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I know everyone hates Adobe (I certainly share some of the grievances about their pricing structure) but I have been using Photoshop for something like 23 years

I know everyone hates Adobe (I certainly share some of the grievances about their pricing structure) but I have been using Photoshop for something like 23 years, working across half that many creative disciplines, and cannot overstate how much I value the consistency, reliability, and neutron-star density of its feature set. You call it bloated, I call it a Swiss army knife. I don't want every tool to be that way, but I love that some are. (The problem with this analogy is that Photoshop actually /is/ the best tool for many of the things it can do, where the Swiss army knife is solidly in jack-of-all-trades territory.) Given this, I am very concerned about Adobe's continued march into web apps. For most of my UI and web design work, I use Figma, and quite like its feature set, but that I cannot use it offline and that I cannot work in a file that requires over 2GB of RAM due to its browser RAM cap is infuriating to me when Photoshop (the supposedly worse program) enables me to manually allocate as much of my system's 64GB of RAM as I please. It's difficult to imagine any web app stably and efficiently growing to Swiss army knife-levels of capability. Not just in terms of performance and resource management, but also GUI, keyboard shortcuts, etc. I've long assumed my CC subscription would die with me, unlike many (most?) of my peers, but if the web-based Photoshop somehow became the primary Photoshop, I may have to cancel my subscription, and then kill myself.

