Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#61

Post by besasam » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

I'm hopeful for the new GIMP release. There was a thread about it yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16686941

Sadly, when it comes to things like context-aware fill, Photoshop still outperforms any alternative I've tried, so I'm probably going to stick to it for a while longer.

Bit off topic, but if you're still looking for a video editing software, try Hitfilm Express: https://hitfilm.com/express

It's non-free but doesn't cost anything, and it's really powerful but still really easy to use.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#62

Post by besasam » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

madenine wrote: post #21

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 t…

>you would have have to create a feature for feature better product, and offer it at a lower price point.

Have you tried out Affinity? I'm not sure about the features yet, but it's definitely just as visually appealing at a fraction of the cost (and non-subscription).

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#63

Post by dingaling » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 10:37 AM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #5

For "developing" RAW images (Adobe Lightroom), it appears that the FOSS, Darktable [1], is a serious competitor. It has a full array of non-destructive editing features including extremely fancy parametric mask and blending effects. It also has responsive photo management (works great on at least 10s of GB), import, tagging, etc. They recently released their first Windows build. [1] https://www.darktable.org/

Dark table, Raw Therapee and even dcraw-ufraw are all considered first-class tools for RAW work even amongst semi-pro market.

Lightroom is still a common choice for photo pros licensing other Adobe tools but I know some of them wio fall back to FOSS tools for particular tasks particularly in astro work.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#64

Post by davidnoble12 » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

This was a great post. We are cut off at my university in a licensing fight with Adobe. I'm not certain how absent that product we are running a digital media and design curriculum...unless the students are required to purchase themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#65

Post by punkbit » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

You should definitely check Affinity! They have amazing products, such as Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo; I remember paying about 30 GBP for each license. It's way faster to work on, compared to Photoshop or Gimp; Load time etc. Also, for video editing, you have this other company called HitFilm, you can use it to Edit or VFX (Yup! Motion graphics) super cheap or you use the Free version. Also, there's Blender for the past 20 years, for everything motion, and you can also edit video, and so much more.

Maybe you should criticize the fact that small companies don't have as much money for marketing, in comparison to Adobe; But a good start is to start use Firefox and an alternative search engine than Google. You'd be surprised at what you're capable finding!

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#66

Post by nugi » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

blt wrote: post #34

Photoshop 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 m…

Slightly OT, however; Pros buy snap on because of convenience. Most know there are cheaper, better made tools available for the last 25 years. The tool trucks, and big lines of credit, and bling factor are their only remaining upsells. The 'made in usa' stamps are even disappearing from their tools as more come from tiawan and china. It is hard, if not impossible, to justify the markup without some huge ego stroking, tradition and deliberate lack of comparison shopping.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#67

Post by peatmoss » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

pvinis wrote: post #55

I use to work for a company making an InDesign alternative. It's pagestrip.com. Feel free to try it out!

I wish them luck. In my undergraduate journalism days I learned page layout in Quark Express. Then MacOS X happened. Quark basically refused to build a version that wasn’t tied hopelessly to the old Mac system.

And I remember what a breath of fresh air InDesign was. Here was an upstart challenger building something that, while less featureful than Quark, had some niceties and trust built up from their work on Photoshop.

In the blink of an eye Quark was a footnote and InDesign was the juggernaut.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#68

Post by Topgamer7 » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

punkbit wrote: post #65

You should definitely check Affinity! They have amazing products, such as Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo; I remember paying about 30 GBP for each license. It's way faster to work on, compared to Photoshop or Gimp; Load time etc. Also, for video editing, you have this other company called HitFilm, you can use it to Edit or VFX (Yup! Motion graphics) super cheap or you use the Free version. Also, there's Blender…

I have tried Affinity. It's not quite there yet in UX. For example vector editing via the pen tool is abysmal and infuriating. At least 8 months ago when I tried it.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#69

Post by isaiahg » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

pacavaca wrote: post #3

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,…

Wow, Affinity looks pretty capable, I think worth trying out. Still, no real alternative for video editing...

I use Blender's built in video editor. It's got some rough edges but you get a full creative suite with it including compositing and vfx. Particles, filters, camera tracking, animate the video positions for any swipes or transitions you want. Considering the price, free, it's unbelievable what you get with it.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody competes with Adobe?

#70

Post by shaftway » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #27

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 diffi…

Adobe pushed really hard on SVG (also vector based), before the Macromedia acquisition. They were part of the W3C group that designed the spec and they produced the most popular browser extensions to support it. The Macromedia acquisition was most likely in response to a lack of interest in SVG from the public.

Source: I worked on the SVG extension at Adobe.