[HN Gopher] Figma and Canva are taking on Adobe and winning
___________________________________________________________________
Figma and Canva are taking on Adobe and winning
Author : samulipehkonen
Score : 199 points
Date : 2021-04-09 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kwokchain.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kwokchain.com)
| achow wrote:
| The point most are missing is that, $600/annum _maynot_ be a big
| deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual
| designer.
|
| How is that relevant?
|
| Unlike hardcore workplace software - someone below gave example
| of a $10K PCB layout software - Adobe products are used for
| personal and hobby projects by designers at home or at schools.
| When these designers stop using the Adobe software at home and
| schools and use alternatives, they would insist the same switch
| at workplace as well. The employers would be more than happy to
| accommodate that request (who does not like free money).
|
| I'm still rocking 2013 Adobe suite - the last perpetual license -
| for 'just incase' scenarios. But since last many years have
| totally switched to the likes of Figma at home computer, and at
| workplace there was enmass transition to Sketch till couple of
| years back, and now to Figma.
|
| (Hopefully) Adobe would go the way of Corel Draw, which you only
| find in old printing shops, where they insist that they convert
| your Adobe (.psd) files to Corel Draw one before they can send it
| to printing machines.
| adonese wrote:
| >The point most are missing is that, $600/annum maynot be a big
| deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual
| designer.
|
| I seriously thought that the rather easy way to crack Adobe and
| Autodesk softwares was to lure in indie designers and engineers
| such that it becomes their go-to tool in their professional
| jobs.
| cma wrote:
| In addition to price discrimination, this is why productivity
| app companies often give it at dramatically reduced prices or
| even free to independent creators (usually dollar revenue
| limit) and edu.
| vosper wrote:
| > The point most are missing is that, $600/annum maynot be a
| big deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual
| designer.
|
| There was a theory, back before the subscription era, that the
| reason stolen/fake Photoshop license keys would work across
| multiple versions was that Adobe actually wanted people to be
| using pirated Photoshop at home. The people pirating Photoshop
| were theorised to turn into the same people who'd demand it at
| their workplaces, and Adobe was quite happy to go cash in on
| the corporate licensing. Easily piratable Photoshop was a free
| training program for future Adobe customers, who weren't going
| to pay for a copy to use at home, anyway.
|
| Who knows if there's any truth to that, but it doesn't work in
| the subscription era, which definitely opens up some space for
| competition.
| ndiddy wrote:
| It also allowed Adobe to wipe out competition that was
| targeted towards the home market (why would you pay $99 for
| Paint Shop Pro when you could pirate Photoshop for free?)
| prox wrote:
| I have been moving to the Affinity Suite and never have I
| missed anything from Adobe. I love to work in it and I don't
| have to pay per month.
| zippergz wrote:
| I've attempted this transition a few times, and keep failing.
| It's not so much that the apps are inferior than that my
| habits with Adobe are so ingrained. It's very hard to force
| myself to keep using Affinity long enough to get used to it,
| when I have the corresponding Adobe app _right there_ and I
| know I can get my task done in a fraction of the time.
| Logically I know that this is short-term thinking, and the
| investment in switching would be worth it. But in the moment
| when I need to get something done, it 's tough.
| detritus wrote:
| I'm in your camp, but still have paid-for copies of the
| Affinity Suite because despite once been a total PS and AI
| - and by extension Adobe itself - fanboy and having used
| them since the mid-nineties, I now absolutely loathe Adobe
| and its subscription model.
|
| Unfortunately for me, Illustrator (which along with Firefox
| is the software open all day long, every day) is too
| muscle-memoried. I've had it set up to my perfection for a
| decade or more, and it feels like it'd take about the same
| again to veer the fuckwit supertanker that is my brain
| towards Affinityland.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| That's odd. I've found the keyboard shortcuts and tools
| to be similar enough (v and a being the most used) and
| annoying UX things, like every nudge of the cursor keys
| adds an undo step, have been done properly instead.
| prox wrote:
| You probably fall in the advanced or expert category, and
| what I did is simply do a few key elements from things I
| was able to do easily in PS and practice it in Affinity
| (for instance certain layer actions or layouts)
|
| A few months in Affinity and you already are saving money,
| if that's important to you.
| Wistar wrote:
| I am in your camp, too. My muscle-memory investment in the
| Adobe product line, especially Photoshop, Illustrator and
| After-Effects, is approaching 30 years old -- more than
| half my life -- and that really locks me in for
| professional, get-it-done-now, reasons.
| packetlost wrote:
| How does Affinity Photo compare to LightRoom? I've tried
| everything from Luminar, to CaptureOne and nothing really
| works quite as well as LightRoom for various reasons.
| alexdeloy wrote:
| I love all the Affinity products so far but the RAW part of
| Affinity Photo is where the suite falls a bit short in my
| opinion.
|
| Things I miss most when compared to Lightroom are:
|
| - the ability to quickly create circular and gradient masks
| and apply a set of setting to them
|
| - Edits are not saved into a .xmp file like Lightroom does.
| Once you developed your image and closed the Raw editor,
| there is no way to apply the exact same settings again if
| you want to tweak something later.
| prox wrote:
| I think a Lightroom competitor was on their list (but for
| a while now, hope it arrives soon!)
| prox wrote:
| It has a special workspace for editing RAW and can do most
| things Lightroom does. However it isn't a streamlined
| experience, so I usually use one program to star and sort
| in directories and Photo to do the final edits. Darktable
| is what I use for sorting.
| [deleted]
| system2 wrote:
| VMWare Workstation Player 16 + Windows 10 + Cracked Photoshop +
| Unity Enabled Session. Solves it for most people.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Adobe is one of a long line of companies who appear to sell
| products as their bread and butter, but actually get a large
| portion of revenue through ad analytics and data offerings.
| smeyer wrote:
| Can you break that down a bit for those of us less-informed?
| Looking at an earnings report[0] it looks like the vast
| majority of their revenue (about 90%) comes from
| "subscription", which I assumed was mostly for their products
| sold via subscription models. Is there somewhere that breaks
| down how much of that subscription revenue is from ad analytics
| and data?
|
| [0] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-
| Reports-...
| TrevorJ wrote:
| If you look here, you can see that in 2019 29% of their
| revenue came from the digital experience division, which is
| described as: "subscriptions to Adobe Experience Cloud, a
| cross-channel marketing optimization tool that includes
| analytics, targeting, campaign management, content delivery
| and commerce enablement."
|
| https://dashboards.trefis.com/data/companies/VMW/no-login-
| re...
|
| I suspect that the share has probably grown since then, but I
| don't know that for sure.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| What's that old saying ? Reports of my death are greatly
| exaggerated.
|
| Whether it's Adobe, Apple, Bloomberg, Microsoft or any other
| similar company. The fact is those companies have such an
| enormous moat that no minor competitor is ever going to get any
| serious traction.
|
| In the specific case of Adobe. Figma, Canva,
| $name_your_competitor are, frankly NEVER going to get any serious
| traction. Just look how many decades it took Adobe to finally
| unseat QuarkXPress, and that was two Goliaths battling out !
|
| Why do I say that ?
|
| First, the old adage "time is money". If you are a business who
| employs designers, you want them to work in an efficient manner.
| You give them the tools they trained with. You give them the
| tools they used at previous employers. For designers, that is
| Adobe. The same goes for DTP and AdobeIndesign, or Video Editors
| and Adobe Premiere. Not giving a designer Adobe is a bit like
| telling a techie he can't install ping.
|
| Second, collaboration. Your designers, publishers and video
| editors will be collaborating with others. They'll be importing
| and exporting files all over the place. Sticking with Adobe
| removes problems, and hence wasting time troubleshooting, "time
| is money".
|
| Finally, integration. If you have used Adobe Creative Cloud
| remotely seriously, you will know how awesome it is. Adobe have
| done a spectacular job at cross-product integration with
| extensive native support. You can take Adobe Photoshop and Adobe
| Illustrator files and pull them straight into InDesign for page
| layout. You can be working on a video in Adobe Premiere and from
| within Adobe Premiere, you can throw the audio into Adobe
| Audition, manipulate it, and Adobe Premiere will pick up the
| changes without you needing to lift a finger.
