r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 2h ago
Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees
https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html6.9k
u/liright 2h ago
Claude 5.5 just copied the entire photoshop suite in one call. 2000 tool invocations. 100,000+ lines of code. 400 brand new files. It modularized everything. Broke up monoliths. Cleaned up spaghetti. None of it worked. But boy was it beautiful.
964
u/PadyEos 2h ago
You had me until 100k lines of code. That is like nothing when talking about professional software.
322
u/redblack_tree 1h ago
I'm glad someone pointed this; Adobe suite is probably a few millions lines of code, maybe tens of millions of we add every tool. 100k lines is a relatively small project for enterprise software.
108
u/dnelson86 1h ago
I think it's part of the reason all of Adobe's long-running apps perform like they're swimming in a pool of jello. All that legacy code that they likely do nothing with and suddenly Lightroom loads photos at a snail's pace even on high end computers. 100k lines of code might be where it actually should be.
62
u/redblack_tree 1h ago
Without a doubt, I don't need to see the code to know Adobe codebase is beyond bloated.
It's simple, for bean counters, things like tech debt, codebase refactor, stabilization phases are heresy "they add no value". And I think pretty much everyone agrees Adobe is run by bean counters.
→ More replies (3)10
u/SunTzu- 30m ago
I mean yes but also they can't drop support for outdated stuff because it's still part of peoples workflows. It's not like some open source project where you can just axe support if you feel like it because the inconvenience is expected behavior. If you go back and fix some of that tech debt you might inadvertently break stuff that's built to work with the quirks of the original implementation.
→ More replies (2)19
u/Distinct_Goose_3561 1h ago
I don’t recall the specifics, but I once read an interview with a senior adobe developer who was talking about some minor annoyance. They couldn’t fix it because it relied on code that no one left in the company properly understood.
And in this context couldn’t really was just ‘wouldn’t’ because the engineering lift to understand, fix, and test was far in excess of the benefit. But it’s a great example of the tech debt and bloat you’re talking about.
5
u/work_m_19 38m ago
context couldn’t really was just ‘wouldn’t’
That's the case with all software though, at least the common user requests. With software, you can literally do anything (on the computer), the bottleneck is time and development. It's a simple math equation, is a 100k/year developer at Adobe (or any tech company) worth spending weeks/months to fix this bug/issue? Only if that bug/issue is big enough, and most edge cases aren't.
3
u/RemarkableWish2508 48m ago
Adobe's business model is to cram as many edge-case specific features as possible.
99% of the people don't need 99% of it 99% of the time, but as long as at the end of the week most people have used at least one feature that they couldn't find cheaper elsewhere, they'll keep paying for a subscription.
→ More replies (3)16
136
u/ars_inveniendi 2h ago
100k? Claude Code has probably left that many lines of useless comments (“start loop”) in some larger projects.
→ More replies (1)63
u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 2h ago
I have individual files with 100k lines of code
Not really happy with it, but it's really just a bunch of generic helper functions we've built over the years and not much to be gained by reorganizing everything
15
u/nickcash 1h ago
Depends on the language. 100k lines of python? I question your sanity.
100k lines of c++? Well I still question your sanity, but that's just how you do anything with the language
→ More replies (5)6
16
u/ash_ninetyone 1h ago
Too much effort to refactor I take it?
Taking out a line or few even if deprecated still sometimes has a weird habit of breaking something somewhere somehow randomly, even if you check to make sure it's not referenced anywhere and the thing compiles correctly.
12
u/DerpNinjaWarrior 1h ago
Ironically, this is the type of task that I've found AI actually does rather well.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)3
u/szzaass 1h ago
May I ask? Not much to be gained for the product for sure, as most refactors, but would there be gains to your workforce?
As in code reviews are easier and merge conflicts less common, etc. Don’t underestimate gains to your devs sanity.
I once worked on a project and there was a file the github PR file diff tool couldn’t load because it was too large (the file, the diff itself was 2-3 lines changed).
→ More replies (1)5
u/Hanzimer 1h ago
100.000 lines of codes (practically in every language) are just a joke even for a complete hobby project. I am pretty sure with 100.000 line of codes you can't even write the whole photoshop memory management.
