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Importantly, I've been using it since 1997 - any alternative has to be featureful and intuitive, and it's competing with 20+ years of muscle memory and needs to be able to correctly read ~15 years of files.

Give Affinity Photo a look.

I believe they have a 30 day trial, is on both Windows and Mac.

Most of the layout is the same, as are most of the keyboard shortcuts.

Take a look at the link, it is laid out in about 98% the same as photo shop, most of the same keyboard commands, AND since the engine has been built from scratch it is often faster than PS.

It is available for OS X and Windows.

IN fact their other tools rival Adobe's AI and soon InDesign....with Designer and Publisher.

Also just going on this train of thought, I've pretty much ditched Lightroom for On1 RAW, and the 2019 version coming soon will have a RAW workflow with layers....still in RAW, that and the luminosity masks give some great functionality.

All these very good options available, without having to pay rent to Adobe monthly....

Take a look at the link, it is laid out in about 98% the same as photo shop, most of the same keyboard commands, AND since the engine has been built from scratch it is often faster than PS.

It is available for OS X and Windows.

IN fact their other tools rival Adobe's AI and soon InDesign....with Designer and Publisher.

Also just going on this train of thought, I've pretty much ditched Lightroom for On1 RAW, and the 2019 version coming soon will have a RAW workflow with layers....still in RAW, that and the luminosity masks give some great functionality.

All these very good options available, without having to pay rent to Adobe monthly....

Take a look at the link, it is laid out in about 98% the same as photo shop, most of the same keyboard commands, AND since the engine has been built from scratch it is often faster than PS.

It is available for OS X and Windows.

IN fact their other tools rival Adobe's AI and soon InDesign....with Designer and Publisher.

Also just going on this train of thought, I've pretty much ditched Lightroom for On1 RAW, and the 2019 version coming soon will have a RAW workflow with layers....still in RAW, that and the luminosity masks give some great functionality.

All these very good options available, without having to pay rent to Adobe monthly....

I assume the lack of correlation between the controls is deliberate on the part of the GIMP team, to avoid getting into legal tiffs with Adobe over copying their software directly, but god damn it makes their software frustrating to use.

Give Affinity Photo a try.

The desktop layout is virtually identical to PS, and most of the keyboard shortcuts are the same, and those that aren't are pretty easily customized.

I find the engine to be faster on AP that for PS, and the content aware stuff is amazing well done and FAST.

There is a free trial and if you want to contemplate jumping the "rental" ship on Adobe PS, give it a try.

I've found the Affinity apps to be a pretty decent alternative. No joke.

I would whole heartedly agree...The Affinity products work both for mac and windows, and are one time purchase and not rental...they also are good about free updates and bug fixes.

You have to poke around the site to find the windows versions, tho...strangely.

Affinity Photo - This is the PS killer IMHO...it has every tool I've ever used on PS, and with the engine being written new from scratch I find it to often be FASTER that PS, and the content aware stuff is on par if not better at times that PS.

OH, and if you have an iPad Pro, I would highly recommend Affinity Photo for iPad, you have full blown desktop functionality on the iPad and it is amazing to work with.

They have a free trial on their products, give them a try.

Affinity Designer - This will give Adobe Illustrator a run for its money, I'm currently trying to learn vector stuff with AD.

Affinity Publisher - This is in public beta right now, looks VERY interesting.

On1 RAW - This is an up and coming alternative to Adobe Lightroom. I really like this, there is functionality that blows LR out of the water, I really like the luminance masks while working with your RAW images, there are tons of filters, and the latest versions of On1, now have pretty good cataloging and file management that was something I would have missed with LR. Its slightly more manual, but not a deal killer. I'm currently using it on an older MBP late 2011, 16GB ram, local SSD hard drive and external drives for cache and image storage, and performance is pretty good, although I find that at times it bogs while using my wacom tablet and pen, but if I switch to mouse, no problems. I'm hoping to soon update my medial computer and foresee these problems to disappear. This too has a free trial, I would recommend getting this, and looking through the tutorials and play with it...I believe this will be the LR killer...and I loved lightroom.