|
| That, my friends, is why you should take talk of minor
| competitors of Adobe claiming they are "winning" with a generous
| pinch of salt.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| It's anecdotal, but I've seen Figma become almost the de facto
| standard for web design over the last few years, whilst Canva
| is massively democratising design such that you don't even need
| to work with professional designer for your day to day designs.
|
| I agree Adobe will be sticky and nobody is suggesting they will
| die any time soon, but these tools are so good and so widely
| adopted that I don't see how they can't eventually take a bite
| out of Adobe.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I was of this mind for quite a while. I hate changing tools.
|
| I do a lot of front-end dev work that involves translating non-
| technical designer's layouts into templates for a CMS.
|
| Figma is way, way more efficient for me to use than Ai or PS.
|
| Time is indeed money.
|
| Most of our team isn't bought in to any specific package... I
| have to be able to take deliverables from a wide variety of
| systems, so it wasn't a big deal to add another system on my
| side of thing.
|
| On the designers side, he likes it just as well, and the
| familiarity is the only hurdle. However, it's not like having
| to re-understand design, it's just another tool.
|
| In the end, that's all it takes... because I don't care what
| general standard for cross-industry design is. I remember when
| it was Fireworks. All I care about is the specific tool chain
| that we use.
|
| So, yeah, Figma isn't probably going to become some cross-
| industry standard, but it so much easier to use for the limited
| tasks we use it for that it's winning at our very local,
| agency, level.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| As you yourself admit "for the limited tasks we use it for".
|
| And there I certainly agree with you.
|
| If you can work in a relative silo with a limited number of
| tools, then sure, there may well be scope for shopping
| around, just like you did.
|
| But once you're in an environment where you may use multiple
| tools that come under Adobe's remit, then its likely better
| to stick with Adobe and get the benefit of the cross-
| integration.
|
| For example, a friend of mine runs a small business, they
| have someone on their team whose day job is something else,
| but is good with design and has become the office's go to
| designer.
|
| In the course of an average year, that person will regularly
| use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for all manner of
| graphics tasks. They will use InDesign to create print and
| electronic documents for dissemination. They will
| occasionally use Adobe Premiere and Adobe Audition to edit
| videos and podcasts. And they store photos in Adobe
| Lightroom.
|
| Even as a small, non-design focused business, its not
| difficult to get your money's worth from Adobe.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| And just for context, the documents that I get in Figma cost
| in the high 4-figures to mid 5-figures to create before I get
| them; the folks using these tools aren't picking them because
| they are cheap.
| indymike wrote:
| What is interesting is that the article left out Adobe XD,
| which is their product that should be competing with Figma or
| Sketch. I've tried to use it a few times, and well, honestly,
| it doesn't measure up (it could be that I'm stuck on the bottom
| of the learning curve, but that's a problem, too).
|
| Tools like Figma, Canva and Sketch are enabling workflows where
| all that integration doesn't matter. For example, I'm not going
| to take a bunch of UI prototypes and polish the audio with
| Audition or bitmap edit with Photoshop.
|
| Finally, tools like Affinity, Da Vinci and so on are showing
| that smaller budgets focused on specific workflows can deliver
| a competitive product. I have a Creative Cloud subscription. I
| also bought Affinity. Why? Because Designer and Publisher save
| my team time vs. Adobe. And that includes import and export.
| We're not a print design house, so all the print specific
| tooling doesn't really matter in our all-digital, made for the
| screen, RGB world.
| dorkwood wrote:
| I think things might be shifting more than you realize. All the
| designers at my current workplace use Figma. The workplace
| before that was Sketch. It's only the older members of the team
| who have any Photoshop skills, and they rarely seem to use them
| these days.
|
| Having said that, I don't think this matters so much for Adobe.
| They're well aware that professionals are dropping their tools.
| It's part of their plan, even. All their comms these days focus
| on "the democratization of creative tools" -- they make more
| money selling subscriptions to hobbyists than they ever did
| selling to pros.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Counter-point: I used Adobe products as a professional designer
| since before CS1, right up until switching to Sketch in 2015.
|
| The moment I used Sketch, I knew I'd never use Illustrator or
| Photoshop for work again. Then, a few years later, I used Figma
| for the first time and realized I'd never use Sketch again if I
| could help it.
|
| The point is, at least in the realm of UI/UX design, the
| competition has leapfrogged Adobe. XD is a distant third^1, and
| you'd have to add every Creative Suite product together to get
| to second place. So, they've already lost that race, and the
| trend seems to my mind accelerating rather than slowing down.
|
| I don't think the argument that designers experienced with
| Creative Suite will be hesitant to switch holds up. I'm the
| oldest working designer I know, and like I said above, I jumped
| ship in like five minutes of working with superior tools. I
| don't know anybody younger than me who has any loyalty
| whatsoever to Adobe; quite the opposite, Adobe seems creaky,
| and old-fashioned in a "I can't believe you used to use that,
| Grandpa" way.
|
| ^1 https://uxtools.co/tools/design
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I have a question about this - does Sketch/Figma support
| creating designs that fall outside the current flat design
| trends?
|
| Can it do things like this?
|
| https://image.freepik.com/free-vector/hud-ui-gui-
| futuristic-...
|
| Or this?
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/09/c0/7b09c038e0c644338a9a.
| ..
|
| Genuinely asking, because these are the sorts of things that
| I have long used Photoshop for, but if there's a new, better
| tool, I would like to take a look.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The first example would be easier than the second, but yes,
| you could technically do both. The second one has more
| pixel-based textures (like the drawings), and you could
| certainly use those as layer fills, though I wouldn't
| advise trying to draw them there. I wouldn't say that
| either Sketch or Figma handle pixel artwork particularly
| well, because they're both optimized for vectors, but you
| can import and manipulate that kind of artwork (move,
| resize, crop, change color properties, etc.) fairly well.
|
| It might be worth checking out Affinity Photo and Affinity
| Designer as lighter, cheaper alternatives that handle
| pixels better. But PS is still the best tool for this,
| sure.
| sogen wrote:
| For first link: Yes, can be done easily.
|
| For the textures in the second link: You can go a long way
| in Figma and just use stock-photo images like wood for
| textures. You'll still need a bitmap-based app like
| Photoshop for the bubble, and import them into Figma
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Thank you for the info, this is helpful!
| ilamont wrote:
| This is the same story for every media creation tool, which goes
| hand in hand with advances in technology. Editing audio used to
| require all kinds of expensive hardware and software, now you can
| get the basics done (and sometimes a lot more) with Bandlab and
| Garageband on your phone. Same story with putting printed words
| on paper, video creation, etc.
|
| There are a couple of interesting things about Canva, though.
|
| First, it's a VC funded startup so the motivation behind it is
| not just ease of use, it's profitable exit - probably by Adobe.
| This does not give me confidence that Canva will work for me 2,
| 3, or 5 years down the road when someone screws up the M&A or
| deliberately sinks the acquired product.
|
| Second, Canva hits that non-designer quadrant and new use cases
| mentioned in TFA pretty well, but it is not useful for many
| advanced use cases. I use Canva every week for my own business,
| but I also depend on a paid subscription to Adobe Acrobat to do
| things with PDFs that free tools can't match or can't do well.
| tengbretson wrote:
| What's Figma?
| foxthatruns wrote:
| FIGMA NUTS
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Sorry to be that guy, but have you done a quick google?
| domano wrote:
| I think this is a pun related to "Whats Ligma?" and the
| inappropriate answer to it :)
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| It's a new-ish design tool that is cloud-native. It's kind of
| like Sketch but as a web app.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's not surprising at all. Adobe, as most of us predicted they
| would completely just give up and real innovation or advancement
| once they went subscription. Why spend a huge amounts of money on
| progress when every designer, photographer, artist, editor, game
| developer, VFX artist in the world is forced to pay for $50 a
| month.
|
| They've dropped a small handful of extra features over the past 8
| years but also during that time their software has stagnated and
| rotted. They didn't move with technology so most of it is all
| single core constrained and barely uses the GPU so doesn't feel
| any faster today than it did 8 years ago and in some cases parts
| of it actually feel slower as bitrot has set in.