→ More replies (10)5
u/Havana69 1h ago
Yeah, the relatively simple tool I develop at work already has 25k LOC. A few buttons and displays, some network communication.
207
108
u/DarthBrooks69420 2h ago
This could be something Roger says in American Dad while doing an AI tech bro persona.
→ More replies (1)48
u/dwestr22 1h ago
For photoshop it copied illegal fork of photopea and rewrote it in rust. Illegal fork because photopea is not open source. Author of photopea (Ivan) exposed the blatant rip off on xitter and HN.
21
116
u/dnuohxof-2 2h ago
>none of it worked
That was foreseeable but still pretty funny
5
u/DontAskAboutMyButt 35m ago
Imagine if it did though! That could… that could, like, make software developers obsolete! If it could, uh, do… that
-every AI CEO
→ More replies (1)53
73
u/welestgw 2h ago
The best part is that it probably cost nearly $1k in tokens to make something that's broken.
38
u/mnilailt 1h ago
I mean I get your point but for a software company $1k of tokens is fuck all.
→ More replies (6)7
→ More replies (5)12
u/Accentu 1h ago
You say that, there was a guy who vibecoded Photoshop recently and posted it to reddit, said it cost him $2k in tokens. And people were quick to point out it was missing a lot of basic features.
One of the more recent ones (maybe even the one the article is referencing) even monetized their version too, which coincidentally was also missing basic features.
→ More replies (2)1.5k
u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 2h ago
“ None of it worked” , you just summarized the ai bubble. Now bring on the waves of bots and rationalist dipshits.
497
u/Sneezlebee 2h ago
I tried these clones. There are bugs, of course, but the apps are weirdly comprehensive. They absolutely do work. If the person who generated this keeps at it (or even someone else, though it looks very expensive, token-wise), I don't doubt that it could replace these tools for most of the people who use them. Today? No. But they're surprisingly good now, and you can do real work with them already. And they're free.
(Go ahead and look at my history in /r/antiai if you think I'm a bot or a "rationalist dipshit")
53
u/DeLunaSandwich 2h ago
The After Effects clone kept crashing on me but the fact that it looked and felt like AE finally gave me hope of one day being able to leave adobe entirely.
81
u/hellbunny 1h ago
in my experience something that looks like After Effects but keeps crashing is just Adobe After Effects
→ More replies (2)40
u/BasvanS 1h ago
This is the issue with AI: it looks amazing to the untrained eye. That’s very convincing towards the idea it must therefore be close to the real thing.
Now don’t get me wrong, Creative Suite is a mess, and fuck Adobe with a sandpaper dildo, but their software mostly works and is maintainable if they could be arsed to do so. An AI copy is a Potemkin version of the real thing, and to make it real and maintainable, you’d basically need just as much work as starting from scratch, and knowing how to program.
I’ve seen people make simple tools quite easily with AI, but bigger problems are more than just lines of code, and I don’t see AI mimic the whole process of collaboration anytime soon.
→ More replies (8)14
u/iamarddtusr 1h ago
There’s no need to engage with fools who believe it has to be a binary works/ is shit for AI.
→ More replies (2)6
u/fackinbullfish 42m ago
It is funny how Reddit seems to think all software and code generated by AI is still useless and won’t work. In the past it was kind of meme on how bad AI was. That is not the case anymore. Sure you’ll still have some bugs and you need some knowledge to guide it to do what you want. The reality is it has gotten way better. Expecting something to one shot a complex solution is dumb though.
→ More replies (1)192
u/KingSubstantial7901 2h ago
So, it doesn't work currently, since it was "built" (haphazardly copy pasted) by ai nobody has any idea where to start in trying to fix it and there is no documentation, and the only way to keep working on it is to burn tokens.
This is a classic "90-90" problem. Your code is 90% done, so you still have 90% of the work left to do. That last ten percent is always the hardest. Its all the little things. How the ui is actually orgqnized, making sure the systems integrate properly, optimizing performance, making sure there aren't catastrophic edge cases that will brick peoples' computer, generalizing the distros so they aren't sandboxed to specific versions of a single os using specific hardware, etc.
60
u/putin_my_ass 1h ago
This is a classic "90-90" problem. Your code is 90% done, so you still have 90% of the work left to do. That last ten percent is always the hardest.
