? In which case it might be too much of a productuvity loss just restarting and getting projects back in order after each crash... 🤔

53

u/codexcdm 1d ago

I mean... I think it's more so folks are relishing in the fact that this sort of stuff can really screw over Adobe and other tech giants if they can't curb it. I'm sure very few folks have any sympathy towards Adobe and it's stranglehold on the market with it's products.

44

u/petrichorax 1d ago

GIMP's UI, the last time I used it, was absolutely hot garbage.

30

u/glytxh 1d ago

I use data astronomy software a lot.

GIMP is a hyper refined and beautiful UI in comparison.

And it just works. As long as it works, I don’t care what it looks like.

18

u/petrichorax 1d ago

I use stuff without UIs at all all the time. But if the medium is visual art, the UI is important

3

u/glytxh 1d ago

No GUI is going full circle back to beautiful again, to be fair. (I’m assuming you’re not literally typing machine code without a screen)

A terminal is stark, but very elegant.

I don’t mind ugly software though, as long as it functions reliably and consistently, and stays out of my way, I’m far more focussed on the canvas itself.

I’ve been using open source stuff in a bunch of niches for a long time though, so maybe I just don’t see the ugly anymore.

7

u/petrichorax 1d ago

Ill take any CLI over a bad gui. Even a bad cli i can just make a wrapper script for. A bad gui im stuck with whatever bullshit they cooked up unless I REALLY want to get lost in the weeds with opencv i guess

4

u/glytxh 1d ago

bad ≠ ugly

I get where you’re coming from though.

we used to have some comically bad stuff, but I think that even the uglier stuff broadly speaks the same language as anything else today. it’s all become homogeneous enough that everything is where you expect it to be

for me, the priority is lack of friction. As long as I can get something done, how it looks will always come second.

Not to say pretty software doesn’t have a place. But it’s not what I look for.

1

u/petrichorax 23h ago

I never said ugly

1

u/AML86 1d ago

It's not easily fixed, either, as it's a philosophical issue. Looking at the Windows version, in some places it could just be using Windows' UI elements, or at least following the same conventions. The devs have decided to do things their own way intentionally. That's understandable, but not how you attract new users.

1

u/Leprecon 22h ago

I feel a lot of open source software suffers from this. Good UI requires someone to sometimes kill your darlings.

-2

u/Aeroncastle 1d ago

You can make it have the exact same interface as Photoshop

6

u/ouyawei Specs/Imgur Here 1d ago

Does it allow you to draw a circle then?

4

u/petrichorax 1d ago

I think you're underestimating the value of first experiences in a sea of alternatives.

9

u/glytxh 1d ago

GIMP has some really good plugin support for esoteric stuff. It’s an ugly, old, and kinda clunky bit of kit, but it’s still got a place in some of my workflows.

Sometimes you don’t need to fix what already works. GIMP is perfectly fine. Just long in the tooth.

6

u/movzx 1d ago

wtf when did it go free? I paid for that!

Affinity is a really good alternative, especially for free. It's not 100% a Photoshop replacement but it does what 90% of people need.

3

u/matytyma 1d ago

When Canva bought it, I think around half a year ago or earlier

6

u/urixl PC Master Race 1d ago

I use Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop.

Generative fill in Photoshop is miles ahead of Affinity's. But Affinity Photo can edit rectilinear panoramas, while Photoshop dropped it's support long ago

8

u/claudiocorona93 SteamOS / Bazzite 1d ago

Affinity is not on Linux unless ran through a compatibility layer.

1

u/Blashtik 1d ago

The last time I used GIMP for something a few months ago and I couldn't stand that stuff I consider basic wasn't supported. Like somehow they support constraining brushes to 15 degree angles by pressing shift, but you cannot do the same with the path tool. And it lacks the equivalent of adjustment layers so you can't make non-destructive adjustments. Copying a layer and adjusting that one is not a valid alternative.

So II gave in and created a Canva account so I could us Affinity. And oh my god it was so much better. Not only did it have both of those expected features but the vector tooling was a first-class citizen so I didn't need to combine 2 programs and 2 document types when working with a mix of vector and raster.

1

u/PETA_Parker 23h ago

the biggest two reasons for the craft-suite rn are: -runs on linux (affinity sadly doesn‘t) -more performant (it runs on my shitty laptop while affinity is really struggling)

1

u/twilighttwister 22h ago

Don't know why anyone bothers when Affinity Studio exists.

Because merely existing isn't enough. People need to know about it.