|
| After Effects went from a program that felt almost like magic to
| something that can't even play it's image sequence preview and
| sound without dropping out rendering it a complete frustration to
| use, again this all worked great on a Core Duo 2 iMac 10 years
| ago.
|
| Every single part of Adobes business is there for the taking and
| with only small amounts of effort you can provide something that
| will take them years to catch up to if they ever manage at all,
| look at XD they started that when sketch was eating their lunch
| so they started making XD and they move so slowly that by the
| time it was even remotely viable it was already leapfrogged by
| Figma and now Adobe will never be relevant in that space again.
| wyxuan wrote:
| Used to use sketch, moved to Invision and finally landed on figma
| - and heck I'm not even a UI/UX designer.
|
| I love how I can put up nice designs relatively quickly without
| having to learn the dazzling array of menus and tools found in
| Adobe.
| defenestration wrote:
| We are also fan of Figma. It's easy to work together inside the
| same design and the results are easy to test and present. But
| be warned of vendor lock-in! You can't use .fig files in other
| programs. Before you move your complete Sketch design library
| into Figma, think carefully. They make switching to Figma easy,
| but switching away hard. Converting your complete Figma library
| can be done with xd2sketch.com for hundreds to thousands of
| dollars. Our policy is that we only make one-offs in Figma and
| delete them afterwards.
| cesarvarela wrote:
| The usability of Canva is exquisite.
|
| Seems limited but it is limited in all the right places. Saves so
| much busy work when for example designing a presentation vs
| PowerPoint or Slides. You if just want to get shit done just use
| Canva.
|
| Big omission not mentioning Affinity products, excellent
| Photoshop and Illustrator replacements for a one and only
| beautiful payment of $25.
| adontz wrote:
| Not sure why they compare to Photoshop and not XD.
| nness wrote:
| XD was a tactical response to Sketch and Figma's encroachment
| of Photoshop as an UI/UX tool. Whilst XD is now a better target
| for a like-for-like comparison, from a historical perspective,
| Adobe is on the back-foot trying to re-capture the disciplines
| which no longer use their product.
| oneshoe wrote:
| This. I just used adobe XD for the first time and I actually
| truly enjoyed it. I'm not an Adobe fan boy - there just
| happened to be a sale on the Adobe cloud suite that I bought
| and XD came with it.
| ape4 wrote:
| Adobe is going acquire one of them
| nness wrote:
| My gut says the same. The costs of trying to scale Adobe XD to
| the same utility as the best-of-breeds will be known pretty
| soon, and Adobe will have two options, grow or acquire, and a
| price against both. It'll be straightforward thereafter.
| polytely wrote:
| On the photoshop/illustrator front I've been really happy with
| Affinity Photo and Designer, they are good enough that I haven't
| really missed any functionality, they certainly feel more stable
| (looking at you illustrator) and they are way cheaper.
|
| I wish they would make something that could replace Adobe XD,
| because adobe XD is terribly slow in adding features and there is
| a lot of room for improvement there.
|
| At first I thought XD was great, but as the app I've been
| designing has grown in size I keep encountering more and more
| warts.
| dekerta wrote:
| +1 for Affinity Designer. I was stuck on an old version of
| Adobe Fireworks for years because I refused to give in to their
| SaaS model. The Affinity suite has been worth every penny, and
| I actually _own_ the software, which is great
| macando wrote:
| Creating animatioms in XD is awesome. Haven't had that much fun
| in years. As a tool it misses a lot of features present in
| Sketch and Figma.
| wdb wrote:
| I just wished Figma would run offline when not having internet
| without the need to login every day. One of the reasons I keep
| using Sketch.
|
| Currently, it's less of a problem because you can't travel much
| but before, for me, it was a pain to use Figma on planes, or
| trains.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| It took a lot for me to give up trusty ol' Photoshop for design.
| I pretty much built my career playing with and learning
| Photoshop. But they were years behind Sketch and then named their
| competitor "XD".
|
| What a terrible name. App didn't seem great either. And I really
| really hate the whole Creative Cloud licensing thing that's
| always running in my menubar as well as their strange bundle
| pricing.
|
| In the meantime, Figma quietly came along and somehow built a web
| app that had such good collaboration and sign up/licensing that
| it somehow makes me OK with using a web app.
| pentagrama wrote:
| The web was a big "feature" to allow Figma succeed over Adobe.
|
| In Figma you design and changes instantly for everyone, just sent
| a link and anyone (designers and non-designers) can
| see/collaborate the latest version because is web based.
|
| Adobe sleep many years bloating Photoshop with features that try
| to cover UI design needs and fail, finally releases Adobe XD but
| is miles away of Figma, in Adobe XD today, you make changes in a
| file and have to go to Share > Update link everytime, and then
| the web based version of the file is updated. Is crazy. Sketch
| sleep on that too.
|
| Also Figma was clever to make prototyping and developer handoff a
| core features pretty quickly, now they have a polished "trifecta"
| with UI desgin + Prototying + Developer handoff.
|
| Here a good resource to compare UI design tools (and more)
| https://uxtools.co/tools/design
|
| I'm wondering whats the next step to smooth even more the gap
| between visual design and development.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Figma's dev handoff is still pretty bad though, especially
| around images.
| ENGNR wrote:
| True, it's pretty hidden and frustrating
|
| But even then, being able to do it at all exactly when you're
| ready, is just night and day better compared to having to ask
| the designer for the file they forgot for the nth time
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I assume they helped grow new markets and Adobe had to pivot into
| these "new" markets. All the old users of Adobe are still the
| users of Adobe. But most new entrants have grown up with new
| approaches like Canva etc..... I remember when GIMP was the only
| "credible" alternative to Adobe (acquiring competitors like
| Macromedia etc). Now there are dozens of alternatives.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > All the old users of Adobe are still the users of Adobe
|
| That's definitely not true. Some niches like photo manipulation
| are still Adobe, but Adobe tools used to be the goto for Web
| Design and now they're not.
|
| Closer to the truth is that Adobe stopped development on their
| tool in this area (Fireworks), which opened up the market for
| competitors (primarily Sketch, and the later Figma), who did
| indeed bring their own innovations. And only later realised
| their mistake.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Adobe keep doing really, really stupid things.
|
| The latest Photoshop update removed some of the tools from
| the toolbar. Some of the tools have been there for _decades_
| , and regular users have their locations in muscle memory.
|
| When you're done wondering why you've lost your way in a
| product you've used since the 90s, you can get the tools back
| by by Googling and changing a magic setting in the prefs.
|
| But it's hard to be too offensive about a company that can do
| something like that in the name of "development", while
| leaving many of Photoshop's more annoying warts unattended.
| drewrbaker wrote:
| Adobe have XD which is very similar to Figma. We use it at my
| agency.
| perardi wrote:
| I've used Photoshop since before you some of you people were
| born. _(I'm 37, but I started very, very early.)_ I breathe
| Photoshop. I live in Photoshop. I am like a surgeon with
| Photoshop.
|
| And the vast majority of the time, using Photoshop for a design
| task is gross overkill, or it's poorly suited to the task in
| subtle ways.
|
| It never felt right for UI design. They've made nice improvements
| _(hello, Artboards)_ , but it never "feels" quite right. Am I
| using the right color space and management settings? Can I
| override that symbol? How do I edit that global color? Oh god,
| did I rasterize that layer!?
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Not only that, but the SaaS model has not netted any 'killer'
| features at all. I haven't found a new feature indispensable
| since at least CS2.
| paxys wrote:
| It's the other way around. Photoshop hit the limit for what
| people needed out of a photo editor, and when they realized
| fewer and fewer customers were paying for new versions
| anymore pivoting to a subscription model was the only way to
| ensure a revenue stream. It's the exact same reason why
| Microsoft started shoving Office 365 down everyone's throats.
| What new killer feature has Word added in the last 10 years?
| dylan604 wrote:
| content aware fill
| TrevorJ wrote:
| It's neat, but I can't say I have ever needed it in
| production.
| dylan604 wrote:
| if you do compositing and background replacement, it's a
| huge time saver
| omnimus wrote:
| Introduced in cs6 which was before subscription model.
|
| I would say biggest Photoshop feature since subscription
| was GPU acceleration enhancements. And i guess now the AI
| image scaling which other software already does better.