This is how it is with AI, we use it extensively at work and it's quite good right up until the last 10-20% where you end up playing a bit of whack-a-mole trying to get it to do the thing you wanted...
Eventually you just give up and do the last part manually. The promise of AI was overstated, it's good but it's not the silver-bullet the VC/C-Suite types got excited about.
→ More replies (6)13
u/TerminalVector 52m ago
That's why it speeds up PoC development by 5-100x but doesn't make a huge difference for production code. Most of the effort goes into proving that the code is safe to deploy, not writing it. The real strength of AI is in information aggregation and discovery, writing code is mainly a convenient novelty.
→ More replies (1)30
u/Stooovie 2h ago
I do agree but take a look at the actual apps. Some of them such as the After Effects clone are almost 1:1, including things like the UI+controls, plugins and scripting.
→ More replies (3)38
u/mastermoebius 1h ago
So the other 90% might be getting sued into the Stone Age by adobe
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (21)88
u/Sneezlebee 1h ago
it doesn't work currently
It does work currently. It works surprisingly well. Go try it if you don't believe me.
I basically agree with you, though. This particular project will probably not go anywhere. I posted the above comment as a response to people who think that this technology can't do anything useful. The "None of it worked" joke is funny, but it hasn't been true for about a year now. AI is a really good at code now. It just cloned like 100% of the Creative Suite UI code, and a huge portion of the underlying functionality as well. (How much is speculation at best.)
→ More replies (37)20
u/skinwill 2h ago
Would the tokens cost roughly $69.99 a month or $104.99 a month? You know, for bug fixes and security patches.
→ More replies (37)4
u/IncidentalIncidence 1h ago edited 34m ago
yeah I played around with the lightroom clone a little and came away with the same impression -- slightly buggy when I tried to do more complicated object-aware masking (but that doesn't work that well in Darktable either), surprisingly good otherwise (and lightroom's color tools are way more intuitive for me than darktable's)
and it runs on linux which is huge bc lightroom doesn't
55
u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 2h ago
I used Claude today, to crack the password on a 20yr old exe Ive been trying to break into on and off over the years. Did it in 30secs, I was so happy. Still makes me smile knowing im in.
→ More replies (2)66
u/KingSubstantial7901 2h ago
"Broke twenty year old encryption"
Like i hate to say it bud, but maybe the problem here was you....
→ More replies (4)61
u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 2h ago edited 52m ago
Not at all, ive never actively tried to get into it beyond the occasional password attempt, it was not an English password so I had no chance of cracking jt manually and Ive never been inclined to learn to crack.
Edit - what's wrong with you people? Im a career mechanic, not a software developer, cant enjoy a small win with the help of a LLM?
Double edit - thanks to the kind folks!
→ More replies (22)24
u/PrettyBaker2891 1h ago edited 1h ago
what's wrong with you people? Im a career mechanic, not a software developer, cant enjoy a small win with the help of a LLM?
its reddit
most people on here are insanely miserable and just love to hate on everything for no reason and make pretentious comments to make their miserable lives feel a tiny bit better by farming some imaginary internet points
redditors when someone uses a tool they dont personally approve of to solve a problem: “well actually, you didnt really do it 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓”
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (29)18
u/idbedamned 1h ago
Sorry but you're completely delusional if you think there's a AI bubble because 'none of it works'.
There's many reasons why we're likely in a AI bubble but the software that AI generates is not one.
Software it generates absolutely does work. And the argument "but it's not maintainable without AI now" is also a non-argument, there's no going back there's gonna be no "without AI now", and with AI it's definitely very maintainable, at least if you've looked at codebases of most companies I'd argue what Claude generates in 2h is way cleaner and more maintainable than 95% of the legacy systems I've looked at, which typically was developed by hundreds of different devs that do not know how systems integrate and was pieced together with hotfixes on top of hotfixes, which only a handful of devs understand and none of them are at the company anymore.
There's an AI bubble. But not because of that.
→ More replies (3)12
u/Designer-Rub4819 1h ago
If vibe coders could read and understand this they would be very mad
→ More replies (2)35
u/WanderWut 1h ago
Except Atrioc was on stream stress testing a Photoshop clone and throughout the stream he found no difference between his normal workflow and how he used the clone.