Now...for video and you want to get off of Adobe Premier....I like this:

Davinci Resolve - by Black Magic Design. This products started out as a high end color correction bit of software and it is still industry standard for that, but now, the NLE is very good, and is now paired with Fusion, an alternative to After Effects...and they're adding some high quality sound design/editing into it too.

You need to have a pretty beefy workstation to run this, but this is a quality one stop shop for most all things video.

There are several other options out there, I liked Adobe Products, but I just am not ready to "rent" my software and run into crap like this.

I've also been watching the Adobe products in the CC, and while there have been some improvements and updates that are kinda nice, I've not seen anything groundbreaking that would cause me to need to pay monthly/annually for my software, and I"d really get a bad taste in my mouth if I had to keep paying for software that isn't being updated or really supported.

I have my Adobe CS6 suite of tools for that category and I'm not paying regularly for that...one pay and done.

So...sure, there are a lot of people and shops out there with Adobe ingrained into their workflow and the muscle memory is strong there.

But there are now very viable alternatives...and in most cases, you can use almost all the same keyboard shortcuts (some come standard and some you can set up yourself custom)...and the layout of the desktop is very similar and familiar.

With others...well, if you know one, it isn't rocket surgery to pick up some new differences.

I've found the Affinity apps to be a pretty decent alternative. No joke.

I would whole heartedly agree...The Affinity products work both for mac and windows, and are one time purchase and not rental...they also are good about free updates and bug fixes.

You have to poke around the site to find the windows versions, tho...strangely.

Affinity Photo - This is the PS killer IMHO...it has every tool I've ever used on PS, and with the engine being written new from scratch I find it to often be FASTER that PS, and the content aware stuff is on par if not better at times that PS.

OH, and if you have an iPad Pro, I would highly recommend Affinity Photo for iPad, you have full blown desktop functionality on the iPad and it is amazing to work with.

They have a free trial on their products, give them a try.

Affinity Designer - This will give Adobe Illustrator a run for its money, I'm currently trying to learn vector stuff with AD.

Affinity Publisher - This is in public beta right now, looks VERY interesting.

On1 RAW - This is an up and coming alternative to Adobe Lightroom. I really like this, there is functionality that blows LR out of the water, I really like the luminance masks while working with your RAW images, there are tons of filters, and the latest versions of On1, now have pretty good cataloging and file management that was something I would have missed with LR. Its slightly more manual, but not a deal killer. I'm currently using it on an older MBP late 2011, 16GB ram, local SSD hard drive and external drives for cache and image storage, and performance is pretty good, although I find that at times it bogs while using my wacom tablet and pen, but if I switch to mouse, no problems. I'm hoping to soon update my medial computer and foresee these problems to disappear. This too has a free trial, I would recommend getting this, and looking through the tutorials and play with it...I believe this will be the LR killer...and I loved lightroom.

Now...for video and you want to get off of Adobe Premier....I like this:

Davinci Resolve - by Black Magic Design. This products started out as a high end color correction bit of software and it is still industry standard for that, but now, the NLE is very good, and is now paired with Fusion, an alternative to After Effects...and they're adding some high quality sound design/editing into it too.

You need to have a pretty beefy workstation to run this, but this is a quality one stop shop for most all things video.

There are several other options out there, I liked Adobe Products, but I just am not ready to "rent" my software and run into crap like this.

I've also been watching the Adobe products in the CC, and while there have been some improvements and updates that are kinda nice, I've not seen anything groundbreaking that would cause me to need to pay monthly/annually for my software, and I"d really get a bad taste in my mouth if I had to keep paying for software that isn't being updated or really supported.

I have my Adobe CS6 suite of tools for that category and I'm not paying regularly for that...one pay and done.

So...sure, there are a lot of people and shops out there with Adobe ingrained into their workflow and the muscle memory is strong there.

