If you're a hobbyist needing photo editing software, just use https://www.photopea.com/
Photopea is very good. It is what I recommend to friends who just want an immediate solution.
The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
31–40 of 200 posts
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#32For a long time, "pro" software was able to retain its price premium, even while consumer apps essentially all became free. But two things are happening: First, competitors are realizing pro software can be a "loss leader" for a different offer (see: Blackmagic Resolve, Canva's Affinity suite). Second, AI is making it possible to create open source alternatives that are very full-featured. Blender is a pre-AI example…
> we're seeing an explosion of brand-new high-polish OSS apps this year Do you mind sharing a few examples?
None exist, it's literally all slop.
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#33http://archive.today/WCDgq It’s so insidious to sell yearly subscriptions that you pay for monthly. I want to pay by the month precisely because I decide on a monthly basis whether I need a service. If you want out early with Adobe you have to cough up half of the remaining subscription time. For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler. I’ll pour one out for the pro’s.
> For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler.
Meh. It depends on how you view your photography.
I'm a Sunday photographer. Never made a dime from my work, and I don't look to. I just do it because I enjoy it. I particularly enjoy that I can use it as an excuse to move my ass away from my computer, walk around town to grab shots, etc.
I like editing my photos, but the editing is not why I take photos. I don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of time to learn a new tool. It's a hobby, and the software is only an accessory to it. If I have to spend hours to learn a new tool in front of my computer, it defeats the purpose.
I tried Darktable, and got okish results with it, but it's a pain to use. It doesn't have any serious noise reduction, and since I can't be bothered to lug around anything heavier than a m4/3 body with an f/4 lense, it's something I need, because I mainly shoot at night half the year.
I've looked at alternatives like capture one, but unless you intend to not upgrade your software for at least 3-4 years, they're not cheaper, even though they're not subscription based. You also have to cough up all the money upfront. And you get no Photoshop, either, which I use in addition to LR.
Now, I don't love lightroom. I have no idea wtf it lags when I open and close panels on a pretty hefty desktop. But boy, do I love the time I gain with "ai" masking, noise reduction and object removal.
All in all, it's just not expensive enough to make it worth my while to change to a different software and also lose all my catalog history, just to cough up the same amount of cash in the end.
Now, if someone came up with an actual equivalent that ran on Linux, so I didn't have to have a dedicated Windows box just for this, I'd line right up with my money ready.
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#34Every time I see one of these HN threads, I am actually amazed with what Adobe was able to pull off. I'm not surprised that they could do this to pros who were used to a particular workflow. In fact, for some businesses, a subscription may have some benefits. You were probably upgrading regularly anyway, and the only downside is that it's an expense you can't cut back on in a lean year. But there are so many hobbyist…
I don’t think it’s that surprising. People will pay for software that has better usability and better functionality.
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#35Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#36Are there any projects focused on getting 'creative' software to work well on Linux? Valve solved Linux gaming but it seems tools like DAWs and video/photo editing is still terrible on Linux.
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#37Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#38We all love to hate on Adobe. But as a photographer my primary software tool is Lightroom. And I continue to use it despite its $120/year price and less-than-stellar cataloging subsystem because its photo editing features (it's primary mission) still exceed the capabilities of its competitors. I don't see anyone else here talking about the huge strides that Adobe has taken in the past few years with their masking too…
You’ll never try a different product anyways so who cares about Adobe die hards? This might as well be a thread about using Linux and all the Apple die hards come here to tell us they just can’t use anything besides Apple for “reasons”. Great! Enjoy your setup.
Not GP, but as a LR user, I actually did try alternatives and wasn't impressed. They're usually just as expensive, except if you expect to use the software for multiple years without upgrading, which, to GP's point, would have had you miss out on quite substantial improvements.
I'm a hobbyist, and the new "AI" masking has saved me a lot of time during my edits. Is it as good as a professional path tool wielder? Probably not, but that's not relevant to my use case.
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#39For a long time, "pro" software was able to retain its price premium, even while consumer apps essentially all became free. But two things are happening: First, competitors are realizing pro software can be a "loss leader" for a different offer (see: Blackmagic Resolve, Canva's Affinity suite). Second, AI is making it possible to create open source alternatives that are very full-featured. Blender is a pre-AI example…
Ran into rapidraw yesterday looking for rust RAW processing (was looking for libraries or CLI tools but taking inventory as I went). Ran into rapidraw, which notably is GPU accelerated: https://github.com/cybertimon/rapidraw#rapidraw
The recent updates list is so impressive. Good steady stream of updates. And a good number of them take and integrate amazing incredible open source models, doing one shot depth processing, object detection, infill painting, denoising.
And oh by the way the developer is 18 years old.
Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe
#40I bought CS6 Suite back in 2012 and used it well into 2021. Before that I had a patchwork of CS3 programs from 2005 I was given the discs for second-hand. Nowadays I use Krita, ffmpeg, Blender, Zim Desktop Wiki, and Inkscape to replace Flash/Animator, Photoshop, Premier, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. CS6 cost me $549 back in 2012 under a pretty generous student discount, but would've been $1,800 otherwise. That's $790…
For regular, undiscounted prices the subscription prices were somewhat fair. Regular Photoshop CS5 was $700, or $1000 for the extended version. And $200 to upgrade. Now it's a $300/year subscription.
But students really got shafted. You used to get 80-90% student discounts, and could keep using the same version for years. Including keeping the software when you were no longer a student