An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop • Hacker News Board

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#61

Post by cmyk_student » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

dsego wrote: post #28

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World would be in a better place if GIMP hadn't ever existed, the existence of GIMP is part of why we don't have an actual viable alternative. Constant claims of "good enough", 20+ years to implement adjustment layers after dismissing their value for many years a team that doesn't really care at all about it. If GIMP had never existed maybe the Blender team or someone else who actually has passion for the problem wou…

I share the sentiment, a lot of open source alternatives can't decide whether they want to be a replacement, a professional tool, a beginner user-friendly tool or just a playground for software devs. GIMP is awkwardly in the middle and has been stuck for a long time, it never met expectations, but became the default answer to any questions involving photoshop alternatives.

I think the challenge is that there are so many expectations. From reading and responding to issue reports, it seems like a group of people expect us to be Photoshop and another group expects us to be MS Paint - and making one group happy (non-destructive editing, for instance) annoys the other group. :)

GIMP is meets a lot of people's needs though (though we can always do that better). I'm in the process of transcribing interviews by GIMP's maintainer from professional artists who use GIMP and other free/libre software in their workflows, and it's really interesting to see what they're able to do.

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#62

Post by freedomben » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #21

harvie wrote: post #11

GIMP. How do you feel about it? i know people were sometimes quite critical, it has different workflow than PS, but it seems it gets the job done.

World would be in a better place if GIMP hadn't ever existed, the existence of GIMP is part of why we don't have an actual viable alternative. Constant claims of "good enough", 20+ years to implement adjustment layers after dismissing their value for many years a team that doesn't really care at all about it. If GIMP had never existed maybe the Blender team or someone else who actually has passion for the problem wou…

> World would be in a better place if GIMP hadn't ever existed, the existence of GIMP is part of why we don't have an actual viable alternative.

Wow, that's a wild statement. I think you might be right. Though GIMP was responsible for GTK, which is now a critical part of most linux systems. I wonder where we'd be if not for GTK? Qt everywhere maybe?

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#63

Post by 3form » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #40

> A little while later, Adobe started silently updating my /etc/hosts file for license verification purposes. Holy moly.

I don't know what's worse: that they did that, or that the operating system allowed them to do that. On both macOS and Windows according to my understanding that should require admin rights, normally, not to mention the degree to which Apple made macOS immutable (I'm not familiar with the details, to be honest).

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#64

Post by geenat » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

d3Xt3r wrote: post #2

Since you've got Photoshop muscle memory but you're no longer a heavy user, have you considered Photopea[1]? It's very similar to PS in terms of UI, and even has the same keyboard shortcuts, so you'll feel right at home. At least more "at home" compared to Pixelmator, IMO. [1] https://www.photopea.com/

Photopea is only good for smaller edits/files otherwise it starts lagging like crazy.

That said, Affinity is quite fair fast even on huge files. You can bring over like 80% of your Photoshop muscle memory.

Honorable mentions depending on your needs: Figma, Penpot, Krita

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#65

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #21

harvie wrote: post #11

GIMP. How do you feel about it? i know people were sometimes quite critical, it has different workflow than PS, but it seems it gets the job done.

World would be in a better place if GIMP hadn't ever existed, the existence of GIMP is part of why we don't have an actual viable alternative. Constant claims of "good enough", 20+ years to implement adjustment layers after dismissing their value for many years a team that doesn't really care at all about it. If GIMP had never existed maybe the Blender team or someone else who actually has passion for the problem wou…

[deleted]

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#66

Post by skeledrew » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

medwards666 wrote: post #53

throw0101d wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also entirely free with no gotchas. How is this sustainable for a for-profit entity? How do they pay the bills/developers?

Presumably though Canva subscriptions? Shame it's only Mac/Windows compatible. I'd kill for a Linux build.

Maybe use WINE or similar to run the Windows build?

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#67

Post by firecall » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

Rember when Adobe tried to stop people saying images had been “Photoshopped”?

Well, be careful what you wish for Adobe!

Now everyone just says an image is AI, and something being Photoshopped is a distant memory.

RIP Photoshopped Images.

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#68

Post by stronglikedan » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

3form wrote: post #63

amelius wrote: post #40

> A little while later, Adobe started silently updating my /etc/hosts file for license verification purposes. Holy moly.

I don't know what's worse: that they did that, or that the operating system allowed them to do that. On both macOS and Windows according to my understanding that should require admin rights, normally, not to mention the degree to which Apple made macOS immutable (I'm not familiar with the details, to be honest).

It does require admin rights on Win and will pop up the little admin confirmation message on each edit. I'm dubious of the claim that it was written to unnoticed. I use PS daily and I know it hasn't modified my hosts file, because I have, often, and would have noticed (that, and the obvious admin confirmation dialog).

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#69

Post by swiftcoder » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

cmyk_student wrote: post #61

dsego wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share the sentiment, a lot of open source alternatives can't decide whether they want to be a replacement, a professional tool, a beginner user-friendly tool or just a playground for software devs. GIMP is awkwardly in the middle and has been stuck for a long time, it never met expectations, but became the default answer to any questions involving photoshop alternatives.

I think the challenge is that there are so many expectations. From reading and responding to issue reports, it seems like a group of people expect us to be Photoshop and another group expects us to be MS Paint - and making one group happy (non-destructive editing, for instance) annoys the other group. :) GIMP is meets a lot of people's needs though (though we can always do that better). I'm in the process of transcri…

> it seems like a group of people expect us to be Photoshop and another group expects us to be MS Paint - and making one group happy (non-destructive editing, for instance) annoys the other group

This feels like it would behoove the project to pick a lane and tell the users which one of these it is supposed to be. You have a worse experience for all by trying to keep both camps happy, and also ceding one of these verticals would open up mindshare for another open-source project to step in and cover that instead

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#70

Post by card_zero » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #58

pier25 wrote: post #51

I've been using Photoshop since CS1 (was a Corel user before that). Photoshop and Illustrator CS6 were the last good versions. Very snappy and with probably 99% of the features I use today. Everything slowly degraded when they moved to the subscription model which I've been paying since 2013. Apple Silicon support was really bad for a couple of years (tons of GPU issues in Illustrator) but I will admit it's better no…

All the various "cloud" apps suck in various ways (one drive, I've a pitchfork for you; Box Drive, you're maybe the best behaved of a horrible lot) - but Creative Cloud was always the worst.

They're weirdly sticky clouds.