But there are now very viable alternatives...and in most cases, you can use almost all the same keyboard shortcuts (some come standard and some you can set up yourself custom)...and the layout of the desktop is very similar and familiar.

With others...well, if you know one, it isn't rocket surgery to pick up some new differences.

I've found the Affinity apps to be a pretty decent alternative. No joke.

I would whole heartedly agree...The Affinity products work both for mac and windows, and are one time purchase and not rental...they also are good about free updates and bug fixes.

You have to poke around the site to find the windows versions, tho...strangely.

Affinity Photo - This is the PS killer IMHO...it has every tool I've ever used on PS, and with the engine being written new from scratch I find it to often be FASTER that PS, and the content aware stuff is on par if not better at times that PS.

OH, and if you have an iPad Pro, I would highly recommend Affinity Photo for iPad, you have full blown desktop functionality on the iPad and it is amazing to work with.

They have a free trial on their products, give them a try.

Affinity Designer - This will give Adobe Illustrator a run for its money, I'm currently trying to learn vector stuff with AD.

Affinity Publisher - This is in public beta right now, looks VERY interesting.

On1 RAW - This is an up and coming alternative to Adobe Lightroom. I really like this, there is functionality that blows LR out of the water, I really like the luminance masks while working with your RAW images, there are tons of filters, and the latest versions of On1, now have pretty good cataloging and file management that was something I would have missed with LR. Its slightly more manual, but not a deal killer. I'm currently using it on an older MBP late 2011, 16GB ram, local SSD hard drive and external drives for cache and image storage, and performance is pretty good, although I find that at times it bogs while using my wacom tablet and pen, but if I switch to mouse, no problems. I'm hoping to soon update my medial computer and foresee these problems to disappear. This too has a free trial, I would recommend getting this, and looking through the tutorials and play with it...I believe this will be the LR killer...and I loved lightroom.

Now...for video and you want to get off of Adobe Premier....I like this:

Davinci Resolve - by Black Magic Design. This products started out as a high end color correction bit of software and it is still industry standard for that, but now, the NLE is very good, and is now paired with Fusion, an alternative to After Effects...and they're adding some high quality sound design/editing into it too.

You need to have a pretty beefy workstation to run this, but this is a quality one stop shop for most all things video.

There are several other options out there, I liked Adobe Products, but I just am not ready to "rent" my software and run into crap like this.

I've also been watching the Adobe products in the CC, and while there have been some improvements and updates that are kinda nice, I've not seen anything groundbreaking that would cause me to need to pay monthly/annually for my software, and I"d really get a bad taste in my mouth if I had to keep paying for software that isn't being updated or really supported.

I have my Adobe CS6 suite of tools for that category and I'm not paying regularly for that...one pay and done.

So...sure, there are a lot of people and shops out there with Adobe ingrained into their workflow and the muscle memory is strong there.

But there are now very viable alternatives...and in most cases, you can use almost all the same keyboard shortcuts (some come standard and some you can set up yourself custom)...and the layout of the desktop is very similar and familiar.

With others...well, if you know one, it isn't rocket surgery to pick up some new differences.

I'm not a graphic artist, but isn't editing photos a lot like CAD, you need precise input?

That's what the Apple Pencil is for....using that combined with and iPad Pro, works quite well, no perceptible lag, high res screen...its quite easy to work on.

You also have combination with finger presses and gestures to simulate keyboard shortcuts and the like.

Affinity Designer was just released the other day for iPad.....here's a good demo of it (skip to about 1:13 to get past the early chatty part.

There's others:

Affinity Photo for iPad

Vectornator

Procreate

I'm not a graphic artist, but isn't editing photos a lot like CAD, you need precise input?

That's what the Apple Pencil is for....using that combined with and iPad Pro, works quite well, no perceptible lag, high res screen...its quite easy to work on.

You also have combination with finger presses and gestures to simulate keyboard shortcuts and the like.

Affinity Designer was just released the other day for iPad.....here's a good demo of it (skip to about 1:13 to get past the early chatty part.

