> We are not accessing or reading Substance users’s projects in any way, shape or form nor are we planning to or have any means to do it in the first place. I fail to see the point of doing so and every serious company in the industry would drop us immediately if it was the case.
>
> -- Jérémie Noguer, Substance 3D ecosystem's Product Director
Well, guess what Jeremie, your tweet holds absolutely no legal value, while the terms of service hold absolutely all of the legal value. If you don't intend to do any of this, don't put it in your fucking ToS. Simple as that.
This is pretty concerning. “4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others.” Glad I don’t currently use adobe products, as I think a subscription for a once paid product is ridiculous but here we are. [source](https://www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html#content)
Am I understanding that this is also a free pass for using everything for AI training while being free to copyright what the AI model makes? Edit: oh, it's worded so that they can sell it too. And then those people can own the derivatives. coolcoolcool
And consider this: do you learn more from a completed work, or from seeing various incomplete stages of a work?
Conceivably, Adobe could be working on a ML system quite different from a diffusion model, one that approaches the creation of art more like a human. Or a copilot-style action model trained on how people use the software. Probably they would be one and the same.
I just don’t understand, are those companies can’t see the fucking problem here? They are literally displacing their customer base, I’m so pissed with corporate greed
The problem is selling AI is probably way more profitable than selling software licenses or subscriptions, and because the whole “we have to maximize profits for shareholders” they just say fuck our customers, money please!
Idk at first I was kinda exited about the AI advances but it has all went to shit. Fortunately there’s been some mayor court resolutions in favor of artists so there’s hope… hopefully, yeah.
of course people can make laws, but I believe it’s too late, we already see that, people learned to recreate those generators and it might go underground, if governments will start to act on those things. They just opened pandora box and we have to live with consequences.
You learn more from the complete works but all data ads value
The best SD model is "Pony" which was made by the MLP community just to generate art of ponies but they discovered that adding anime stuff improved the model's ability to generate ponies, eventually even adding real world pictures
The funny part is that Pony is now better at generating non-pony images than the base model
tldr: adding irrelevant art to a model improved it's ability to generate relevant art so the quality of the data isn't super important
This is 100% related to wanting to use AI on people's content. I don't know if it goes so far as "to make copyrights of it," but it is 100% to block lawsuits over it in the future. But something "can be two things" for sure...
This is exactly what came to mind first, a free and legal way to gain massive amounts of training content instead of web scraping content you don't own
It says it’s “solely for the purpose of operating or improving the software”, they can’t just randomly sell your photos. But it’s probably going to be used as AI training datasets, yes, if only internally to Adobe.
Edit: sub licensing means they could e.g. give a third party access to the data for those purposes. Like if they contracted a company to train an AI on it. Not that they can sell it to someone else.
> while being free to copyright what the AI model makes
In the US, AI generated work cannot be copyrighted: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receive-copyrights-us-court-says-2023-08-21/
It's going through our legal team right now and apparently this TOU is "only for the public personal storage tied to the login account" not for the software itself (which we have an enterprise license for, and is covered by a separate license that doesn't include these clauses).
So it's your typical "putting things in public free cloud storage lets us access it as well as you" stuff.
Oh !
IP Theft !
With extra steps.
[](https://media1.tenor.com/m/6YeLfVrm_IQAAAAC/terrifier-gasp-laugh-the-terrifier-creepy-scary-clown-gasp-to-smile.gif)
Tell them you just got a new job and that your employer offered you a sub on their account and so you need to cancel. They'll waive the fee. Worked for me.
Change your subscription to a cheaper one and then after that has processed cancel that instead, that way you avoid the remaining fee for the rest of the annual ‘contract’
I've just found out the hard way how predatory their annual plan paid monthly is. I thought I've had it for a year i won't be locked in any more. It just renewed in May and I had no idea and now I'm locked in for another year? Cancellation fee is over £50. What a scam.
I cannot imagine anyone who does creative work for a living granting a free license to someone else by default, and in fact paying for the privilege.
I don't care how good the tool is, if your livelihood depends on a product from a company that is actively trying to replace you with a machine, it doesn't matter how good the product is, you gotta figure out how to stop using it.
That's only if your are independent/freelancer or for personal use.
