18 ms·

Figma and Canva are taking on Adobe and winning

288 points by samulipehkonen 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
I assume they helped grow new markets and Adobe had to pivot into these “new” markets. All the old users of Adobe are still the users of Adobe. But most new entrants have grown up with new approaches like Canva etc..... I remember when GIMP was the only “credible” alternative to Adobe (acquiring competitors like Macromedia etc). Now there are dozens of alternatives.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > All the old users of Adobe are still the users of Adobe That's definitely not true. Some niches like photo manipulation are still Adobe, but Adobe tools used to be the goto for Web Design and now they're not. Closer to the truth is that Adobe stopped development on their tool in this area (Fireworks), which opened up the market for competitors (primarily Sketch, and the later Figma), who did indeed bring their own innovations. And only later realised their mistake.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Adobe keep doing really, really stupid things. The latest Photoshop update removed some of the tools from the toolbar. Some of the tools have been there for decades, and regular users have their locations in muscle memory. When you're done wondering why you've lost your way in a product you've used since the 90s, you can get the tools back by by Googling and changing a magic setting in the prefs. But it's hard to be too offensive about a company that can do something like that in the name of "development", while leaving many of Photoshop's more annoying warts unattended.
polote 5y ago
Related from same author a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23584954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23584954 "Why Figma wins"
skd-fs 5y ago
This resembles the era of Salesforce vs Oracle. Having everything on the cloud (Salesforce) versus having expensive in-house systems maintained by Oracle/SAP. Not surprising at this point as Adobe is a mature and slow moving company. What innovations have they done in the last 5 years besides closing down Flash?
- villasv 5y ago
  Adobe products are not stale. Photoshop has already successfully incorporated some of the recent research on image processing using GANs and it's getting ever more powerful.
  - TrevorJ 5y ago
    There's nothing in Photoshop since CS2 that I need, and I use it every single week. In fact, with every update they seem to either break something, or make the tool worse. I've use the tool for 20 years. I don't WANT to be forced to upgrade to the newest version where some shortcut is inexplicably changed for no good reason. They need to stop trying to add new keys to a piano. Let us play the instrument as we learned it.
    - villasv 5y ago
      I agreee with everything you said, but none of it is relevant in the context of comparing Photoshop to an obsolete database. My point was not that it’s UX is improving, only that the technology isn’t stale.
      - TrevorJ 5y ago
        I mean, if the only features that get added aren't useful, then isn't that actually worse than being stale? It's an antipattern at that point.
        villasv 5y ago
        Useful _to you_
tengbretson 5y ago
What's Figma?
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Sorry to be that guy, but have you done a quick google?
  - domano 5y ago
    I think this is a pun related to "Whats Ligma?" and the inappropriate answer to it :)
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  It's a new-ish design tool that is cloud-native. It's kind of like Sketch but as a web app.
- foxthatruns 5y ago
  FIGMA NUTS
adontz 5y ago
Not sure why they compare to Photoshop and not XD.
- nness 5y ago
  XD was a tactical response to Sketch and Figma's encroachment of Photoshop as an UI/UX tool. Whilst XD is now a better target for a like-for-like comparison, from a historical perspective, Adobe is on the back-foot trying to re-capture the disciplines which no longer use their product.
- oneshoe 5y ago
  This. I just used adobe XD for the first time and I actually truly enjoyed it. I'm not an Adobe fan boy - there just happened to be a sale on the Adobe cloud suite that I bought and XD came with it.
polytely 5y ago
On the photoshop/illustrator front I've been really happy with Affinity Photo and Designer, they are good enough that I haven't really missed any functionality, they certainly feel more stable (looking at you illustrator) and they are way cheaper. I wish they would make something that could replace Adobe XD, because adobe XD is terribly slow in adding features and there is a lot of room for improvement there. At first I thought XD was great, but as the app I've been designing has grown in size I keep encountering more and more warts.
- macando 5y ago
  Creating animatioms in XD is awesome. Haven't had that much fun in years. As a tool it misses a lot of features present in Sketch and Figma.
- dekerta 5y ago
  +1 for Affinity Designer. I was stuck on an old version of Adobe Fireworks for years because I refused to give in to their SaaS model. The Affinity suite has been worth every penny, and I actually own the software, which is great
drewrbaker 5y ago
Adobe have XD which is very similar to Figma. We use it at my agency.
macando 5y ago
Changing customer needs are the largest source of entropy in markets. When customer needs rapidly change, there is less advantage in being an incumbent. Instead, legacy companies are left with all the overhead and a product that no longer is what customers want. There are many causes of changing customer needs. Often there are new and growing segments of customers with different use cases. Existing products may work for them, but they aren’t ideal. The features they care about and how they value them are very different from the customers the legacy company is used to. Companies resist changing core parts of their product for every new use case since it’s costly in work, money, and attention. This is one of the best product articles ever written. All planets aligned for Figma: - Companies big and small acknowledging the importance of UI/UX design resulting in more and more designers entering the workforce. - Remote work going mainstream pushing more people toward online collaboration tools. - Web technologies progressing and enabling desktop-like experience inside a browser. Resulting in designers, managers, customers all loving Figma. It's a game changer and it will be a bigger success story than Slack.
- kak9 5y ago
  appreciate the kind words!
jordemort 5y ago
I believe it. We needed to make some coupons for the kid's Easter eggs this year. Google led me to Adobe Spark Post. I couldn't figure out how to get anything done and the app immediately started trying to upsell me for some sort of subscription. My more social-media-savvy wife told me to download Canva instead. I did, and got what I needed done easily in a couple of minutes, and then I deleted Spark Post.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- paulcole 5y ago
  I think you are selling short your social-media-savviness. You seem pretty capable here on HN which fits my definition of social media.
  - jordemort 5y ago
    Perhaps, but she's done it from the side of managing the social media presence for a business; I have not. I don't need any design assistance to post on HN, but I was going for something flashier than "Verdana on beige" for the Easter eggs.
    - paulcole 5y ago
      My point was more that calling someone social-media-savvy on HN is usually code for (at best) someone who works in marketing who does something that’s “not real work.” Not accusing you of that (and your explanation makes perfect sense) but trying to keep in mind that HN in itself is social media and a marketing tool for a VC fund.
tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
I really like this kind of market analysis (discussing levels of abstraction as the primary variant in market differentiation), because it's been my focus of thought for the past few years. I actually think that Figma is still somewhat legacy in its model, because it still relies on the concept of a designer as akin to an illustrator. Give them a canvas, and some tools, and let them draw. No one has attempted to deviate from that model, and I think there could be a wealth of opportunity outside of it.
- makeboss 5y ago
  What is the distinction between a designer and an illustrator?
davidgh 5y ago
Feels like classic Innovator’s Dilemma [1]. Adobe’s incumbent bread-winning products do not allow them to internally develop less expensive alternatives that would actively erode revenue from the legacy products. So outside companies do it instead. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
- andybak 5y ago
  There's more going on here. Figma targets collaboration. Canva tackles ease of use. Nothing was stopping Adobe improving in that department. Photoshop already has a cheap monthly subscription. Why not do a similar price point with a new collaboration and ease of use layer slapped on Illustrator?
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    Cheap is relative, would I rather have Photoshop for 2.5 months or a permanent license of Affinity Photo? I'm taking into account a current 50% discount, but I think that's fair since Adobe products no longer go on sale. But even without the sale, it's 5 months of Photoshop versus a permanent license.
  - staysaasy 5y ago