There's others:

Affinity Photo for iPad

Vectornator

Procreate

Adobe PS for iPad is going to have to really go a LOOONG way to beat the current Affinity Photo for iPad Pro .

It is full functioning, one time license fee (like $14 right now), and they do periodic updates, no extra charge.

The performance is amazing, I've been lately really stretching it to do things like 11 full RAW images from my 5D3, for panos....and I did about 18 RAW image focus stacking.....and Affinity on iPad Pro handled it.

PS is really going to have to redo their engine....Affinity on desktop is often faster, so I would think they're really gonna have to redo PS if they try to put it on a tablet.

Adobe is really going to be playing catch up on this one, IMHO.

Affinity Photo for iPad is an incredible app and cost $19.99, once.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ipad/

I happily bought the Desktop version a few years ago. Works for me and no renting software from Adobe.

Affinity Photo for iPad is an incredible app and cost $19.99, once.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ipad/

That's my dilemma. Photoshop is the bad one with this. I absolutely refuse to go with their subscription based model. I'm not going to pirate their product- I'll go with a rival product instead, despite being inferior.

Give Affinity Photo a try. I really like it and the engine is faster than PS.

If you know PS, then AP won't take you long to adapt.

It came out for Mac first, but there is a windows version, they have a trial I think, give it a look.

I"m also working with On1 RAW to replace Lightroom since Adobe took it CC *rental* too.

So far, i find it really great and with luminance masking in the RAW workflow...amazing.

For video, it appears Davinci Resolve 15 will chip away at Premier....

I refuse to rent my software at this time too...and while adobe is raking $$ in the stock market....this rental move has given their competitors room and incentive to develop and they are coming up with REAL I think Adobe's CC move next, is to more and more push and someday maybe 'force' your content to be kept on their cloud.

The LR CC and classic thing seems to be paving the way for that.....I wouldn't like that.

*Exactly* Pirating just gives the Adobe juggernaut more power, as they can claim that piracy hurts their business and using their products further cements their hold on the graphics software industry. Many graphic designers, turned off by the idea of software subscriptions, have abandoned Adobe and switched to Affinity instead. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have proved to be quite worthy replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator. Plus the one-time price of $49.99 each is quite reasonable. Affinity needs an InDesign killer and Affinity Publisher is currently in development with a beta expected some time this summer with a release expected before the end of the year.

As a self employed contractor software subscriptions are killing my business. Adobe has forced me into a subscription model where I'm paying 50$ a month to use their software, Microsoft is pretty much forcing the subscription model of Office 365 on me. Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon? My monthly fees are going to pile up it's going to make the decision to seek open source alternatives and simple choice.

Not sure what all you're using from Adobe. I myself have resisted the move to the rental model of software they have switched to.

If you are using Photoshop, take a look at: Affinity Photo. I you are a windows user, scroll all the way to the bottom there is a link for the windows version, and as I understand works just as well as the Mac version does. The engine is actually much faster than PS, it does 99% of what PS does...only better. It is about $50, and perpetual license...and so far over past couple years I've owned it, they've put out several updates/upgrades for free.

They also make a AI competitor, in Affinity Designer

If you use Adobe Premier, you might look at DaVinci Resolve one of the best color grading apps out there, and the NLE and sound is working nicely too. It is quite optimized for multi-core CPUs and will use your GPUs' well too, unlike Premier which often won't use all your equipment efficiently.

They also make Fusion which will substitute for After Effects (although there is a learning curve to use the nodal paradigm).

OH by the way, those last two products from Blackmagic Design...the FREE versions do about 99% of what the paid for versions do and those are only I think about $299 paid.

So, do look around, there are a number of valid alternatives to many Adobe products that have come out to serve the market that doesn't want to rent their fucking software.

As a self employed contractor software subscriptions are killing my business. Adobe has forced me into a subscription model where I'm paying 50$ a month to use their software, Microsoft is pretty much forcing the subscription model of Office 365 on me. Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon? My monthly fees are going to pile up it's going to make the decision to seek open source alternatives and simple choice.

