A few years ago I replaced Photoshop with Affinity. Affinity’s user interface is pretty awful, even compared to Photoshop, but it does at least run a bit better. A few years ago I switched from premiere pro to da Vinci resolve, and though resolve has a bit of a learning curve, overall I think it’s better than premiere - it’s definitely faster and crashes a lot less.
I’m hoping that audacity 4 is a good enough audio editor to replace audition - we’ll see, audition is actually pretty good imo but I’d accept a slight downgrade if it means I can get away from Adobe entirely.
Affinity is good, and runs OK on Linux with recent versions of wine. Resolve is very good. A credible alternative to Premiere, though Fusion isn’t all that compared to Ae.
I had to use Google to work out how to crop to a rectangular selection on affinity 2. Not sure about affinity 3. I was also really unhappy with the ‘personas’ UI pattern which locks away different photo editing tools into whole parallel universe user interfaces. As a new user it just looked like those features were missing and I had to Google again. It’s not hard to learn but my first impression of the software was googling to work out how to do things that are obvious in any other image editor. Maybe it’s better in affinity 3?
Canva surely would become assholes if they had a monopoly, but it’s a loooooong way from “gaining some market traction” to “Adobe is defeated and powerless to compete”
If only gimp wasn’t garbage… Tbh I’m also kinda wondering how Affinity did pull off the move they made with their 3 programs turning into one, at the same time redoing so much of it.am And why foss can’t do it.
Of course there’s money and closed source is probably messier in a lot of places than foss is (or at least targets to be), but is that it?
Unironic question: is it possible to explain to a non-artistic, non-graphic-design techie like me what makes GIMP so inadequate? I hear this refrain a lot but have never heard an explanation for why it falls SO short that it’s not a viable alternative for most people.
The UI feels quite haphazard, it doesn’t follow the same approach to UI like other drawing tools and it feels like it’s trying to reinvent the wheel when people are already used to certain areas on the screen being used for certain things, and personally the UI scaling looked quite rough last I looked at it. It just gave me the vibe of a programmer made tool to have something graphic to edit things rather than one a designer spent time r&d-ing from the bottom up.
A few years ago I tried putting text on a path (think “curvy text”). First tried gimp, quit frustrated after about a hour. While at some point I “kind of” got it to work, it looked like shit. Then I opened photoshop, was done in about three minutes. Note that I never did it before in photoshop nor gimp.
Luckily, nowadays I just open photopea whenever I would have used photoshop in the past. The fact that one single guy built a better photo editor than gimp should tell you everything.
It’s been a long time since I last used it so I don’t remember specifics, but I found really basic stuff that would take a couple of seconds to do in photoshop were a lot more difficult in gimp. Krita is better…
I use gimp at least weekly. The UX isn’t great imo, but I’m used to it now, and I’m sure Photoshop would boggle my mind. It also has improved quite a bit in the past years.
I know its not realistic, but I just imagine how great GIMP would be if people donated just 1/20th of what they pay Adobe to the GIMP devs.
Same with LibreOffice vs Office.
We are really missing out on some potentially fantastic software so that a few people can be in the centibillionaire club and it makes me sangry
I know that’s true about more than just software, but the way to “fight back” here is so easy and low risk compared to fighting the other cartels that farm us for $$. It is as easy as not using their products and services if there is a viable alternative that respects your humanity.
it’s difficult to tell if it’s bad ux or unfamiliarity when you’re good at using one and not the other, and not really worth the effort when switching to krita was easier.
Have you tried Reaper daw? I’ve been using it for years at this point. It has a free unlimited lifetime demo, or you can pay them $60 for a lifetime license.
It’s not a lifetime license though. The license is valid for one major release meaning if you buy now, at v7.69, you’re covered for the last v8.x release.
You are correct. It’s been so long since I bought my license it feels like a lifetime. I checked the website and if you buy now it’s valid up to v8.99. That could be years from now. I bought my license in 2020 at v6.05. 6 years is extremely generous considering the software subscription environment we live in today.
A few years ago I replaced Photoshop with Affinity. Affinity’s user interface is pretty awful, even compared to Photoshop, but it does at least run a bit better. A few years ago I switched from premiere pro to da Vinci resolve, and though resolve has a bit of a learning curve, overall I think it’s better than premiere - it’s definitely faster and crashes a lot less.