    The main thing that was stopping them from improving in the collaboration / usability department was the fact that Adobe's products are extremely comprehensive – that's how they differentiate. But that comprehensiveness comes at the expense of complexity, makes it harder to have a really tight interface and add things like collaboration features. The comprehensiveness is what allowed them to win in the enterprise, but it came at a high price. If Figma wants to become an enterprise solution they'll probably end up getting really complex too.
    - wongarsu 5y ago
      Comprehensiveness is one of Adobe's differentiators, the other is specialised products that seamlessly interoperate. Illustrator is "Photoshop, but focus on vectors", InDesign is "Illustrator but for page design", Animate is "Illustrator, but for animations", Aftereffects is "animate but for video". All of them seamlessly interchange files with each other. Adding tools with the sole purpose to give a less powerful, more intuitive interface would have fit perfectly into the Adobe ecosystem.
wyxuan 5y ago
Used to use sketch, moved to Invision and finally landed on figma - and heck I'm not even a UI/UX designer. I love how I can put up nice designs relatively quickly without having to learn the dazzling array of menus and tools found in Adobe.
- defenestration 5y ago
  We are also fan of Figma. It's easy to work together inside the same design and the results are easy to test and present. But be warned of vendor lock-in! You can't use .fig files in other programs. Before you move your complete Sketch design library into Figma, think carefully. They make switching to Figma easy, but switching away hard. Converting your complete Figma library can be done with xd2sketch.com for hundreds to thousands of dollars. Our policy is that we only make one-offs in Figma and delete them afterwards.
jonathanstrange 5y ago
I'm surprised at the choice of competition named in the article. I'd say the strongest contender to Adobe's core business is Affinity with their desktop software suite.
- doogerdog 5y ago
  I agree. Affinity started very strong and just keeps getting better. Adobe's subscription BS is going to hurt them in the long game.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    I love affinity products but I wonder about their plan long term. With the current pay once, get updates for free model they will run out of customers at some point. Adobe sold upgrades back in the day, but that is not a possible path for Affinity, at least not if they mainly sell through the Mac App Store.
    - jackson1442 5y ago
      Something that you sometimes see is developers offering a bundle that includes v1 and v2 of an app where the price is (v1 cost + "upgrade fee"), which is automatically discounted to just the upgrade fee. This definitely works on iOS, so I figure it would also work on macOS.
      - yoz-y 5y ago
        I saw that done but it definitely feels hacky.
    - omnimus 5y ago
      Well i am sure they are already preparing some form of v 2 thats going to be such upgrade. My bet for features would be 1. Plugins API/scripting 2. Better panel management
- brobdingnagians 5y ago
  I agree that Affinity deserves mention here, since they are another player. Just slightly different than the other two and meeting a need in a variation of the theme. I do some graphic design and photo editing, but not enough to justify the large recurring price of Adobe products, so I went with Affinity and I've loved it. I'm not a profession artist, so I'd only ever really heard of Adobe, but went looking for something else simply because of cost. EDIT: I think the main reason they don't mention Affinity is because Affinity capitalized on Adobe's price increase; the price increase is mentioned as a positive for Adobe's stock price in the article, though a lot of customers dislike it. It is an interesting case of Figma and Canva having better functionality for certain segments, and Affinity having better price to capabilities ratio for other segments. When Adobe was more of the only game in town, it was fine, but now others are carving into the space and competing on variations, providing better alternatives to different needs or prices.
krmmalik 5y ago
I think Adobe is getting beat on a number of fronts, not just what Figma and Canva are addressing. There is a slow but steady rise in the number of people moving away from Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve for example. Adobe have been short-sighted with their very expensive subscription model which has resulted in people seeking out alternatives. Sure it was very profitable for them in the short-term but at what long-term cost? It has done nothing but foster resentment in even its most loyal user base. Personally I can't wait for mature Adobe After Effects alternative, and then I'm gone for good.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  $600 a year isn't expensive for software for a US professional worker. I understand that there's lots of people that don't fit that description. That they would also like to use Adobe's tools is perhaps not entirely a sign of decline.
  - steve_adams_86 5y ago
    Agreed, it seemed outrageous to me 10 years ago but I believe now that Adobe simply focused on a certain segment. I wasn't in it. But that's just it; I had very little money, and I was mad that they'd excluded me. But of course they'd exclude me, haha.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      You were never their target. But there were people thinking about you. The cracked adobe products from 10 years ago provide most of the functionality the new subscription does at a big discount. In a way those warez (sp) crackers cared about you more than adobe ever did.
  - mrj 5y ago
    But that's a ton of cost for something you don't use often or if you're just starting out. That price tag eliminates the low end on-ramp into the products. They moved away from perpetual licenses and raised prices, which ensured there was room for competitors with a lower initial price and "good enough" quality.
kgraves 5y ago
Isn't this just a classic case of unbundling[0], as to which Figma and Canva are just unbundling Adobe products. Come to think of it, I also think the reverse will happen when people realise that using multiple tools in concert will cause friction and then some customers revert to a 'bundled' service with their needs accommodated in just one service/program. Hopefully Figma, Canva and many others like them don't not get ironically acquired by Adobe and the like. [0] https://stratechery.com/outline/bundling-and-unbundling/ https://stratechery.com/outline/bundling-and-unbundling/
- macando 5y ago
  Sketch unbundled Photoshop, while Figma offered something Photoshop never had - collaboration. Sketch changes how designers work, while Figma do that equally well + it changes how teams work.
ape4 5y ago
Adobe is going acquire one of them
- nness 5y ago
  My gut says the same. The costs of trying to scale Adobe XD to the same utility as the best-of-breeds will be known pretty soon, and Adobe will have two options, grow or acquire, and a price against both. It'll be straightforward thereafter.
- gsmo 5y ago
  This just reminded me: does anyone remember Macromedia? Adobe bought them a looong time ago.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    No, they were gone in a flash.
perardi 5y ago
I’ve used Photoshop since before you some of you people were born. (I’m 37, but I started very, very early.) I breathe Photoshop. I live in Photoshop. I am like a surgeon with Photoshop. And the vast majority of the time, using Photoshop for a design task is gross overkill, or it’s poorly suited to the task in subtle ways. It never felt right for UI design. They've made nice improvements (hello, Artboards), but it never “feels” quite right. Am I using the right color space and management settings? Can I override that symbol? How do I edit that global color? Oh god, did I rasterize that layer!?
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  In the same boat. I started using PS in 1998. Never felt right for UI design, but nothing has ever really felt right for me, even Figma/Sketch/etc. I’ve tried them all. I don’t know precisely what I’m looking for, but they aren’t it.
  - dorkwood 5y ago
    I feel like the future might involve writing a little bit of code, so you can more easily link properties together and that sort of thing. Maybe a node-based workflow, I'm not sure.
    - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
      Totally agreed. No one has explored textual interfaces for designers, because everyone assumes “well designers are visual thinkers so they must draw”. I think that’s somewhat reasonable but it’s also blunt and obtuse. As it happens, I’m currently creating a platform-agnostic DSL specifically for designers. The goal is to give them a parametric language through which they can communicate their designs using their own mental models and verbiage.
- TrevorJ 5y ago
  Not only that, but the SaaS model has not netted any 'killer' features at all. I haven't found a new feature indispensable since at least CS2.
traceroute66 5y ago