quasarsunnix 4y ago
The problem is the bloat. I have CC access via work, but still choose to go with Affinity because of the performance issues. I counted 20 processes running the last time I had PS installed. The apps all take forever to load, drain battery if working remotely, and are far more unstable than in the past. I too grew up in PS in the 90s, but let's not pretend it's not become a dumpster fire - albeit a very feature rich dumpster fire as you stated. I agree that Figma shares many of these same issues performance wise. Truthfully the only creative software I use that I truly enjoy these days is Blender. Hopefully one day the passion of Blender will make it to other areas in the creative software space.
- inasmuch 4y ago
  I haven't used any of the Affinity apps. But are we talking about the same Photoshop? > I counted 20 processes running the last time I had PS installed I don't check how many background processes are running when I use Photoshop because I don't notice them at all. Almost every feature I use in it feels responsive, especially compared to how it used to be. If you're talking about telemetry, yeah, I hate that too, but I've more or less resigned to it as a necessary evil in all my professional tooling. > The apps all take forever to load Photoshop opens nearly instantly on my M1 Max Macbook Pro, as it did on my M1. It was slower on Intel, but what wasn't. I can open and close Photoshop three times before Discord even loads an empty window. > drain battery if working remotely I've never tried a remote workflow with Photoshop, so can't speak to that at all. Definitely does not seem like what the program is optimized for, and I would think battery drain would be the fault of whatever tool you're using to remote in, no? Or do you mean just working on an unplugged laptop? In which case, I find Electron apps that do one task poorly tend to be less efficient than even heavier desktop apps that 100 things well, Adobe or otherwise. > and are far more unstable than in the past. Sorry, what? I haven't had an Adobe app crash on me in probably eight years. I of course count that as good luck, but to say the current builds are less stable than older versions is just … insane to me. Thinking back to, say, the CS2/3 days, half my time in the program was spent Cmd+S-ing for fear of the inevitable hourly crash and loss of work. Photoshop crashes were a legitimate part of creative culture from like 1999 to 2012. Sorry if I sound like an Adobe shill. We've just clearly had very different experiences with their products of late. Where we are in agreement is that Blender is cool! I'm too much of a neophyte in 3D workflows to assess whether I think it's ultimately well designed (some bits seem to be … others not so much?), but it seems to run very well on the various machines I've tried it on and I have a great deal of respect for the nature of the program and the people behind it.
  - SyneRyder 4y ago
    Photoshop CC and Affinity Photo user here... yes, Photoshop is ridiculously slow to load. Just did a test on my machine: Photoshop CC 2022: 35 seconds until the workspace appears Affinity Photo: 8 seconds and for fun, a tool that I still frequently use even in 2022: Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7: 1 second.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Adobe keep adding pointless new features which I have to keep turning off in the preferences. The new save dialog is insane. No, I don't want to save a copy just because I want to save a jpeg. Why is this even a question? I have no idea why it isn't possible to copy/paste text with its blending options. Select All, Copy - Nope. All you get is the text, with none of the effects. (I know you can duplicate a layer - but not to a different document.) Why does Creative Cloud install three versions? I suppose it's nice that I have v21, v22 and v23 but - why? There still isn't a simple "paste clipboard to new document" command - something Paintshop Pro had back in the 90s. Does anyone at Adobe actually use PS professionally? These are all simple usability issues that could be fixed with a bit of thought. But instead we get Neural Filters - useless - and the occasional core behaviour that changes for no good reason.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    My most recent pet peeve is the constantly having to choose not to save to the cloud but to use my local file. On every single document saved
    - inasmuch 4y ago
      Yeah, I hate the cloud saving too. Fortunately that's something you can customize: Preferences > File Handling > Default File Location. There are a lot of other useful settings in that panel for people (like me) who don't like a lot of the changes that have come down with Creative Cloud file handling.
  - inasmuch 4y ago
    > The new save dialog is insane. No, I don't want to save a copy just because I want to save a jpeg. Why is this even a question? I don't like the new save/load stuff either, and much prefer the old versions you can toggle, but that does bring up the fact that /you can toggle stuff/ and really customize the app to your preferences. I don't know any other visual creative tools with the depth of customization that Photoshop affords, between the fully modular GUI, actions, etc. A side note: jpgs saving as a copy has always been the default when you're working with a psd. There used to be a way to turn off the 'copy' appendage (like you can when duplicating layers), but I can't remember if it's still there. > I know you can duplicate a layer - but not to a different document. You can, actually! Been able to for a very long time. Right-click on the layer > Duplicate layer > Destination > Document. Pick another document you have open or create a new one with that layer. Pretty handy!
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  That's what's so frustrating about Adobe. Given their position in the market, they could be cutting edge software performance wise and everything else. No one can say they don't have the resources. Instead, they buy innovators (that solely exist in the first place because Adobe failed to keep up), do bare minimum to maintain, and charge rents.
dietrichepp 4y ago
I’ve been using Photoshop alternatives for a long time now, but when I was a kid, I had access to Photoshop (version 2.5 and later 5.0). I’m used to the alternatives. Mostly Gimp, Krita, Pixelmator, and Procreate. Recently I had a chance to use Photoshop 7 on an old iMac G4 that I acquired. Surely this would be like living in the dark ages, banging some rocks together? Well, no. It turns out that this old version of Photoshop is easy to use and powerful. I can quickly do simple graphic design tasks that would take me longer in other programs or leave me frustrated. I can also do a bunch of simple photo editing tasks that I’ve been missing out on. This experience really highlighted how I’ve gotten used to missing features or poorly-designed UIs in programs like Gimp. Simple things like messing with channels, changing the brush size, working with 16-bit color and alternative color spaces, layer styles, nice text layers—it’s all just there and working and ready to use, in this nearly 20-year-old software.
- some-guy 4y ago