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| In the same boat. I started using PS in 1998. Never felt right
| for UI design, but nothing has ever really felt right for me,
| even Figma/Sketch/etc. I've tried them all.
|
| I don't know precisely what I'm looking for, but they aren't
| it.
| dorkwood wrote:
| I feel like the future might involve writing a little bit of
| code, so you can more easily link properties together and
| that sort of thing. Maybe a node-based workflow, I'm not
| sure.
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| Totally agreed. No one has explored textual interfaces for
| designers, because everyone assumes "well designers are
| visual thinkers so they must draw". I think that's somewhat
| reasonable but it's also blunt and obtuse.
|
| As it happens, I'm currently creating a platform-agnostic
| DSL specifically for designers. The goal is to give them a
| parametric language through which they can communicate
| their designs using their own mental models and verbiage.
| boraoztunc wrote:
| Same here, 36. I've been using Adobe products since the
| beginning of my relation with computers, I guess started with
| Dreamweaver, and now it is so hard to quit, as I use almost all
| the CC apps professionally, to make my living.
|
| I mentioned here before on another post, it is mostly because
| of the long-years offline archive, mockups, and all the
| resources I can find easily, both offline and online. Recently
| I get my courage and decided to end my subscription, at the
| last stage of the process they proposed a two-month free, so I
| took it. What a shame, but I hope I'll decide the same after
| these two months.
|
| Adobe is really what Steve Jobs described back than; "rapid
| energy consumption, computer crashes, poor performance on
| mobile devices, abysmal security, lack of touch support."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
| pcurve wrote:
| I've been using it since v1.0 before the days of layers and
| editable text. And 1 step undo was all we had. I still remember
| seeing Knoll brothers named prominently every time you boot up
| the application. Good times :)
| didibus wrote:
| I heard by a few UX designer that they prefer Adobe XD as a
| design tool actually over Figma, but the cost is why they use
| Figma instead.
|
| I find it a glaring ommision from the article analysis that it
| didn't even mention Adobe XD anywhere? It seems to me maybe
| newcomers are only competing against price and nothing else?
| sevencolors wrote:
| Yeah, I found it strange they didn't even compare XD. Which is
| the direct competitor to Figma/Sketch.
|
| Also the cost for just XD is similar to that of Figma/Sketch
|
| Free Plan / ~$10 monthly plan
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I'm surprised at the choice of competition named in the article.
| I'd say the strongest contender to Adobe's core business is
| Affinity with their desktop software suite.
| doogerdog wrote:
| I agree. Affinity started very strong and just keeps getting
| better. Adobe's subscription BS is going to hurt them in the
| long game.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I love affinity products but I wonder about their plan long
| term. With the current pay once, get updates for free model
| they will run out of customers at some point. Adobe sold
| upgrades back in the day, but that is not a possible path for
| Affinity, at least not if they mainly sell through the Mac
| App Store.
| omnimus wrote:
| Well i am sure they are already preparing some form of v 2
| thats going to be such upgrade.
|
| My bet for features would be 1. Plugins API/scripting 2.
| Better panel management
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Something that you sometimes see is developers offering a
| bundle that includes v1 and v2 of an app where the price is
| (v1 cost + "upgrade fee"), which is automatically
| discounted to just the upgrade fee. This definitely works
| on iOS, so I figure it would also work on macOS.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I saw that done but it definitely feels hacky.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Affinity apps are professional-grade and feature-rich but they
| don't match Adobe apps feature-by-feature. This is perfectly
| understandable, and the Affinity team are not trying to make
| clones of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. But some users
| are clamouring for their must-have feature from
| Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign to make it into the Affinity
| apps. It will be impossible to satisfy all users and some won't
| switch.
|
| The one Adobe app that has no rival is After Effects. DaVinci
| Resolve has motion design tools, but nothing to match the sheer
| features of After Effects (not to mention the vast ecosystem of
| plugins and the huge number of tutorials).
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I agree that Affinity deserves mention here, since they are
| another player. Just slightly different than the other two and
| meeting a need in a variation of the theme. I do some graphic
| design and photo editing, but not enough to justify the large
| recurring price of Adobe products, so I went with Affinity and
| I've loved it. I'm not a profession artist, so I'd only ever
| really heard of Adobe, but went looking for something else
| simply because of cost.
|
| EDIT: I think the main reason they don't mention Affinity is
| because Affinity capitalized on Adobe's price increase; the
| price increase is mentioned as a positive for Adobe's stock
| price in the article, though a lot of customers dislike it. It
| is an interesting case of Figma and Canva having better
| functionality for certain segments, and Affinity having better
| price to capabilities ratio for other segments. When Adobe was
| more of the only game in town, it was fine, but now others are
| carving into the space and competing on variations, providing
| better alternatives to different needs or prices.
| polote wrote:
| Related from same author a few months ago
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23584954 "Why Figma wins"
| macando wrote:
| _Changing customer needs are the largest source of entropy in
| markets. When customer needs rapidly change, there is less
| advantage in being an incumbent. Instead, legacy companies are
| left with all the overhead and a product that no longer is what
| customers want.
|
| There are many causes of changing customer needs. Often there are
| new and growing segments of customers with different use cases.
| Existing products may work for them, but they aren't ideal. The
| features they care about and how they value them are very
| different from the customers the legacy company is used to.
| Companies resist changing core parts of their product for every
| new use case since it's costly in work, money, and attention_.
|
| This is one of the best product articles ever written.
|
| All planets aligned for Figma:
|
| - Companies big and small acknowledging the importance of UI/UX
| design resulting in more and more designers entering the
| workforce.
|
| - Remote work going mainstream pushing more people toward online
| collaboration tools.
|
| - Web technologies progressing and enabling desktop-like
| experience inside a browser.
|
| Resulting in designers, managers, customers all loving Figma.
| It's a game changer and it will be a bigger success story than
| Slack.
| skd-fs wrote:
| This resembles the era of Salesforce vs Oracle. Having everything
| on the cloud (Salesforce) versus having expensive in-house
| systems maintained by Oracle/SAP.
|
| Not surprising at this point as Adobe is a mature and slow moving
| company. What innovations have they done in the last 5 years
| besides closing down Flash?
| villasv wrote:
| Adobe products are not stale. Photoshop has already
| successfully incorporated some of the recent research on image
| processing using GANs and it's getting ever more powerful.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| There's nothing in Photoshop since CS2 that I need, and I use
| it every single week. In fact, with every update they seem to
| either break something, or make the tool worse. I've use the
| tool for 20 years. I don't WANT to be forced to upgrade to
| the newest version where some shortcut is inexplicably
| changed for no good reason. They need to stop trying to add
| new keys to a piano. Let us play the instrument as we learned
| it.
| villasv wrote:
| I agreee with everything you said, but none of it is
| relevant in the context of comparing Photoshop to an
| obsolete database.
|
| My point was not that it's UX is improving, only that the
| technology isn't stale.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I mean, if the only features that get added aren't
| useful, then isn't that actually _worse_ than being
| stale? It 's an antipattern at that point.
| villasv wrote:
| Useful _to you_
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I am centered pretty squarely in the middle of their use
| case, so I would be relatively surprised if I'm an
| outlier.
| alexashka wrote:
| This is like saying Clojure is taking on Java, and winning.
|
| It solves _some_ problems some people have and that 's great. It
| isn't moving the needle in any meaningful way.
| jordemort wrote:
| I believe it. We needed to make some coupons for the kid's Easter
| eggs this year. Google led me to Adobe Spark Post. I couldn't
| figure out how to get anything done and the app immediately
| started trying to upsell me for some sort of subscription. My
| more social-media-savvy wife told me to download Canva instead. I
| did, and got what I needed done easily in a couple of minutes,
| and then I deleted Spark Post.
| paulcole wrote:
| I think you are selling short your social-media-savviness. You
| seem pretty capable here on HN which fits my definition of
| social media.