What's that old saying ? Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Whether it's Adobe, Apple, Bloomberg, Microsoft or any other similar company. The fact is those companies have such an enormous moat that no minor competitor is ever going to get any serious traction. In the specific case of Adobe. Figma, Canva, $name_your_competitor are, frankly NEVER going to get any serious traction. Just look how many decades it took Adobe to finally unseat QuarkXPress, and that was two Goliaths battling out ! Why do I say that ? First, the old adage "time is money". If you are a business who employs designers, you want them to work in an efficient manner. You give them the tools they trained with. You give them the tools they used at previous employers. For designers, that is Adobe. The same goes for DTP and AdobeIndesign, or Video Editors and Adobe Premiere. Not giving a designer Adobe is a bit like telling a techie he can't install ping. Second, collaboration. Your designers, publishers and video editors will be collaborating with others. They'll be importing and exporting files all over the place. Sticking with Adobe removes problems, and hence wasting time troubleshooting, "time is money". Finally, integration. If you have used Adobe Creative Cloud remotely seriously, you will know how awesome it is. Adobe have done a spectacular job at cross-product integration with extensive native support. You can take Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files and pull them straight into InDesign for page layout. You can be working on a video in Adobe Premiere and from within Adobe Premiere, you can throw the audio into Adobe Audition, manipulate it, and Adobe Premiere will pick up the changes without you needing to lift a finger. That, my friends, is why you should take talk of minor competitors of Adobe claiming they are "winning" with a generous pinch of salt.
- benjaminwootton 5y ago
  It’s anecdotal, but I’ve seen Figma become almost the de facto standard for web design over the last few years, whilst Canva is massively democratising design such that you don’t even need to work with professional designer for your day to day designs. I agree Adobe will be sticky and nobody is suggesting they will die any time soon, but these tools are so good and so widely adopted that I don’t see how they can’t eventually take a bite out of Adobe.
- scarecrowbob 5y ago
  I was of this mind for quite a while. I hate changing tools. I do a lot of front-end dev work that involves translating non-technical designer's layouts into templates for a CMS. Figma is way, way more efficient for me to use than Ai or PS. Time is indeed money. Most of our team isn't bought in to any specific package... I have to be able to take deliverables from a wide variety of systems, so it wasn't a big deal to add another system on my side of thing. On the designers side, he likes it just as well, and the familiarity is the only hurdle. However, it's not like having to re-understand design, it's just another tool. In the end, that's all it takes... because I don't care what general standard for cross-industry design is. I remember when it was Fireworks. All I care about is the specific tool chain that we use. So, yeah, Figma isn't probably going to become some cross-industry standard, but it so much easier to use for the limited tasks we use it for that it's winning at our very local, agency, level.
achow 5y ago
The point most are missing is that, $600/annum maynot be a big deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual designer. How is that relevant? Unlike hardcore workplace software - someone below gave example of a $10K PCB layout software - Adobe products are used for personal and hobby projects by designers at home or at schools. When these designers stop using the Adobe software at home and schools and use alternatives, they would insist the same switch at workplace as well. The employers would be more than happy to accommodate that request (who does not like free money). I'm still rocking 2013 Adobe suite - the last perpetual license - for 'just incase' scenarios. But since last many years have totally switched to the likes of Figma at home computer, and at workplace there was enmass transition to Sketch till couple of years back, and now to Figma. (Hopefully) Adobe would go the way of Corel Draw, which you only find in old printing shops, where they insist that they convert your Adobe (.psd) files to Corel Draw one before they can send it to printing machines.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- prox 5y ago
  I have been moving to the Affinity Suite and never have I missed anything from Adobe. I love to work in it and I don’t have to pay per month.
  - packetlost 5y ago
    How does Affinity Photo compare to LightRoom? I've tried everything from Luminar, to CaptureOne and nothing really works quite as well as LightRoom for various reasons.
    - alexdeloy 5y ago
      I love all the Affinity products so far but the RAW part of Affinity Photo is where the suite falls a bit short in my opinion. Things I miss most when compared to Lightroom are: - the ability to quickly create circular and gradient masks and apply a set of setting to them - Edits are not saved into a .xmp file like Lightroom does. Once you developed your image and closed the Raw editor, there is no way to apply the exact same settings again if you want to tweak something later.
TrevorJ 5y ago
Adobe is one of a long line of companies who appear to sell products as their bread and butter, but actually get a large portion of revenue through ad analytics and data offerings.
- smeyer 5y ago
  Can you break that down a bit for those of us less-informed? Looking at an earnings report[0] it looks like the vast majority of their revenue (about 90%) comes from "subscription", which I assumed was mostly for their products sold via subscription models. Is there somewhere that breaks down how much of that subscription revenue is from ad analytics and data? [0] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-Reports-Record-Q4-and-Fiscal-2020-Revenue-december/default.aspx https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-Reports-...
  - TrevorJ 5y ago
    If you look here, you can see that in 2019 29% of their revenue came from the digital experience division, which is described as: "subscriptions to Adobe Experience Cloud, a cross-channel marketing optimization tool that includes analytics, targeting, campaign management, content delivery and commerce enablement." https://dashboards.trefis.com/data/companies/VMW/no-login-required/KvEbwXy8/Adobe-s-Revenues-How-Does-Adobe-Make-Money- https://dashboards.trefis.com/data/companies/VMW/no-login-re... I suspect that the share has probably grown since then, but I don't know that for sure.
alexashka 5y ago
This is like saying Clojure is taking on Java, and winning. It solves some problems some people have and that's great. It isn't moving the needle in any meaningful way.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Every industry disruption starts out this way... by solving some problems, but faster, cheaper, or better.
whall6 5y ago
Let’s not forget the hell you go through when uninstalling Adobe products
- sumnole 5y ago
  Is it still next to impossible to cancel? It's been a while (I'm now a happy Affinity customer) but they had no self service cancellation and their offshore customer service team gave me the run around for days, at one point lying to me about deactivating my subscription when they hadn't.
  - omnimus 5y ago
    Still the same. Also the license is not monthly as they try to show. Its auto extending annual contract that you pay month by month and if you want to cancel you have to pay rest of that contract.
ryanwhitney 5y ago
It took a lot for me to give up trusty ol’ Photoshop for design. I pretty much built my career playing with and learning Photoshop. But they were years behind Sketch and then named their competitor “XD”. What a terrible name. App didn’t seem great either. And I really really hate the whole Creative Cloud licensing thing that’s always running in my menubar as well as their strange bundle pricing. In the meantime, Figma quietly came along and somehow built a web app that had such good collaboration and sign up/licensing that it somehow makes me OK with using a web app.
pentagrama 5y ago
The web was a big "feature" to allow Figma succeed over Adobe. In Figma you design and changes instantly for everyone, just sent a link and anyone (designers and non-designers) can see/collaborate the latest version because is web based. Adobe sleep many years bloating Photoshop with features that try to cover UI design needs and fail, finally releases Adobe XD but is miles away of Figma, in Adobe XD today, you make changes in a file and have to go to Share > Update link everytime, and then the web based version of the file is updated. Is crazy. Sketch sleep on that too. Also Figma was clever to make prototyping and developer handoff a core features pretty quickly, now they have a polished "trifecta" with UI desgin + Prototying + Developer handoff. Here a good resource to compare UI design tools (and more) https://uxtools.co/tools/design https://uxtools.co/tools/design I'm wondering whats the next step to smooth even more the gap between visual design and development.
- robertoandred 5y ago
  Figma's dev handoff is still pretty bad though, especially around images.
  - ENGNR 5y ago
    True, it's pretty hidden and frustrating But even then, being able to do it at all exactly when you're ready, is just night and day better compared to having to ask the designer for the file they forgot for the nth time
wdb 5y ago
I just wished Figma would run offline when not having internet without the need to login every day. One of the reasons I keep using Sketch. Currently, it's less of a problem because you can't travel much but before, for me, it was a pain to use Figma on planes, or trains.
- searchableguy 5y ago
  Figma desktop works offline. https://www.figma.com/downloads/ https://www.figma.com/downloads/
  - wdb 5y ago
    You need to keep logging in
    - searchableguy 5y ago