  I use the Windows version of Photoshop 7.0 still. It works out of the box with WINE as well on MacOS and Linux.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Apparently Wine no longer works well on an up to date version of macOS. Is this true? Sad if so, because I didn't even know Wine worked on any OS-X, period, and I never got to enjoy it! > Note that Wine does not work well with macOS 10.15 Catalina. Apple removed 32-bit support in Catalina, which is a critical part of the macOS system that almost all of Wine relies on. You can run 64-bit applications through Wine on Catalina, but very few applications for Windows are 64-bit. If you need to use Wine, you should not upgrade to Catalina. https://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/#:~:text=Note%20that%20Wine%20does%20not,for%20Windows%20are%2064%2Dbit https://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/#:~:text=No...
    - some-guy 4y ago
      I should probably have stated that I used it in an older version of Mac OS before Catalina, I forgot that they dropped 32-bit support. Apparently if you're savvy enough there are ways to get around it, but I don't know if this would still work with newer versions of Mac OS [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQj0lZFz6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQj0lZFz6I
tehlike 4y ago
Online/offline thing can be fixed with progressive web apps at least on Android. Figma has to implement it though.
- inasmuch 4y ago
  I don't think I'll be designing on an Android device any time soon, but fingers crossed for implementation!
Keyframe 4y ago
For all shit we give Adobe we have to give them credit. Over time their tools become incredibly good for productivity (even though they might suck hard in certain departments like performance). I've been around for long enough to see few of these. Freehand for example - there were tears and cries for help when they got ahold of it. Illustrator was shit at the time; Today it's awesome and an industry standard. Flash, same story. After Effects, same story. Premiere, same story. Indesign, same story. Etc.. Hard reason why most of those became industry standard was/is that Adobe understands how to cater to the user of those. Performance sucks, yes. Stability? Sometimes as well. User experience? The best. It's like with Microsoft and dev tools.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Performance sucks, yes. Stability? Sometimes as well. User experience? The best Not sure how this makes sense. If the performance is not good, and the stability is lacking, then the user experience cannot be the best. I rather use a video editor that makes me go through two menus instead of one, rather than having a video editor that crashes on me or takes ages to generate the proxy clips (or even need proxy clips for 4K and below footage).
  - Keyframe 4y ago
    Right, but there's a threshold of how much pain is detrimental to the overall benefits. Performance and stability do suck, but not _that_ much.
- krsw 4y ago
  I think that cuts both ways in that while they do incrementally improve the products, they never would be industry standard if not for Adobe pushing them. Also worth noting that a lot of their portfolio was acquired once it had been threatening their turf and becoming established (Macromedia early on, Figma most recently). Their Suite approach lets them float tools for awhile before determining if they're worthwhile to continue developing or if they need to be axed, or merged into existing products.
  - 4y ago
zigzag312 4y ago
For offline alternative to Figma check Lunacy. It's quite powerful, multiplatform and free. UI and workflow is well thought out. It seems it's written in C# as it uses Avalonia UI. https://icons8.com/lunacy https://icons8.com/lunacy
- inasmuch 4y ago
  I will check it out—thanks for the tip!
- rvz 4y ago
  Enjoy it while it lasts as I bet that Microsoft will acquire the creators of Lunacy for their Surface products.
  - zigzag312 4y ago
    Huh, I hope not. I can already imagine how they would rewrite UI in Blazor, move the app to Azure and make it way worse in the process.
jjcm 4y ago
Big disclaimer that I work for Figma, so HEAVY biases here. In my eyes the 2GB/4GB limit for browser memory caps feels like an implementation issue rather than it being the wrong platform. At least for me, I value the ability to easily collaborate with people more than the need to have code be explicitly local or for things to be offline. The browser is excellent at that, and the explosion of online SASS products over locally installed apps in the last decade has shown it to be true for most use cases. I don't think it's difficult at all to imagine a web app "stably and efficiently growing to Swiss army knife-levels of capability". Increasing that per-tab memory limit feels like an easier hill to climb than finding a way to provide that instant access for everyone and collaboration baked into locally installed apps. Also don't kill yourself, even if it's a joke, life is more than software.
- inasmuch 4y ago
  Appreciate your thoughts! The suicide bit was definitely a joke, so no worries there. I hear what you're saying, and definitely get how the sharing bit that has helped Figma take off like it has is good for the browser. I'm a bit at odds with the industry, though, in that that's probably one of the things I like least about Figma. But a lot of that is because I'm not always the best team player :]. I won't pretend to know enough about what goes into building these programs to say whether the RAM cap or native app collaboration is the more difficult thing to overcome, but it's clear to me that I would prioritize these differently from others.
- Auracle 4y ago
  On the other hand, I have absolutely no use for any collaboration (say, in Photoshop) with the work I do.
throwaway82388 4y ago
I work with the creative cloud/suite daily, and judging from what I read on twitter and in various forums, I get the feeling that I must be among the only happy Adobe customers out there. I appreciate the continual new features and updates (exception: losing the Pantone solid book), but I feel the overall value proposition is better than it’s ever been. I remember spending hundreds annually on design suite upgrades. Now, a regular subscription gets me all of their software, a generous font selection, photoshop brushes, much more. Taking Adobe for granted and kicking them around online has become a sport for some, but I suspect it’s a very loud but small segment of their customers.
- inasmuch 4y ago
  Yeah, I hear you. A CC subscription is not cheap, but it's pretty incredible what you get for ~$600/yr, especially compared to what's offered by other subscriptions people pay for without blinking an eye. I'm as eager—if not more—to take on massive greedy corporations as the next person, but my guillotine would be dull well before I got to Adobe's neck.
hamburglar 4y ago
This is a very old-man thing to say, but I think Photoshop peaked somewhere around version 6.0, which is what I’m still using. Amazing that it still runs, since it’s from the mid-90’s but it’s free of the cloud and really is very feature-dense. Thanks, windows appcompat team.