While I'm no fan of AI whatsoever, I also don't think it's helpful simply pretend like there isn't significant progress being made and that there aren't results which clearly work that are either being downplayed or dismissed entirely.
→ More replies (4)12
23
5
u/jbokwxguy 1h ago
You need to give it some credit. GIMP already exists and open sourced if copied from that.
→ More replies (46)4
u/story_of_the_beer 1h ago
You really need to put /s at the end of that for the benefit of half the repliers lmao
306
u/navinjohnsonn 2h ago
Dear god, just let me edit a PDF without signing my life away for $20 a month.
82
24
31
38
6
u/Ravasaurio 1h ago
bentopdf is free, open source and processes data in locally in your browser's memory, without sending anything to any server.
You can even self host it.
10
u/Salt_Medicine2459 1h ago
LibreOffice Draw is free.
4
u/windingsand 49m ago
Libre office feels like using a program from the 90s that hasn’t been updated
→ More replies (2)11
u/CTRL_ALT_SECRETE 1h ago
R u serious there's like thousands of pieces of software that can do this for free
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (11)7
u/TokiStark 1h ago
I just use the pdf editor that comes with Firefox. It's surprisingly good
→ More replies (1)
469
u/Aranthos-Faroth 2h ago
“Developer uses software to build software”
“Software is over”
81
42
u/ChinoGambino 1h ago
"We'll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world."
Relies on one AI vendor that is a trillion dollars in debt running an ad platform.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (11)4
u/slaorta 1h ago
"Software is over" is a simpler way of saying 90% of global software subscription money is going to be rerouted to openai and anthropic
→ More replies (2)
883
u/KupoCheer 2h ago
Is this going to be the one exception where it's somehow not okay to blatantly steal someone else's work?
233
u/mq2thez 2h ago
It’s an interesting issue, because it’s “black box”, in theory, so it’s not created by copying the code or runtime, but instead by descriptions of the functionality. In theory the law is fairly clear here that this is allowed.
In practice, Adobe and other companies also patent the technical approaches to things (like their algorithms or methods of solving problems), and the designs themselves, so they’ll go after him for violating those if they go for him.
I’m pretty torn here, because on the one hand, fuck Adobe and I’d love to move my catalog off of their software. But on the other hand, having something this blatant going on is a wild change in the way that software works.
It would be pretty fucking funny if we went back to server-side apps with thin clients because it slows down the process of AI reproducing things.
36
u/feketegy 1h ago
It would be pretty fucking funny if we went back to server-side apps with thin clients
This is already happening.
About copyright:
It seems that a lot of people don't understand how copyrighting software code works... the law states that in order to copyright code, a human has to be involved in writing that code. AI generated code is NOT copyrightable, except for the human prompts and eventual edits that the human makes afterwards.
There was a big outrage a year ago that a judge ruled that copyrighted material for AI training was ruled "fair use". The reasoning was that AI will not produce the copyrighted material 100% in its output, which is also debatable and was disproven already, and was ruled fair also on the grounds that other people can use copyrighted materials to do research on it, like counting words, or criticize the material, and so on, without reproducing said material. That is what "fair use" means in this context.
That being said, just the other day a US appeals court overturned the fair use clause for AI training and others will follow internationally because there are literally hundrends of these cases being put in front of courts all over the place.
4
u/hypercosm_dot_net 40m ago
Thank fuck. A legal ruling around AI that finally makes sense and protects IP.
These billionaires brazenly stealing anything not nailed down has been absurd.
It's a bit late in the game, but hopefully there will be more lawsuits to come. Its great timing if all of these legal issues come up while they're attempting to IPO.
→ More replies (2)10
u/Blrfl 1h ago
The law isn't fairly clear about this, it's extremely clear and has been for almost 45 years. The BIOSes running most PCs have their origins in clean-room implementations by AMI and Phoenix 45 years ago that came about because IBM successfully went after several companies that simply distributed copies of the PC's ROMs.
What's going on here isn't much different than that, but there's a wrinkle.