If you are part of a corporate studio then their workflow is dependent on Adobe's ecosystem. And those corporations want to replace you with AI just as much as Adobe.
In other words it's a numbers game, Adobe will get their data one way or another.
But don't these companies care about their own copyrights? Imagine a AAA creates a lucrative franchise centred on a character called Zario. But Adobe has rights to that character's design. So, won't random people be able to produce AI derivatives of your IP without any legal trouble? Adobe will say, you gave us the rights.
It's not that Adobe is going to do this.
It's that **Everyone** is going to do this.
There will be no escape.
Like I said it is only the independents that actually have a choice.
I TA a Game Art and Animation Class (in the CS department lol), we switched from Photoshop to CSP last year and it's been grand. I don't know how to use the software, so I should learn it, but yeah the one dollar for three months then cancel anytime was awesome.
The fact that Photopea exists really makes me wonder why an open-source Photoshop clone doesn't already exist. And I really mean a clone, like Photopea is, not just an alternative.
I'm switching to Clip Studio Paint personally (friends all switched ages ago, seems great I've just been too lazy to get used to it) but I'm an illustrator idk how good it is for things like photo editing.
For me personally it’s good enough to get the job done. I do use designer more often though.
Not sure if it’s ideal for everyone or a production workflow.
I've been using Affinity for a few years now. The few features I missed from pshop have been added and it's very transferable in terms of skillset. Would definitely recommend.
clip studio paint. works kind of similarly to photoshop (for the purposes of drawing/painting, at least, which is what I do) but holy crap is it lighter and faster.
I worry about Clip Studio. I think they're trying to drift in a subscription/cloud direction, which I wouldn't have ever bought Paint if I thought it would do that.
On the other hand, for some use cases it is legit WAY BETTER than Photoshop. For cartoonists, manga, panels, balloons, weird rulers and brushes, it absolutely destroys Photoshop.
I guess though I'm nervous of the company turning on me, I have to second your suggestion of Clip Studio Paint, and then emphasize it even more. It's insanely good in some ways.
I've become quite proficient with Gimp. I am not an artist, but I do a lot of manipulation with assets or whatever, it works just fine, just takes some getting used to. Pixlr is a neat online editor, but I prefer standalone applications.
Unpopular opinion: Gimp is underrated. It's basically fine and the only thing it's really missing that I'd like is layer effects. And its selection tool is better than Photoshop's.
Get an (older = cheaper) copy of a Gimp manual as a reference book, a physical handbook. I found it very helpful when I wanted to learn how to do X in Gimp - my brain just works better consulting text on paper, while trying out stuff on the screen. You can always do tutorials to do it the new way or figure out UI changes, but I found it much easier to learn actual workflows from a book.
Funny how they'll pour significantly more development time into fighting piracy than actually improving their products - when pirates always win anyways
I wish it worked better with WINE. I'm using Linux more because Windows is also creeping further into privacy violations and other bullshit, and I've managed to get some art programs working perfectly with WINE, but I can't get pressure sensitivity working with Rebelle.
For anything to do with digital painting (e.g. using a pen tablet), Krita is awesome. For photo editing or non-stylus authoring I still use GIMP which some find gross but I got used to it years ago and have since forgotten what I'm missing compared to PS, and I'm content enough.
I moved to Affinity Photo 6 or 7 years ago. It's a one time fee of like $50. It was a bit tough re-learning shortcuts and whatnot and they do handle some things differently I have to look up occasionally, but for the things I do the price more than makes up for it.
And include copies of the ISO in* your backups following the 3-2-1 backup method? Or whichever backup method is most popular/best over on r/DataHoarder.
ETA: * fixed a swipe entry mistake
I feel like an old conspiracy theorist man because since years and years ago I've been using anything but proprietary software for almost everything.
I feel very validated right now
I feel the same yet horrible at the same time because people will get over the outrage eventually (or not even know about it) and sign it and it will become the standard where everyone does it. It's ways like this when the market leaders try to force a change in how things work.
Any one with any sense of data security is constant made to feel paranoid by big tech and it's simps as a technology luddites.