      Odd, I didn't need to but thanks to know.
open-source-ux 5y ago
Another app that has captured "mindshare" among artists and designers is Procreate - a digital painting app for the iPad. It's leapt over Adobe to dominate the digital painting space on the iPad. Adobe is playing catch-up with their late-to-market rival painting app Fresco. However, to keep things in perspective, usage of Adobe's apps still dominate the creative industries. That grip shows no sign of loosening. Just the volume of tutorials for Photoshop alone is humongous. What the likes of Procreate, Sketch, Figma, and Affinty show is that you can carve a profitable space in the design and graphics field and succeed even when that field is dominated by a behemoth like Adobe. It's also refreshing to see rivals rethink the way of accomplishing design tasks. A lot of Adobe apps have accrued so much clunky UI interactions and lack the fresh ideas from some of their rivals.
- ansgri 5y ago
  Procreate is awesome! I don’t even paint but use it often enough for quick sketching of diagrams or simple image editing. I have the Adobe subscription and use Lightroom a lot, but Photoshop feels like a heavy machinery better fit for the PC when you want complex editing. Aside, I’ve learned Photoshop around 7th version (not CS), and was really impressed by modern capabilities — they support nondestructive editing workflow for almost everything!
- kak9 5y ago
  author here! haha, yes I love Procreate. i use it for all my (very bad) drawings in blog posts. And all i wish is that someone would make plugin to integrate procreate and figma nicer procreate is so great
didibus 5y ago
I heard by a few UX designer that they prefer Adobe XD as a design tool actually over Figma, but the cost is why they use Figma instead. I find it a glaring ommision from the article analysis that it didn't even mention Adobe XD anywhere? It seems to me maybe newcomers are only competing against price and nothing else?
- sevencolors 5y ago
  Yeah, I found it strange they didn't even compare XD. Which is the direct competitor to Figma/Sketch. Also the cost for just XD is similar to that of Figma/Sketch Free Plan / ~$10 monthly plan
- kak9 5y ago
  Author here! Yes, totally right. There was a bunch i wanted to write about Adobe. Both XD and the current moves they've made with CC etc. But had to cut because too much--so hopefully will have an essay entirely on Adobe coming at some point
lavrton 5y ago
Taking the chance, I am working on JavaScript SDK to make canva-like design editors: https://polotno.dev/ https://polotno.dev/. Will be useful if you want to make a similar tool on your website. There is also https://studio.polotno.dev/ https://studio.polotno.dev/ product that as positioned as canva alternative without signups or paywalls. Not as good as canva yet, but it is in progress.
ilamont 5y ago
This is the same story for every media creation tool, which goes hand in hand with advances in technology. Editing audio used to require all kinds of expensive hardware and software, now you can get the basics done (and sometimes a lot more) with Bandlab and Garageband on your phone. Same story with putting printed words on paper, video creation, etc. There are a couple of interesting things about Canva, though. First, it's a VC funded startup so the motivation behind it is not just ease of use, it's profitable exit - probably by Adobe. This does not give me confidence that Canva will work for me 2, 3, or 5 years down the road when someone screws up the M&A or deliberately sinks the acquired product. Second, Canva hits that non-designer quadrant and new use cases mentioned in TFA pretty well, but it is not useful for many advanced use cases. I use Canva every week for my own business, but I also depend on a paid subscription to Adobe Acrobat to do things with PDFs that free tools can't match or can't do well.
cesarvarela 5y ago
The usability of Canva is exquisite. Seems limited but it is limited in all the right places. Saves so much busy work when for example designing a presentation vs PowerPoint or Slides. You if just want to get shit done just use Canva. Big omission not mentioning Affinity products, excellent Photoshop and Illustrator replacements for a one and only beautiful payment of $25.
Nkuna 5y ago
Switches to Morpheus' voice What if I told you you can use ANY Adobe software, procured legitimately, in perpetuity without using cracked/pirated copies; without paying a dime? No shenanigans like modifying or deleting files, changing your PC's clock, etc. Just using the OS's system tools[]. It's so obvious, I'm certain a sizable number of Adobe users do this. Obviously outlining how would alert Adobe and I'm not sure I want to risk that.
- amelius 5y ago
  Which OS?
  - ampdepolymerase 5y ago
    Probably Windows Sandbox or one of the other Hyper-V based out-of-the-box VM solutions.
codq 5y ago
Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, Canva, Figma, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro — it’s nice living an Adobe-free life.
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
It’s not surprising at all. Adobe, as most of us predicted they would completely just give up and real innovation or advancement once they went subscription. Why spend a huge amounts of money on progress when every designer, photographer, artist, editor, game developer, VFX artist in the world is forced to pay for $50 a month. They’ve dropped a small handful of extra features over the past 8 years but also during that time their software has stagnated and rotted. They didn’t move with technology so most of it is all single core constrained and barely uses the GPU so doesn’t feel any faster today than it did 8 years ago and in some cases parts of it actually feel slower as bitrot has set in. After Effects went from a program that felt almost like magic to something that can’t even play it’s image sequence preview and sound without dropping out rendering it a complete frustration to use, again this all worked great on a Core Duo 2 iMac 10 years ago. Every single part of Adobes business is there for the taking and with only small amounts of effort you can provide something that will take them years to catch up to if they ever manage at all, look at XD they started that when sketch was eating their lunch so they started making XD and they move so slowly that by the time it was even remotely viable it was already leapfrogged by Figma and now Adobe will never be relevant in that space again.
rossdavidh 5y ago
"Most successful companies, especially startups, have found tailwinds to harness that help pull them forward." Allow me to entirely miss the point of this article by saying that is a really very confused metaphor. Tailwinds don't pull anything, and you can't put them in a harness. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be picturing. I know, this is irrelevant to their point.
- danuker 5y ago
  I imagine a sail.
- koolhaas 5y ago
  But “harness” can be specifically used in relation to natural resources e.g. harness the wind or harness solar energy. And it’s used generally with other words that you can’t put in a harness. It’s not just a noun.
- kak9 5y ago
  oh god you're right haha, I malaphor'd that
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    "malaphor" is a wonderful word, thanks for that. :)
perplex 5y ago
Wait the article doesn’t mention Adobe XD which is Adobe’s UI design tool that competes with Figma and Sketch. XD is great for my needs and with frequent updates it is always improving. I’m also in the camp where Adobe shortcuts are burned into my muscle memory. I’ve tried the others but am more productive using the tools I know. Photoshop and Illustrator alone are worth it also. Some amazing power that other tools just don’t have.
- gotrythis 5y ago
  XD has nearly no adoption compared to Figma. I saw a chart in the last week or so, and XD barely registered and Figma had the most adoption by far. Can't find it again atm.
kwanbix 5y ago
I am a user of PaintShop Pro 7, love it. Bought PSP8. Hate it. Anybody can recommend something similar to PSP7 which is having issues with Win10? Tried GIMP but too complicated. Paint.NET too simple.
foobiter 5y ago
i’ve been using their tools for 25 years and adobe has never really understood design for the internet, they’ve tried and failed a lot
jbra 5y ago
ok as a product designer in the business what ppl fail to understand is that the smaller companies like figma 1. move faster and are more innovative 2. priced right for most designers 3. know their audience adobe is not as nimble, has excessive pricing and for the most part the traditional apps are robust but harder to use designers change software pretty often these days because 1. students can't afford adobe and use figma or sketch, get into the workplace and expect to use the same tools 2. almost all designers, even product designers to work on the side for fun...and no i do not want to pay adobe 75$ a month for a bunch of apps i will not really use ( i myself use figma for all my personal projects now and my team at work will transition to it this year) 3. transitioning from sketch to figma to adobe xd is not that hard as they have similar features...it's def easier than going from PS to figma. which is why almost 0 product designers use PS anymore 4. mid-smaller companies can change design software pretty easily..we are always moving forward as designers 5. ppl only stay at a company for 2 yrs so if I go from using Figma at this small company, I might bring that along to a larger company if i get hired
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

