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Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

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Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#121
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. As a longtime Photoshop user, I was gobsmacked the first time I used Photopea at just how good it was. Gobsmacked even more when I found out it was all written in JS and completely running in the browser with no server backend. EDIT: apparently my enthusiasm is outdated. I just tried to load the site in Firefox [latest version] and got the following error: "Your browser is too old (no WebAssembly). Please, up…

Perhaps you should update.

  >Perhaps you should update.
Ahem....

  >I just tried to load the site in Firefox [latest version]
Fixed now, anyway. See above ^^

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#122
post #5

There is little to no time spent in this article on how photopea is monetized. I even went to the product itself to find out but couldn’t, at least on mobile. Is there some subscription? What do you pay for? Genuinely asking since I used it a few times and never noticed any payment nagging.

Sorry, I interviewed Ivan and he said roughly 90% of the revenue comes from ads. I also asked him if he considered creating his own header bidding system, but he said this wasn’t worth it

Ok nice thanks for the clarification

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#123
post #57
post #5

There is little to no time spent in this article on how photopea is monetized. I even went to the product itself to find out but couldn’t, at least on mobile. Is there some subscription? What do you pay for? Genuinely asking since I used it a few times and never noticed any payment nagging.

Open the website without an adblocker and you'll see how. There's huge banner ads on the side.

Oh right I probably have a content blocker enabled.

Still surprising how much as revenue they’re generating

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Adobe sold modernized older versions of Photoshop. For most of my uses PS 7 or CS1 is entirely adequate and those versions ran great on a paltry 400Mhz PowerPC G3 with 128MB of RAM, meaning that it'd be blazing fast on the cheapest modern laptops you can find.

Nobody prevents you to reuse an old copy on a VM or a container. With a shared folder you don't have to give it network access.

Practically speaking yes, and it’s probably ok to do that for personal use. Where things get shaky is if you want to use it professionally — even if you buy an old license key off of eBay Adobe could decide the license is no longer valid and sue you.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#125
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to talk and engage in the community for a while, came up with really well researched tried-and-tested UX improvements, only to be dismissed as not “relevant”. Further engagements only seem to be showing how opaque the decision making process is (you can see this in a different form in the wordpress community btw)

You have to keep in mind that for as many non gimp user asking for a change in gimp UI there are as many current gimp users who would not necessarily see it as a good change if it hurts their muscle memory and workflow. For example when they introduced the single window mode as default, I view it as a regression only because people can't use a window manager properly or pretend to do professional stuff on what is jus…

Well, I can understand the position of long time gimp users, but ultimately you have to move on to better paradigms and years of UX research. If you match it with a legacy mode, things can be a smooth transition.

In that time I used GIMP a lot and was a good moderate level user probably, but the interface kept getting in my way (unlike Photoshop were I was able to reach almost a flow state of doing things at that time)

Eventually I just moved on, but I can’t fully shake the feeling that GIMP could have been so much more. Godot and Blender which others mentioned just have done so much better in that regard. Blender had the suckiest of UX/UI but even in the face of much/some “old timer” resistance they made something that most hail as a success now.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody prevents you to reuse an old copy on a VM or a container. With a shared folder you don't have to give it network access.

Practically speaking yes, and it’s probably ok to do that for personal use. Where things get shaky is if you want to use it professionally — even if you buy an old license key off of eBay Adobe could decide the license is no longer valid and sue you.

If you had already that license I don't think Adobe can revoke it. I don't think it is legal to revoke a license that is sold in the second hand market either.

The biggest risk I can think of is that the old product may be in some case vulnerable to compromised documents and by sharing the sandbox folder with your main computer you could in theory get the main machine compromised.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#127
post #86

So that settles it - Javascript is all you need.

Photopea is using WebAssembly, too.

So Javascript and Rust? I'm cool with that. Both ends of the programming spectrum. Thinking further on this, could WA offer a way out of the walled garden of mobile development?

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#128
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if Adobe has any other reason to acquire Photopea other than to kill it so that there's no more "free" Photoshop alternatives.

When regulators come knocking for some reason, "look we offer free software, nobody is required to pay"

Isn't photoshop for the web going to be free too? It's possible that projects like photopea are forcing their hand.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's done a fantastic job. Meanwhile the GIMP still doesn't have a "Save As..." menu item, you have to go through extra steps using "Export". Just a symptom of the attitude the UI projects.

That's the same wth just a different name, what is the problem?

Maybe all the time looking for how to **ing save the first time, plus all the extra time clicking thereafter, plus the times you forget momentarily and take the wrong route again...

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimp is a permanent embarrassment of humanity itself. Literally the worst software I have ever used.

Gimp has been solving the need of users looking for an open source image editing software for decades. It has been used and forked as filmgimp, now cinepaint who has been used in the film industry. Not really what I'd call an embarassment.

A triumph of mediocrity, re the UI. It's the incumbent so I use it for tasks and have for decades while longing for something else the whole while.
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