quasarsunnix 4y ago

The problem is the bloat. I have CC access via work, but still choose to go with Affinity because of the performance issues. I counted 20 processes running the last time I had PS installed. The apps all take forever to load, drain battery if working remotely, and are far more unstable than in the past. I too grew up in PS in the 90s, but let's not pretend it's not become a dumpster fire - albeit a very feature rich dumpster fire as you stated. I agree that Figma shares many of these same issues performance wise. Truthfully the only creative software I use that I truly enjoy these days is Blender. Hopefully one day the passion of Blender will make it to other areas in the creative software space.

inasmuch 4y ago
I haven't used any of the Affinity apps. But are we talking about the same Photoshop? > I counted 20 processes running the last time I had PS installed I don't check how many background processes are running when I use Photoshop because I don't notice them at all. Almost every feature I use in it feels responsive, especially compared to how it used to be. If you're talking about telemetry, yeah, I hate that too, but I've more or less resigned to it as a necessary evil in all my professional tooling. > The apps all take forever to load Photoshop opens nearly instantly on my M1 Max Macbook Pro, as it did on my M1. It was slower on Intel, but what wasn't. I can open and close Photoshop three times before Discord even loads an empty window. > drain battery if working remotely I've never tried a remote workflow with Photoshop, so can't speak to that at all. Definitely does not seem like what the program is optimized for, and I would think battery drain would be the fault of whatever tool you're using to remote in, no? Or do you mean just working on an unplugged laptop? In which case, I find Electron apps that do one task poorly tend to be less efficient than even heavier desktop apps that 100 things well, Adobe or otherwise. > and are far more unstable than in the past. Sorry, what? I haven't had an Adobe app crash on me in probably eight years. I of course count that as good luck, but to say the current builds are less stable than older versions is just … insane to me. Thinking back to, say, the CS2/3 days, half my time in the program was spent Cmd+S-ing for fear of the inevitable hourly crash and loss of work. Photoshop crashes were a legitimate part of creative culture from like 1999 to 2012. Sorry if I sound like an Adobe shill. We've just clearly had very different experiences with their products of late. Where we are in agreement is that Blender is cool! I'm too much of a neophyte in 3D workflows to assess whether I think it's ultimately well designed (some bits seem to be … others not so much?), but it seems to run very well on the various machines I've tried it on and I have a great deal of respect for the nature of the program and the people behind it.
- SyneRyder 4y ago
  Photoshop CC and Affinity Photo user here... yes, Photoshop is ridiculously slow to load. Just did a test on my machine: Photoshop CC 2022: 35 seconds until the workspace appears Affinity Photo: 8 seconds and for fun, a tool that I still frequently use even in 2022: Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7: 1 second.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Adobe keep adding pointless new features which I have to keep turning off in the preferences. The new save dialog is insane. No, I don't want to save a copy just because I want to save a jpeg. Why is this even a question? I have no idea why it isn't possible to copy/paste text with its blending options. Select All, Copy - Nope. All you get is the text, with none of the effects. (I know you can duplicate a layer - but not to a different document.) Why does Creative Cloud install three versions? I suppose it's nice that I have v21, v22 and v23 but - why? There still isn't a simple "paste clipboard to new document" command - something Paintshop Pro had back in the 90s. Does anyone at Adobe actually use PS professionally? These are all simple usability issues that could be fixed with a bit of thought. But instead we get Neural Filters - useless - and the occasional core behaviour that changes for no good reason.
- dylan604 4y ago
  My most recent pet peeve is the constantly having to choose not to save to the cloud but to use my local file. On every single document saved
  - inasmuch 4y ago
    Yeah, I hate the cloud saving too. Fortunately that's something you can customize: Preferences > File Handling > Default File Location. There are a lot of other useful settings in that panel for people (like me) who don't like a lot of the changes that have come down with Creative Cloud file handling.
- inasmuch 4y ago
  > The new save dialog is insane. No, I don't want to save a copy just because I want to save a jpeg. Why is this even a question? I don't like the new save/load stuff either, and much prefer the old versions you can toggle, but that does bring up the fact that /you can toggle stuff/ and really customize the app to your preferences. I don't know any other visual creative tools with the depth of customization that Photoshop affords, between the fully modular GUI, actions, etc. A side note: jpgs saving as a copy has always been the default when you're working with a psd. There used to be a way to turn off the 'copy' appendage (like you can when duplicating layers), but I can't remember if it's still there. > I know you can duplicate a layer - but not to a different document. You can, actually! Been able to for a very long time. Right-click on the layer > Duplicate layer > Destination > Document. Pick another document you have open or create a new one with that layer. Pretty handy!
llanowarelves 4y ago
That's what's so frustrating about Adobe. Given their position in the market, they could be cutting edge software performance wise and everything else. No one can say they don't have the resources. Instead, they buy innovators (that solely exist in the first place because Adobe failed to keep up), do bare minimum to maintain, and charge rents.

