I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough!
I use Procreate, Affinity and Figma and all of these tools are cheaper, easier to use, and still support my (often more advanced) use-cases.
Same with Lightroom vs. Capture One.
PS. If you fell for the same "annual but paid monthly subscription" scam with an early cancellation fee, try changing your payment method to PayPal, and then use it to block the payments.
I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough!
Coincidentally, I just finished a session with Affinity Photo 2 before reading your comment.
I, too, recommend Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement for many people. It's probably good enough for 80% of people out there.
I switched to Affinity because I don't do subscription software. But I'm still up to speed with Photoshop because I have to use it at work.
Photoshop is still better than Affinity in a lot of ways, and for all the confusion in its interface, it's still more polished than Affinity.
One of my biggest problems with Affinity Photo is that it can't save files in the background, which wastes a lot of time when you're working with multiple large images.
Worse, though, is that Affinity Photo is just buggy. Affinity Photo 2 is better, but many bugs persist. Things like images loading, but simply not rendering on screen. Or selecting a tool, but the tool has no effect, and you have to quit the program and restart for it to work again.
Unfortunately, Affinity's official forum is not what it should be. I'll be polite and call responses from official Affinity people "brusque." Also, be very gentle in your criticism and reporting of bugs, because they're quick to delete even minor complaints. More than once I've been following a discussion where someone is having the same problem as I am, and I get an e-mail notification containing another person's response. By the time I get to the actual forum, it's all been deleted by the admins. Not a good look.
Affinity’s forum community is truly bizarre. I posted a feature request for WebP support some years back; for a couple years later, people would regularly reply to chime in that I was an idiot for thinking I needed it.
All Affinity software (AFAIK) these days makes extensive use of 3D graphics hardware. The problems you're experiencing may be due to insufficient systems memory, or perhaps insufficient video memory. The reason I'm suggesting this is because I have a very old Intel CPU in my system (6-core) 5820K and I'm pretty sure some of the CPU pins are bent because I only see 50-75% of the physical memory that's actually inside the system--and even with that, I never experience any of the problems you described. FWIW, I also upgraded my graphics card to an RTX 3090 with 24Gb of VRAM, when they were clearing out their inventories to make room for the 40x0 series at the end of last year--and I did it predominantly because the GTX 980ti I had been using until then "only" came with 6Gb of VRAM, which was reduced to less than 5Gb by Windows' window manager and was responsible for frequent hiccups and crashes involving 3D software.
TBH, Affinity is slowly adapting Adobe's practices. They have released second generation of every their app and these apps don't have any significant changes. They just wanted to get some money from their users second time.
Affinity was accepting and incorporating so much feedback from users like myself after releasing version 1 of their software suite--which were subsequently added to incremental versions that were free of charge, up to v1.8X IIRC--that I for one was amazed they were actually still able to make a living at all--the software was (is) too high quality to be selling permanent licenses for such a low price. It's also worth mentioning that at least during the first iteration of their range of products, they frequently had substantial sales that allowed you to buy all their software for what seemed like a pittance.
Still, v2 is an improvement. While I cannot pinpoint the exact improvements (there are quite a few of them), my sessions with Affinity v2 are more productive than they used to be with v1. I do not complain on v1, I was quite happy with it, but I am even happier with v2.
One aspect gives a red flag though: they implemented internet activation in v2 as opposed to a prior simple licensing model based on license keys. So maybe one day they will start to force "cloud" junk upon the throats of their customers, and at that point I will probably just leave.
This is very helpful. I haven't heard of Affinity before but I am really excited to try it, especially given the one-time cost model. Seems like Affinity + Capture One could be a great non-subscription pairing for photo work.
Affinity Designer is a very good vector editing app. Switched to it from Inkscape due to performance and UI issues. To me, it's more convenient to use than vector things in Pixelmator Pro.
For photo editing, I don't like Affinity Photo. It seems powerful, but too much for me to learn, so I use Pixelmator Pro for simple photo editing (although I can never remember where the tool I need is). Maybe it's better for pros, though.
For quick pixel editing/cropping I use Acorn — it's fast and the UI is not overloaded.
I've been using Pixelmator Pro a little recently, and I turn to it now for its AI features. Cutting a subject out of its background? It makes the "Magnetic lasso" feel like MS Paintbrush. I had to design a heavily 'shopped Christmas card recently, and those features cut down my work by a lot.
I own both Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro. I find the UI using Pixelmator to be more user friendly. This could be because I come from many years of using Photoshop and I found the way Affinity deals with layers and effects to be counterintuitive to me.
That being said, both products are solid and likely a matter of personal preference or specific feature needs.
