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Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

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Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#21

Post by madenine »

The time to take on Adobe was probably 10-15 years ago. At this point to oust them or even try to compete with them you would have have to create a feature for feature better product, and offer it at a lower price point. Your interface would either have to mimic adobe's to ease transition or be a significant improvement that its beneficial to switch.

As far as dialed down "40% functionality" - isn't that what Adobe tried with their "Elements" line dialed back versions of Premier/Photoshop at a lower price point?

I get the feeling it would be hard to roll out a "40%" product without a "100%" as well - or else you risk having the narrative around your product becoming "use this until you start taking yourself seriously - then learn a whole new software suite when you graduate to Adobe"

Idk. Lack of competition isn't great, but back when others were actively trying Photoshop was still king (thinking back to the 4.0/5.0 days)

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#23

Post by [deleted] »

billconan wrote: post #2

I like photoshop and haven't found a good replacement. when muscle memory is built up, it's really difficult to learn and switch to a different tool. I have been searching for photoshop alternatives. but so far I haven't found any. For me photoshop is too expensive. I have even considered to implement my own (I only need a portion of the photoshop features) https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ is what I found recently,…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#24

Post by sfifs »

pacavaca wrote: post #16
starmftronajoll wrote: post #8

Seems like the question would be to ask why nobody competes viably with Photoshop. Premiere is an odd example to single out — Avid and Final Cut, for instance, are full-featured and both have a substantial user base. The competition there is healthier than OP makes it out to be. As for Photoshop, once it became the standard, it stayed that way by virtue of user inertia and the massive development resources it would t…

Right, I would even narrow down my question to "why nobody competes Viably in a non-professional market". Both Avid and Final Cut are overkills for a ski-trip video editing, while simple things like iMovie and friends are waaay to stripped down.

Perhaps because sufficient number of non professionals typically won't pay an amount of money that pays for a top notch development team. So in the non professional market, you have labors of love like GIMP and DarkTable

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#25

Post by Torn »

For consumer (non-expert) ways to design great-looking graphics + materials in an easy drag & drop fashion, check out Canva.

For the more complicated things, Paint.NET on windows is pretty great (and still free). I've yet to find an equivalent that works as well for other OSes.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#27

Post by hyperpallium »

Adobe has been in the game for a long time, and they know how to play. For example, early on in postscript days, they had proprietary fonts... which they made free at about the right time to have reaped profits without fueling a competitor. A short-sighted company might have hung on; a non-profit might have given it away from the start.

- they allow photoshop to be pirated - removing fuel for competitors

- it's difficult (and uninteresting/not technically challenging) to make UIs easy to use; hence the gimp

- pdf is free-to-read, pay-to-write. They keep adding new features, so companies will keep buying it

- maybe I read too much into this: but I once noted that postscript/pdf are the only mainstream "vector" graphics on the market (well, splines, not vectors, but I just mean that they're drawn)... apart from flash, which (to me) it seemed could make inroads on publishing. Then... adobe acquired flash (macromedia), giving them a monopoly on vector graphics. They let flash languish, consistent with my view...

Adobe know what they're doing, to maintain digital standards/monopolies throughout the lifecycle.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#28

Post by pacavaca »

kingnothing wrote: post #12

If we're looking at a single program, like Photoshop, I can get the best tool in the industry for $20 / month. You have three hurdles to overcome... 1. What would you do better than Photoshop? 2. How would you price it to be competitive? 3. How will you convince users that your product is worthwhile?

So, let's take Pixelmator as an example. They easily bought me with their promise of a streamlined design and simple to use tools. Their demos looked so cool, that I've easily paid $40 (I think it was $40). Then, when I started using it, I realized it's missing some super-simple features (that people request on their forum) + it's not so stable, it freezes and crashes sometimes. (Also, can't remember the exact features that I was missing) So, now, even though I have a paid for Pixelmator, I still have to ask my wife to do simple edits in her Photoshop occasionally, which I hate using.

So, what I'm saying is that selling to me was not a problem at all, if only they could deliver a good product. I also used Sketch as an example of a product that works great: it's cheap, it probably misses tons of Corel Draw features, but it's simple, cheap, and perfectly serves needs of those, dealing with web/mobile design.

So, should there be a similar product for raster graphics and video? Also, NI on the audio production market feels to me as up for disruption.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#29

Post by mjrpes »

billconan wrote: post #2

I like photoshop and haven't found a good replacement. when muscle memory is built up, it's really difficult to learn and switch to a different tool. I have been searching for photoshop alternatives. but so far I haven't found any. For me photoshop is too expensive. I have even considered to implement my own (I only need a portion of the photoshop features) https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ is what I found recently,…

I've used CS2 for many years, but the UI glitches with Windows 7/10 have gotten very annoying. I stumbled on Affinity a few weeks back and bought a $50 license after just a few hours of demoing it. It is very good. Much better IMHO than paint.NET and Gimp. There are a few features that I still really wish it would have, such as live export preview, to fine tune JPEG quality for web graphics.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#30

Post by ghaff »

sfifs wrote: post #24
pacavaca wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I would even narrow down my question to "why nobody competes Viably in a non-professional market". Both Avid and Final Cut are overkills for a ski-trip video editing, while simple things like iMovie and friends are waaay to stripped down.

Perhaps because sufficient number of non professionals typically won't pay an amount of money that pays for a top notch development team. So in the non professional market, you have labors of love like GIMP and DarkTable

For video editing could add Blender. There are alternatives for both casual use and professional users who are willing to put up with less fit and finish.
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