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If your first instinct is to down vote this, I urge you to articulate your counterargument, because I think this comment is spot on. I would love to see someone

If your first instinct is to down vote this, I urge you to articulate your counterargument, because I think this comment is spot on. I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable. E.g., by illustrating comprehensive experience using both the open source applications and the commercial competitors and demonstrating through example the relative merits of each.

em-bee 2y ago
I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable i also would like to see someone defending all that gimp bashing do the same. the problem comes from both sides.
- robenkleene 2y ago
  Open source tools (outside of Blender, which has an amazing reputation among creative professionals) are not discussed at all in creative circles, there is no mirror image of creative professionals bashing open source tools.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    what about the comments in this very thread? every argument about gimp vs photoshop has claims that photoshop is so much better. i don't dispute that, but i am still waiting to see the evidence
    - robenkleene 2y ago
      I think the dilemma here is trying and failing. Many of us tried the open source alternatives and failed, there's nothing really useful to say about that. It might just be a failure on our part, i.e., someone else with a better approach might succeed. But what you really need is someone who's an expert in Photoshop, to move to an open source alternative and succeed and then weigh the advantages, and this needs to happen in aggregate to start getting a real sense of what the difference are. Note that I don't think even the commercial Affinity apps have crossed this bar, so it's nothing against open source, it's just photo editing at the high-end is just a one-tool market. Contrast this to Final Cut Pro X vs. Premiere vs. DaVinci Resolve, where you can find countless comparisons of the individual advantages of each of those platforms, that's a market with healthy competition and options. Same with DAWs, same with 3D packages.
- antifa 2y ago
  GIMP is awesome on Linux. GIMP runs like ass on OSX. I still use GIMP on OSX anyways, but I see that weighing heavily on someone considering their options.
fractallyte 2y ago
Sure, I can do that. I've published a game on the Apple App Store. All graphics were produced using non-Adobe commercial and open source software. I even used relatively ancient software. Here's a list: - Creature House Expression: a competitor to Illustrator, which has a way better UI than anything Adobe, and still (AFAIK) unique features (eg. "skeletal strokes"). - Synthetik Studio Artist: has no competitor, and outdoes anything that Photoshop can accomplish in its niche; - Vue d'Esprit 4: landscape and plant generation, which worked well enough that I didn't need any resource-hungry later versions; - Candy Factory (for the Amiga, running under emulation): I'm sure some PS plugins can do the same, but why bother when I had this already from way back? - GIMP: STFU about the UI. If you're used to Photoshop, get used to something else; PS is not the pinnacle of UI excellence. Other superb software: - VectorStyler, which might be a practical successor to Expression; - Escape Motions software collection. I've also tried Affinity Photo and Designer, but I definitely prefer the software I mentioned above. So, YES, I am qualified to bash Adobe, and I unashamedly do so.
- robenkleene 2y ago
  Not to detract from your post, which I found super interesting to read. I hadn't heard of most of the software you listed and most of it was pretty interesting. But I wouldn't find it convincing as a list of Adobe alternatives, the main thing that seems missing is expertise with Adobe software. The type of review I'm primarily interested in is from folks who have used the software semi-daily for a long time, often at least a decade. The feedback usually looks something like this (e.g., something I'd imagine reading comparing NLE packages): "I edit ~10 documentaries a year in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci's color workflow is clearly superior, the UI is deeper, and the way the color wheels work makes it easier to make fine-grade adjustments. The node-based color workflow also makes it easier to separate making color corrections from actually color grading. But on the other side, Premiere's Dynamic Link integration, makes it easier to maintain and iterate on shots that involve a lot of 2D motion graphics." A couple of points that I look for: - Someone that's done something so many times that they no longer care about anything other than the best tool for the job. Often times the best tool is different if your goal is quality vs. speed, it's a good sign if that's specifically called out. - They don't have chip on their shoulder. A lot of folks don't like paying at all, so will always prefer the cheaper software. Or they prefer open source software inherently. Or they have some other priority, like not wanting to install Adobe Creative Cloud (which starts a permanent process always running on your machine, which is icky). All of those are perfectly fine priorities for someone to have, but care absolutely zero about anyone else's opinion on any of that stuff, because I can already gauge for myself how I feel about those things. I.e., I already know how I feel about the price of software, so I don't care about someone else's opinion. What I want to know is if I invest in learning this software for a decade daily, how am I going to feel about it then? Would I have preferred investing in another package? The only way to gauge that is hearing from folks that have already done that. Note they don't need a decade of experience in the second package to compare, but they definitely need it for the first. Just for completions sake, the other thing I noticed about your list is a lot of the packages were for one specific niche, which is a different category of software. All of the Adobe flagships are general purpose.