> “We have recently discontinued certain older versions of Creative Cloud applications and and a result, under the terms of our agreement, you are no longer licensed to use them,” Adobe said in the email. “Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.” Users were less than enthusiastic about the sudden restrictions.
> “As we had shared in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media marketing, strategy, and global partnerships at Adobe in a statement to The Verge. “To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.”
If you continue to use Pantone colors that were available in an older version of photoshop, a third party (Pantone) may sue you - not Adobe suing you.
So, Adobe will not anymore sue users for using old versions? This is not relevant anymore? Can you provide a link that shows that Adobe retracted of this practice?
I imagine this is a sign of what's coming for everything outside of software as well. Can't wait to not find my car, bicycle or fridge one morning, because the model is no-longer supported and they decide to get themselves repossessed and walked away. Or they just brick themselves.
I remember seeing something here, can't recall if it was satire but it was about some EV manufacturer's future plans where your vehicle would drive itself back to dealer or something if you miss a payment. Auto repo.
Coming from Photoshop (and no longer doing any serious graphic work), I've found https://www.photopea.com/ (an in-browser photoshop clone) to be really great for 99.9% of my needs.
It's free, has the same UI as photoshop so no re-learning hotkeys, and is browser-based.
Online-based tools rarely gain any professional trust as they can just disappear without a trace one day. Some occasional editing - maybe, putting a trade at the mercy of an online-only solution - never.
Another aspect is privacy. Medium- and high-caliber professionals are reluctant to share the innards of their work with anyone.
edit: I've downloaded and installed Photoshop CS2 from the Archive.org link. Activated with the provided key. Works flawlessly on Windows 10. Thanks a lot for this!
edit2: "Adobe has not officially released the CS2 software for free. Instead, it has canceled its CS2 license management servers because of a technical glitch, so for those with existing licenses it is now offering downloads that do not require contact with the licensing servers. While Adobe admits this may be seen as it giving its software away for free, this service is intended for those with existing Adobe CS2 licenses."
It is, I have a dedicated PowerPC Mac running old versions of software that are now free to use (including CS 2). Check the Internet Archive or “Macintosh Repository” (Mac only, of course) for other software or downloads.
The caveat is that you’ll likely need an old OS to run EOL software.
I hope pre-CC versions of PS aren’t covered by the linked article. I was hoping to one day set up a “comfy” creative corner machine running OS X 10.4-10.6 and PS CS1/CS2, because that combo is the one I’ve found least obtrusive and most productive. Affinity, Pixelmator, and Krita are nice and all but I can’t use them in my preferred environment.
Could it still work with wine? I once helped a coworker setting up a rather old version of Photoshop because we still had a physical copy with license lying around and saw no reason to waste that. Once we found an external CD Drive everything seemed to work.
>“Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.”
So Adobe was never planning on suing anybody, but any third-party license agreements may have expired. Such as those with Pantone.
Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? (also the fact that the article is 4 years old...)
I mean is obvious to me, say you sell me some software, and next week you tell me, "hey sucker, I might have used some third party shit that I should not have, you should stop using the stuff or you might be in danger of lawsuits".
Something like this happened with some video games where they autoupdated and removed some contentment, this should be illegal, you do not change a deal a few years after , this products should not be sold but say clear "rent for 1,2,3 years" and then maybe people might decide that would be worth it to do something like Blender and finance an open project then getting screwed like this.
It's just the nature of software license agreements. You say that they used third party shit that they should not have, but why should they not have? The inclusion of Pantone swatches in Adobe products was of huge benefit to users, and therefore Adobe, and also to Pantone themselves.
I still own the CS6 suite, the last one before Adobe went mad with subscriptions. Even back then they tried to switch CS6 users to CC users by accepting some ridiculous license agreement that would lead to losing access to CS6. Adobe became truly horrible when the current CEO took the reins.
Its cool how adobe has web scraping robots like bots that scans countless computers in search for adobe software that doesn't have a ongoing subscription.
Oh wait. They can't.
As a person who doesn't need to do adobe software, I'd pirate their software just out of spite. Let them fight me.
Readit News
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913362
I use Procreate, Affinity and Figma and all of these tools are cheaper, easier to use, and still support my (often more advanced) use-cases.
Same with Lightroom vs. Capture One.
PS. If you fell for the same "annual but paid monthly subscription" scam with an early cancellation fee, try changing your payment method to PayPal, and then use it to block the payments.
Coincidentally, I just finished a session with Affinity Photo 2 before reading your comment.
I, too, recommend Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement for many people. It's probably good enough for 80% of people out there.
I switched to Affinity because I don't do subscription software. But I'm still up to speed with Photoshop because I have to use it at work.
Photoshop is still better than Affinity in a lot of ways, and for all the confusion in its interface, it's still more polished than Affinity.
