this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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Honestly nah, there are lots of other good options. Support the devs and people fueling real creativity rather than staying in Adobe's ecosystem, paid or not.
I use Affinity these days. Although it being purchased by Canva has me very worried.
Exactly this.
Unfortunately as someone who uses Adobe programs for work, the FLOSS alternatives are just not there yet :/ (especially considering how seamlessly Adobe programs work together)
My partner is a graphic designer and although she undeniably had some growing pains switching away from Adobe, she hasn't looked back.
Thanks, that's interesting to hear! Can I ask what sort of graphic design she does?
My work primarily involves CMYK publications made in InDesign, using graphics made in Illustrator and Photoshop. So inter-operability and compatibility with professional CMYK printing are key for my needs.
She also worked with Photoshop and Illustrator. She does many things. Freelance design work for people, as well advertising design for her work. She also does design for our website and ttrpg hobbies.
Thanks, glad to hear the alternatives work for her! Does she use FLOSS ones (Inkscape, Scribus, GIMP, Krita, etc.) or Affinity's programs?
Affinity primarily.
Makes sense! I hope it won't get enshittified now that Canva bought them.
On macOS I found that getting Photoshop to stay cracked was a hassle. This didn't make me buy Photoshop, it just made me use something else.
I dumped Adobe completely several years ago, and found that Pixelmator has been an excellent Photoshop replacement. It even now does vector images - used to use an app called Graphic for that (for an Illustrator replacement), but should now be able to do all of that from Pixelmator.
I had a legit copy of CS6 for my windows computer, then switched to Mac and was unable to get a copy for it so I kept my windows laptop around for graphic design.
It died and now I use Affinity on my Mac and iPad.
Yeah, I used Adobe CS3 on the Mac for a very long time, because I may have had the activation key for my college's site license...
That never gave me any trouble. But using other keys or cracks, a real pain in the ass.
Top meme
Had me at the first 1/10th.
Any Lightroom classic alternative?
In the theme of above lightroom classic (cracked)
Otherwise not really. You're looking at digiKam for the library management side and either RawTherapee or Darktable for editing.
I just couldn't get used to how the UI of Darktable works. Rawtherapee is somewhat nice, usable at least. I'll check out digikam, I do have a problem with organisation.
Rawtherapee or darktable for example.