| jordemort wrote:
| Perhaps, but she's done it from the side of managing the
| social media presence for a business; I have not. I don't
| need any design assistance to post on HN, but I was going for
| something flashier than "Verdana on beige" for the Easter
| eggs.
| paulcole wrote:
| My point was more that calling someone social-media-savvy
| on HN is usually code for (at best) someone who works in
| marketing who does something that's "not real work." Not
| accusing you of that (and your explanation makes perfect
| sense) but trying to keep in mind that HN in itself is
| social media and a marketing tool for a VC fund.
| [deleted]
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| I really like this kind of market analysis (discussing levels of
| abstraction as the primary variant in market differentiation),
| because it's been my focus of thought for the past few years.
|
| I actually think that Figma is still somewhat legacy in its
| model, because it still relies on the concept of a designer as
| akin to an illustrator. Give them a canvas, and some tools, and
| let them draw. No one has attempted to deviate from that model,
| and I think there could be a wealth of opportunity outside of it.
| Nkuna wrote:
| _Switches to Morpheus ' voice_
|
| What if I told you you can use ANY Adobe software, procured
| legitimately, in perpetuity without using cracked/pirated copies;
| without paying a dime?
|
| No shenanigans like modifying or deleting files, changing your
| PC's clock, etc. Just using the OS's system tools[ _]. It 's so
| obvious, I'm certain a sizable number of Adobe users do this.
|
| _Obviously outlining how would alert Adobe and I'm not sure I
| want to risk that.
| amelius wrote:
| Which OS?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Probably Windows Sandbox or one of the other Hyper-V based
| out-of-the-box VM solutions.
| krmmalik wrote:
| I think Adobe is getting beat on a number of fronts, not just
| what Figma and Canva are addressing. There is a slow but steady
| rise in the number of people moving away from Adobe Premiere to
| DaVinci Resolve for example.
|
| Adobe have been short-sighted with their very expensive
| subscription model which has resulted in people seeking out
| alternatives. Sure it was very profitable for them in the short-
| term but at what long-term cost?
|
| It has done nothing but foster resentment in even its most loyal
| user base.
|
| Personally I can't wait for mature Adobe After Effects
| alternative, and then I'm gone for good.
| maxerickson wrote:
| $600 a year isn't expensive for software for a US professional
| worker.
|
| I understand that there's lots of people that don't fit that
| description. That they would also like to use Adobe's tools is
| perhaps not entirely a sign of decline.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| You have everyone arguing about whether $600 is too much for
| photoshop, but everyone should note that you can also get it
| for $10/mo. It doesn't get you all the other adobe products,
| just photoshop and lightroom, but that's fine for a ton of
| people.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The post I replied to was talking about multiple Abode
| products, so I don't think the focus on Photoshop is my
| fault.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Oh yeah definitely not blaming you, just trying to do a
| PSA for the discussion. People are probably focusing on
| it because the article emphasized it.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Depending on your use case, you can get similar products
| for a one-time purchase of less than $40.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's a lot for teenagers and students. People prefer to use
| software they know, and if you keep your creative software
| from people in their formative years then you are going to
| struggle.
|
| This might be less of a problem if they hadn't also slashed
| education discounts (pupils and students used to get 80-90%
| discount, presumably to discourage buying used or pirating)
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Exactly. The SaaS model largely lacks a gameplan for long
| term sustainability.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| How so? The SaaS model lets you price segment more
| flexibly. You can do a free (or very cheap) loss leader
| version that has a more limited feature-set (that
| students & hobbyists don't need) and a non-commercial
| license. Charge more for larger shops that need
| collaborative/more professional features.
|
| Just because Adobe is doing the transition poorly (albeit
| you wouldn't know from their share price), I don't
| necessarily buy that it's a fundamental flaw in the SaaS
| business model. Indeed Figma & Canva are both SaaS
| companies themselves. As MSFT has shown, it doesn't take
| much for a giant to come back. I don't think Adobe is
| particularly cash-strapped so they can weather out a
| bunch of mistakes/internal realignment.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Their financials have done great since they switched.
| Strong growth in revenue, gross profit and net income.
| vendiddy wrote:
| This may be short-term growth at the expense of long-term
| sustainability.
|
| The younger generation will reach for the more affordable
| options like Figma, Sketch, Canva. Everyone will know how
| to use these tools a lot better so this these will become
| the new standards in the workplace.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Right. I was explicitly responding to OPs claim that SaaS
| lacks long term sustainability because Adobe's approach
| seems like it could kill their long-term userbase.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Also, as an individual having your work locked behind a
| subscription fee is more than a little scary. For a company
| it's no big deal to have subscription autorenew in
| perpetuity, but individuals sometimes need to cut costs,
| and because of that subscription fees start to look like a
| ball and chain.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> $600 a year isn't expensive for software for a US
| professional worker.
|
| Let's be crystal clear here.
|
| $600 is the subscription for ALL of the Adobe Apps. That
| means you're paying $600 for what? 15-20 different apps? That
| means you're averaging around $40 per app. Which is roughly
| the same cost per month as other competitors products. Adobe
| XD is $9.99/month which is the same cost as Sketch $99/year
| and has more functionality then Sketch. If you toss in the
| additional $8/month for InVision, then XD is now cheaper. A
| lot of orgs like having one vendor for all of those apps as
| opposed to having multiple subs for several different
| companies.
|
| I'm no Adobe apologist, but let's make sure when people are
| tossing around the $600 cost, we're comparing apples to
| apples. You can hack on them for their lack luster customer
| support, new versions not working on newer PC's and
| completely ignoring Linux users - but arguing about price?
| Not really a good enough reason not to use them in my
| opinion. Over the past few years, the newer apps they've come
| out with, they're keeping their pricing competitive: XD vs
| Sketch/InVision vs Figma.
|
| Their pricing has also slowly come down as more competitors
| come into the market. I agree, I don't see them declining,
| they just need to stay competitive now that they are a number
| of legit products to compete with several of their products.
| mox1 wrote:
| I think the better way to look at it: Is $600 / year /
| employee enough of an incentive for competitors to step up?
|
| I think lots of software companies( and entrepreneurs) are
| seeing Adobe's revenue stream and asking "Whats the moat?,
| What's stopping us from building the top 5-10 Adobe features
| and charging $300 / year?"
|
| It would seem that Adobe doesn't have much of a moat and that
| perhaps their software will be commoditized as we move
| forward.
| bdcravens wrote:
| There are plenty of "US professional workers" who do not need
| all of Photoshop's functionality. I've found Pixelmator meets
| all of my needs, for a one time purchase of less than $40.
| The moment that changes, I can purchase Photoshop; doing so
| now would be a premature optimization. I believe many still
| use Adobe products merely because they accepted that as a
| default.
| coldcode wrote:
| I use Affinity Photo, and previously used Pixelmator; I
| don't miss any of Adobe's overpriced products.
| maxerickson wrote:
| _I believe many still use Adobe products merely because
| they accepted that as a default._
|
| This supports the notion that it isn't particularly
| expensive!
|
| I didn't say "it's the cheapest" or "it's the best value",
| I said it wasn't expensive, and qualified the remark with a
| statement about the group of users I believe that Adobe
| targets.
|
| People are replying that they think it's a bad decision to
| ignore user acquisition from less expensive licensing
| options, but that is separate from whether Adobe is having
| any trouble finding users (they appear to be printing
| money).
| bdcravens wrote:
| There's plenty of power users, but I think Adobe makes
| plenty of money off of users who don't need the
| product(s), but don't seek lower priced alternatives out
| of ignorance or apathy. The same could be said of things
| like computers and fitness equipment.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I am so glad that only US-based professional workers are
| considered worthy of playing with Big Boys' Toys like Adobe
| products. /s
| maxerickson wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are being sarcastic about how a mega-
| corp approaches business decisions. Of course they do what
| makes the most money.
