Many mobile photo editing apps compete with lightroom. Snapseed, VSCO, Instagram
those are too basic, there's a lot of space in between Photoshop and Instagram...
Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#32I 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,…
Wow, Affinity looks pretty capable, I think worth trying out. Still, no real alternative for video editing...
On Mac quite a few people use Final Cut.
Davinci Resolve is also getting better over time. Some people say it's already good enough for them to use daily, I think it's too buggy.
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#33The competition has been assimilated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altsys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia
Lest we forget https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop
Though TBF Adobe subsequently wrote many times more than the original.
Also, macromedia bought altsys, so that one's a transitive acquisition.
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#34Photoshop is feature-complete, and the features are implemented well. For example, compare the speed of applying a 200px-radius Gaussian blur in Photoshop vs. Gimp.
To make an analogy with more hands-on trades: buying Photoshop is like getting the entire Snap-On tool catalog for $500. Buying Pixelmator is like getting 1/4 of the Craftsman tool catalog for $50. If you can spare the extra $450, you get a lot for your money.
Professional mechanics spend $xx,000 on Snap-On tools because they can justify the cost. Most DIY mechanics buy cheaper tools. But if the Snap-On tools only cost $500, why not get the best?
(edit: GIMP is like getting the entire Harbor Freight tool catalog for free.)
Also, most instructional material for image editing assumes Photoshop.
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#35Adobe 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 diffi…
This. Plus network effects. Once you have people sharing files in Photoshop, Indesign and AE formats, everyone who's working with you has to adopt Adobe as well.
GIMP proves that it's possible to build a competing product that has all the features, but doesn't come with the same ease-of-use or shortcuts or support for proprietary file formats. Which means slow adoption, and ensures that it's hard to compete with Adobe in this field.
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, Affinity looks pretty capable, I think worth trying out. Still, no real alternative for video editing...
On Mac quite a few people use Final Cut. Davinci Resolve is also getting better over time. Some people say it's already good enough for them to use daily, I think it's too buggy.
Final Cut is like $300 - a price of a new GoPro.
Btw, I think that GoPro could be a great company to compete in the video-editing market. They already have a wide audience, and they just have to make their Quick editor more feature rich, while keeping it simple enough for average user. They also have money and are in desperate need of settling on a software market...
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#37For 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.
Want to reiterate how great Canva is, and my anecdotal evidence that a TON of bloggers and people around the web use it.
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#38Earlier 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
Right, but what about those "indie" content creators, popping up everywhere these days: YouTubers, Instagrammers, independent musicians and clip-makers, poor startup founders, needing to create a 1-minute marketing video twice a year... All those, I think, would spare $50-$100 for a good piece of software but not more than that. And if someone would analyze how they use professional products, I'm sure, it would converge to some stable ~30% subset of features big products offer
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Mac quite a few people use Final Cut. Davinci Resolve is also getting better over time. Some people say it's already good enough for them to use daily, I think it's too buggy.
Final Cut is like $300 - a price of a new GoPro. Btw, I think that GoPro could be a great company to compete in the video-editing market. They already have a wide audience, and they just have to make their Quick editor more feature rich, while keeping it simple enough for average user. They also have money and are in desperate need of settling on a software market...
You can get FCP10 for $15 on ebay(although the installation is a little sketchy). It is what I use on my non network connected Mac.
Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?
#40> I was also looking for a simple software to stitch together my GoPro videos but was left out with either free iMovie/Quick, which are too basic or a super-expensive Premiere.
It sounds like your real question is, why isn't anyone making free or inexpensive tools with features like Premiere, so I don't have to pay for it? That's the problem -- everybody wants nice software but nobody's willing to pay what it would actually cost to write it.