I assume they helped grow new markets and Adobe had to pivot into these “new” markets. All the old users of Adobe are still the users of Adobe. But most new entrants have grown up with new approaches like Canva etc..... I remember when GIMP was the only “credible” alternative to Adobe (acquiring competitors like Macromedia etc). Now there are dozens of alternatives.

nicoburns 5y ago
> All the old users of Adobe are still the users of Adobe That's definitely not true. Some niches like photo manipulation are still Adobe, but Adobe tools used to be the goto for Web Design and now they're not. Closer to the truth is that Adobe stopped development on their tool in this area (Fireworks), which opened up the market for competitors (primarily Sketch, and the later Figma), who did indeed bring their own innovations. And only later realised their mistake.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Adobe keep doing really, really stupid things. The latest Photoshop update removed some of the tools from the toolbar. Some of the tools have been there for decades, and regular users have their locations in muscle memory. When you're done wondering why you've lost your way in a product you've used since the 90s, you can get the tools back by by Googling and changing a magic setting in the prefs. But it's hard to be too offensive about a company that can do something like that in the name of "development", while leaving many of Photoshop's more annoying warts unattended.

polote 5y ago

Related from same author a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23584954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23584954 "Why Figma wins"

skd-fs 5y ago

This resembles the era of Salesforce vs Oracle. Having everything on the cloud (Salesforce) versus having expensive in-house systems maintained by Oracle/SAP. Not surprising at this point as Adobe is a mature and slow moving company. What innovations have they done in the last 5 years besides closing down Flash?

villasv 5y ago
Adobe products are not stale. Photoshop has already successfully incorporated some of the recent research on image processing using GANs and it's getting ever more powerful.
- TrevorJ 5y ago
  There's nothing in Photoshop since CS2 that I need, and I use it every single week. In fact, with every update they seem to either break something, or make the tool worse. I've use the tool for 20 years. I don't WANT to be forced to upgrade to the newest version where some shortcut is inexplicably changed for no good reason. They need to stop trying to add new keys to a piano. Let us play the instrument as we learned it.
  - villasv 5y ago
    I agreee with everything you said, but none of it is relevant in the context of comparing Photoshop to an obsolete database. My point was not that it’s UX is improving, only that the technology isn’t stale.
    - TrevorJ 5y ago
      I mean, if the only features that get added aren't useful, then isn't that actually worse than being stale? It's an antipattern at that point.
      - villasv 5y ago
        Useful _to you_

tengbretson 5y ago

What's Figma?

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Sorry to be that guy, but have you done a quick google?
- domano 5y ago
  I think this is a pun related to "Whats Ligma?" and the inappropriate answer to it :)
tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
It's a new-ish design tool that is cloud-native. It's kind of like Sketch but as a web app.
foxthatruns 5y ago
FIGMA NUTS

adontz 5y ago

Not sure why they compare to Photoshop and not XD.

nness 5y ago
XD was a tactical response to Sketch and Figma's encroachment of Photoshop as an UI/UX tool. Whilst XD is now a better target for a like-for-like comparison, from a historical perspective, Adobe is on the back-foot trying to re-capture the disciplines which no longer use their product.
oneshoe 5y ago
This. I just used adobe XD for the first time and I actually truly enjoyed it. I'm not an Adobe fan boy - there just happened to be a sale on the Adobe cloud suite that I bought and XD came with it.

polytely 5y ago

On the photoshop/illustrator front I've been really happy with Affinity Photo and Designer, they are good enough that I haven't really missed any functionality, they certainly feel more stable (looking at you illustrator) and they are way cheaper. I wish they would make something that could replace Adobe XD, because adobe XD is terribly slow in adding features and there is a lot of room for improvement there. At first I thought XD was great, but as the app I've been designing has grown in size I keep encountering more and more warts.

macando 5y ago
Creating animatioms in XD is awesome. Haven't had that much fun in years. As a tool it misses a lot of features present in Sketch and Figma.
dekerta 5y ago
+1 for Affinity Designer. I was stuck on an old version of Adobe Fireworks for years because I refused to give in to their SaaS model. The Affinity suite has been worth every penny, and I actually own the software, which is great

drewrbaker 5y ago

Adobe have XD which is very similar to Figma. We use it at my agency.

macando 5y ago

Changing customer needs are the largest source of entropy in markets. When customer needs rapidly change, there is less advantage in being an incumbent. Instead, legacy companies are left with all the overhead and a product that no longer is what customers want. There are many causes of changing customer needs. Often there are new and growing segments of customers with different use cases. Existing products may work for them, but they aren’t ideal. The features they care about and how they value them are very different from the customers the legacy company is used to. Companies resist changing core parts of their product for every new use case since it’s costly in work, money, and attention. This is one of the best product articles ever written. All planets aligned for Figma: - Companies big and small acknowledging the importance of UI/UX design resulting in more and more designers entering the workforce. - Remote work going mainstream pushing more people toward online collaboration tools. - Web technologies progressing and enabling desktop-like experience inside a browser. Resulting in designers, managers, customers all loving Figma. It's a game changer and it will be a bigger success story than Slack.

kak9 5y ago
appreciate the kind words!

jordemort 5y ago

I believe it. We needed to make some coupons for the kid's Easter eggs this year. Google led me to Adobe Spark Post. I couldn't figure out how to get anything done and the app immediately started trying to upsell me for some sort of subscription. My more social-media-savvy wife told me to download Canva instead. I did, and got what I needed done easily in a couple of minutes, and then I deleted Spark Post.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paulcole 5y ago
I think you are selling short your social-media-savviness. You seem pretty capable here on HN which fits my definition of social media.
- jordemort 5y ago
  Perhaps, but she's done it from the side of managing the social media presence for a business; I have not. I don't need any design assistance to post on HN, but I was going for something flashier than "Verdana on beige" for the Easter eggs.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    My point was more that calling someone social-media-savvy on HN is usually code for (at best) someone who works in marketing who does something that’s “not real work.” Not accusing you of that (and your explanation makes perfect sense) but trying to keep in mind that HN in itself is social media and a marketing tool for a VC fund.

tenaciousDaniel 5y ago

I really like this kind of market analysis (discussing levels of abstraction as the primary variant in market differentiation), because it's been my focus of thought for the past few years. I actually think that Figma is still somewhat legacy in its model, because it still relies on the concept of a designer as akin to an illustrator. Give them a canvas, and some tools, and let them draw. No one has attempted to deviate from that model, and I think there could be a wealth of opportunity outside of it.

makeboss 5y ago
What is the distinction between a designer and an illustrator?

davidgh 5y ago

Feels like classic Innovator’s Dilemma [1]. Adobe’s incumbent bread-winning products do not allow them to internally develop less expensive alternatives that would actively erode revenue from the legacy products. So outside companies do it instead. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

andybak 5y ago
There's more going on here. Figma targets collaboration. Canva tackles ease of use. Nothing was stopping Adobe improving in that department. Photoshop already has a cheap monthly subscription. Why not do a similar price point with a new collaboration and ease of use layer slapped on Illustrator?
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  Cheap is relative, would I rather have Photoshop for 2.5 months or a permanent license of Affinity Photo? I'm taking into account a current 50% discount, but I think that's fair since Adobe products no longer go on sale. But even without the sale, it's 5 months of Photoshop versus a permanent license.
- staysaasy 5y ago
  The main thing that was stopping them from improving in the collaboration / usability department was the fact that Adobe's products are extremely comprehensive – that's how they differentiate. But that comprehensiveness comes at the expense of complexity, makes it harder to have a really tight interface and add things like collaboration features. The comprehensiveness is what allowed them to win in the enterprise, but it came at a high price. If Figma wants to become an enterprise solution they'll probably end up getting really complex too.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    Comprehensiveness is one of Adobe's differentiators, the other is specialised products that seamlessly interoperate. Illustrator is "Photoshop, but focus on vectors", InDesign is "Illustrator but for page design", Animate is "Illustrator, but for animations", Aftereffects is "animate but for video". All of them seamlessly interchange files with each other. Adding tools with the sole purpose to give a less powerful, more intuitive interface would have fit perfectly into the Adobe ecosystem.