|
| Part of my point is that people would do well to consider
| how Adobe approaches the situation before they expend a
| bunch of emotional energy wishing it were otherwise.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| That's not the point. The point is that Adobe are being
| extractive assholes, and they know it. Setting the price
| point this high basically communicates that they consider
| anyone unable to pay this much a pleb, where all of their
| competitors don't. This is quite insulting, considering
| that we're talking about a graphic manipulation program
| rather than some hyper-specialised piece of enterprise
| financial markets software that only a few can use to its
| fullest.
| Nkuna wrote:
| > Of course they do what makes the most money.
|
| Launching features on iOS/macOS first is a business
| decision that makes the most money (probably) but it's
| this very reason I slowly started replacing Adobe
| software.
|
| Adobe XD, especially in the beginning, would leave
| Android and Windows users in a lurch focusing their
| efforts primarily on Mac/iPhone users.
|
| For instance, real time mobile preview via USB (MISSION
| CRITICAL!!!!!), a feature requested December 16, 2016 1
| was implemented on iOS on February 04, 2019. Worse still,
| this feature works on iDevices but only with a Mac. As of
| last December when I last checked, this was still not
| possible on Windows for either mobile platforms.
|
| Sure, as late as 2009, users were evenly split between
| Mac and Windows. Prior, it was more Mac users. It has
| since changed with majority of Adobe users on Windows. 2
| So this steadfast commitment to Apple users makes no
| sense when the majority of your users are on Windows!
|
| Switched to Figma once I started using Linux as my daily
| driver.
|
| 1. https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums/353007-adobe-xd-
| feature...
|
| 2. https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/adobe-cc-os-
| market-...
| ska wrote:
| > $600 a year isn't expensive for software for a US
| professional worker.
|
| It's expensive for what a lot of those workers use it for. In
| the pre-SAAS days, companies would handle this by having an
| few license and not necessarily following the upgrade churn.
|
| Going SAAS only "solved" that for Adobe, but disgruntled that
| user base that is now no longer served. This obviously
| creates market room.
|
| $600 is nothing for a worker who is going to be in a software
| an appreciable part of every week. When it's $600 here, $300
| there, $1000 here for stuff they only use a few times a
| month? Not a good deal.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >but disgruntled that user base
|
| The user base that is disgruntled are the ones that would
| have been using the cracked versions anyways, so there's no
| monetary loss to adobe at all in that regard.
|
| I get being a poor student that can't afford the software
| that you eventually need to know how to use. I grew up
| learning Adobe products from those cracked versions.
| However, now that I'm a working stiff, I pay for my
| software. I can't think of the last time I used a cracked
| version. Everyone has to start somewhere. Adobe now gives
| full version access via trials for 30-days.
| Nkuna wrote:
| Trial period was shortened to a week in May 2016. See
| https://prodesigntools.com/adobe-cc-7-day-free-
| trials.html
| ska wrote:
| > The user base that is disgruntled are the ones that
| would have been using the cracked versions anyways,
|
| I disagree; I think I correctly identified a user base of
| corporations and users who would much rather do things
| right, but don't have 600/yr/user of need. Currently they
| are paying adobe subscriptions, or juggling free trials.
| If someone offers them good-enough software for
| significantly less, they won't think twice about jumping.
|
| This is separate from the issues of students etc. using
| cracked or 'educational' versions. Some of them may not
| like the subscription only approach, but as you say that
| isn't a real impact to bottom line because they would
| never buy it.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Agreed, it seemed outrageous to me 10 years ago but I believe
| now that Adobe simply focused on a certain segment. I wasn't
| in it. But that's just it; I had very little money, and I was
| mad that they'd excluded me. But of course they'd exclude me,
| haha.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You were never their target. But there were people thinking
| about you.
|
| The cracked adobe products from 10 years ago provide most
| of the functionality the new subscription does at a big
| discount.
|
| In a way those warez (sp) crackers cared about you more
| than adobe ever did.
| mrj wrote:
| But that's a ton of cost for something you don't use often or
| if you're just starting out. That price tag eliminates the
| low end on-ramp into the products. They moved away from
| perpetual licenses and raised prices, which ensured there was
| room for competitors with a lower initial price and "good
| enough" quality.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 600 dollars a year is a huge amount for a software product.
| If that was their enterprise/seat pricing you may have a
| point but this is the standard price for everyone.
| kradeelav wrote:
| $600 is larger than most comic cover commissions (source:
| have been paid to do them), and unfortunately Photoshop is
| still a standard in many tangential industries that pay far
| below the minimum I strongly suspect that you assume for many
| (corporate) graphic designers.
|
| I started creating graphics in high school on the Gimp, which
| was a natural transition to a (gifted) copy of PSCS2, and
| I've been using my college version of CS5 ever since
| afterwards. That route to graphic design would've never
| happened at their current prices. They're burning a whole
| generation of designers.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Fifty bucks a month for the whole suite is half of one page
| of comics posted to my Patreon. And my Patreon is pretty
| tiny.
|
| Fifty bucks a month is less than I charge for one single-
| character flat color commission, which is something I can
| do in an hour or two.
|
| I am not at all surprised that most comic cover gigs pay
| like shit. Comics generally pay like shit.
|
| And all that said I sure did pirate Illustrator for a
| decade until I was at the point where paying the full
| subscription was the easiest route. If I was a broke
| student now I'd probably be getting into Affinity Designer
| instead of Illustrator.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| The problem is the kind of work that Adobe's tools are used
| for. Designers, video editors, artists, illustrators, etc.
| These are all careers that people get into by having a strong
| portfolio of prior work, which usually requires them to make
| stuff outside of professional work. So they need tools for
| personal use to get hired. Then when they start working they
| are going to want to use the tools they are familiar with.
|
| That absolutely has the result of eating into Adobe's bottom
| line. Even big companies that can easily afford Adobe's
| prices aren't going to pay them if their employees don't even
| want to use the software.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| One thing I don't like about Adobe is that they set the same
| price for high and low income countries.
|
| For many people and companies in my region their license is
| unafordable.
|
| Other companies that offer subscription based es services,
| like Microsoft, Spotify, Disney, several antivirus vendors
| offer lower prices.
|
| I mean, I could afford the student price, but not the
| commercial price of their subscription .
| TrevorJ wrote:
| For every freelancer who sits in an Adobe product 40 hours a
| week, there's many who need an Adobe product for a couple
| hours every few months. For these people, it's a pretty
| terrible deal, and feels more alike a tax, or rent-seeking
| than it does like paying for a useful service.
| dylan604 wrote:
| use it for one month. stop paying for it. pay for it again
| the next month you need it. stop paying for it.
| visarga wrote:
| frictionless process, smooth as butter
| dylan604 wrote:
| How is it any different than renting a car, or a hotel,
| or any other various things one might rent? There's just
| this illusive concept people seem to have of owning
| software. This kind of model would have had me as a legit
| paying Adobe customer way back when I did "borrow" their
| software. I never had enough money to buy a >$1k bit of
| software for a couple of things, but I could have found
| $50 (maybe closer to $60 if not doing 12 months??) for a
| month's legit use of the software for a random freelance
| gig
| dthul wrote:
| But Adobe doesn't make it easy to pay for it one month
| and don't pay for it the next. Their site uses dark
| patterns which make you choose yearly subscriptions
| instead of monthly (happened to me even though I thought
| I had a monthly subscription) and terminating it is a
| whole ordeal with several steps.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Adobe sells access to Creative Suite in one-year
| increments exclusively. You can opt to _pay_ monthly, but
| with a minimum one-year commitment.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I fail to see how this isn't objectively worse than
| purchasing software outright.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| this. Subscription software models extract more money from
| the pro market but cut out the casual market completely.
| thendrill wrote:
| This exactly. I am not asking my employer to spend so much
| money on something I am not using for free in my free time.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Subscriptions are also tricky to "purchase(?)" at some
| places.
|
| I'm pretty sure I'm not actually allowed to charge them
| to a grant.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| I tried buying a student discount subscription in my
| country and I could never finish the process.
|
| I then contacted two local partners and none of them
| allowed me to buy the license as a student. One said that
| the student discount did not exist, and the other one
| siad thst my University had to buy it for me.
| chrischen wrote:
| Professionals use an assortment of tools, maybe one of which
| may be Photoshop. I would agree if your hypothetical
| processional only used and needed Photoshop.