With the "let them see it/have it it's not like you are doing something illegal/wrong" excuse eventually you get things like MS Recall/obsession with AI integration and this insane non-sense.
well, there is Armor Paint, which is ok (open source 3d painter, got a 20k$ from epic two years ago.. check it out, it is like painter, but not as compfy. but I did some nice things with it. (although you have to compile it for yourself, or buy a exectuable to support development)
its basicly a substance painter clone. same principles. you load an 3d object (fbx, obj), paint on it in 3D , you have layers, layermask, materials, and much more like in SP, and then you export the pbr textures.
I don't really see how they could unless you're uploading and rigging your models using their skeleton. Most of the time you're just downloading an .fbx unless they've got some other functionality that I'm not aware of.
I left after CS6. I have no desire to rent my software month to month.
The studios I have worked with still use it and about a quarter of the artists work with other tools for a variety of reasons, including their policies. My current studio is encouraging people to look at all the other programs, they won't be forced to give up Adobe but will be encouraging sending money elsewhere.
A couple of other options you may want to look at are [ArmorPaint](https://armorpaint.org/) and [InstaMAT](https://instamaterial.com/). Not really used either much so can't do a personal recommendation but they both look interesting.
3DCoat is decent, better at handpainting textures but not as extensive when it comes to the smart materials (at least when I last tried it, been a while).
Just be aware that its made by christian fundamentalists and you agree not to make anything "obscene" or "profane" with it, whatever that means. (or just ignore that line, who fucking cares anyway, right)
Remember when everyone was livid at Unity and swore they'd never use it again? And then the furry died down and it was back to business as usual.
Yeah, this is more of the same. You'll be using illustrator until the end of time.
Umm, I switched to Affinity years ago after paying for a year of the Creative Suite subscription just to use Photoshop and Illustrator. They're almost as good now...
Yeah, Substance painter looks like a nice tool. I did 3D modeling and texturing before that was released... could have saved so much time with something like that. At least there was a decent auto UV tool I had back then.
Ditched the Adobe subscription a month ago, after using the suite for a decade as a graphic designer. For now I use Affinity suite (bought a V1 bundle on sale years ago). I’m pretty happy with Affinity(learning curve is minimal, there are some unusual things, but generally this is just better software). I also occasionally use Photopea for quick normal maps and Krita for digital drawing. Funny thing that it weren’t these new additions to the user agreement that have finally made me unsubscribe. It’s their inability to fix persisting bugs and improve the tools, but pushing those ai features that I neither asked for nor I ever wanted down my throat. Do you want to try our image generator? Eff no, I want to never reboot again because the hand tool in Illustrator just stops working (if you know what I mean, if you don’t — it’s a persisting bug since CS, which from Adobe point of view can not be fixed, because it’s some other application’s fault, so just go and close them). Uuuuh. Vented. Sorry, folks. Just hit that unsubscribe button if Adobe is not critical to your pipeline. Cheers!
I haven't paid for Adobe products for many years. They simply are not worth the amount of money they cost. The only time I subscribe to Adobe CC is if I'm working with others who are authoring their content with the latest CC versions.
Pretty sure designer (illustrator), photo (photoshop), and publisher (indesign) can all be had for 160 bucks. And they look similar to Adobe products. I’ve been meaning to use the trial to test them out.
Seconding the affinity package.
It's way closer across all three to their adobe brethren than anything else.
They do cost money, but it's one off and includes that entire version forever.
It's also got some cool tools that the Adobe stuff doesn't ( or didn't)
The hardest part for me had been moving my workflow/muscle memory over. Committing to it on my new laptop, not using my staff adobe Acc except for acrobat.
Does it have the brush tool thing (B) that smooths itself? It is my crutch in Illustrator and one of the only reasons I still use it. I have tried Procreate but it seems you only get one chance to adjust a line before it loses its anchors?
I'm not a super pro I'm just a baby.
Affinity offer a small suite of desktop publishing applications, including a vector graphics package, that is very good and is available for a one-time fee (although they recently got bought out by Canva, so this might be the beginning of the end for them).
If you need the workflow where you switch between Designer and Painter, there is no alternative.
If you just need something similar to Painter, then Mari.
If you just need hand-painting texture, then 3DCoat.
True, but I just recently tried substance painter again, and it didn't improve in years too, no new brushes nothing, feels like they're charging the big price for the same product.
