Adobe has sort of a monopoly on the creative tools market. Nobody seriously considers an alternative for their Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, etc, and for some people, these are truly the only products which can satisfy their sophisticated needs. However, there are more and more small (independent) creators of all kinds, who do not need all the uber features of the professional products but would rather appreciate an intuitive UI, cheaper price, and friendlier customer support. Every kid today is either a blogger, vlogger or web designer and it seems to me like quite a big market that would easily turn away from Adobe, had anyone created an alternative product with 40% of functionality that works flawlessly (!).<p>I recently had to interact with Adobe support, and my experience was quite terrible. I was also looking for a simple software to stitch together my GoPro videos but was left out with either free iMovie/Quick, which are too basic or a super-expensive Premiere.
Both times I was wondering, how come there's only Adobe on the market, why nobody dares to compete with them. So, HN, what do you think, why?<p>P.S.
I tried using Pixelmator (non-free), GIMP, OpenShot and a few more open-source editors - they don't stand the competition.
On the other hand, I use and love Sketch, and would really appreciate Sketch-grade competitors for the above mentioned Adobe products.
Adobe has been in the game for a long time, and they know how to play. For example, early on in postscript days, they had proprietary fonts... which they made free at about the right time to have reaped profits without fueling a competitor. A short-sighted company might have hung on; a non-profit might have given it away from the start.<p>- they allow photoshop to be pirated - removing fuel for competitors<p>- it's difficult (and uninteresting/not <i>technically</i> challenging) to make UIs easy to use; hence the gimp<p>- pdf is free-to-read, pay-to-write. They keep adding new features, so companies will keep buying it<p>- maybe I read too much into this: but I once noted that postscript/pdf are the only mainstream "vector" graphics on the market (well, splines, not vectors, but I just mean that they're drawn)... apart from flash, which (to me) it seemed could make inroads on publishing. Then... adobe acquired flash (macromedia), giving them a monopoly on vector graphics. They let flash languish, consistent with my view...<p>Adobe know what they're doing, to maintain digital standards/monopolies throughout the lifecycle.
Photoshop is feature-complete, and the features are implemented well. For example, compare the speed of applying a 200px-radius Gaussian blur in Photoshop vs. Gimp.<p>To make an analogy with more hands-on trades: buying Photoshop is like getting the entire Snap-On tool catalog for $500. Buying Pixelmator is like getting 1/4 of the Craftsman tool catalog for $50. If you can spare the extra $450, you get a <i>lot</i> for your money.<p>Professional mechanics spend $xx,000 on Snap-On tools because they can justify the cost. Most DIY mechanics buy cheaper tools. But if the Snap-On tools only cost $500, why not get the best?<p>(edit: GIMP is like getting the entire Harbor Freight tool catalog for free.)<p>Also, most instructional material for image editing assumes Photoshop.
I like photoshop and haven't found a good replacement. when muscle memory is built up, it's really difficult to learn and switch to a different tool.<p>I have been searching for photoshop alternatives. but so far I haven't found any. For me photoshop is too expensive.<p>I have even considered to implement my own (I only need a portion of the photoshop features)<p><a href="https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/" rel="nofollow">https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/</a><p>is what I found recently, it looks nice, but I can't get used to it.
I'm a designer that works both on an indie freelancer level and an agency/corporate level, so this feels apt for input!<p>Several reasons - you've got part of the answer right in that there are a ton of other smaller tools for the more specific sections of the market that can be broken apart and sectioned off. I personally deal with quite a bit of comics/illustration and there alone you have Corel Painter, OpenCanvas, PaintTool SAI, Manga Studio, Clip Studio, plus many of the newer ipad sketch programs that've popped up recently.<p>However - I think those markets get saturated and weakened too quickly by those newcomers that gain a foothold and then slowly start deteriorating due to lack of updates or shiny marketing. Photoshop gets underrated for sheer versatility in this case - it's less of a high priced transient brand (think Uber or BMW) and simply a functioning longstanding tool (a car, or a swiss army knife for that 'tool as a brand' metaphor) for so many kinds of design related issues that the ease of use is baked in. Software tends to have a maddening problem of quick degradation and a large slice of older designers tend to be very picky about their tools. Broke, too.<p>Additionally, for some of the larger corporations - there's lots of production chains that rely quite strongly on specific file formats to be exported or special color management, and most of these smaller programs simply can't handle that much depth without the team that Adobe has. (Don't ever talk to me about color management for factory packaging production.)<p>Finally, factor in the immense marketing team that Adobe has - designers are innately marketers, after all, and they've saturated most trendy design sites with pro-Adobe ads and likely have special deals behind the scene to keep their name relevant. Not a fan of that style of closed garden at all, so I skate by by using the most outdated version of PS (ie non subscription) I can find without crippling my workflow, and using others if I can.