Not sure what all you're using from Adobe. I myself have resisted the move to the rental model of software they have switched to.

If you are using Photoshop, take a look at: Affinity Photo. I you are a windows user, scroll all the way to the bottom there is a link for the windows version, and as I understand works just as well as the Mac version does. The engine is actually much faster than PS, it does 99% of what PS does...only better. It is about $50, and perpetual license...and so far over past couple years I've owned it, they've put out several updates/upgrades for free.

They also make a AI competitor, in Affinity Designer

If you use Adobe Premier, you might look at DaVinci Resolve one of the best color grading apps out there, and the NLE and sound is working nicely too. It is quite optimized for multi-core CPUs and will use your GPUs' well too, unlike Premier which often won't use all your equipment efficiently.

They also make Fusion which will substitute for After Effects (although there is a learning curve to use the nodal paradigm).

OH by the way, those last two products from Blackmagic Design...the FREE versions do about 99% of what the paid for versions do and those are only I think about $299 paid.

So, do look around, there are a number of valid alternatives to many Adobe products that have come out to serve the market that doesn't want to rent their fucking software.

I checked their site but they don't mention OS support anywhere. The Affinity Photo article on Wikipedia says it only supports Mac OS, iOS and Windows 10.

That's a shame, since I use Windows 7. I guess I'll stick with PaintShop Pro.

Yeah, it is not easy to find, but here are the system requirements.

It looks like it will run Win 7 for you.

HTH.

Near the bottom of this page has the system requirements https://affinity.serif.com/en-... Needs service pack 1, and aero enabled.

My biggest problem with GIMP (or at least the GIMP of four years ago) is that it feels just enough like Photoshop to get you feeling that it shouldn't be a problem to use. However, there's enough differences where, coming off of a decade of using Photoshop at work, you end up muttering "Ok, what is the damn shortcut for that function?"

Take a look at Affinity Photo...it is pretty much 99% there with PS and MUCH faster engine too. Reasonably priced and perpetual license.

They've also been going free updates for years now...

I've played with GIMP too, and while it has it's uses, it is missing some stuff, AND, like you said, if you're used to a PS workflow with keyboard shortcuts, etc...it is a PITA.

Affinity Photo is laid out almost identically to PS for the most part and you keyboard shortcuts are mostly all there too...you can remap the ones that aren't and off you go.

I love photoshop, lightroom and other Adobe products. However, at this point, I stopped at CS6 for the Adobe suite of tools.

I have LR5, and may try to go to LR6 while I believe I still can to get that last perpetual license, but that's it.

While Adobe has put out "some" upgrades and new features over these past few years of Creative Cloud, I frankly haven't found anything there to be groundbreaking, that I cannot work without. IMHO, the adage that if they don't have incentive to innovate (due to steady income stream no matter what) they won't. And I don't see that they have really.

ON the other hand, it may be that things like Photoshop and Designer, AI, etc...have pretty much for the most part hit the wall on what you can do....and there isn't much room left for improvement for completely NEW features.

If that's the case, then if nothing else, Adobe should try going in and rewriting the engines behind the scenes, but you don't see that either.

One nice thing about the Adobe CC rental thing is, it has spurred on other companies to try to fill that void, and there are a number of them that are.

So far as a PS replacement, I'm enjoying Affinity Photo . It is damned fast, their engine work blows Adobe away. And for functionality, well, I'd say it is about 98-99% there. My only gripe is they need to emulate PS in that when you have the brush tool, you need to have the keyboard command to allow quick sampling of colors with the brush on the image. Other than that, the healing, cloning and content aware tools are JUST as good as Adobes from what I've seen so far. And I think with some extra time, it may equal or surpass PS. It is reasonably priced for a perpetual license, and they've been doing a LOT of updates for free since I bought it a couple years ago.

Affinity has a designer app and I belive a Publisher app coming out....windows and mac.