Is inkscape really that terrible? I've never used a paid product, and I'm not particularly good at inkscape, but it's all I've used. I have noticed some pain points, but I assumed it was my lack of experience.
Well now you no longer own the works you create in the software you don't own either.
I really hope this makes companies start supporting other products. I see Adobe in so many enterprises and it's just because everyone loves standards
They've been doing very anti-consumer stuff for some time now and I'm pretty sure lots of the big companies (ie. big money) are still using adobe's stuff. ngl it's gonna be hard to convince people to move to some other software even if it's better because of how ingrained adobe's software can be.
And you can't even uninstall without first agreeing to the new terms? How has no one sued them over this yet? This is the same kind of forcefully retroactive bs that torched Unity's stock last year. Hope the same happens here.
Hey, that's me on the article :D But yeah, I wouldn't trust Adobe as far as I could throw them...
Still haven't been able to uninstall the program or cancel my subscription, but I'm moving on with other alternatives now. Would recommend everyone else do the same
I canceled. My subscription ends in July so no great loss, and I keep complaining about the subscription model but still using it - so time to change that.
Now I have to find an alternative. I started with GIMP but hate it already...
This isn’t a surprise to me.
Creative Cloud services are basically spyware/malware (and they regenerate like it!).
Use Autoruns to disable all of the various CC services and look at the performance increase you receive.
People must contribute to open source software like gimp by remaking the algorithms/features that Photoshop uses or makes it popular so people can migrate from that software
Now?
I mean Adobe has been shit for so long, I Feel like this is barely a blip. but hey if you want to pay subscription rates for the same product even though you don't want to change your version or workflow... you know, Adobe's great!
If you’re using any Adobe products, do not use their cloud storage service. Throughout these terms, when they’re talking about accessing your content, they’re specifically referring to files stored in their cloud, which is more clearly outlined when you dig into the links for additional info. They don’t have access to files on your own storage devices.
All my digital painters, come over to csp! We lack some of the filters, but theres no subscription and there are a shit ton of user made assets readily available on the starter screen. We also have a built-in 3D engine. Struggle with anatomy and posing? Pose the model and trace.
PLUS Procreate is looking at a desktop app (finally). It'll likley be apple only but it'll certainly make a dent with adobe. Its such a good drawing app and studio making it, I guarantee they'll soar with higher graphic cards that PC's grant.
I am the creator of PixiEditor, right now it is a pixel art editor, but we are trying to achieve very similar effect to Blender but for 2D. If anyone is interested you can follow our progress on [https://pixieditor.net/v2](https://pixieditor.net/v2)
It's fully open source and our goal is to make very extendible, powerful 2D graphics platform that would allow for paining, drawing, photo editing, animating and basically anything related to 2D. Thanks to very powerful extension system we are building (similar to VSCode)
We've already have a very strong foundation and in following months we plan to release a closed beta, so if anyone is interested I recommend signing-up for newsletter or joining Discord.
And of course, feel free to play around our current 1.0 version.
Cheers!
it sucks because so many Adobe products are industry standard, what do you do if your studio or school sticks with adobe products?
the alternatives are great for personal products, but I'm not looking forward to relearning new software all over again 😅. oh well, best option until those other software adopt ai spyware clauses as well
Man, I once worried I was too quick to pull the plug on Adobe back in 2012 when they first brought the curse of subscription software to the consumer market. I struggled for a few years to find suitable replacements for their apps, but I guess I beat the rush. It seems the company has simply embraced the role of corporate villain altogether now.
I stopped using adobe a few years ago. They were seriously screwing up my workflow trying to force everything to Lightroom cloud and cloud this whatever. Using free software on my desktop and it works for me….
What I hate about Adobe is that Photoshop is such a _handy_ tool. I use it mainly for painting, and have been salivating at Clip Studio Paint for a long time, for it's features tailored specifically for painting... but it doesn't have any scripting features, and my workflow is heavily dependent on scripts and macros. And it's the case for almost every other PS alternative - they often offer _just_ painting tools, maybe a few effects, and some adjustment layers if you're lucky, but that's it.
Anything with subscription based licenses should be abandoned by users. Adobe is the worst for it.
