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Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

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Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#41

Post by magicalhippo »

k1ns wrote: post #7
paulgb wrote: post #6

I canceled my Adobe Premiere Pro subscription a while back, not because of AI terms but because other dark patterns in how they bill gave me a bad taste. I switched to DaVinci Resolve, which has a pretty capable free version. (I haven't used it extensively enough to comment on whether I will miss Premiere in the long run)

Davinci Resolve is super powerful, even in its free version. Every project I have learned something new that it can do. Highly recommend.

Any good guides for basic editing? Tried it a couple of times some years ago and couldn't get it working and/or got lost in settings.

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#43

Post by ndaiger »

Kronopath wrote: post #27

I’m not much of an artist, so for my limited photo manipulation needs Acorn is cheap, subscriptionless, and way more than enough for me: https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

I have been using Acorn since...wow, 2009!

After the first $49 purchase, I spent another $15 and then $19 on upgrades over the years.

It's very effective. The interface is extremely familiar if you're used to Photoshop, and it's wonderfully Mac-native.

I highly recommend it!

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#45

Post by tambourine_man »

cheema33 wrote: post #29
tambourine_man wrote: post #20

Unfortunately, Adobe tools were already on its own league before the recent AI revolution. They are now even more untouchable. I say that with deep regret not only because of the update to the terms of service, but because they are terrible OS citizens, downright user hostile in many situations and a monopoly.

> they are terrible OS citizens I used to feel this way. And then I discovered their Spectrum design and React libraries. I use them in production. And I am a huge fan. I don't think anything like this exists. Opensource or commercial. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of UI libraries. But nothing has the breadth of coverage that Spectrum does, including design guidelines. https://spectrum.adobe.com/ https://githu…

By OS, I meant Operating Systems, not Open Source :)

Their apps are such foreigners in their ecosystem that they make Electron apps look good by comparison. Also, Creative Cloud spreads itself over every folder it can touch, keeps nagging me to use cloud-whatever, fights me for auto launching and updating, etc.

That's what I meant as a bad platform citizen.

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#46

Post by karaterobot »

Figma for all UX design.

Affinity Photo for bitmap editing (which is vanishingly rare these days).

Affinity Designer for a few vector operations and tools not supported by Figma.

Affinity Publisher for print design (aka when I need to update my resume...).

Instead of Adobe Stock, I use Pexels, or just generate a sufficiently generic image on ChatGPT.

Instead of Adobe Fonts, I just stopped being a web developer, ha ha. Google Fonts, of course, is one alternative.

I got rid of all Adobe products in 2019. Or so I thought. Last year, my laptop fan started going crazy, and the whole machine was heating up. When I looked at my processes, I saw that some little remnant of Creative Cloud had refused to be uninstalled through the regular process, had survived on my computer for years, and just at that moment decided to attack. Maybe it was trying to remind me why I hate Adobe.

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#47

Post by invalidname »

chirau wrote: post #36

For Photoshop: 1) Photopea (quite brilliant for most of the things photoshop can do) 2) paint.net for not too advanced edits 3) Krita For After Effects: 1) Natron 2) BlackMagic Fusion For Premiere Pro: 1) DaVinci Resolve 2) KdenLive For Illustrator: 1) Inkscape 2) Graphite Please note that most of these are not feature for feature replacements, but for the most part and most common tasks, they are very good offerings…

Photopea is fantastic. I've paid Adobe thousands over the years because my spouse uses Photoshop and can't stop (I use Sketch when I need something).

I had enough with Adobe mostly due to cost. It's robbery to pay those prices for a tool she uses 3 times a year. I tried installing Krita for her and she struggled with everything. Couldn't find anything and just complained all the time. It occurred to me to try something else and Photopea is absolutely amazing. Wish I knew about it sooner.

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#48

Post by constantinum »

For photo editing and manipulation

1) https://www.gimp.org/

2) https://www.digikam.org/

3) https://www.darktable.org/

Vector based editing tool

1) https://inkscape.org/

UI/UX

1). https://www.sketch.com/

Desktop publishing

https://www.scribus.net/

But I haven't found a tool that is as good as Adobe Indesign for desktop publishing.

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#49

Post by hoyd »

I'm currently only using Premiere Pro and InDesign from the Adobe Creative Suite and Inkscape and Gimp from old habit. Never god around to use Photoshop and Illustrator to be honest. I'm planning to end up with this suite:

Premiere Pro -> Davinci Resolve

InDesign -> Affinity Publisher

Illustrator -> Inkscape

Photoshop -> Gimp

Re: Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

#50

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

chirau wrote: post #36

For Photoshop: 1) Photopea (quite brilliant for most of the things photoshop can do) 2) paint.net for not too advanced edits 3) Krita For After Effects: 1) Natron 2) BlackMagic Fusion For Premiere Pro: 1) DaVinci Resolve 2) KdenLive For Illustrator: 1) Inkscape 2) Graphite Please note that most of these are not feature for feature replacements, but for the most part and most common tasks, they are very good offerings…

Is PaintShop Pro still a competitive product?

https://www.paintshoppro.com/en/

What about Corel products?

https://www.coreldraw.com/en/all-products/

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