For a lightroom replacement, I'm playing with On1 RAW ...it is very good so far, I do miss some of the LR cataloging, but On1 appears to be adding those options. I like that it has in the RAW development area, simple and luminosity masking...something you have to drop out of raw imaging processing from LR and got to PS for on the Adobe side.. And again...very quick and responsive engine.

And for video...well, the free version of Black magic's Davinci Resolve ....well known and respected for its color grading capabilities, now has a very respectable e NLE inside, and they're adding some impressing sound tools too. Premier? Well....it has competition. I also like FCPX too, but since it is so different and Mac only, I won't put that one up there right now.

Adobe After Effects? Well, now I love me some AE. I also have some 3rd party filters for AE from Red Giant and Video Copilot I enjoy using....so far, that one is the hardest to find a replacement for, but it appears that Blackmagic Fusion may be a real contender there.

So, there are alternatives....may take a little retraining, but then again, not that much. The PS alternatives often have pretty much the same layout of tools and keyboard shortcuts. A NLE for the most part is a NLE with some minor differences...

So, if nothing else, with Adobe going rental, it has put forth incentive for other companies to come along and truly compete.

So far, I'm voting with my wallet....I encourage anyone that can to also do so.

And I do this through a business....so, those that think the rental model is great for a business write off......I'd rather write off purchases of something the company owns, and doesn't go vapor when you stop rent payment.

I love photoshop, lightroom and other Adobe products. However, at this point, I stopped at CS6 for the Adobe suite of tools.

I have LR5, and may try to go to LR6 while I believe I still can to get that last perpetual license, but that's it.

While Adobe has put out "some" upgrades and new features over these past few years of Creative Cloud, I frankly haven't found anything there to be groundbreaking, that I cannot work without. IMHO, the adage that if they don't have incentive to innovate (due to steady income stream no matter what) they won't. And I don't see that they have really.

ON the other hand, it may be that things like Photoshop and Designer, AI, etc...have pretty much for the most part hit the wall on what you can do....and there isn't much room left for improvement for completely NEW features.

If that's the case, then if nothing else, Adobe should try going in and rewriting the engines behind the scenes, but you don't see that either.

One nice thing about the Adobe CC rental thing is, it has spurred on other companies to try to fill that void, and there are a number of them that are.

So far as a PS replacement, I'm enjoying Affinity Photo . It is damned fast, their engine work blows Adobe away. And for functionality, well, I'd say it is about 98-99% there. My only gripe is they need to emulate PS in that when you have the brush tool, you need to have the keyboard command to allow quick sampling of colors with the brush on the image. Other than that, the healing, cloning and content aware tools are JUST as good as Adobes from what I've seen so far. And I think with some extra time, it may equal or surpass PS. It is reasonably priced for a perpetual license, and they've been doing a LOT of updates for free since I bought it a couple years ago.

Affinity has a designer app and I belive a Publisher app coming out....windows and mac.

For a lightroom replacement, I'm playing with On1 RAW ...it is very good so far, I do miss some of the LR cataloging, but On1 appears to be adding those options. I like that it has in the RAW development area, simple and luminosity masking...something you have to drop out of raw imaging processing from LR and got to PS for on the Adobe side.. And again...very quick and responsive engine.

And for video...well, the free version of Black magic's Davinci Resolve ....well known and respected for its color grading capabilities, now has a very respectable e NLE inside, and they're adding some impressing sound tools too. Premier? Well....it has competition. I also like FCPX too, but since it is so different and Mac only, I won't put that one up there right now.

Adobe After Effects? Well, now I love me some AE. I also have some 3rd party filters for AE from Red Giant and Video Copilot I enjoy using....so far, that one is the hardest to find a replacement for, but it appears that Blackmagic Fusion may be a real contender there.

So, there are alternatives....may take a little retraining, but then again, not that much. The PS alternatives often have pretty much the same layout of tools and keyboard shortcuts. A NLE for the most part is a NLE with some minor differences...