The competition has been assimilated.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altsys" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altsys</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach_Software" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach_Software</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia</a>
You should definitely check Affinity! They have amazing products, such as Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo; I remember paying about 30 GBP for each license. It's way faster to work on, compared to Photoshop or Gimp; Load time etc.
Also, for video editing, you have this other company called HitFilm, you can use it to Edit or VFX (Yup! Motion graphics) super cheap or you use the Free version. Also, there's Blender for the past 20 years, for everything motion, and you can also edit video, and so much more.<p>Maybe you should criticize the fact that small companies don't have as much money for marketing, in comparison to Adobe; But a good start is to start use Firefox and an alternative search engine than Google. You'd be surprised at what you're capable finding!
Seems like the question would be to ask why nobody competes viably with Photoshop. Premiere is an odd example to single out — Avid and Final
Cut, for instance, are full-featured and both have a substantial user base. The competition there is healthier than OP makes it out to be.<p>As for Photoshop, once it became the standard, it stayed that way by virtue of user inertia and the massive development resources it would take for a competitor to create a program in the same class. Photoshop is an extremely complex app and, on the whole, a very good one. It’s not without its frustrations, but nothing is.
Bitmap graphics: Paint.NET . Yeah, Windows, but it works quite well. IIRC, I've read that, at least at one point, it ran under Wine. KDE's Krita just hit 4.0 . I haven't used it, but there are lots of nice comments about it floating around. In the Linux world, there's also Pinta that I've used a few times. On Ubuntu 16.04, out of the default repositories, it complains about this or that missing or not being signed/blessed/something -- or did, last I used it. But it works ok, at least for the quick and dirty tasks I had at hand at that time.<p>Vector graphics: Inkscape<p>Adobe support is, in my experience, truly horrible. I once spent a cumulative 7.5 hours on support calls before I finally got a front line call center employee to go back to their supervisor, after being given the wrong answer once, and prod them into paying attention and looking further and, lo and behold, generating the correct legacy license code I -- rather, the person I was helping -- was entitled to as an owner/licensee of the full-blown Creative Suite.<p>Basically, I knew more than the support supervisor about this problem. I just had to find someone in support with the interest and guts to push their supervisor to actually pay attention and execute the solution.<p>7.5 hours. For what should have been one 10 minute support call.<p>After that, I vowed that as for myself, at least, Adobe would never get another dime from me.
For "developing" RAW images (Adobe Lightroom), it appears that the FOSS, Darktable [1], is a serious competitor. It has a full array of non-destructive editing features including extremely fancy parametric mask and blending effects. It also has responsive photo management (works great on at least 10s of GB), import, tagging, etc. They recently released their first Windows build.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.darktable.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.darktable.org/</a>
I'm one of those sad dorks who bought into CorelDraw back in the late 90s. Yes, their packaging was tacky; yes, they marketed themselves poorly; yes, a dozen cd-roms full of shitty clip art and knock-off fonts was a poor way to court designers. Behind all that was a massively superior (to Illustrator) vector art software, and a bitmap editor that was easily a peer to Photoshop. Watching "Creative Suite" (I mean Cloud) features to finally catch up to Corel 1998 in 2015 has been excruciating.<p>Look at how Illustrator even today doesn't use shift-clicks consistently with either Mac or Windows; it works like an app from thirty years ago, because it is a 30-year-old app.<p>Artists learn a tool, and are more interested in what they can do with that tool than how the tool works. Thus, they have a uniquely poor ability to adapt. You can see that with the transition of film photographers to digital. Also 3D guys: I have a neighbor who was an animator in the eighties, he did a bunch of those animated logos for NBC and HBO and MTV (with physically carved models and fancy camera tricks); he's trying like hell to adapt to software, but he seems to be about a decade late to wrap his head around it.