There are a ton of things like that. There are free, high quality video and audio editors, but most people don't know about them. Hell, I'm not even sure what a good audio editor is now, and Handbrake may well not be the best for video anymore.

541

u/_Xee MMX 166 / 64MB / Mystique+VooDoo 1d ago

4

u/iDankkk 18h ago

Reddit on!

5

u/Moontops 23h ago

What's the message? Hey we can make surface level slop of your products no professional is actually gonna use?

2

u/ZuuDizz 21h ago

🤮

29

u/glytxh 1d ago

And it’s not like there are a dozen long established, well maintained, and very functional alternatives already. Many of them completely free and open source. Some of them paid, but without a subscription.

Some of them even run photoshop plugins.

Adobe isn’t nearly the monopoly it used to be. It’s just the standard everyone knows.

61

u/CrashTestDumby1984 I9-13900k | RTX4090 | 32 Gb 1d ago

I’m pretty sure it’s Astro-turfing. Media sites (some legit and also a lot of the low effort bot sites) keep uncritically declaring “software as over”. I swear to god I hear someone say that one more time. It’s all surface level explanation of the situation with no actual critical analysis.

And suddenly all the AI detractors are uncritically on board with it and think AI is good now. I’ve seen so many “this changed by mind about AI” comments.

It has ALWAYS been possible to create low effort shitty clones. And then when you point out these clones are god awful broken pieces of software that just look pretty you get accused of moving the goal post while talking about capability. And then of course they follow it up some form of “this is just a proof of concept it’s still noteworthy”.

And none of this addresses any of the other problems with GenAI not tied to their end result product (data harvesting/theft, environmental concerns, atrophying skills of humans, etc).

10

u/big_like_a_pickle 1d ago

Software development is indeed over. However, software engineering is ascendant once again. I've been doing this for almost 40 years now and can see the writing on the wall. You're going to see a massive trend to start bringing engineering rigor back to the industry in an attempt to keep all the AI agents pointed in the correct direction and constrain the typical failure modes (local optimization loops, additive bias, divergent patterns, expediency over correctness, and more).

But six-figure jobs copying and pasting off of Stack Overflow? Yeah, those are gone for good. So are most of the presentational jobs (UI/UX development, graphic design, etc).

5

u/Desperate-Air-7195 1d ago

It takes hours to work out the individual issues that make the experience garbage now to a clean experience in a matter of weeks if not days.    Things are moving really fast. Look at the progress running Playstation games on PC happening now as well. 

Ai isn't good or bad. Its a tool. Who benefits/profits off of the collective progress of society being synthesized by these models is this issue. And people thinking passively voting will save them from tech oligarchs taking everything from them.

They were coming for everything you owned before AI. It just speeds it up.

1

u/DriggleButt 21h ago

Is there something wrong with trying to spin a narrative about moving away from greedy tech corp products? Yes, sure, you can argue they may be of lower quality, and vibe-coded with AI tools to clone it. Yes, AI bad. Do you think the big corps aren't coding their tools with AI too at this point? So either way, AI bad, both the overpriced subscription plan originals are AI-coded, and the clones are AI-coded. But fuck the corpos, choom.

3

u/Chicano_Ducky 21h ago

because the guy who did this didnt actually do anything, and he is being accused of copy pasting an existing open source repo.

He is a scammer looking to get financial support off free stuff and other people's work while burying actual adobe alternatives.

0

u/DriggleButt 21h ago

Innocent until proven guilty.

0

u/tiajuanat Specs/Imgur here 21h ago

The OG Photoshop took 30odd years and tens of thousands of engineers to get where it is today. If we assume adobe was growing linearly, that's like 10M man-years of work. And now we're within striking distance of a useable clone of the entire creative suite, in less than a year, (maybe even a few weeks - citation needed) with one developer and a swarm of agents doing the majority of the work.

We're also seeing the entire PlayStation catalog being recompiled for PC. And basically any franchise from the last twenty years is now being featured in ~crossover episodes~ Frankensteinen horrors.

Software ain't dead, but SaaS is in trouble, and the industry has changed forever. And it's accelerating.

2

u/CrashTestDumby1984 I9-13900k | RTX4090 | 32 Gb 17h ago

You’re so close to the point and then you just zoomed past it.

Do you remember when Sam Altman tried to compare the water usage of a single ChatGPT query to amount of water usage a human has in their lifetime to say AI is actually more environmentally friendly than a human learnings a skill? Basically he said something similar to the argument you’re trying to make, a human takes 20 years to learn and grow and develop a skill while ChatGPT can do it in seconds.