So, if nothing else, with Adobe going rental, it has put forth incentive for other companies to come along and truly compete.

So far, I'm voting with my wallet....I encourage anyone that can to also do so.

And I do this through a business....so, those that think the rental model is great for a business write off......I'd rather write off purchases of something the company owns, and doesn't go vapor when you stop rent payment.

The Affinity range includes Photo and Designer, with Publisher due later this year.

Affinity web site

Anonymous Coward #55050609 wrote, with a link to Krita:

You're doing it wrong.

A presumably different Anonymous Coward #55050697 wrote:

Also Serif Photo. It is paid, but it is at a price of a dinner for 2

When I tried to look up its price to verify the claim of "a price of a dinner for 2", the first result for serif photo on Google Search was Serif PhotoPlus. I assumed that "Serif Photo" was a colloquial abbreviation for Serif PhotoPlus. The Serif PhotoPlus page states that the Serif PhotoPlus product has been discontinued in favor of Affinity Photo. So I instead looked up the price of Affinity Photo and wrote in reply to Anonymous Coward #55050697:

Now called Affinity, and priced at $50.

You wrote:

What does that mean? Krita is not Affinity.

That's why I replied to Anonymous Coward #55050697, who suggested the predecessor of Affinity Photo, not Anonymous Coward #55050609, who suggested Krita.

Now called Affinity, and priced at $50. I could buy dinner for 7 with that.

Like the AC said, Affinity Photo is well worth the $50. Unless your workflow makes extensive use of third party plugins, it may well do a good 80% of what you need.

As for Lightroom, I've been pretty happy with Corel Aftershot. Again, there's no accounting for muscle memory, but it is definitely a solid Lightroom competitor.

Let's just see how many of those features I can move over from my (mostly very portable) existing image manipulation code. And how quick. Today serves as the starting line. Assuming age doesn't kick me nipples north in the short term, and no other unforeseen disaster shows its ugly face, I expect to be raising my figurative middle finger in Adobe's direction quite soon as these things go.

In other words you want to compete with people like Affinity Photo which sells for $US40 or even The GIMP. Both of which are mature projects. So what are you going to do to differentiate yourself in the market?

Besides, maybe with a little luck, MSFT will nickel-and-dime Adobe hard-core along the way, and they become victims of the same rental scheme they've inflicted on their own customer base. Couldn't happen to a more deserving company, really.

I'm also hoping Affinity will eat their lunch with reasonably priced software with perpetual licenses. So far they have excellent Photoshop and Illustrator alternatives for Mac, with a DTP and DAM package to come. Windows versions are on the way, with Designer (cf Illustrator) already in beta: http://affinity.serif.com/

At least some of them seem to work in Affinity already:

https://affinity.serif.com/for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

One can only hope.

I just still at this point, refuse to RENT my fucking creative software. For now, my CS6 Suite of Adobe tools will work...and now, with things like Fusion from Blackmagic..... Davinci Resolve from black magic design that is not only one of the ultimate color grading apps, it is also now turning into a world class NLE to compete with Adobe Premier.

I'm also playing with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer , which so far look to compete pretty nicely with Photoshop and Illustrator respectively. All without the damned RENTAL Model...you buy a standalone license and be done with it.

Also Davinici Resolve...has a FREE lite version that really has about 99% of the functionality of the paid version....The affinity tools, are mac only for now, but they are working on releasing Windows versions soon.

The sooner the better...I really want to give the Adobe CC rental model some real competition with teeth and kill this thing off that is not in the consumer's best interest.

Oh dear, I seem to have gotten on a soapbox again....

One can only hope.

I just still at this point, refuse to RENT my fucking creative software. For now, my CS6 Suite of Adobe tools will work...and now, with things like Fusion from Blackmagic..... Davinci Resolve from black magic design that is not only one of the ultimate color grading apps, it is also now turning into a world class NLE to compete with Adobe Premier.