I’m hoping that audacity 4 is a good enough audio editor to replace audition - we’ll see, audition is actually pretty good imo but I’d accept a slight downgrade if it means I can get away from Adobe entirely.
Affinity is good, and runs OK on Linux with recent versions of wine. Resolve is very good. A credible alternative to Premiere, though Fusion isn’t all that compared to Ae.
Ardour is great right now. As is Reaper.
Awful? I’ve found it so much nicer, especially with how seamless moving across their suite was before they made it a single app
I had to use Google to work out how to crop to a rectangular selection on affinity 2. Not sure about affinity 3. I was also really unhappy with the ‘personas’ UI pattern which locks away different photo editing tools into whole parallel universe user interfaces. As a new user it just looked like those features were missing and I had to Google again. It’s not hard to learn but my first impression of the software was googling to work out how to do things that are obvious in any other image editor. Maybe it’s better in affinity 3?
If you think Canva won’t pull the same shit Adobe does once they have the market dominance to do so, you’re deluding yourself.
The only future-proof, user-respecting, dignified alternative is FOSS.
Canva surely would become assholes if they had a monopoly, but it’s a loooooong way from “gaining some market traction” to “Adobe is defeated and powerless to compete”
If only gimp wasn’t garbage… Tbh I’m also kinda wondering how Affinity did pull off the move they made with their 3 programs turning into one, at the same time redoing so much of it.am And why foss can’t do it.
Of course there’s money and closed source is probably messier in a lot of places than foss is (or at least targets to be), but is that it?
Unironic question: is it possible to explain to a non-artistic, non-graphic-design techie like me what makes GIMP so inadequate? I hear this refrain a lot but have never heard an explanation for why it falls SO short that it’s not a viable alternative for most people.
The UI feels quite haphazard, it doesn’t follow the same approach to UI like other drawing tools and it feels like it’s trying to reinvent the wheel when people are already used to certain areas on the screen being used for certain things, and personally the UI scaling looked quite rough last I looked at it. It just gave me the vibe of a programmer made tool to have something graphic to edit things rather than one a designer spent time r&d-ing from the bottom up.
A few years ago I tried putting text on a path (think “curvy text”). First tried gimp, quit frustrated after about a hour. While at some point I “kind of” got it to work, it looked like shit. Then I opened photoshop, was done in about three minutes. Note that I never did it before in photoshop nor gimp.
Luckily, nowadays I just open photopea whenever I would have used photoshop in the past. The fact that one single guy built a better photo editor than gimp should tell you everything.
It’s been a long time since I last used it so I don’t remember specifics, but I found really basic stuff that would take a couple of seconds to do in photoshop were a lot more difficult in gimp. Krita is better…
Was it more difficult or just unfamiliar? Like, if you’d given it a couple of weeks maybe it would have become intuitive? Or was it just bad UX?
I use gimp at least weekly. The UX isn’t great imo, but I’m used to it now, and I’m sure Photoshop would boggle my mind. It also has improved quite a bit in the past years.
I know its not realistic, but I just imagine how great GIMP would be if people donated just 1/20th of what they pay Adobe to the GIMP devs.
Same with LibreOffice vs Office.
We are really missing out on some potentially fantastic software so that a few people can be in the centibillionaire club and it makes me sangry
I know that’s true about more than just software, but the way to “fight back” here is so easy and low risk compared to fighting the other cartels that farm us for $$. It is as easy as not using their products and services if there is a viable alternative that respects your humanity.
it’s difficult to tell if it’s bad ux or unfamiliarity when you’re good at using one and not the other, and not really worth the effort when switching to krita was easier.
Have you tried Reaper daw? I’ve been using it for years at this point. It has a free unlimited lifetime demo, or you can pay them $60 for a lifetime license.
I’m already an fl studio user, I was more interested in an audio editing program instead of a daw
Oh, you can edit audio with it.
https://www.reaper.fm/
It’s not a lifetime license though. The license is valid for one major release meaning if you buy now, at v7.69, you’re covered for the last v8.x release.
You are correct. It’s been so long since I bought my license it feels like a lifetime. I checked the website and if you buy now it’s valid up to v8.99. That could be years from now. I bought my license in 2020 at v6.05. 6 years is extremely generous considering the software subscription environment we live in today.
Reaper for DAW if you’re okay with a learning curve.