I guess it depends which market you are talking about, Adobe Photoshop usage in the VFX and Game industries have plummeted. Texturing is done using The Foundry Mari or Allegorithmic Substance Painter. After Effect is still used for commercials but most of the high-end compositing work is done with The Foundry Nuke. As far as editing goes, Davinci Resolve is an amazing piece of software, I highly recommend it given it is free.
Support for @kamphey<p>Snapseed<p>Filterstorm - thats the "Photoshop" for iPad / iPhone
<a href="http://filterstorm.com" rel="nofollow">http://filterstorm.com</a><p>ExifViewer by Fluntro
<a href="http://exifviewerapp.com/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://exifviewerapp.com/blog/</a><p>SKRWT <a href="http://www.skrwt.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.skrwt.com</a><p>Slidebox - <a href="http://slidebox.co" rel="nofollow">http://slidebox.co</a><p>Union - <a href="http://unionapp.co" rel="nofollow">http://unionapp.co</a><p>And many more. Digital minimalism is the new trend. We don't need 3 million special effects / features for a happy life. Less is more - more room for your own thoughts, fantasy. With digital minimalism i invite you that you are a part of my creativity.<p>Not Photoshop a hug for your mom is life.<p>See all the new YT videos. Zero effects, zero style, 2D, a human face in the middle and realtalk / rants about truth, emotions and what you really feel.The ppl understand my life is a selflie. I am not myself, i am an actor and dont tell my friends what i really love / feel / need.
Ultimately there is very little consumer grade software anymore because modern consumers won't pay for software.<p>The only people who pay for software are enterprises and they aren't going to skimp a few hundred dollars on software that makes their $X0,000 creative workers X% less productive.<p>In this space there is basically Pixelmator and Affinity trying to eke out enough sales to keep their developers paid.
The time to take on Adobe was probably 10-15 years ago. At this point to oust them or even try to compete with them you would have have to create a feature for feature better product, and offer it at a lower price point. Your interface would either have to mimic adobe's to ease transition or be a significant improvement that its beneficial to switch.<p>As far as dialed down "40% functionality" - isn't that what Adobe tried with their "Elements" line dialed back versions of Premier/Photoshop at a lower price point?<p>I get the feeling it would be hard to roll out a "40%" product without a "100%" as well - or else you risk having the narrative around your product becoming "use this until you start taking yourself seriously - then learn a whole new software suite when you graduate to Adobe"<p>Idk. Lack of competition isn't great, but back when others were actively trying Photoshop was still king (thinking back to the 4.0/5.0 days)
If we're looking at a single program, like Photoshop, I can get the best tool in the industry for $20 / month. You have three hurdles to overcome...<p>1. What would you do better than Photoshop?<p>2. How would you price it to be competitive?<p>3. How will you convince users that your product is worthwhile?
I'm hopeful for the new GIMP release. There was a thread about it yesterday: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16686941" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16686941</a><p>Sadly, when it comes to things like context-aware fill, Photoshop still outperforms any alternative I've tried, so I'm probably going to stick to it for a while longer.<p>Bit off topic, but if you're still looking for a video editing software, try Hitfilm Express: <a href="https://hitfilm.com/express" rel="nofollow">https://hitfilm.com/express</a><p>It's non-free but doesn't cost anything, and it's really powerful but still really easy to use.
