An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop • Hacker News Board

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#71

Post by silon42 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:03 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).

Maybe it's another excuse to not have a Linux port... ("licensing would be impossible")

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#72

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:05 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).

[deleted]

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#73

Post by exe34 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:06 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #40

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

Read only root for the win. Or rage really, because then it won't work.

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#74

Post by trembolram » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

dtagames wrote: post #7

Affinity, mentioned in the article, was acquired by Canva and had its entire UI redone to work just like Photoshop. It's also entirely free with no gotchas.

> It's also entirely free with no gotchas.

I'm running Affinity Studio on my Mac. Every time I run it, Little Snitch shows that it is transferring data to many servers, such as serifservices.com, canva.com, onetrust.com, amazonaws.com, sentry.io, ..

I've tried to set privacy preferences to maximum, but it hasn't helped. Am I the product? The old Affinity Designer 1 doesn't send any data to servers, so I'm still using it instead of the new app.

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#75

Post by exe34 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

anonymars wrote: post #43

pauldoerwald wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subscription model isn't needed to kill software. I think Adobe just stopped caring about product quality. They stopped asking "why do people love Photoshop" and instead just chased quarterly numbers.

Adobe and everyone else. Many of those complaints resonated with me outside of Photoshop But as I've said in the past, I think there is a relationship between subscriptions and quality: with a subscription model, feedback signals become decoupled. In the past, if the new version isn't good enough, people won't buy it. Now the calculus is changed to whether the product has become bad enough to un subscribe Potentially…

You also can't stick to the older version, so the choice is can you afford to do your job without any Photoshop or are you stuck.

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#76

Post by medwards666 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

skeledrew wrote: post #66

medwards666 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

True, that's an option, but a native build would be optimal

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#77

Post by AlexandrB » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

pauldoerwald wrote: post #17

JKCalhoun wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty clear marketing killed PS when they went to a subscription model.

A subscription model isn't needed to kill software. I think Adobe just stopped caring about product quality. They stopped asking "why do people love Photoshop" and instead just chased quarterly numbers.

> A subscription model isn't needed to kill software.

It's not needed, but it sure helps!

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#78

Post by cmyk_student » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #69

cmyk_student wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ver…

We do - we state exactly what GIMP is and what we aim for. That doesn't stop people from having their own conceptions.

The "more like MS Paint" group tends to be longtime users who often prefer the destructive editing approach of GIMP 2. We try to respect people who currently use the software, while also trying to implement new features as intended on the roadmap.

Given the number of great open source art programs today, I don't think we're keeping anyone from doing anything. :)

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#79

Post by philistine » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

anonymars wrote: post #43

pauldoerwald wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subscription model isn't needed to kill software. I think Adobe just stopped caring about product quality. They stopped asking "why do people love Photoshop" and instead just chased quarterly numbers.

Adobe and everyone else. Many of those complaints resonated with me outside of Photoshop But as I've said in the past, I think there is a relationship between subscriptions and quality: with a subscription model, feedback signals become decoupled. In the past, if the new version isn't good enough, people won't buy it. Now the calculus is changed to whether the product has become bad enough to un subscribe Potentially…

That’s why I love the Nova.app model. You pay for a year of releases, but if you unsubscribe you keep the latest version when your subscription was active.

It’s the best/worst of both worlds!

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

#80

Post by dylan604 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

mft_ wrote: post #45

A tangent, but for full clean removals of apps in MacOS (because I'm old-school and despite having plenty of GBs of storage, I hate the idea of dregs lying around) I've had success with AppCleaner[0] and Pearcleaner[1]. Pearcleaner is multi-functional; AppCleaner just sits in the background looking for app bundles to appear in the recycle bin. [0] https://appcleaner.macupdate.com/ [1] https://github.com/alienator88/P…

It was all of the Adobe app's caches that kill me. I kept a copy of DiskInventoryX around for a long time for the specific purpose of showing how large those folders could get.