I'm also playing with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer , which so far look to compete pretty nicely with Photoshop and Illustrator respectively. All without the damned RENTAL Model...you buy a standalone license and be done with it.

Also Davinici Resolve...has a FREE lite version that really has about 99% of the functionality of the paid version....The affinity tools, are mac only for now, but they are working on releasing Windows versions soon.

The sooner the better...I really want to give the Adobe CC rental model some real competition with teeth and kill this thing off that is not in the consumer's best interest.

Oh dear, I seem to have gotten on a soapbox again....

If you become skilled at programming, you will come to notice how non-free programs, denying you the source code, restrict and oppress you.

What bollocks.

The last piece of productivity software I bought was Affinity Photo. I bought it because I prefer it to Photoshop or Gimp and it cost only forty bucks. Bargain. When bought it, I knew it was closed-source. I haven't been sold something under the impression that it was something else. Even if it was open-source, I wouldn't have the time to change it if it didn't do what I wanted. Closed or open, I'd still e-mail the developers for feature requests and bugs. For those reasons, I'm not restricted. I don't feel very "oppressed" either .

The only situation in which I can see myself being "restricted" by closed-source software is if I didn't trust the company, and the product was poorly supported. I have experienced this over the last year and my solution was to roll my own alternative. I am free to do that and the presence of bad commercial shit does not take away my freedoms.

Half correct. Adobe's Creative Cloud software is subscription software, but it is not web-based. The "cloud" bit in the name is just buzzword bingo; the apps are installed and run locally as Windows/OS X executable binaries, just as they always have, with check-ins to confirm that you've paid your protection money this month.

Of course the subscription aspect is reason enough for many people to walk way from Adobe (as I have). I know many illustrators have turned to the Manga Studio for comics production, or the GIMP if they can accept its limitations (e.g. lacking CMYK support). Some people can likewise get by with Free software such as Inkscape or Scribus to replace Illustrator and InDesign, respectively. Serif (which currently has graphics apps for Windows) is undertaking development of a full-featured commercial Creative Suite replacement for OS X, and their Illustrator-substitute Affinity Designer (first piece of the puzzle) is nearly ready for release.

For example Serif gives away software that is a couple versions old here http://www.serif.com/FreeDownloads/

I think they also have a discount on buying older versions too. I even purchased a copy of drawplus a couple years ago because I liked some of its functionality and it was just a few $.

reeeeeeeeeel..... one troll bagged :) thanks for playing

o.o sucks as an app :-| sadly it is all we linux users really have. Lotus symphony looks nice, but I just cant bring myself to use the old o.o codebase.

Break up MS and force them to compete fairly... petition MS office for linux now! ... bleh its about the only MS application I have any respect left for.

We need more companies like Mozilla, regardless of themselves as a company their cross-platform applications have welcomed windows switchers to linux with open arms. Bring us Photoshop and a decent office package and we'd be sorted... what is corel doing these days? you'd think we'd see another release of word perfect for Linux, a perfect marriage (not suggesting its better than o.o but its still another choice at least)

bleh, even serif! http://www.serif.com/store/index.asp

I can dream with tearful eyes :-| until then I have my mac.

http://www.serif.com/ I picked up PagePlus in the early '90s, and now have most of their software. Although it's not FOSS, and it's not quite up to Adobe's quality, Serif beats Adobe with a big stick on price, and has done everything I've needed it to. I've never quite understood why they're so poorly known here.

Yeh I've used Serif PagePlus from http://www.serif.com/ for years, it kick's Publisher's booty with the amount of desktop publishing & effects power it has built in, very sweet indeed. The latest PagePlus, X2, is Serif's 20th anniversary edition and was one of the first fully Vista compliant applications out.

For Web Design I've used NetObjects Fusion from http://www.netobjects.com/ since like version 4 in 1998 - 10 is out now and this WYSIWYG environment is very powerful - has e-commerce, photo galleries, scripting support built right in and generates nice clean W3C compliant code - extremely easy to create great sites, even better for pro's like myself. There's also a huge user community who help each other out.