wyxuan 5y ago

Used to use sketch, moved to Invision and finally landed on figma - and heck I'm not even a UI/UX designer. I love how I can put up nice designs relatively quickly without having to learn the dazzling array of menus and tools found in Adobe.

defenestration 5y ago
We are also fan of Figma. It's easy to work together inside the same design and the results are easy to test and present. But be warned of vendor lock-in! You can't use .fig files in other programs. Before you move your complete Sketch design library into Figma, think carefully. They make switching to Figma easy, but switching away hard. Converting your complete Figma library can be done with xd2sketch.com for hundreds to thousands of dollars. Our policy is that we only make one-offs in Figma and delete them afterwards.

jonathanstrange 5y ago

I'm surprised at the choice of competition named in the article. I'd say the strongest contender to Adobe's core business is Affinity with their desktop software suite.

doogerdog 5y ago
I agree. Affinity started very strong and just keeps getting better. Adobe's subscription BS is going to hurt them in the long game.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  I love affinity products but I wonder about their plan long term. With the current pay once, get updates for free model they will run out of customers at some point. Adobe sold upgrades back in the day, but that is not a possible path for Affinity, at least not if they mainly sell through the Mac App Store.
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    Something that you sometimes see is developers offering a bundle that includes v1 and v2 of an app where the price is (v1 cost + "upgrade fee"), which is automatically discounted to just the upgrade fee. This definitely works on iOS, so I figure it would also work on macOS.
    - yoz-y 5y ago
      I saw that done but it definitely feels hacky.
  - omnimus 5y ago
    Well i am sure they are already preparing some form of v 2 thats going to be such upgrade. My bet for features would be 1. Plugins API/scripting 2. Better panel management
brobdingnagians 5y ago
I agree that Affinity deserves mention here, since they are another player. Just slightly different than the other two and meeting a need in a variation of the theme. I do some graphic design and photo editing, but not enough to justify the large recurring price of Adobe products, so I went with Affinity and I've loved it. I'm not a profession artist, so I'd only ever really heard of Adobe, but went looking for something else simply because of cost. EDIT: I think the main reason they don't mention Affinity is because Affinity capitalized on Adobe's price increase; the price increase is mentioned as a positive for Adobe's stock price in the article, though a lot of customers dislike it. It is an interesting case of Figma and Canva having better functionality for certain segments, and Affinity having better price to capabilities ratio for other segments. When Adobe was more of the only game in town, it was fine, but now others are carving into the space and competing on variations, providing better alternatives to different needs or prices.

krmmalik 5y ago

I think Adobe is getting beat on a number of fronts, not just what Figma and Canva are addressing. There is a slow but steady rise in the number of people moving away from Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve for example. Adobe have been short-sighted with their very expensive subscription model which has resulted in people seeking out alternatives. Sure it was very profitable for them in the short-term but at what long-term cost? It has done nothing but foster resentment in even its most loyal user base. Personally I can't wait for mature Adobe After Effects alternative, and then I'm gone for good.

maxerickson 5y ago
$600 a year isn't expensive for software for a US professional worker. I understand that there's lots of people that don't fit that description. That they would also like to use Adobe's tools is perhaps not entirely a sign of decline.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  Agreed, it seemed outrageous to me 10 years ago but I believe now that Adobe simply focused on a certain segment. I wasn't in it. But that's just it; I had very little money, and I was mad that they'd excluded me. But of course they'd exclude me, haha.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    You were never their target. But there were people thinking about you. The cracked adobe products from 10 years ago provide most of the functionality the new subscription does at a big discount. In a way those warez (sp) crackers cared about you more than adobe ever did.
- mrj 5y ago
  But that's a ton of cost for something you don't use often or if you're just starting out. That price tag eliminates the low end on-ramp into the products. They moved away from perpetual licenses and raised prices, which ensured there was room for competitors with a lower initial price and "good enough" quality.

kgraves 5y ago

Isn't this just a classic case of unbundling[0], as to which Figma and Canva are just unbundling Adobe products. Come to think of it, I also think the reverse will happen when people realise that using multiple tools in concert will cause friction and then some customers revert to a 'bundled' service with their needs accommodated in just one service/program. Hopefully Figma, Canva and many others like them don't not get ironically acquired by Adobe and the like. [0] https://stratechery.com/outline/bundling-and-unbundling/ https://stratechery.com/outline/bundling-and-unbundling/

macando 5y ago
Sketch unbundled Photoshop, while Figma offered something Photoshop never had - collaboration. Sketch changes how designers work, while Figma do that equally well + it changes how teams work.

ape4 5y ago

Adobe is going acquire one of them

nness 5y ago
My gut says the same. The costs of trying to scale Adobe XD to the same utility as the best-of-breeds will be known pretty soon, and Adobe will have two options, grow or acquire, and a price against both. It'll be straightforward thereafter.
gsmo 5y ago
This just reminded me: does anyone remember Macromedia? Adobe bought them a looong time ago.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  No, they were gone in a flash.

perardi 5y ago

I’ve used Photoshop since before you some of you people were born. (I’m 37, but I started very, very early.) I breathe Photoshop. I live in Photoshop. I am like a surgeon with Photoshop. And the vast majority of the time, using Photoshop for a design task is gross overkill, or it’s poorly suited to the task in subtle ways. It never felt right for UI design. They've made nice improvements (hello, Artboards), but it never “feels” quite right. Am I using the right color space and management settings? Can I override that symbol? How do I edit that global color? Oh god, did I rasterize that layer!?

tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
In the same boat. I started using PS in 1998. Never felt right for UI design, but nothing has ever really felt right for me, even Figma/Sketch/etc. I’ve tried them all. I don’t know precisely what I’m looking for, but they aren’t it.
- dorkwood 5y ago
  I feel like the future might involve writing a little bit of code, so you can more easily link properties together and that sort of thing. Maybe a node-based workflow, I'm not sure.
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    Totally agreed. No one has explored textual interfaces for designers, because everyone assumes “well designers are visual thinkers so they must draw”. I think that’s somewhat reasonable but it’s also blunt and obtuse. As it happens, I’m currently creating a platform-agnostic DSL specifically for designers. The goal is to give them a parametric language through which they can communicate their designs using their own mental models and verbiage.
TrevorJ 5y ago
Not only that, but the SaaS model has not netted any 'killer' features at all. I haven't found a new feature indispensable since at least CS2.

