4 ms·

Adobe have definitely bested most oss competitors in their space. Although with the amount of man power at their disposal it would be hard to beat.

sjwright 8y ago
The vast bulk of Adobe's advantage is in UX, not technical algorithms. Which makes perfect sense because that tends to be the case with most F/OSS software—technically brilliant but with an face only a programmer could love. Yes, Adobe do have some remarkable algorithms that would be difficult to replicate (e.g. heal brush and content aware fill) but these are a small minority of Adobe's software advantage. The one that irritates me the most is vector drawing programs: open source programs (and even paid competitors) just can't touch Adobe Illustrator for the sort of work I do. I'm sure at least 50 percent of it is familiarity and muscle memory, but I've desperately tried switching to a few different options like Inkscape or Affinity and left wildly disappointed.
- homarp 8y ago
  for content aware fill and heal brush both GMIC ( https://patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic-inpainting.html https://patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic-inp...) and resynthetizer ( http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer ) are working quite OK.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Gimp even had content aware fill first, It was based on a SIGGRAPH paper iirc.
- deltron3030 8y ago
  Do you use the Astute plugins for AI, or the native pen tool? Affinity feels different, maybe less precise, but the functionality was way better compared with the native Adobe tool. You should try Figmas pen tool, I like it.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    My uses are relatively trivial- logo design, SVG generation, basic layout work and PDF tinkering. My main need is fine control of beziers with auto-guides to ensure consistency.
- have_faith 8y ago
  You're right that UX is one of the biggest problems they have. One thing that is also hard to replicate it how well Adobe's software works together. Embedding smart objects and illustrator files in photoshop documents, right clicking a clip in Premiere and sending it to After Affects and back again without rendering an intermediate file etc. I would be interested in a Lightroom alternative if anyone can recommend one though.

sjwright 8y ago

The vast bulk of Adobe's advantage is in UX, not technical algorithms. Which makes perfect sense because that tends to be the case with most F/OSS software—technically brilliant but with an face only a programmer could love. Yes, Adobe do have some remarkable algorithms that would be difficult to replicate (e.g. heal brush and content aware fill) but these are a small minority of Adobe's software advantage. The one that irritates me the most is vector drawing programs: open source programs (and even paid competitors) just can't touch Adobe Illustrator for the sort of work I do. I'm sure at least 50 percent of it is familiarity and muscle memory, but I've desperately tried switching to a few different options like Inkscape or Affinity and left wildly disappointed.

homarp 8y ago
for content aware fill and heal brush both GMIC ( https://patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic-inpainting.html https://patdavid.net/2014/02/getting-around-in-gimp-gmic-inp...) and resynthetizer ( http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer ) are working quite OK.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Gimp even had content aware fill first, It was based on a SIGGRAPH paper iirc.
deltron3030 8y ago
Do you use the Astute plugins for AI, or the native pen tool? Affinity feels different, maybe less precise, but the functionality was way better compared with the native Adobe tool. You should try Figmas pen tool, I like it.
- sjwright 8y ago
  My uses are relatively trivial- logo design, SVG generation, basic layout work and PDF tinkering. My main need is fine control of beziers with auto-guides to ensure consistency.
have_faith 8y ago
You're right that UX is one of the biggest problems they have. One thing that is also hard to replicate it how well Adobe's software works together. Embedding smart objects and illustrator files in photoshop documents, right clicking a clip in Premiere and sending it to After Affects and back again without rendering an intermediate file etc. I would be interested in a Lightroom alternative if anyone can recommend one though.