FYI Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo are good alternatives that also run on Apple Silicon.

They have no subscription requirements and are 50% off right now ($25 each): https://affinity.serif.com/

I love (and own) all the Affinity products, but Designer still has a long way to go to get to feature parity with Illustrator, imho. Good news is, they are always improving.

Designer feels like working with an arm tied behind my back. I absolutely hate Adobe's subscription model, software philosophy, and nearly everything else about them. But Designer has a long way to go to being productive.

As someone who is not professional in graphics but need to do some vector graphics for professional work, I like Affinity Designer very much. Once it clicks, it’s actually easy to use and quite productive.

That said, its probably not a marketable skill by itself as most places would look for the “Adobe Illustrator” keyword.

The free and opensource https://inkscape.org/ is a great altrenative to Illustrator. More here - https://logosbynick.com/illustrator-vs-inkscape/ for those interested.

I'm mostly happy with it too, but the lack of a "Select Same Appearance" in Designer drives me insane.

Affinity just added this in the most recent update.

Thanks, will check it out. Reads like it'll handle opening InDesign, Illustrator and PSD's - assume that's workable and doesn't have too many gotchas?

I get a variety of artwork from designers in a plethora of formats and sadly can't enforce my preferences on them.

One gotcha is there is no native bitmap trace. The developers currently recommend using external software to do so.

Otherwise, I've been able to bang out some quick vector layouts since some of the basic hotkeys are the same, and it seems to handle almost any vector format I've opened with it.

Does anyone how well it holds (or if it's useful at all) against Lightroom?

I'm tired of the Adobe subscription ...

Checkout https://www.darktable.org/ - it's free and opensource. More here - https://expertphotography.com/lightroom-vs-darktable/

They don’t currently offer a Lightroom alternative. Affinity photo is a photoshop replacement, but doesn’t really offer photo organization capabilities like Lightroom does.

I too am tired of paying for Lightroom every month

Depending on your Lightroom use, check out CaptureOne. Great RAW editor, fantastic if you shoot tethered with supported cameras, not so great for organizing photos.

Affinity wouldn't let me switch my 3 month old Affinity Designer for OS X license with a Windows license when my laptop got stolen. They wanted me to pay $70 for another license, and their support was quite rude about it. The reason they gave me was "it would be unfair to the other customers that paid full price for both platforms".

I have a bad taste in my mouth about the ordeal and have been boycotting their software in protest. Because of how rude their support was, I would rather pay Adobe than spend a single dollar more at Affinity.

I don't see how that makes sense.

In HN of all places, I would expect people to understand that it costs money to maintain a product for different systems.

And it wasn't even their fault, your laptop getting stolen is not on them [1]. There's a lot of bullshit with services (like Amazon not refunding you the difference on an order if the price goes down before your item arrives), but this doesn't seem like one of them.

Also, if you paid $70 for designer, then that kind of sucks because I almost always see it for 50% off. Case and point, it's $35 right now.

[1] I am trying to make a point that's purely technical, but I don't want to seem too callous - I am sorry your laptop got stolen, it sucks to lose something expensive that is very important, and has a lot of important data on it. And I know responses like mine are the last thing someone with anger wants to hear (I've been in that position), but I run my own business and I am also on the other side now where it's really hard to deal with situations like this.

> I would expect people to understand that it costs money to maintain a product for different systems.

Huh? What has that got to do with this case? They're already maintaining it on multiple systems and its not like aetherspawn would be able to use it on more than one system. It literally is no different to the Affinity devs whether aetherspawn is using the OS X or Windows version since they both cost the same amount (and the license was only three months old).

It just seems like they wanted another sale to allow access to a second platform, which would make sense if they retained access to the first.

I'm not sure what the right approach is here (certainly being rude about it isn't it, though!) but every time a company has given me leeway, I've always then went around telling everyone who would listen how great the company is. Seems like they did the opposite by alienating the customer instead. That doesn't seem like a good approach.

I think the point is that its a one and done transaction. You bought the software on platform X. 3 months in it might engender goodwill to swap it. But bought software deactivation isn't really a thing...

Now subscriptions. I notices my jetbrains stuff worked with the same license key when I switched it to linux. But I'm paying them yearly.

I'll totally agree there is no need to be rude. Though I imagine if you are in customer service for a while, its probably a natural defensive posture.

They're basically trying to make a sale, a windfall, from an existing customer's personal troubles. It's not a sale they would have made except for the guy needing to switch laptops. Frame it however you want, but that kind of thing makes people feel taken advantage of.

Yeah, that's my thought too. The fact that it is cheap makes me think they could have been more flexible, under the circumstances of someone who ran into some hardship.

But even if not, they could have simply said sorry, our policy is that we don't do this. aetherspawn said they were rude about it. There was no reason to be rude, they could have said no while still being empathic to the situation and being courteous. I don't know how rude they were or weren't, of course.

I might agree with the goodwill argument if it wasn't for the fact that Affinity apps are _so cheap_. When I wanted to give them more money for yet another free updated that added several features, I happily paid for the iOS version even though I didn't really need it.