dietrichepp 4y ago

I’ve been using Photoshop alternatives for a long time now, but when I was a kid, I had access to Photoshop (version 2.5 and later 5.0). I’m used to the alternatives. Mostly Gimp, Krita, Pixelmator, and Procreate. Recently I had a chance to use Photoshop 7 on an old iMac G4 that I acquired. Surely this would be like living in the dark ages, banging some rocks together? Well, no. It turns out that this old version of Photoshop is easy to use and powerful. I can quickly do simple graphic design tasks that would take me longer in other programs or leave me frustrated. I can also do a bunch of simple photo editing tasks that I’ve been missing out on. This experience really highlighted how I’ve gotten used to missing features or poorly-designed UIs in programs like Gimp. Simple things like messing with channels, changing the brush size, working with 16-bit color and alternative color spaces, layer styles, nice text layers—it’s all just there and working and ready to use, in this nearly 20-year-old software.

some-guy 4y ago
I use the Windows version of Photoshop 7.0 still. It works out of the box with WINE as well on MacOS and Linux.
- metadat 4y ago
  Apparently Wine no longer works well on an up to date version of macOS. Is this true? Sad if so, because I didn't even know Wine worked on any OS-X, period, and I never got to enjoy it! > Note that Wine does not work well with macOS 10.15 Catalina. Apple removed 32-bit support in Catalina, which is a critical part of the macOS system that almost all of Wine relies on. You can run 64-bit applications through Wine on Catalina, but very few applications for Windows are 64-bit. If you need to use Wine, you should not upgrade to Catalina. https://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/#:~:text=Note%20that%20Wine%20does%20not,for%20Windows%20are%2064%2Dbit https://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/#:~:text=No...
  - some-guy 4y ago
    I should probably have stated that I used it in an older version of Mac OS before Catalina, I forgot that they dropped 32-bit support. Apparently if you're savvy enough there are ways to get around it, but I don't know if this would still work with newer versions of Mac OS [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQj0lZFz6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQj0lZFz6I

tehlike 4y ago

Online/offline thing can be fixed with progressive web apps at least on Android. Figma has to implement it though.

inasmuch 4y ago
I don't think I'll be designing on an Android device any time soon, but fingers crossed for implementation!