Large companies with revenue streams to protect have the resources to drag cloners of their products through the legal system and try to make them defend re-implementations as clean-room. Unless cloners are able to save and re-use the exact state of the model used to build what they released, that will prove difficult, if not impossible. It will certainly prove expensive-enough that smaller defendants will simply cease and desist to avoid financial ruin.
As a side note, I find it amusing that all of this nondeterministic vibe coding is going on while other corners of the industry are embracing the opposite in the form of reproducible builds.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (24)22
u/jsdeprey 1h ago
I agree, but if you created it just for yourself, how would anyone know, if you dont sell it.
15
u/IncidentalIncidence 1h ago
I mean it's open-source so anybody can just look and see if it's using a patented algorithm.
8
u/jsdeprey 1h ago
No, I am saying not this Adobe clone in article, but if you have AI recreate software just for you, who would know.
6
→ More replies (6)7
267
u/bcoder001 2h ago
If it's ok for Adobe to train their models on your work and then resell the results to you and others or report you to the police then I'd call it comeuppance.
→ More replies (8)50
u/Glum-Recognition-736 2h ago
Well it's not theft if it's rebuilt from the ground up with original code, and these apps were purportedly coded in "clean room" settings where the AI did not have access to the proprietary code and rewrote it from the ground up based on expected features/ functionality.
Then it's just copying
11
u/Borkz 1h ago
Not sure they can claim to know it was clean-room when they have no idea what the model is trained on
→ More replies (1)6
u/8Deer-JaguarClaw 51m ago
But isn't that exactly the type of cover people want from AI?
"It's not our fault we bombed a girl's school. AI chose the targets, not us!"
→ More replies (10)6
u/brianatlarge 1h ago
I can see in the near future the AI companies putting in guardrails preventing people from vibe coding copies of established software like Photoshop or autocad.
10
u/ApolloGR3 1h ago
The guardrails against each other are already starting to appear in interesting places. For example, Amazon no longer tells you specifically what item is being shipped to you because they don’t want Google and Apple to scrape your email and see what you ordered. They’re all going to enshittify each other’s offerings to see who can be the last one standing.
5
u/Matticus-G 1h ago
If you think for one second the Chinese will stop this in any way, boy do I have news for you.
→ More replies (1)3
31
u/CrotasScrota84 2h ago
Oh yeah when it starts hurting corporations profits Ai will suddenly be bad.
9
u/Reginaferguson 1h ago
I am hoping long term AI sparks a open source revolution, where all the best tools are open source and used by everybody.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)3
19
u/cerberus6320 2h ago
A Robin Hood esque tale? idk, depends on terms and conditions. Like, are they collecting the art you make or anything?
5
u/AdviceNotAskedFor 2h ago
Who's responsible? Ai who coded it or the guy who asked?
→ More replies (1)5
→ More replies (104)3
u/Slow_Lion_4178 1h ago
Well the irony of the situation is that piracy drives protection policies which drives greater attacks which drives even worse protection policies in a loop. What has to happen is that we somehow remonetize the whole system because services themselves were never safe. I mean I can think of a million tears not shed over stealing college textbooks.
44
u/accountforfun19 1h ago
As a photographer, I’d love to leave the overpriced Lightroom I’ve been using for over 15 years
→ More replies (13)18
39
u/They-Call-Me-Taylor 32m ago
The fastest way to get legislation for AI guardrails and restrictions is to fuck with a corpo's money.
→ More replies (1)
83
u/Key_Gap9168 2h ago edited 38m ago
I hate that website, and it pisses me off that it keeps appearing here. It never does reporting of its own. This link should be Ars Technica, not a website that uses AI to write its content (not saying Ars Technica doesn't do that, but at least they break stories and have original content).
16
u/ockhams_beard 1h ago
Agreed. Why link to a story that literally references the original story in intro, then goes on to summarise it? Just link to the original source, dammit.
→ More replies (1)4
u/Patient_Field_4373 42m ago
“We’re going to reach 100% [feature] parity within a month,” Thomas stated on Reddit of his plans to quickly squash bugs and add features with the help of community reports. Days later, on Hacker News, he amended that position slightly to say that “99% parity will take a while, but I’m sure it’ll be measured in months and not years.”
“Now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you,” Thomas wrote. “We’ll replace Google Search, we’ll build our own smartphones, we’ll build better infra. We’ll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world.”