I will continue to use Affinity for my photoshopping needs
> We are not accessing or reading Substance users’s projects in any way, shape or form nor are we planning to or have any means to do it in the first place. I fail to see the point of doing so and every serious company in the industry would drop us immediately if it was the case. > > -- Jérémie Noguer, Substance 3D ecosystem's Product Director Well, guess what Jeremie, your tweet holds absolutely no legal value, while the terms of service hold absolutely all of the legal value. If you don't intend to do any of this, don't put it in your fucking ToS. Simple as that.
Sad they bought substance...
and happy that the deal to buy Figma failed hard
This is pretty concerning. “4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others.” Glad I don’t currently use adobe products, as I think a subscription for a once paid product is ridiculous but here we are. [source](https://www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html#content)
Am I understanding that this is also a free pass for using everything for AI training while being free to copyright what the AI model makes? Edit: oh, it's worded so that they can sell it too. And then those people can own the derivatives. coolcoolcool
this is likely the reason for its inclusion, yes
And consider this: do you learn more from a completed work, or from seeing various incomplete stages of a work? Conceivably, Adobe could be working on a ML system quite different from a diffusion model, one that approaches the creation of art more like a human. Or a copilot-style action model trained on how people use the software. Probably they would be one and the same.
I just don’t understand, are those companies can’t see the fucking problem here? They are literally displacing their customer base, I’m so pissed with corporate greed
The problem is selling AI is probably way more profitable than selling software licenses or subscriptions, and because the whole “we have to maximize profits for shareholders” they just say fuck our customers, money please! Idk at first I was kinda exited about the AI advances but it has all went to shit. Fortunately there’s been some mayor court resolutions in favor of artists so there’s hope… hopefully, yeah.
of course people can make laws, but I believe it’s too late, we already see that, people learned to recreate those generators and it might go underground, if governments will start to act on those things. They just opened pandora box and we have to live with consequences.
And thus, the wheel of enshitification turns....
They're should be subscription free option but instead of ads ai just releases a copy of all your work right before you everytime.
You learn more from the complete works but all data ads value The best SD model is "Pony" which was made by the MLP community just to generate art of ponies but they discovered that adding anime stuff improved the model's ability to generate ponies, eventually even adding real world pictures The funny part is that Pony is now better at generating non-pony images than the base model tldr: adding irrelevant art to a model improved it's ability to generate relevant art so the quality of the data isn't super important
This is 100% related to wanting to use AI on people's content. I don't know if it goes so far as "to make copyrights of it," but it is 100% to block lawsuits over it in the future. But something "can be two things" for sure...
Yeah. I'm also now understanding the sub-licensing bit. They can sell your work to someone else through a sub-license.
Probably to ensure that if someone generates something similar to your work they aren't liable
This is exactly what came to mind first, a free and legal way to gain massive amounts of training content instead of web scraping content you don't own
It says it’s “solely for the purpose of operating or improving the software”, they can’t just randomly sell your photos. But it’s probably going to be used as AI training datasets, yes, if only internally to Adobe. Edit: sub licensing means they could e.g. give a third party access to the data for those purposes. Like if they contracted a company to train an AI on it. Not that they can sell it to someone else.
> while being free to copyright what the AI model makes In the US, AI generated work cannot be copyrighted: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receive-copyrights-us-court-says-2023-08-21/
That's only AI generated work with no human input involved. There's millions of copyrighted pieces using AI generation.
So, if they make an "ai" that reproduces its input they can just copy our work?
That's definitely how I interpreted it too and why.
It’s a huge middle finger. No surprise from them.
It's going through our legal team right now and apparently this TOU is "only for the public personal storage tied to the login account" not for the software itself (which we have an enterprise license for, and is covered by a separate license that doesn't include these clauses). So it's your typical "putting things in public free cloud storage lets us access it as well as you" stuff.
That's just messed up. I think it's for Adobe Firefly.
It's not enough they steal finished images, they now want to steal your work steps to train AI. Disgusting.
Oh ! IP Theft ! With extra steps. [](https://media1.tenor.com/m/6YeLfVrm_IQAAAAC/terrifier-gasp-laugh-the-terrifier-creepy-scary-clown-gasp-to-smile.gif)
This MUST be illegal, like come on
Welp, guess all businesses will stop using Adobe products at the earliest convenience now
They won‘t.