Sorry but I think you’re wrong. If your customer accidentally spills their drink you give them a replacement for free. It’s not a requirement, it’s just the kind of decency that builds good will, especially when the marginal cost to you is very low. Same principle applies here, where the marginal cost is literally zero.

No its more like you bought a new car stereo that only works with bmw cars and then your car got stolen. Then you ask the stereo shop to give you a ford version for free because you cant afford to buy a bmw again. Its the wrong place to ask this and he is asking for a different product.

Its explicitly part of their biz model to charge for different platforms in liu of doing the subscription thing.

The marginal cost of the stereo is probably over a hundred dollars. The marginal cost of a drink and of a software license is zero. If your customer for some reason can’t use the previous license due to unforeseen circumstances, just give them a new one that they can use. If you lose your license key, most software vendors will give you a new one too.

> The margical cost of the stereo is probably over a hundred dollars

> just give them a new one that they can use

It always rubs me the wrong way when a customer decides what value something has to a business, assuming they know everything about the business' incomings and outgoings, assuming they know the size of the business, assuming that all businesses must operate the same way because some businesses have the flexibility to offer acts of goodwill.

It makes the assumption that all businesses, especially in software, are on equal footing. They very much aren't. Sorry, but the customer can't always be right — the business has its own bills to take care of, employees to pay, rights to licence, and lights to keep on; beyond what the customer paid for, it really doesn't have any further obligations. Good will is exactly that: good will.

The marginal cost of a software license is approximately zero. And selling an extra license due to a lost device is a windfall, from an already paying customer, that would not have occurred but for the lost device. People will interpret that intuitively as the business taking advantage of them.

Now imagine having to re-buy any of your Steam games to have them work on Macs. This is a bad take.

Yes. No problem with Adobe switching licenses to other machines. You just log in and select which machines you want to remove the license from, and you can switch them around easily.

Yeah, but that’s a subscription. The whole point of these apps is that they are a one time purchase.

The good news for you then is that you're going to pay adobe much much much more in the long run, getting exactly what you wanted, apparently.

I was agreeing with you, empathizing, until your last sentence. You lost me there.

I've just canceled my subscription this morning after i've received a reminder that it would be renewed.

I don't know where you use CC for, but if it is just for photoshop, you might give https://www.photopea.com/ a try.

I switched to Affinity Photo as an alternative [1] and quite happy with it. It's similar enough to Photoshop that I'm not lost, more polished than Gimp, and only a fraction of the price. Their forum is also quite good for support.

1: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

I'll second this.

Affinity Photo and Designer are great tools, they are cross-platform (although you have to purchase them separately), and regularly go on sale (I bought both for 70$ total).

I have yet to find a task I used to use Photoshop or Illustrator for that I can't do with these. I am not a hardcore or super advanced user, but that's why it works for me.

Nikon have just published a complete free and quite sophisticated photo software suite, most useful summary of which here :

https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikon-launches-new-software.htm...

Ed; "Everything is there: stills, video, image browsing, NEF processing, Lightroom-like capabilities, cloud integration, image ingest,and much more."

nice trying this out. i have a nikon camera :)

(They aren't cross-platform if they don't run on Linux)

Tomato, tomato

edit: we are talking about replacements for Adobe products here, so context matters. Adobe products _also_ don't run on Linux.

I wouldn't call Adobe products "cross-platform" either, though.

Pretty sure there are lots of valid definitions of "cross-platform", and I will say again that context matters.

If I'm talking about a mobile app and I say "cross-platform" I probably meant iOS and Android. It would be strange to say "what about Linux??" in that context.

So here we are talking about competitors to Adobe products, where "cross-platform" means Windows and Mac, so when I say "cross-platform" in this context, I am also referring to that same set of platforms.

With linux desktop use at ~1.5% and dropping, at some point it becomes bad business to support it. It's not adobe's job to pick OS's for their users, it's their job to support the OS's that their users use. And their users are about 99% Windows/Mac it seems.

When you cover about 98-99% of your users platforms, I think you're cross platform.

Otherwise, we could define a cross-platform slippery slope such that no software has ever achieved it. There's always another platform you didn't support.

Then "cross-platform" now means "Windows and MacOS" and Linux stops making the "platform" list?

I always thought cross-platform meant "more than one platform", but I guess I don't really know if that's how it's typically used.

I almost exclusively use Linux, and I would call any Windows + Mac app cross-platform.

Does it run on more than one platform? If yes, it's cross platform.

Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Linux? BSD? Haiku? Minix?

If it doesn't run on BeOS, it's not cross platform!

I mean, yes. Functional cross-platform doesn't mean "every single platform ever", and hitting 98% is a fantastic target.

Listen, I love linux, and it's not MY fault that the year of the Linux Desktop never came and that its marketshare has continued to fall against its competitors.

In the commercial desktop software realm, that's what cross-platform has always meant.

These arguments really needs to be in the context of the real world. No one values an academic/technical point.

The intersection of artists, who are heavy users of the Adobe suite of products, and linux aficionados is essentially zero.

You do realize this, do you not?

It is cross platform if they run aCross multiple platforms. Be that 2 or 3 or 15.