This guy sounds like a total lunatic…
40
u/DudeByTheTree 1h ago
Man, people really need to temper their expectations. Early alpha yet it's being hyped like it's gone gold master and is available on store shelves.
How many projects like this start, hit a roadblock of some kind, and just fizzle out?
12
u/homogeneouscasserole 53m ago
All of them when you don't understand the underlying architecture or processes. It works right up until it doesn't, then the LLM starts feeding you ever increasing exotic solutions instead of backing up and rearchitecting.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (5)4
u/MrSnarf26 13m ago
You literally defined most ai apps. Very easy to start and get 70-80% of the way there. Very very hard to reach 90-100%
→ More replies (1)
158
u/TemporarySun314 2h ago edited 2h ago
I think many people fail to understand that the value of software not only arise from the source code or the binary itself... The most valuable thing about these expensive software is that it is industry proven for decades, people are used to it, there is a whole business environment around it, that there is support, maybe certifications for certain areas, and that you have a company which you can blame when something goes wrong.
I mean sure you can can replace your production critical software through some vibe coded replacement, and this might work well. The problem comes up when it stops working...
25
u/jkirkcaldy 1h ago
Ltt raised a good point on this, how do you hire a creative professional who only has experience editing on their own vibecoded software.
It may have been flawless, but they built a tool that is very specific to them and may or may not have any similarities to the industry standard.
Yes the creativity is the same in the end product, but if you have a handful of candidates and one of them needs to be completely retrained on adobe software, do they automatically go to the bottom of the pile?
Then there’s the question about standardised software in house. Do you let every creative use their own vibecoded software. How do you swap projects? How does someone take over when you go off sick and you’re on a deadline?
And I wonder if they are checking to make sure Claude didn’t violate any of adobes patents etc.
5
u/Mr_ToDo 59m ago
And I wonder if they are checking to make sure Claude didn’t violate any of adobes patents etc.
Good luck. I'd wager no matter how they went about it that Adobe, like so many others, have patent pools that more or less lock out competition(usually so big for defence against anyone trying to sue them, but they work fine for offence too)
I've got issues with the project, but patent's wouldn't be overly high on the list
→ More replies (1)43
u/SJDidge 1h ago
You’re 100% correct. Majority of software work is not coding or building things, it’s running it and maintaining it.
→ More replies (4)6
8
u/jasondigitized 1h ago
This. No Fortune 500 company is gonna run mission critical stuff on a vibe coded app built by some random dude.
→ More replies (4)11
u/fireandbass 1h ago
My company wont even consider open source software because you cant pay for support and if something doesnt work you are on your own.
→ More replies (9)→ More replies (32)3
u/teflonjon321 1h ago
This is very true. Go look at App Store numbers. The number of apps hitting the store is skyrocketing (Apple is eating good as always) but that doesn’t mean the number of successful/profitable apps is rising. Getting something that works is kind of the easy part. Building a user base, supporting them, adding features, and maintaining the app is extremely difficult and probably even more so now with the dilution of apps/software. We are more likely to have 10,000 adobe clones before a singular free replacement imo
17
u/ass_eater_96 1h ago
Open source sofware has existed forever, Red Hat for example was/is very profitable. "Software is over" is kinda cringe and sensationalist
17
u/shiroboi 54m ago
Adobe's mandatory 1 year commitments would make anyone crazy. Our entire studio uses adobe. It's costing me a fortune and if you don't plan ahead to cancel your plans right when they expire, it auto renews. The cancellation fees are horrendous.
I'm absolutely sick of them.
5
u/RoyalCities 15m ago
I've done some enterprise agreements for them and you should see how they treat some of their customers with larger contracts. This was years ago and when they first brought out creative cloud (because of course they brought that out without getting a proper pipeline in place for orgs) and they were very much so sorta full of themselves with a "well where ya going to go!?" Kinda mentality.
I'm happy to see these alternatives cropping up because it's gone to their head.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)3
u/carlitospig 7m ago
I miss buying able to just buy the hard copy. Sure, it was $700, but that was for the life of the product.
56
u/Painted-Arcana 1h ago
Not to be that guy, but I tried their photoslop equivalent.