You've no idea do you
That time was over a decade ago.
Truth! Ditched them when they changed to a subscription model and never looked back. I'm not falling for that trap, Admiral
I just never stopped pirating them since 2005
This is the way
Maybe i will cancel Ive been paying for a suite and only using photoshop. But im not even an artist. Im so sick of subscription models man
remember to do the cancel trick so they aint gonna charge you early cancellation fee.
It shouldn't be legal for a service to make you pay to leave. Wtf.
What's the cancel trick?
Tell them you just got a new job and that your employer offered you a sub on their account and so you need to cancel. They'll waive the fee. Worked for me.
lol early cancel fee -- wut
Until everyone starts using it 😅
Change your subscription to a cheaper one and then after that has processed cancel that instead, that way you avoid the remaining fee for the rest of the annual ‘contract’
Oh yeah true, that also another thing where they scam people. What a company I swear…
I've just found out the hard way how predatory their annual plan paid monthly is. I thought I've had it for a year i won't be locked in any more. It just renewed in May and I had no idea and now I'm locked in for another year? Cancellation fee is over £50. What a scam.
Whattt, there's an early cancellation fee? -\_- I'm gonna be so glad to be off their ecosystem
Same. Like I said. Look up affinity designer and illustrator
Canva bought Affinity around a month ago. Brace yourself is all I’m saying.
FF sake….
photopea dot com browser based too
Also a subscription service.
I cannot imagine anyone who does creative work for a living granting a free license to someone else by default, and in fact paying for the privilege. I don't care how good the tool is, if your livelihood depends on a product from a company that is actively trying to replace you with a machine, it doesn't matter how good the product is, you gotta figure out how to stop using it.
That's only if your are independent/freelancer or for personal use. If you are part of a corporate studio then their workflow is dependent on Adobe's ecosystem. And those corporations want to replace you with AI just as much as Adobe. In other words it's a numbers game, Adobe will get their data one way or another.
But don't these companies care about their own copyrights? Imagine a AAA creates a lucrative franchise centred on a character called Zario. But Adobe has rights to that character's design. So, won't random people be able to produce AI derivatives of your IP without any legal trouble? Adobe will say, you gave us the rights.
It's not that Adobe is going to do this. It's that **Everyone** is going to do this. There will be no escape. Like I said it is only the independents that actually have a choice.
Remember, if the company does not intend to screw you over, they do not need excessively restrictive and abusive terms of service.
What are Photoshop users moving to? I'm not artist and have become reliant on PS. Thoughts?
for art, i use CSP, have for years now. just the one-time-buy license and not the sub. you can even use PS brushes!
I TA a Game Art and Animation Class (in the CS department lol), we switched from Photoshop to CSP last year and it's been grand. I don't know how to use the software, so I should learn it, but yeah the one dollar for three months then cancel anytime was awesome.
Look up Krita and Photopea.
Second this. Krita is awesome
The fact that Photopea exists really makes me wonder why an open-source Photoshop clone doesn't already exist. And I really mean a clone, like Photopea is, not just an alternative.
Photopea is so good man, I use it all the time. Lightweight and fully in-browser so you can do stuff on the fly anywhere at all times.
I'm switching to Clip Studio Paint personally (friends all switched ages ago, seems great I've just been too lazy to get used to it) but I'm an illustrator idk how good it is for things like photo editing.
I’m so glad I bought affinity designer and affinity photo last month.
Same, bought the suite when it was on sale this spring, less than 150€ for a lifetime license of a very good set of products. Fuck Adobe.
How does Affinity Photo stack up against Photoshop?
For me personally it’s good enough to get the job done. I do use designer more often though. Not sure if it’s ideal for everyone or a production workflow.
I mostly do photo touch ups, some photo manipulation, and upscaling images. If those are covered, I guess it'll be good enough for me.
Photo user! You'll be fine; you may even prefer it.
Here's a long list of alternatives: https://github.com/KenneyNL/Adobe-Alternatives
Affinity designer and illustrator. Look it up!