One of my biggest problems with Affinity Photo is that it can't save files in the background, which wastes a lot of time when you're working with multiple large images.
Worse, though, is that Affinity Photo is just buggy. Affinity Photo 2 is better, but many bugs persist. Things like images loading, but simply not rendering on screen. Or selecting a tool, but the tool has no effect, and you have to quit the program and restart for it to work again.
Unfortunately, Affinity's official forum is not what it should be. I'll be polite and call responses from official Affinity people "brusque." Also, be very gentle in your criticism and reporting of bugs, because they're quick to delete even minor complaints. More than once I've been following a discussion where someone is having the same problem as I am, and I get an e-mail notification containing another person's response. By the time I get to the actual forum, it's all been deleted by the admins. Not a good look.
(It’s now available in v2)
I'd say it's much more similar to the pre- or early Creative Suite (not Creative Cloud) versions. (I'm using AP2)
One aspect gives a red flag though: they implemented internet activation in v2 as opposed to a prior simple licensing model based on license keys. So maybe one day they will start to force "cloud" junk upon the throats of their customers, and at that point I will probably just leave.
Affinity Designer is a very good vector editing app. Switched to it from Inkscape due to performance and UI issues. To me, it's more convenient to use than vector things in Pixelmator Pro.
For photo editing, I don't like Affinity Photo. It seems powerful, but too much for me to learn, so I use Pixelmator Pro for simple photo editing (although I can never remember where the tool I need is). Maybe it's better for pros, though.
For quick pixel editing/cropping I use Acorn — it's fast and the UI is not overloaded.
I've been using Pixelmator Pro a little recently, and I turn to it now for its AI features. Cutting a subject out of its background? It makes the "Magnetic lasso" feel like MS Paintbrush. I had to design a heavily 'shopped Christmas card recently, and those features cut down my work by a lot.
That being said, both products are solid and likely a matter of personal preference or specific feature needs.
-- hobbyist experience
If we're going to turn on the outrage machine, let's at least stick to current news. Not something that happened 4 years ago.
We can't rearsh enough how evil Adobe practices are, they are so evil it is so hard to grasp that even if we knew we need regular remindes.
Adobe might be above Microsoft level. See, people have all forgotten about or don't know.
Anyone please make MS court cases from the 2000s reach the top 50 list. That would be news for the majority of readers, even hackernews' community.
Note the third parties part there.
For example, Adobe's previous license for Pantone colors expired last year ( https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/1/23434305/adobe-pantone-su... ).
> “As we had shared in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media marketing, strategy, and global partnerships at Adobe in a statement to The Verge. “To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.”
If you continue to use Pantone colors that were available in an older version of photoshop, a third party (Pantone) may sue you - not Adobe suing you.
So, Adobe will not anymore sue users for using old versions? This is not relevant anymore? Can you provide a link that shows that Adobe retracted of this practice?
And have you heard of this happening in the last four years? I haven't at least.
Deleted Comment
Edit: Found it https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624328/ford-self-reposse...
Dead Comment
Even trying GIMP over multiple years I could never make sense of it's UI but Krita is a breeze and incredibly powerful.
It's free, has the same UI as photoshop so no re-learning hotkeys, and is browser-based.
Krita is literally a KDE app
Another aspect is privacy. Medium- and high-caliber professionals are reluctant to share the innards of their work with anyone.
https://archive.org/details/Adobe-CS2
[1]: probably
edit: I've downloaded and installed Photoshop CS2 from the Archive.org link. Activated with the provided key. Works flawlessly on Windows 10. Thanks a lot for this!
edit2: "Adobe has not officially released the CS2 software for free. Instead, it has canceled its CS2 license management servers because of a technical glitch, so for those with existing licenses it is now offering downloads that do not require contact with the licensing servers. While Adobe admits this may be seen as it giving its software away for free, this service is intended for those with existing Adobe CS2 licenses."
The caveat is that you’ll likely need an old OS to run EOL software.
So Adobe was never planning on suing anybody, but any third-party license agreements may have expired. Such as those with Pantone.
Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? (also the fact that the article is 4 years old...)
I mean is obvious to me, say you sell me some software, and next week you tell me, "hey sucker, I might have used some third party shit that I should not have, you should stop using the stuff or you might be in danger of lawsuits".
Something like this happened with some video games where they autoupdated and removed some contentment, this should be illegal, you do not change a deal a few years after , this products should not be sold but say clear "rent for 1,2,3 years" and then maybe people might decide that would be worth it to do something like Blender and finance an open project then getting screwed like this.
As a person who doesn't need to do adobe software, I'd pirate their software just out of spite. Let them fight me.