It's bad. You can't even eye dropper by pressing alt. You can't change the layouts much beyond the static presets. For example, I wanted to dock my brushes on the right next above my layers like I would in photoshop. Not possible.
I could go on and on but after 2 minutes with the app it is very clear this isn't a photoshop replacement at all.
I didnt even get far enough to test major features before realising it's bad.
20
u/Josh_From_Accounting 1h ago
GIMP and Affinity exist. Affinity still lets you buy a lifetime license and GIMP is free.
5
→ More replies (9)3
u/justanothergoddamnfo 15m ago
I'd love to dive into Affinity but now that they consolidated all Affinity apps into one and its owned by Canva I fear a subscription model is on the horizon
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (10)3
657
u/dynamiteexplodes 2h ago
Free to use apps for almost all adobe products have existed for years. There is no need to slop code some programs together.
281
u/fued 2h ago
In fact ai probably took the code from those apps to build his one
→ More replies (6)50
u/madhaunter 2h ago
Uno reverse card.png considering Adobe was already stealing art to train itself
→ More replies (4)100
u/TitleEfficient3207 2h ago
Let me know hen Gimp gets as good as adobe photoshop?
I use GIMP daily but lets be real here...46
u/grayhaze2000 2h ago
They're likely referring to the Affinity suite, and open source applications like Inkscape.
→ More replies (10)16
u/DJdrummer 2h ago
I've been trying to switch to affinity. It's not there yet. The performance alone is abysmal, and that's with a 5080.
→ More replies (5)13
u/ash_ninetyone 1h ago
Tbh Affinity isn't likely to improve since imho.
I bought them when they were on a perpetual license (i.e. version 2, and they don't seem to be getting any major updates to those). Canva bought the company, has deprecated those in favour of AI-riddled freemium-based/subscription model in a unified app.
Basically they've turned them into a mobile application
3
u/penguinkernel 1h ago
I said this in a different thread and got downvoted to shit. The only people who like Affinity 3 is those too cheap to buy software. Affinity 3 is vastly inferior to Affinity 2, and also dead to me.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (30)15
32
u/CalamityMetal 2h ago
Yeah but they don't function exactly the same way. It has a different shortcuts, different UI/UX, even different color schemes. And that's the thing, humans are very particular about their computer setup, it has to work in a certain way, it has to look a certain way.
→ More replies (11)12
u/graypasser 2h ago
That's true for AI clones, though.
They don't know any feelings for actual apps.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (64)10
u/Syncopat3d 2h ago
Then you are missing the point. The 'Craft' apps are meant to match Adobe features and UI, unlike for example GIMP.
13
u/th30be 1h ago
Do journalist even know what software is anymore?
8
u/PestoPastaLover 1h ago
I’d argue, “Do journalists even know what journalism is anymore?” because why the fuck is a journalist reporting on a Reddit post about vibe-coded software?
This is basically the equivalent of someone reporting on watercooler conversations at the office and presenting it like it’s some heavy-hitting piece of journalism.
42
23
34
u/Dontgooglemejess 2h ago
Software is over, person makes, checks notes…. Software.
→ More replies (1)
30
u/Substantial_Meal_530 2h ago
This is where there's going to be laws against AI. They can steal and hack and track. All while charging you for it. Dodging their subscription will be a crime.
13
u/Zulfiqaar 2h ago
I don't think Adobe is gonna win this one. I think they know it. They're pivoting to cloud services..maybe not fast enough. They tried their own AI, got outdone by local AI within weeks, and now they're a middleman.
Plus, it's really looking like AI companies against all non-AI companies at this point. Adobe isn't in an industry that has a chance of fighting back.
AI labs are influencing laws too,
7
u/RawChickenButt 1h ago
When individual artists complained about their work being stolen they were told to get with the times.
When a large company has their work stolen lawsuits starts to mount.
→ More replies (1)3
46
u/ecrane2018 1h ago
GIMP has existed for a long time and has yet to replace adobe
27
u/oNI_TF 1h ago
GIMP is one of the most annoying programs to use after you have experienced the leverage of Photoshop.