We are working to compete with Adobe (well not them specifically), less trying to beat them on feature count (nobody would), more taking the things that Photoshop is overkill for and making it easier/repeatable.<p>Competitors always seem to focus on a 'canvas' paradigm rather than what people are actually trying to get done, such as cropping to the same dimensions for web over and over again, or in your case stitching videos (sorry we don't support video yet).<p>We are still pretty early stage but the feedback has been great.<p><a href="https://beta.laazy.io" rel="nofollow">https://beta.laazy.io</a>
Is anyone seriously investing in any commercial non SAAS software any more as a stand-alone product? No one is seriously competing with Microsoft Office either.
Adobe has tons of competitors, but they're not always obvious because the market doesn't perfectly overlap.<p>For example, I used to buy Photoshop and Dreamweaver to do web design for static sites. Now I use SquareSpace instead.<p>There are lots of niche products that chip away at Photoshop, including web-based alternatives that are less powerful but "good enough" and more portable.
I think you kinda answered your own question:<p>> P.S. I tried using Pixelmator (non-free), GIMP, OpenShot and a few more open-source editors - they don't stand the competition.<p>It's really hard to do it right, and even if you do you're targeting just a single segment of the market (people who need more than iMovie but not everything that Premiere provides). I imagine more than a few people have looked into this and decided that isn't a good ROI for the amount of investment involved.<p>Also, don't forget that Adobe (used to, anyway, not sure if they still do) has really cheap student licenses so that aspiring designers/editors/etc. get hooked on their software and carry that preference over into their professional lives.<p>My guess is that anyone who really has a passion for this has a regular full-time job and works on something like GIMP in their free time.
For consumer (non-expert) ways to design great-looking graphics + materials in an easy drag & drop fashion, check out Canva.<p>For the more complicated things, Paint.NET on windows is pretty great (and still free). I've yet to find an equivalent that works as well for other OSes.
While I haven't found any replacement for AfterEffects for motion graphics, many people I know have switched to Affinity Designer/Photo without looking back.
Not only does it not tie you into a subscription, the interface is cleaner (without years of baggage) and the whole system feels less cluttered. Maybe the features are there with Photoshop, but they are more intuitive with Affinity. Maybe it doesn't do some niche-thing Photoshop can do, but it's evidently enough for most.<p>Pixelmator and Vectormator also have very good quality.<p>In Open Source, Gimp and Krita really don't compete well in Photo editing and there simply is nothing even close to AE, but for audio Ardour does a good job.
PhaseOne's Capture One is gaining some traction against Lightroom in the photography market, especially since Adobe basically forced Lightroom users to a subscription-only model.
These kinds of tools are very sticky. Every once in a while I might come across interesting design software, with features I'd want etc. But at the end of the day, it's very risky to switch. Takes a long time to develop a good workflow. And you might end up not liking it anyways. I keep using Illustrator and Photoshop for the same reason I keep using Emacs.<p>I actually know an unlikely person that got started with the terrible GIMP and they're very reluctant to switching too.
<i>> I was also looking for a simple software to stitch together my GoPro videos but was left out with either free iMovie/Quick, which are too basic or a super-expensive Premiere.</i><p>It sounds like your real question is, why isn't anyone making free or inexpensive tools with features like Premiere, so I don't have to pay for it? That's the problem -- everybody wants nice software but nobody's willing to pay what it would actually cost to write it.
Hi, my name is Ivan and I am competing with Adobe and other image-editing comapnies :)<p>You can read about my photo editor Photopea here: <a href="https://blog.photopea.com/creating-photopea.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.photopea.com/creating-photopea.html</a>
My experience is only with LightRoom and Photoshop and I have to say that their products are just very good. There is also a ton of learning material out there for Adobe products.<p>Hard to compete with that. Affinity photo is quite good but if I were a pro I would stick to Photoshop.
This was a great post. We are cut off at my university in a licensing fight with Adobe. I'm not certain how absent that product we are running a digital media and design curriculum...unless the students are required to purchase themselves.
There's a lot more competition in the photography industry. Adobe has lightroom but there's a trend now for photographers jumping into Capture One. Then there's dxo optics, darktable and for the less high end market Acdsee.
I am attending an Adobe conference this week and this was my exact thoughts. How come no one else build these tools and compete in this market. There is a huge market potential.