traceroute66 5y ago

What's that old saying ? Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Whether it's Adobe, Apple, Bloomberg, Microsoft or any other similar company. The fact is those companies have such an enormous moat that no minor competitor is ever going to get any serious traction. In the specific case of Adobe. Figma, Canva, $name_your_competitor are, frankly NEVER going to get any serious traction. Just look how many decades it took Adobe to finally unseat QuarkXPress, and that was two Goliaths battling out ! Why do I say that ? First, the old adage "time is money". If you are a business who employs designers, you want them to work in an efficient manner. You give them the tools they trained with. You give them the tools they used at previous employers. For designers, that is Adobe. The same goes for DTP and AdobeIndesign, or Video Editors and Adobe Premiere. Not giving a designer Adobe is a bit like telling a techie he can't install ping. Second, collaboration. Your designers, publishers and video editors will be collaborating with others. They'll be importing and exporting files all over the place. Sticking with Adobe removes problems, and hence wasting time troubleshooting, "time is money". Finally, integration. If you have used Adobe Creative Cloud remotely seriously, you will know how awesome it is. Adobe have done a spectacular job at cross-product integration with extensive native support. You can take Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files and pull them straight into InDesign for page layout. You can be working on a video in Adobe Premiere and from within Adobe Premiere, you can throw the audio into Adobe Audition, manipulate it, and Adobe Premiere will pick up the changes without you needing to lift a finger. That, my friends, is why you should take talk of minor competitors of Adobe claiming they are "winning" with a generous pinch of salt.

benjaminwootton 5y ago
It’s anecdotal, but I’ve seen Figma become almost the de facto standard for web design over the last few years, whilst Canva is massively democratising design such that you don’t even need to work with professional designer for your day to day designs. I agree Adobe will be sticky and nobody is suggesting they will die any time soon, but these tools are so good and so widely adopted that I don’t see how they can’t eventually take a bite out of Adobe.
scarecrowbob 5y ago
I was of this mind for quite a while. I hate changing tools. I do a lot of front-end dev work that involves translating non-technical designer's layouts into templates for a CMS. Figma is way, way more efficient for me to use than Ai or PS. Time is indeed money. Most of our team isn't bought in to any specific package... I have to be able to take deliverables from a wide variety of systems, so it wasn't a big deal to add another system on my side of thing. On the designers side, he likes it just as well, and the familiarity is the only hurdle. However, it's not like having to re-understand design, it's just another tool. In the end, that's all it takes... because I don't care what general standard for cross-industry design is. I remember when it was Fireworks. All I care about is the specific tool chain that we use. So, yeah, Figma isn't probably going to become some cross-industry standard, but it so much easier to use for the limited tasks we use it for that it's winning at our very local, agency, level.

achow 5y ago

The point most are missing is that, $600/annum maynot be a big deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual designer. How is that relevant? Unlike hardcore workplace software - someone below gave example of a $10K PCB layout software - Adobe products are used for personal and hobby projects by designers at home or at schools. When these designers stop using the Adobe software at home and schools and use alternatives, they would insist the same switch at workplace as well. The employers would be more than happy to accommodate that request (who does not like free money). I'm still rocking 2013 Adobe suite - the last perpetual license - for 'just incase' scenarios. But since last many years have totally switched to the likes of Figma at home computer, and at workplace there was enmass transition to Sketch till couple of years back, and now to Figma. (Hopefully) Adobe would go the way of Corel Draw, which you only find in old printing shops, where they insist that they convert your Adobe (.psd) files to Corel Draw one before they can send it to printing machines.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
prox 5y ago
I have been moving to the Affinity Suite and never have I missed anything from Adobe. I love to work in it and I don’t have to pay per month.
- packetlost 5y ago
  How does Affinity Photo compare to LightRoom? I've tried everything from Luminar, to CaptureOne and nothing really works quite as well as LightRoom for various reasons.
  - alexdeloy 5y ago
    I love all the Affinity products so far but the RAW part of Affinity Photo is where the suite falls a bit short in my opinion. Things I miss most when compared to Lightroom are: - the ability to quickly create circular and gradient masks and apply a set of setting to them - Edits are not saved into a .xmp file like Lightroom does. Once you developed your image and closed the Raw editor, there is no way to apply the exact same settings again if you want to tweak something later.

TrevorJ 5y ago

Adobe is one of a long line of companies who appear to sell products as their bread and butter, but actually get a large portion of revenue through ad analytics and data offerings.

smeyer 5y ago
Can you break that down a bit for those of us less-informed? Looking at an earnings report[0] it looks like the vast majority of their revenue (about 90%) comes from "subscription", which I assumed was mostly for their products sold via subscription models. Is there somewhere that breaks down how much of that subscription revenue is from ad analytics and data? [0] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-Reports-Record-Q4-and-Fiscal-2020-Revenue-december/default.aspx https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-Reports-...
- TrevorJ 5y ago
  If you look here, you can see that in 2019 29% of their revenue came from the digital experience division, which is described as: "subscriptions to Adobe Experience Cloud, a cross-channel marketing optimization tool that includes analytics, targeting, campaign management, content delivery and commerce enablement." https://dashboards.trefis.com/data/companies/VMW/no-login-required/KvEbwXy8/Adobe-s-Revenues-How-Does-Adobe-Make-Money- https://dashboards.trefis.com/data/companies/VMW/no-login-re... I suspect that the share has probably grown since then, but I don't know that for sure.

alexashka 5y ago

This is like saying Clojure is taking on Java, and winning. It solves some problems some people have and that's great. It isn't moving the needle in any meaningful way.

klodolph 5y ago
Every industry disruption starts out this way... by solving some problems, but faster, cheaper, or better.

whall6 5y ago

Let’s not forget the hell you go through when uninstalling Adobe products

sumnole 5y ago
Is it still next to impossible to cancel? It's been a while (I'm now a happy Affinity customer) but they had no self service cancellation and their offshore customer service team gave me the run around for days, at one point lying to me about deactivating my subscription when they hadn't.
- omnimus 5y ago
  Still the same. Also the license is not monthly as they try to show. Its auto extending annual contract that you pay month by month and if you want to cancel you have to pay rest of that contract.

ryanwhitney 5y ago

It took a lot for me to give up trusty ol’ Photoshop for design. I pretty much built my career playing with and learning Photoshop. But they were years behind Sketch and then named their competitor “XD”. What a terrible name. App didn’t seem great either. And I really really hate the whole Creative Cloud licensing thing that’s always running in my menubar as well as their strange bundle pricing. In the meantime, Figma quietly came along and somehow built a web app that had such good collaboration and sign up/licensing that it somehow makes me OK with using a web app.

pentagrama 5y ago

The web was a big "feature" to allow Figma succeed over Adobe. In Figma you design and changes instantly for everyone, just sent a link and anyone (designers and non-designers) can see/collaborate the latest version because is web based. Adobe sleep many years bloating Photoshop with features that try to cover UI design needs and fail, finally releases Adobe XD but is miles away of Figma, in Adobe XD today, you make changes in a file and have to go to Share > Update link everytime, and then the web based version of the file is updated. Is crazy. Sketch sleep on that too. Also Figma was clever to make prototyping and developer handoff a core features pretty quickly, now they have a polished "trifecta" with UI desgin + Prototying + Developer handoff. Here a good resource to compare UI design tools (and more) https://uxtools.co/tools/design https://uxtools.co/tools/design I'm wondering whats the next step to smooth even more the gap between visual design and development.

robertoandred 5y ago
Figma's dev handoff is still pretty bad though, especially around images.
- ENGNR 5y ago
  True, it's pretty hidden and frustrating But even then, being able to do it at all exactly when you're ready, is just night and day better compared to having to ask the designer for the file they forgot for the nth time

wdb 5y ago

I just wished Figma would run offline when not having internet without the need to login every day. One of the reasons I keep using Sketch. Currently, it's less of a problem because you can't travel much but before, for me, it was a pain to use Figma on planes, or trains.

searchableguy 5y ago
Figma desktop works offline. https://www.figma.com/downloads/ https://www.figma.com/downloads/
- wdb 5y ago
  You need to keep logging in
  - searchableguy 5y ago
    Odd, I didn't need to but thanks to know.