| danShumway wrote:
| Yes and no. People become professionals using tools that
| they're familiar with.
|
| 600$ a year for an industry standard that makes a person
| productive isn't a lot. But what happens when 50% of your
| workforce is using a different tool that they're more
| comfortable with because they've already invested 5-10 years
| into learning it?
|
| It's not expensive for a productivity boost _once_ you 're a
| professional. The question is, if you are a professional, and
| you're just now getting to the point where you can afford to
| _start_ using Adobe tools, are they so much better than the
| tools you 've been using your entire life that they're still
| worth $600 a month? Will they still provide a productivity
| boost that justifies their cost if they're not an industry
| standard anymore?
|
| Right now, Adobe products are still at least arguably (if not
| obviously) an industry standard. But when we talk about a
| market decline, a current decline in hobbyist usage may
| signal a heavy future decline in the professional market.
| It's not necessarily the case that they're completely
| separate from each other.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. $600 USD per worker, per year is a
| massive expense for a small to medium firm, and those rates
| will only rise in the future. In my country at today's
| exchange it's more like $830 per user per year! I much
| preferred the model of paying once and owning a copy of the
| software.
|
| Sure you get updates now, Adobe was very bad at even basic
| patching before the CC era, they offer features that no one I
| know is requesting. It's like a fishmonger backing up the van
| and dumping a bunch of fish you don't need then billing you
| every month.
|
| So bring on the competitors. I'm a big fan of Sketch on the
| Mac.
| rmah wrote:
| Massive? Oh come on, $600 is the cost of a moderately
| expensive chair.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Chairs are not replaced every year, plus that capital
| expenditure, not opex.
|
| For a design house, licensing is not an insignificant
| cost of business. Its justifiable because thats the
| fastest tool for their workforce.
|
| for a small company without a design team, it probably
| makes sense to just use the cheap/free stuff and style it
| out.
| andreilys wrote:
| Or you can pay a one time $99 fee for Sketch which in
| most cases has all you need.
|
| I took that route and haven't missed Adobe at all.
| Nkuna wrote:
| Not all designers (creative work really) work on Macs!
| wongarsu wrote:
| A chair lasts 10-15 years, so it's more like $40-60/year.
| $600/year chairs are pretty much the best chairs you can
| buy for money.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| A chair will last many years, lets say 5, so amortised we
| are talking about a $830 x 5 = $4150 chair for every
| user.
|
| That's massive in my book. Subscription software is a
| scam.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Go try and get your employer to buy you a new chair. In
| most places, that is like pulling teeth
| ipaddr wrote:
| I managed to get a new chair once. It took an ergonomics
| expert visit. Everyone was filled with envy from vp's
| down the line. In the end management pushed me into full
| time remote so they could take the chair.
|
| And it wasn't even $600.00
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It is frankly amazing to much how much office politics
| wind up revolving around chairs in some places.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I was pretty specific about what I said. In the US it's $15
| dollars a week for the software and $1000+ a week for the
| user. It's not a big cost if the software provides that
| individual with much value.
|
| Sure, they are clearly ceding a chunk of the market to
| other companies. I don't think it's obvious that this is a
| bad business decision...
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Relative to buying software outright, yes, it's a big
| cost. Any it's also annoying. You don't own the software,
| which ends up effecting you negatively in a myriad of
| small ways.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This argument is always brought out like a standard
| bearer. Adobe software was NEVER a buy it once, own it
| for life. Sure, that particular version, maybe. But
| nobody stays on that version forever. Pre-subscription
| days to CS bundles, the bundles were $1200-$1500USD. They
| would release a new version of software each year, and
| they would charge $600USD for the upgrade. So, your $1200
| in, plus an annual $600 in upgrades. Pre CS bundles, it
| was $800 for Photoshop alone. Premiere was even more.
| wdb wrote:
| Yes, but you could skip a version easily in the old days!
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you worked alone that might have worked.
| Sending/receiving files from someone with newer versions
| caused problems. I suffered through this once when doing
| 32page magazine layouts, and I was a version behind the
| printer. That experience alone convinced me to upgrade.
| wdb wrote:
| I always just send a PDF or IDML file to the printer. So
| far that worked out well
| mattkevan wrote:
| In my experience the printer was always a good few
| releases behind the current version. No-one wanted to
| upgrade unless they absolutely had to. The switch to
| InDesign from Quark was particularly drawn-out, and even
| then no one took Quark 5 files.
|
| It's very different now it's all done by PDF - as long as
| it's formatted correctly it doesn't matter what program
| created it or how old it was.
| Nkuna wrote:
| You'd send InDesign files to the printer? Why when there
| are various export formats printers accept..?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Going further back to Aldus Pagemaker. Plus, I come from
| a time of Quark and SyQuest drives to move data around.
| Things were different in the stone ages. PDFs were not a
| thing people used.
| [deleted]
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| Yes, not to mention the inevitable downtime when some
| cloud service can't authenticate. Not an improvement on
| working with local software.
| mc32 wrote:
| If the moderately paid person is inefficient or
| unproductive because they don't have a $600 piece of
| software, management is egregiously misguided about where
| to spend money. I mean if an add'l $600 spent on a position
| or role is the balance between being profitable and
| bankruptcy then something is seriously wrong in that
| company.
|
| Sure they can have the user use a $0 piece of SW, but if
| it's costing more than $50 a month in productivity via
| frustration, unfamiliarity or shortcoming (90% of the value
| at $0), Thats misuse of that person's talent and
| detrimental to the success of the company.
| ipaddr wrote:
| If $600.00 a year is peanuts to your company I would
| invite them to send me $600 dollars a year.
|
| It is not like $600 dollars is going to bankrupt your
| company. Their would be something seriously wrong if your
| company couldn't send me the money.
| Nkuna wrote:
| The idea is you're spending $600 to use software that
| directly or indirectly contributes to the co's revenue.
| If you do it right, you make that $600 back and then
| some.
| cglace wrote:
| I have a hard time seeing how sending you $600 has
| anything to do with the productivity of a tool. Most
| people design PCBs using Altium which is $10,000 per
| license. Are you saying companies should send you 10k
| because they could use Eagle instead?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I wonder the number of PCBs designed with Altium ($$$$),
| Eagle ($$), and KiCAD ($0).
| ipaddr wrote:
| $600 is a budget item that will be available next year to
| spend. If you never expense me you will never create the
| budget room for when you really need it.
|
| If the size of your company allows for $10,000 software
| purchases I would expense me for 2 copies. Next year you
| can use that budget for post covid grow.
| mc32 wrote:
| It depends on that $600's ROI. Are you going to make it
| worth it, the user productive or contribute to the goals
| of the company?
| ipaddr wrote:
| The idea is to pay me today to create budget room for you
| in the future for when you need that budget. By paying me
| $600 you create a budget increase that carries forward
| annually. Simply pay me yearly until you are ready to
| spend your free $600 budget.
| [deleted]
| usaphp wrote:
| > very expensive subscription model which has resulted in
| people seeking out alternatives
|
| I disagree, from my own experience and people I know in graphic
| design field, Adobe products just feel clunky and unintuitive.
| First time I've tried Sketch, I was blown away by how simple
| and intuitive the interface is and I would not mind paying the
| same or more for Sketch compared to Adobe suite.
|
| The goal of software is to make me work faster and more
| efficient, if 2x more expensive software makes me work 3x
| faster - it's always worth the price.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Sketch is focused on UI design, it's more specialized tool
| than e.g. Photoshop. Of course you're able to design faster
| and more streamlined in it than in a tool that was repurposed
| for the job.
| dharma1 wrote:
| I'm with you. I use Figma for all UI/UX work, Resolve for
| editing/grading but still reach for AE for motion graphics and
| some video things. Even though After Effects is super slow and
| doesn't seem to get much faster with newer CPUs/GPUs, there's
| nothing else that comes close. Maybe Fusion in Resolve if
| Blackmagic spent enough development effort on it.
|
| Having said that, I think Adobe can still continue to grow with
| the overall digital/creative market growth, even if they are
| losing market share on a couple of the flagship products. They
| have some enterprise cloud software and I guess the
| photography/print design/illustration users are still there.