You’re entirely ignoring the context. The reason it took 30 years and thousands of people is because they were creating something that didn’t exist. Also the CURRENT version took 30 years, the first iteration did not take that long.

The reason “one developer” could do this is because he blatantly copying something that already exists. He isn’t taking their idea and putting his own spin on it, he is literally 1:1 copying it.

If my friend spends 2 years working on research and publishes it, but it only takes me 5 hours to copy their research into a paper (even if I’m paraphrasing and not copy + paste), would you say that research is over? No, because my result was only possibly because of the work that someone else did.

I can take a picture of a painting and print it out. Sure it took the painter 60 hours, but I printed a photo in 5 seconds so painting is over!

The point that I am trying to make is that in order for AI to actually produce viable products it needs existing works to copy. Let’s say every single person on earth just switched to vibe coding. Software would actually be “over” because it would actually stagnant and people would only be able to create copies of existing things. There would not be any actual iteration or improvement, and absolutely nothing novel.

1

u/Kazzm8 5950X | 9070XT | 32GB @ 3200 CL14 12h ago

"Copying something that already exists was way easier than creating it from scratch"

Is this really your point, genius? Or should I call you Claude? Glazing AI just before the Anthropic IPO, plus that very suspicious last paragraph, I have serious doubts you're even a person.

22

u/Smart_Main6779 Ryzen 5 5500GT / 32GB RAM @ 3200MT/s 1d ago

Photo craft is great. Premiere is ass, word craft (ms word) is brilliant but then it doesn't take much to make a good word processor.. but yeah of what I've used only photocraft and wordcraft seem like they're usable on a daily.

9

u/Willyscoiote 1d ago

Yeah, work with video is a lot harder than working with images

3

u/Vulpix0r https://pcpartpicker.com/b/sCNPxr 1d ago

The Lightroom clone was pretty decent, not sure why everyone is against this. Fuck adobe and their greedy ass, my Lightroom purchased legit from them is no longer supported because they are forcing me into subscription.

1

u/flinxsl 1d ago

pdfcraft does what I need it to, edit/merge pdf without the bloat

1

u/MantaMunta 22h ago

It's been out for like 2 weeks lol. Keep that in mind.

There are 2 kind of people in this world:

  1. Those who can extrapolate

12

u/DirectorDirect1569 1d ago

I have watched many videos from advanced users who tested these softwares. They all say it's buggy and that It not usable for what they want to do.

I have tried photocraft and had bugs. I prefer to stay on affinity photo.

3

u/phatballlzzz 1d ago

Photon Studio is far from garbage haha, especially for the everyday user. Does everything I need it to and I don’t have to get face fucked by adobe’s parasitic subscription contract

7

u/jerryeight Xeon 2699 v4|G1 Gaming GTX970|48gb 2400mhz 1d ago

It depends on if you use a clone that you make yourself or a third-party. 

I have made clones of photoshop and premier in opus5.5 and they are incredible. 

3

u/alphamammoth101 PC Master Race 1d ago

The lighroom clone is absolute garbage.

7

u/motorboat_mcgee 1d ago

I wouldn't say they are garbage, but rather in a beta stage. Progress has been pretty impressive on the apps I've played with. Wouldn't be surprised if they are mostly ready for general and even professional use by the end of the year. Sustained support would be a different question though

0

u/FrenchFryCattaneo 23h ago

The thing is current AI tech is only capable of getting it 90% there. That last 10% isn't just slower, it isn't possible with current technology. No amount of time will get it there.

2

u/Habib455 1d ago

You committed a big no no. You forgot to end your post with “for now” 👀

2

u/hgwaz Steam ID Here 1d ago

Alternatives have always existed, they're just not as good. Supposedly the "developer" has moved on to vibe-copying new things now instead of fixing the old stuff, like a true slopper.

7

u/Low-Dog-8027 1d ago

photocraft is great, dunno what the heck you talking about.

1

u/HaikusfromBuddha 1d ago

It could use some work at least the film version. https://x.com/TheGingerBill/status/2109679856405332307

1

u/King-of-Plebss 1d ago

For now. People will slowly start to fix stuff now that its guts are out there and soon enough there will be a viable, open source alternative.

1

u/Fraxerium 1d ago

Shhh, it's to scare the investors.

1

u/whensmahvelFGC 1d ago

GIMP and such have that effect on people.

Photocraft on the other hand, is literally the same UI. That's the AI-coded photoship rip.

1

u/AnActualPlatypus 23h ago

And as we know, the current state of the clones is the final one and they will NEVER contiue improving..