I cancelled my subscription a few days ago. It was the most painfull procedure ever. Help article points to a cancellation button, which does not exist. Contact page leads to nowhere. Chat bot points you to the useless help section. Finally a real human behind the chatbot answers, but takes extra long time to make you lose any remaining patience or hope. Finally after 1 hour of various counter offers and discounts, they accept the cancellation request. I have never witnessed a subscription cancellation process this obstructive. It should be illegal.

Same here but in my case I did find the cancel subscription button, it just gave an "error" when I tried to use it. Required me to talk to support before cancelling.

That is in addition to their scammy practice of displaying a monthly price, but locking you into a yearly contract. You pay monthly, but if you cancel within the year they charge you a cancellation fee that is essentially equal to the entire remaining subscription. Not sure if they do that anymore, but that was the case with my sub 2 years ago.

I’m amazed that a large corporation gets away with it. It’s super scammy.

Every single cable company tries the same scam. The only difference being that it's slightly easier to get to a human in the first place.

Cancelling the payment from the bank side would probably speed up their response.

This is why I have gone to using virtual cards online.

When you want to cancel, you go to one central repository with all your virtual cards and turn off the card for the service you want to cancel. When your next payment comes up, the card will decline, the service will close your account for you. Easy cancellation.

I have been happy with Pixelmator Pro.

I use it for work.

One time fee, I can’t justify Photoshop CC for once per quarter usage.

I may use it intensively for a few days then not touch it for months.

This is really something I've been thinking for quite some time, canceling my CC subscription (which is monthly) but there are couple of things that kept from executing this decision; first of course loong years of habit (almost 20), hard to leave. After switching to Figma for UI design, my main use of CC for branding, print design is left to Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and photography editing for Lightroom. I can ditch the others in CC apps in an instant, but I can't Photoshop and Illustrator, because the branding design works need mockups, brushes, textures, stuff and web resources mostly made for PS, also I've a huge offline archive I like using, also there is print work, which I use Illustrator mainly. Adobe products really make me mad, they work in weird ways, crash, lost work and data, plus couple of times in a year something happens to make me connect to client support, these are the times that I really want to cut my all connection with the company and their products.

At some point I'll manage to figure this out and take a bold step further to leave Adobe all behind. I know there are options, tried most of them (Affinity etc), but I make my living through these apps and I need reliable software with resources and community, just like Figma did in a great way for UX/product design, I wish they create side products like CC apps, for print design, even audio design, that would be awesome.

I have gotten pretty decent results from Pixelmator Pro and Inkscape.

I grew up with Photoshop 4 and CorelDRAW!, so I would totally be happy with those as well.

YMMV

PSA: Be aware of Adobe's "Yearly contract billed monthly" subscription thingy.

Thank you, we want to try this. I despise subscription model software. I wish I could find my Adobe Photoshop 6.0 disk, it did everything I need just fine.

Eh, why not rate it 3.14159 ? After all you paid for it?

I just tried this and while I appreciate the attempt to make it relatively the same UI as Photoshop most of the things I tried didn't work like they would in Photoshop.

I couldn't apply a filter to a shape layer, which I can do in Photoshop. It didn't blur out the option, I had to click it to find out I couldn't do it.

I did try to gaussian blur a layer and it did nothing until I hit 50px then at 51px it basically blurred everything out of existence. I tried this in Photoshop and it behaved in a more linear way, as I'd expect.

This would actually be less of a problem if every Photoshop alternative didn't try to be a pixel perfect clone of Photoshop. Take some risks, evaluate some choices and see if you can do things better than Photoshop. Otherwise the comparisons will be too stark.

I understand a lot of the vitriol towards Adobe for a number of reasons, but for some reason they just do photo/image editing better than anyone else. I keep waiting for the day a FOSS alternative pops up that actually competes.

Thanks for that link. I've often found myself wanting to do minimal image work, and this is the first time i see something really usable.

Photopea is made by a single developer.

https://blog.photopea.com/creating-photopea.html

A single developer who put in 7000 hours before he made a cent. It was a hobby project he was passionate about.

He thankfully now makes a comfortable living from it.

It's one of my favourite indie-hacker-style stories, as the hacker was motivated by his intrinsic joy of making something.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9urjmg/i_made_a_free_...

> A single developer who put in 7000 hours before he made a cent.

I think this is less uncommon for bootstrapped companies than a lot of people assume. E.g. Patrick Campbell from ProfitWell has a similar story.

Ironically that this is also how Photoshop started.

I have many customers who are stuck with CC for Acrobat. It seems to be the only full featured PDF editing program.

For those on a Mac I highly recommend PDF pen pro for most editing needs. If it has the features you’re looking for it’s a great alternative

That said Acrobat is really fully fleshed so I understand why people still only use it professionally

I switched to "PDF Expert" (developer is Readdle I think) on the mac and its equivalent on mobile. Its easier to use than Acrobat ever was and costs less per year.

Have you checked out the Affinity offerings?

I've started using Pixelmator Pro, and I've been impressed so far. Much faster, snappier, and things like filters and color correction adjustments better designed, and without the bloat and cruft that comes with Photoshop.