Keyframe 4y ago

For all shit we give Adobe we have to give them credit. Over time their tools become incredibly good for productivity (even though they might suck hard in certain departments like performance). I've been around for long enough to see few of these. Freehand for example - there were tears and cries for help when they got ahold of it. Illustrator was shit at the time; Today it's awesome and an industry standard. Flash, same story. After Effects, same story. Premiere, same story. Indesign, same story. Etc.. Hard reason why most of those became industry standard was/is that Adobe understands how to cater to the user of those. Performance sucks, yes. Stability? Sometimes as well. User experience? The best. It's like with Microsoft and dev tools.

capableweb 4y ago
> Performance sucks, yes. Stability? Sometimes as well. User experience? The best Not sure how this makes sense. If the performance is not good, and the stability is lacking, then the user experience cannot be the best. I rather use a video editor that makes me go through two menus instead of one, rather than having a video editor that crashes on me or takes ages to generate the proxy clips (or even need proxy clips for 4K and below footage).
- Keyframe 4y ago
  Right, but there's a threshold of how much pain is detrimental to the overall benefits. Performance and stability do suck, but not _that_ much.
krsw 4y ago
I think that cuts both ways in that while they do incrementally improve the products, they never would be industry standard if not for Adobe pushing them. Also worth noting that a lot of their portfolio was acquired once it had been threatening their turf and becoming established (Macromedia early on, Figma most recently). Their Suite approach lets them float tools for awhile before determining if they're worthwhile to continue developing or if they need to be axed, or merged into existing products.
- 4y ago

zigzag312 4y ago

For offline alternative to Figma check Lunacy. It's quite powerful, multiplatform and free. UI and workflow is well thought out. It seems it's written in C# as it uses Avalonia UI. https://icons8.com/lunacy https://icons8.com/lunacy

inasmuch 4y ago
I will check it out—thanks for the tip!
rvz 4y ago
Enjoy it while it lasts as I bet that Microsoft will acquire the creators of Lunacy for their Surface products.
- zigzag312 4y ago
  Huh, I hope not. I can already imagine how they would rewrite UI in Blazor, move the app to Azure and make it way worse in the process.

jjcm 4y ago

Big disclaimer that I work for Figma, so HEAVY biases here. In my eyes the 2GB/4GB limit for browser memory caps feels like an implementation issue rather than it being the wrong platform. At least for me, I value the ability to easily collaborate with people more than the need to have code be explicitly local or for things to be offline. The browser is excellent at that, and the explosion of online SASS products over locally installed apps in the last decade has shown it to be true for most use cases. I don't think it's difficult at all to imagine a web app "stably and efficiently growing to Swiss army knife-levels of capability". Increasing that per-tab memory limit feels like an easier hill to climb than finding a way to provide that instant access for everyone and collaboration baked into locally installed apps. Also don't kill yourself, even if it's a joke, life is more than software.

inasmuch 4y ago
Appreciate your thoughts! The suicide bit was definitely a joke, so no worries there. I hear what you're saying, and definitely get how the sharing bit that has helped Figma take off like it has is good for the browser. I'm a bit at odds with the industry, though, in that that's probably one of the things I like least about Figma. But a lot of that is because I'm not always the best team player :]. I won't pretend to know enough about what goes into building these programs to say whether the RAM cap or native app collaboration is the more difficult thing to overcome, but it's clear to me that I would prioritize these differently from others.
Auracle 4y ago
On the other hand, I have absolutely no use for any collaboration (say, in Photoshop) with the work I do.

throwaway82388 4y ago

I work with the creative cloud/suite daily, and judging from what I read on twitter and in various forums, I get the feeling that I must be among the only happy Adobe customers out there. I appreciate the continual new features and updates (exception: losing the Pantone solid book), but I feel the overall value proposition is better than it’s ever been. I remember spending hundreds annually on design suite upgrades. Now, a regular subscription gets me all of their software, a generous font selection, photoshop brushes, much more. Taking Adobe for granted and kicking them around online has become a sport for some, but I suspect it’s a very loud but small segment of their customers.

inasmuch 4y ago
Yeah, I hear you. A CC subscription is not cheap, but it's pretty incredible what you get for ~$600/yr, especially compared to what's offered by other subscriptions people pay for without blinking an eye. I'm as eager—if not more—to take on massive greedy corporations as the next person, but my guillotine would be dull well before I got to Adobe's neck.

hamburglar 4y ago

This is a very old-man thing to say, but I think Photoshop peaked somewhere around version 6.0, which is what I’m still using. Amazing that it still runs, since it’s from the mid-90’s but it’s free of the cloud and really is very feature-dense. Thanks, windows appcompat team.