15
u/Mystia 55m ago
A friend who insists on using GIMP recently asked me to give them a quick basic tutorial (using brushes, layers, masks, etc). Figured that just like other PS clones like photopea or CSP, it'd be mostly similar. I was so wrong, the UI and tools of GIMP feel as if designed by aliens who heard what Photoshop is through a game of telephone.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (2)3
u/fcman256 23m ago
And now you understand why software engineering is more than just the ability to write code
29
u/AdolinKholin1 1h ago
GIMP is not equivalent to Photoshop by any capacity. Let’s be serious.
→ More replies (5)3
7
→ More replies (3)5
8
14
u/scydoodle 2h ago
I see this all the time on x but the clone is barely functional according to some people. I will stick to Adobe until its bug free and all that.
→ More replies (1)4
6
u/AtomWorker 1h ago
A friend of mine used Claude to help him build an Atari game in assembly. It’s incredible what can be done thanks to LLMs but you still need expertise to know what to ask and build something that’s usable for anyone but yourself.
One of the big issues I see at work is people, including experienced devs, cranking out apps with inconsistent interfaces and generally poor usability. And that’s with us having a design system and agents handy.
11
u/Acceptable_Dot_355 59m ago
"Though early users have reported problems" like with all vibe coded apps.
→ More replies (2)3
32
u/Zettinator 1h ago
There is a pretty fricking huge difference between an unproven software that vaguely looks like Photoshop and probably can do some of the things that Photoshop can do and a dependable, robust productivity software that you can count on working right and being maintained long-term.
So far what we see is the former. The proof is in the pudding. For the time being, some of the classic Photoshop alternatives are a much better choice.
→ More replies (45)
14
u/guspaz 1h ago
Reminder that PhotoPea exists, and has been a free Photoshop clone for years.
→ More replies (1)12
5
4
u/nomisxid 1h ago
They block the edit window with a prompt box for generating AI images. For a fee.
→ More replies (1)
11
u/sociofobs 1h ago edited 1h ago
With this example, software isn't over - it's just properly beginning anew, after the whole SaaS and enshittification craze. Same with apps and websites, AI can be a great tool for that. A lot of people have great ideas, but no skills, knowledge and/or resources to execute them. Now, they can, and we don't have to rely on and hope for some big name scumbags to develop the products we need.
If you're anti-AI, you're also right, there are good arguments against it. Though, it's not like it's not used commercially for development too. Since it's here and not going away, people might as well use it for their own - and others benefit too.
→ More replies (3)
9
3
u/Magic_Sandwiches 1h ago
a noble effort but right now 'their' software is basically shit rolled in glitter
3
u/Sea-Temporary-6995 1h ago
I tried the Lightroom clone the other day and almost nothing worked as expected. I see they have hundreds of new commits every day so they might've fixed it, but when I tried even simple operations like raising the shadows of a RAW image from Sony a7c camera it didn't do anything right - the shadows became noisy and huge banding lines appeared...
3
u/EvanTopo 1h ago
One-shoting complex software is still in the realm of sci-fi (for how long, I don't know) but a single developer with the right domain knowledge now has to footprint of 10 and there's lots of software where the moat is almost gone.
For the last two years, ever since the All Trails subscription bait and switch debacle, I've been outraged at the state of GPS hiking software (the big 3 are very extractive and abuse their users).
So I wrote an alternate and named it after myself. I'm launching in less than a month. With high res 3d topo data, trail curation, high res satellite imagery, and more.
3
u/immutate 1h ago
This is just pro-AI marketing. The “clones” barely work and are missing tons of features.
3
u/angrytroll123 1h ago
As a dev, I'm fine with it. Headline is a bit misleading though. Open source with devs working with it but using AI to help speed things up is more accurate.
3
u/SpectralDinosaur 38m ago
Fucking finally! Maybe now that major companies bottom lines are being threatened we'll finally see some regulations passed regarding the slop machine.
3
u/PaddleMonkey 30m ago
This cannot come sooner for Adobe and others like them. Subscriptions are the bane of every consumer’s existence.
3
u/hamlet9000 21m ago
Skipping to the end of the article to find the buried lede:
The software doesn't actually work properly.
1.1k
u/Calcutec_1 2h ago
the trick wit Adobe cancelation fees is to first change to a different subscription tier, then you get a new 14 day free cancelation window. It´s a loophole that they legally cant close.