open-source-ux 5y ago

Another app that has captured "mindshare" among artists and designers is Procreate - a digital painting app for the iPad. It's leapt over Adobe to dominate the digital painting space on the iPad. Adobe is playing catch-up with their late-to-market rival painting app Fresco. However, to keep things in perspective, usage of Adobe's apps still dominate the creative industries. That grip shows no sign of loosening. Just the volume of tutorials for Photoshop alone is humongous. What the likes of Procreate, Sketch, Figma, and Affinty show is that you can carve a profitable space in the design and graphics field and succeed even when that field is dominated by a behemoth like Adobe. It's also refreshing to see rivals rethink the way of accomplishing design tasks. A lot of Adobe apps have accrued so much clunky UI interactions and lack the fresh ideas from some of their rivals.

ansgri 5y ago
Procreate is awesome! I don’t even paint but use it often enough for quick sketching of diagrams or simple image editing. I have the Adobe subscription and use Lightroom a lot, but Photoshop feels like a heavy machinery better fit for the PC when you want complex editing. Aside, I’ve learned Photoshop around 7th version (not CS), and was really impressed by modern capabilities — they support nondestructive editing workflow for almost everything!
kak9 5y ago
author here! haha, yes I love Procreate. i use it for all my (very bad) drawings in blog posts. And all i wish is that someone would make plugin to integrate procreate and figma nicer procreate is so great

didibus 5y ago

I heard by a few UX designer that they prefer Adobe XD as a design tool actually over Figma, but the cost is why they use Figma instead. I find it a glaring ommision from the article analysis that it didn't even mention Adobe XD anywhere? It seems to me maybe newcomers are only competing against price and nothing else?

sevencolors 5y ago
Yeah, I found it strange they didn't even compare XD. Which is the direct competitor to Figma/Sketch. Also the cost for just XD is similar to that of Figma/Sketch Free Plan / ~$10 monthly plan
kak9 5y ago
Author here! Yes, totally right. There was a bunch i wanted to write about Adobe. Both XD and the current moves they've made with CC etc. But had to cut because too much--so hopefully will have an essay entirely on Adobe coming at some point

lavrton 5y ago

Taking the chance, I am working on JavaScript SDK to make canva-like design editors: https://polotno.dev/ https://polotno.dev/. Will be useful if you want to make a similar tool on your website. There is also https://studio.polotno.dev/ https://studio.polotno.dev/ product that as positioned as canva alternative without signups or paywalls. Not as good as canva yet, but it is in progress.

ilamont 5y ago

This is the same story for every media creation tool, which goes hand in hand with advances in technology. Editing audio used to require all kinds of expensive hardware and software, now you can get the basics done (and sometimes a lot more) with Bandlab and Garageband on your phone. Same story with putting printed words on paper, video creation, etc. There are a couple of interesting things about Canva, though. First, it's a VC funded startup so the motivation behind it is not just ease of use, it's profitable exit - probably by Adobe. This does not give me confidence that Canva will work for me 2, 3, or 5 years down the road when someone screws up the M&A or deliberately sinks the acquired product. Second, Canva hits that non-designer quadrant and new use cases mentioned in TFA pretty well, but it is not useful for many advanced use cases. I use Canva every week for my own business, but I also depend on a paid subscription to Adobe Acrobat to do things with PDFs that free tools can't match or can't do well.

cesarvarela 5y ago

The usability of Canva is exquisite. Seems limited but it is limited in all the right places. Saves so much busy work when for example designing a presentation vs PowerPoint or Slides. You if just want to get shit done just use Canva. Big omission not mentioning Affinity products, excellent Photoshop and Illustrator replacements for a one and only beautiful payment of $25.

Nkuna 5y ago

Switches to Morpheus' voice What if I told you you can use ANY Adobe software, procured legitimately, in perpetuity without using cracked/pirated copies; without paying a dime? No shenanigans like modifying or deleting files, changing your PC's clock, etc. Just using the OS's system tools[]. It's so obvious, I'm certain a sizable number of Adobe users do this. Obviously outlining how would alert Adobe and I'm not sure I want to risk that.

amelius 5y ago
Which OS?
- ampdepolymerase 5y ago
  Probably Windows Sandbox or one of the other Hyper-V based out-of-the-box VM solutions.

codq 5y ago

Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, Canva, Figma, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro — it’s nice living an Adobe-free life.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

It’s not surprising at all. Adobe, as most of us predicted they would completely just give up and real innovation or advancement once they went subscription. Why spend a huge amounts of money on progress when every designer, photographer, artist, editor, game developer, VFX artist in the world is forced to pay for $50 a month. They’ve dropped a small handful of extra features over the past 8 years but also during that time their software has stagnated and rotted. They didn’t move with technology so most of it is all single core constrained and barely uses the GPU so doesn’t feel any faster today than it did 8 years ago and in some cases parts of it actually feel slower as bitrot has set in. After Effects went from a program that felt almost like magic to something that can’t even play it’s image sequence preview and sound without dropping out rendering it a complete frustration to use, again this all worked great on a Core Duo 2 iMac 10 years ago. Every single part of Adobes business is there for the taking and with only small amounts of effort you can provide something that will take them years to catch up to if they ever manage at all, look at XD they started that when sketch was eating their lunch so they started making XD and they move so slowly that by the time it was even remotely viable it was already leapfrogged by Figma and now Adobe will never be relevant in that space again.

rossdavidh 5y ago

"Most successful companies, especially startups, have found tailwinds to harness that help pull them forward." Allow me to entirely miss the point of this article by saying that is a really very confused metaphor. Tailwinds don't pull anything, and you can't put them in a harness. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be picturing. I know, this is irrelevant to their point.

danuker 5y ago
I imagine a sail.
koolhaas 5y ago
But “harness” can be specifically used in relation to natural resources e.g. harness the wind or harness solar energy. And it’s used generally with other words that you can’t put in a harness. It’s not just a noun.
kak9 5y ago
oh god you're right haha, I malaphor'd that
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  "malaphor" is a wonderful word, thanks for that. :)

perplex 5y ago

Wait the article doesn’t mention Adobe XD which is Adobe’s UI design tool that competes with Figma and Sketch. XD is great for my needs and with frequent updates it is always improving. I’m also in the camp where Adobe shortcuts are burned into my muscle memory. I’ve tried the others but am more productive using the tools I know. Photoshop and Illustrator alone are worth it also. Some amazing power that other tools just don’t have.

gotrythis 5y ago
XD has nearly no adoption compared to Figma. I saw a chart in the last week or so, and XD barely registered and Figma had the most adoption by far. Can't find it again atm.

kwanbix 5y ago

I am a user of PaintShop Pro 7, love it. Bought PSP8. Hate it. Anybody can recommend something similar to PSP7 which is having issues with Win10? Tried GIMP but too complicated. Paint.NET too simple.

foobiter 5y ago

i’ve been using their tools for 25 years and adobe has never really understood design for the internet, they’ve tried and failed a lot

jbra 5y ago

ok as a product designer in the business what ppl fail to understand is that the smaller companies like figma 1. move faster and are more innovative 2. priced right for most designers 3. know their audience adobe is not as nimble, has excessive pricing and for the most part the traditional apps are robust but harder to use designers change software pretty often these days because 1. students can't afford adobe and use figma or sketch, get into the workplace and expect to use the same tools 2. almost all designers, even product designers to work on the side for fun...and no i do not want to pay adobe 75$ a month for a bunch of apps i will not really use ( i myself use figma for all my personal projects now and my team at work will transition to it this year) 3. transitioning from sketch to figma to adobe xd is not that hard as they have similar features...it's def easier than going from PS to figma. which is why almost 0 product designers use PS anymore 4. mid-smaller companies can change design software pretty easily..we are always moving forward as designers 5. ppl only stay at a company for 2 yrs so if I go from using Figma at this small company, I might bring that along to a larger company if i get hired

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