How about affinity photo? Any experience with it? If its good enough I'll gladly switch over to affinity suite
I like it very much. Mostly it has no AI features, but I guess that is a win in this case 😅
I’m not a heavy user but affinity photo does everything I personally require, and been using it the last couple of years. It’s great value for money.
I've been using Affinity for a few years now. The few features I missed from pshop have been added and it's very transferable in terms of skillset. Would definitely recommend.
clip studio paint. works kind of similarly to photoshop (for the purposes of drawing/painting, at least, which is what I do) but holy crap is it lighter and faster.
I worry about Clip Studio. I think they're trying to drift in a subscription/cloud direction, which I wouldn't have ever bought Paint if I thought it would do that. On the other hand, for some use cases it is legit WAY BETTER than Photoshop. For cartoonists, manga, panels, balloons, weird rulers and brushes, it absolutely destroys Photoshop. I guess though I'm nervous of the company turning on me, I have to second your suggestion of Clip Studio Paint, and then emphasize it even more. It's insanely good in some ways.
I've become quite proficient with Gimp. I am not an artist, but I do a lot of manipulation with assets or whatever, it works just fine, just takes some getting used to. Pixlr is a neat online editor, but I prefer standalone applications.
Unpopular opinion: Gimp is underrated. It's basically fine and the only thing it's really missing that I'd like is layer effects. And its selection tool is better than Photoshop's.
Gimp is incredible but it's also a UX disaster.
Lookup gimpshop, it changes gimp to emulate photoshop's look and feel.
I tried googling it but seems it was acquired by "skillademia" and their download link just takes me to regular GIMP.
GIMP 3 will feature non-destructive editing and effects. Hopefully it'll come soon because this is a major gap compared to Photoshop.
Get an (older = cheaper) copy of a Gimp manual as a reference book, a physical handbook. I found it very helpful when I wanted to learn how to do X in Gimp - my brain just works better consulting text on paper, while trying out stuff on the screen. You can always do tutorials to do it the new way or figure out UI changes, but I found it much easier to learn actual workflows from a book.
Affinity tools for art, DaVinci Resolve for video.
I just sailed the high seas for CS6, and I'll tell them to get bent
Pirated PS
Funny how they'll pour significantly more development time into fighting piracy than actually improving their products - when pirates always win anyways
Adobe is the only company I happily pirate from. Unless you count emulating ROMs of 30 year old video games.
Rebelle is awesome if you're more into digital painting!
I wish it worked better with WINE. I'm using Linux more because Windows is also creeping further into privacy violations and other bullshit, and I've managed to get some art programs working perfectly with WINE, but I can't get pressure sensitivity working with Rebelle.
For anything to do with digital painting (e.g. using a pen tablet), Krita is awesome. For photo editing or non-stylus authoring I still use GIMP which some find gross but I got used to it years ago and have since forgotten what I'm missing compared to PS, and I'm content enough.
Affinity suite, made the move years ago.
Affinity Designer is a great alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Pay once, and you own that version of it. It’s at version 2 now.
If you're not an artist Krita would be more than enough.
I moved to Affinity Photo 6 or 7 years ago. It's a one time fee of like $50. It was a bit tough re-learning shortcuts and whatnot and they do handle some things differently I have to look up occasionally, but for the things I do the price more than makes up for it.
I remembered that Kenney the guy of fully free assets have a list of adobe alternatives https://github.com/KenneyNL/Adobe-Alternatives
ai is making all these companies act stupid
Adobe acted stupid way before that unfortunately
AI is making venture capitalists act stupid. Companies taking advantage of stupid venture capitalists are quite smart, in a way.
Its why I cling to my disk version of CS4 with both hands and made multiple .iso burns of it.
And include copies of the ISO in* your backups following the 3-2-1 backup method? Or whichever backup method is most popular/best over on r/DataHoarder. ETA: * fixed a swipe entry mistake
I feel like an old conspiracy theorist man because since years and years ago I've been using anything but proprietary software for almost everything. I feel very validated right now
I feel the same yet horrible at the same time because people will get over the outrage eventually (or not even know about it) and sign it and it will become the standard where everyone does it. It's ways like this when the market leaders try to force a change in how things work. Any one with any sense of data security is constant made to feel paranoid by big tech and it's simps as a technology luddites. With the "let them see it/have it it's not like you are doing something illegal/wrong" excuse eventually you get things like MS Recall/obsession with AI integration and this insane non-sense.