| burlesona wrote:
| Just as a counter point, when the first CS subscription came
| out it allowed me to use Photoshop and Illustrator legally for
| $30 or so for a month at a time on an as-needed basis (I didn't
| always need it), when the alternative was to pay like $1k up
| front (I don't remember exactly). As a bootstrapped and low
| income person at the time this made it possible for me to
| access the software when I otherwise couldn't have. So, it's
| not exclusively a bad thing.
| dekerta wrote:
| That's fair, but it's terrible for people like me. I hate not
| being able to own my desktop software.
|
| I'm a hobbyist photographer, and I use Lightroom quite a bit.
| I purchased Lightroom 4.0 back in 2013, and it has been worth
| every penny, but now I'm stuck on version 4.0 forever because
| I refuse to pay a never-ending monthly fee for software that
| I use as an amateur.
|
| I use Darktable now. It's an excellent open-source
| competitor, but it's not as good as Lightroom. I would gladly
| pay a few hundred dollars to buy a perpetual license for a
| new version.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Would 4.0 even run on modern OS? 32bit vs 64bit
| considerations. Hooks into graphics libraries in OS changes
| as well. No hardware acceleration in debayering RAW, etc.
| There have been a lot a lot a lot of changes since
| perpetual licensed versions of software that nobody would
| be happy sticking with just for license sake.
| dekerta wrote:
| Yes it runs fine on Windows 10. Version 4 came out in
| 2012. Old, but not ancient by any means.
|
| Edit: I mispoke, I'm using version 4.4.1. Not sure, how
| different that is from 4.0
| dylan604 wrote:
| Pretty sure you would not be able to on macOS. While not
| your problem, it could be for others.
| whall6 wrote:
| Let's not forget the hell you go through when uninstalling Adobe
| products
| sumnole wrote:
| Is it still next to impossible to cancel? It's been a while
| (I'm now a happy Affinity customer) but they had no self
| service cancellation and their offshore customer service team
| gave me the run around for days, at one point lying to me about
| deactivating my subscription when they hadn't.
| omnimus wrote:
| Still the same. Also the license is not monthly as they try
| to show. Its auto extending annual contract that you pay
| month by month and if you want to cancel you have to pay rest
| of that contract.
| kgraves wrote:
| Isn't this just a classic case of unbundling[0], as to which
| Figma and Canva are just unbundling Adobe products.
|
| Come to think of it, I also think the reverse will happen when
| people realise that using multiple tools in concert will cause
| friction and then some customers revert to a 'bundled' service
| with their needs accommodated in just one service/program.
|
| Hopefully Figma, Canva and many others like them don't not get
| ironically acquired by Adobe and the like.
|
| [0] https://stratechery.com/outline/bundling-and-unbundling/
| macando wrote:
| Sketch unbundled Photoshop, while Figma offered something
| Photoshop never had - collaboration.
|
| Sketch changes how designers work, while Figma do that equally
| well + it changes how _teams_ work.
| lavrton wrote:
| Taking the chance, I am working on JavaScript SDK to make canva-
| like design editors: https://polotno.dev/. Will be useful if you
| want to make a similar tool on your website.
|
| There is also https://studio.polotno.dev/ product that as
| positioned as canva alternative without signups or paywalls. Not
| as good as canva yet, but it is in progress.
| davidgh wrote:
| Feels like classic Innovator's Dilemma [1]. Adobe's incumbent
| bread-winning products do not allow them to internally develop
| less expensive alternatives that would actively erode revenue
| from the legacy products. So outside companies do it instead.
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
| andybak wrote:
| There's more going on here. Figma targets collaboration. Canva
| tackles ease of use. Nothing was stopping Adobe improving in
| that department.
|
| Photoshop already has a cheap monthly subscription. Why not do
| a similar price point with a new collaboration and ease of use
| layer slapped on Illustrator?
| staysaasy wrote:
| The main thing that was stopping them from improving in the
| collaboration / usability department was the fact that
| Adobe's products are extremely comprehensive - that's how
| they differentiate. But that comprehensiveness comes at the
| expense of complexity, makes it harder to have a really tight
| interface and add things like collaboration features.
|
| The comprehensiveness is what allowed them to win in the
| enterprise, but it came at a high price. If Figma wants to
| become an enterprise solution they'll probably end up getting
| really complex too.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Comprehensiveness is one of Adobe's differentiators, the
| other is specialised products that seamlessly interoperate.
| Illustrator is "Photoshop, but focus on vectors", InDesign
| is "Illustrator but for page design", Animate is
| "Illustrator, but for animations", Aftereffects is "animate
| but for video". All of them seamlessly interchange files
| with each other.
|
| Adding tools with the sole purpose to give a less powerful,
| more intuitive interface would have fit perfectly into the
| Adobe ecosystem.
| omnimus wrote:
| Well Adobe products in reality interoperate very badly.
| It's very apparent Indesign, Illustrator, AE used to be
| made by different companies and they have different
| codebases.
|
| For example if you want to import some vector shape from
| Illu to either Indesign or AE... its pretty complicated.
| Especially if you need to be able to make edits after the
| import (like animate the shape or change colors). Or if
| you want to copy text boxes? Forget it.
|
| This is obvious when you compare it to Affinity suite
| where not only you can copy anything around but you can
| instantly switch from one app to other inside the apps.
| Switching is then more like "vector mode", "pixel mode"
| and "layout mode". It all works much better and faster.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Cheap is relative, would I rather have Photoshop for 2.5
| months or a permanent license of Affinity Photo?
|
| I'm taking into account a current 50% discount, but I think
| that's fair since Adobe products no longer go on sale.
|
| But even without the sale, it's 5 months of Photoshop versus
| a permanent license.
| mc10 wrote:
| Collaboration is pretty difficult to retrofit onto an
| existing product. A collaborative text editor like Google
| Docs needs to be designed for that purpose in mind, and the
| state-of-the-art techniques (CRDTs and OT) are still
| undergoing active research. See also the xi-editor
| retrospective: https://raphlinus.github.io/xi/2020/06/27/xi-
| retrospective.h...
|
| I imagine Figma, being built around CRDTs and a web platform,
| probably had a number of intentional design differences from
| Photoshop etc.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Reminds me of another classic Innovator's Dilemma to have
| panned out with Google and Y! guarding their web-scale
| infrastructure from the outside world even as AWS was running
| away with IaaS.
|
| https://gigaom.com/2007/12/04/google-infrastructure/
| wwweston wrote:
| They can always buy outside companies and kill their competing
| products, right?
|
| Maybe that's just my bitterness talking as someone who really
| liked Fireworks for screen design work, and think it fell prey
| to the dilemma between it and Photoshop.
|
| (I'm still using FW, but that won't be an option on macOS once
| Mojave stops getting updates.)
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Another app that has captured "mindshare" among artists and
| designers is Procreate - a digital painting app for the iPad.
| It's leapt over Adobe to dominate the digital painting space on
| the iPad. Adobe is playing catch-up with their late-to-market
| rival painting app Fresco.
|
| However, to keep things in perspective, usage of Adobe's apps
| still dominate the creative industries. That grip shows no sign
| of loosening. Just the volume of tutorials for Photoshop alone is
| humongous.
|
| What the likes of Procreate, Sketch, Figma, and Affinty show is
| that you can carve a profitable space in the design and graphics
| field and succeed even when that field is dominated by a behemoth
| like Adobe. It's also refreshing to see rivals rethink the way of
| accomplishing design tasks. A lot of Adobe apps have accrued so
| much clunky UI interactions and lack the fresh ideas from some of
| their rivals.
| ansgri wrote:
| Procreate is awesome! I don't even paint but use it often
| enough for quick sketching of diagrams or simple image editing.
| I have the Adobe subscription and use Lightroom a lot, but
| Photoshop feels like a heavy machinery better fit for the PC
| when you want complex editing.
|
| Aside, I've learned Photoshop around 7th version (not CS), and
| was really impressed by modern capabilities -- they support
| nondestructive editing workflow for almost everything!
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