em-bee 2y ago

I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable i also would like to see someone defending all that gimp bashing do the same. the problem comes from both sides.

robenkleene 2y ago
Open source tools (outside of Blender, which has an amazing reputation among creative professionals) are not discussed at all in creative circles, there is no mirror image of creative professionals bashing open source tools.
- em-bee 2y ago
  what about the comments in this very thread? every argument about gimp vs photoshop has claims that photoshop is so much better. i don't dispute that, but i am still waiting to see the evidence
  - robenkleene 2y ago
    I think the dilemma here is trying and failing. Many of us tried the open source alternatives and failed, there's nothing really useful to say about that. It might just be a failure on our part, i.e., someone else with a better approach might succeed. But what you really need is someone who's an expert in Photoshop, to move to an open source alternative and succeed and then weigh the advantages, and this needs to happen in aggregate to start getting a real sense of what the difference are. Note that I don't think even the commercial Affinity apps have crossed this bar, so it's nothing against open source, it's just photo editing at the high-end is just a one-tool market. Contrast this to Final Cut Pro X vs. Premiere vs. DaVinci Resolve, where you can find countless comparisons of the individual advantages of each of those platforms, that's a market with healthy competition and options. Same with DAWs, same with 3D packages.
antifa 2y ago
GIMP is awesome on Linux. GIMP runs like ass on OSX. I still use GIMP on OSX anyways, but I see that weighing heavily on someone considering their options.

fractallyte 2y ago

Sure, I can do that. I've published a game on the Apple App Store. All graphics were produced using non-Adobe commercial and open source software. I even used relatively ancient software. Here's a list: - Creature House Expression: a competitor to Illustrator, which has a way better UI than anything Adobe, and still (AFAIK) unique features (eg. "skeletal strokes"). - Synthetik Studio Artist: has no competitor, and outdoes anything that Photoshop can accomplish in its niche; - Vue d'Esprit 4: landscape and plant generation, which worked well enough that I didn't need any resource-hungry later versions; - Candy Factory (for the Amiga, running under emulation): I'm sure some PS plugins can do the same, but why bother when I had this already from way back? - GIMP: STFU about the UI. If you're used to Photoshop, get used to something else; PS is not the pinnacle of UI excellence. Other superb software: - VectorStyler, which might be a practical successor to Expression; - Escape Motions software collection. I've also tried Affinity Photo and Designer, but I definitely prefer the software I mentioned above. So, YES, I am qualified to bash Adobe, and I unashamedly do so.

robenkleene 2y ago
Not to detract from your post, which I found super interesting to read. I hadn't heard of most of the software you listed and most of it was pretty interesting. But I wouldn't find it convincing as a list of Adobe alternatives, the main thing that seems missing is expertise with Adobe software. The type of review I'm primarily interested in is from folks who have used the software semi-daily for a long time, often at least a decade. The feedback usually looks something like this (e.g., something I'd imagine reading comparing NLE packages): "I edit ~10 documentaries a year in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci's color workflow is clearly superior, the UI is deeper, and the way the color wheels work makes it easier to make fine-grade adjustments. The node-based color workflow also makes it easier to separate making color corrections from actually color grading. But on the other side, Premiere's Dynamic Link integration, makes it easier to maintain and iterate on shots that involve a lot of 2D motion graphics." A couple of points that I look for: - Someone that's done something so many times that they no longer care about anything other than the best tool for the job. Often times the best tool is different if your goal is quality vs. speed, it's a good sign if that's specifically called out. - They don't have chip on their shoulder. A lot of folks don't like paying at all, so will always prefer the cheaper software. Or they prefer open source software inherently. Or they have some other priority, like not wanting to install Adobe Creative Cloud (which starts a permanent process always running on your machine, which is icky). All of those are perfectly fine priorities for someone to have, but care absolutely zero about anyone else's opinion on any of that stuff, because I can already gauge for myself how I feel about those things. I.e., I already know how I feel about the price of software, so I don't care about someone else's opinion. What I want to know is if I invest in learning this software for a decade daily, how am I going to feel about it then? Would I have preferred investing in another package? The only way to gauge that is hearing from folks that have already done that. Note they don't need a decade of experience in the second package to compare, but they definitely need it for the first. Just for completions sake, the other thing I noticed about your list is a lot of the packages were for one specific niche, which is a different category of software. All of the Adobe flagships are general purpose.