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At this point I intend to avoid Adobe's services for the rest of my life. If I ever feel like I need Photoshop or Illustrator I'll find an alternative. There ar

At this point I intend to avoid Adobe's services for the rest of my life. If I ever feel like I need Photoshop or Illustrator I'll find an alternative. There are a lot alternatives to these, both open source and proprietary from small businesses.

FranksTV 5y ago
Sure, but if you are a design professional they are pretty much indispensable.
dheera 5y ago
I use Linux but I'm mostly content with Gimp and Inkscape. I know Photoshop have some "content aware fill" and things but that's just their re-branded name for neural networks that are already open source, it's just a matter of time before it's available in Gimp. I might even consider writing those plugins too but my time is limited.
- account42 5y ago
  There has been a GIMP plugin for this for a long time - no idea how the quality compares to Photoshop's content aware fill though: https://github.com/bootchk/resynthesizer https://github.com/bootchk/resynthesizer
- andi999 5y ago
  I thought the big problem is that gimp uses only rgb color encoding, which is fine for non-print, but if you want to print something professionally you need at least cmyk.
  - chongli 5y ago
    Yeah if you need to work in CMYK you're kind of stuck. Personally, if I needed to do a lot of print work then I'd pick up an old Mac and an old license for Photoshop CS6.
  - dheera 5y ago
    For desktop publishing, Scribus does CMYK. RGB color in Gimp is fine for me because I only use it for photo processing, and cameras shoot in RGB so you aren't losing any information by doing your photo processing in 16-bit or higher RGB. You can do color space conversions to CMYK after that stage. On an interesting side note, realistically though, I've found the vast majority of people I've had to work with don't understand the difference between RGB and CMYK and just want "PDFs" and don't necessarily let me choose or interact with the printing agency directly, or the printer is some friend's wife's father's friend's friends' friend's company on WeChat that is going to be doing the printing at 1/10 the cost of every other commercial printing agency out there and they've chosen to use that company and it would look silly of me to suggest to use a company that costs 10X more just so I can get proofs. In those cases, I've found that if I don't have access to proofs, these days, RGB PDFs often seem to get more consistently rendered than CMYK PDFs.
fernly 5y ago
See https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
- brainbag 5y ago
  As a multi-decade Photoshop user, I find Affinity unusable. I know it comes very highly rated, but my muscle memory is so ingrained that I don't think I can make the switch. Not a single thing worked the way I'd expect, and trying to adapt to it was hours of constant digging through forums to do the most basic things, like move the canvas. I started using Krita instead, and it's a good replacement without being so utterly different.

FranksTV 5y ago

Sure, but if you are a design professional they are pretty much indispensable.

dheera 5y ago

I use Linux but I'm mostly content with Gimp and Inkscape. I know Photoshop have some "content aware fill" and things but that's just their re-branded name for neural networks that are already open source, it's just a matter of time before it's available in Gimp. I might even consider writing those plugins too but my time is limited.

account42 5y ago
There has been a GIMP plugin for this for a long time - no idea how the quality compares to Photoshop's content aware fill though: https://github.com/bootchk/resynthesizer https://github.com/bootchk/resynthesizer
andi999 5y ago
I thought the big problem is that gimp uses only rgb color encoding, which is fine for non-print, but if you want to print something professionally you need at least cmyk.
- chongli 5y ago
  Yeah if you need to work in CMYK you're kind of stuck. Personally, if I needed to do a lot of print work then I'd pick up an old Mac and an old license for Photoshop CS6.
- dheera 5y ago
  For desktop publishing, Scribus does CMYK. RGB color in Gimp is fine for me because I only use it for photo processing, and cameras shoot in RGB so you aren't losing any information by doing your photo processing in 16-bit or higher RGB. You can do color space conversions to CMYK after that stage. On an interesting side note, realistically though, I've found the vast majority of people I've had to work with don't understand the difference between RGB and CMYK and just want "PDFs" and don't necessarily let me choose or interact with the printing agency directly, or the printer is some friend's wife's father's friend's friends' friend's company on WeChat that is going to be doing the printing at 1/10 the cost of every other commercial printing agency out there and they've chosen to use that company and it would look silly of me to suggest to use a company that costs 10X more just so I can get proofs. In those cases, I've found that if I don't have access to proofs, these days, RGB PDFs often seem to get more consistently rendered than CMYK PDFs.

fernly 5y ago

See https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

brainbag 5y ago
As a multi-decade Photoshop user, I find Affinity unusable. I know it comes very highly rated, but my muscle memory is so ingrained that I don't think I can make the switch. Not a single thing worked the way I'd expect, and trying to adapt to it was hours of constant digging through forums to do the most basic things, like move the canvas. I started using Krita instead, and it's a good replacement without being so utterly different.