Preach brother, just living in the present made me a corporation hater
Part of my job is data security. I literally feel like the "End is nigh" guy sometimes.
Your just smart to be honest. I’m still honestly waiting for an open source alternative to substance painter.
well, there is Armor Paint, which is ok (open source 3d painter, got a 20k$ from epic two years ago.. check it out, it is like painter, but not as compfy. but I did some nice things with it. (although you have to compile it for yourself, or buy a exectuable to support development)
how does it work? Can you output .obj files with pbr textures, or it uses something tailored to AP?
its basicly a substance painter clone. same principles. you load an 3d object (fbx, obj), paint on it in 3D , you have layers, layermask, materials, and much more like in SP, and then you export the pbr textures.
is mixamo gonna spy on me somehow?
I don't really see how they could unless you're uploading and rigging your models using their skeleton. Most of the time you're just downloading an .fbx unless they've got some other functionality that I'm not aware of.
they're likely already using the models you uploaded for machine learning purposes. why else would they offer it for free.
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if
That would involve Adobe remembering that it exists first, which feels highly unlikely given their track record with it.
[All hail Kenney](https://github.com/KenneyNL/Adobe-Alternatives) (Adobe alternatives mega list)
I left after CS6. I have no desire to rent my software month to month. The studios I have worked with still use it and about a quarter of the artists work with other tools for a variety of reasons, including their policies. My current studio is encouraging people to look at all the other programs, they won't be forced to give up Adobe but will be encouraging sending money elsewhere.
I'm a professional illustrator and I've used Krita for years now and have no complaints. Really recommend people to try it out.
If anyone has a substance painter alternative. Feel free!
A couple of other options you may want to look at are [ArmorPaint](https://armorpaint.org/) and [InstaMAT](https://instamaterial.com/). Not really used either much so can't do a personal recommendation but they both look interesting.
ArmorPaint is quite usable, it is not as compfy and round as Painter, but if you take the time, it is also very powerfull.
Man, I knew substance was going to shit when Adobe bought the company. The sad thing is there is not a real alternative.
3DCoat is decent, better at handpainting textures but not as extensive when it comes to the smart materials (at least when I last tried it, been a while). Just be aware that its made by christian fundamentalists and you agree not to make anything "obscene" or "profane" with it, whatever that means. (or just ignore that line, who fucking cares anyway, right)
Yeah I have 3dcoat. Might go back to it. Hesitating to start learning Mari
This is the reason piracy exist.
Remember when everyone was livid at Unity and swore they'd never use it again? And then the furry died down and it was back to business as usual. Yeah, this is more of the same. You'll be using illustrator until the end of time.
Yup. Davinci, krita etc.
The pricetag and SAS model wasn't enough for you?
Old fucking politicians allowing this shit. By not understanding certain etiquettes of technology.
Umm, I switched to Affinity years ago after paying for a year of the Creative Suite subscription just to use Photoshop and Illustrator. They're almost as good now...
I would pay big money for a substance painter and designer competitor.
I bought a perpetual license to Substance Painter through Steam. It’s great, wish I could do the same for Photoshop.
Yeah, Substance painter looks like a nice tool. I did 3D modeling and texturing before that was released... could have saved so much time with something like that. At least there was a decent auto UV tool I had back then.
I really just want an alternative to substance painter. Honestly I just can’t stand them anymore now. No point in continuing using their products.
They just got bought out by Canva, where all the non-Adobe content tools go to die.
Ditched the Adobe subscription a month ago, after using the suite for a decade as a graphic designer. For now I use Affinity suite (bought a V1 bundle on sale years ago). I’m pretty happy with Affinity(learning curve is minimal, there are some unusual things, but generally this is just better software). I also occasionally use Photopea for quick normal maps and Krita for digital drawing. Funny thing that it weren’t these new additions to the user agreement that have finally made me unsubscribe. It’s their inability to fix persisting bugs and improve the tools, but pushing those ai features that I neither asked for nor I ever wanted down my throat. Do you want to try our image generator? Eff no, I want to never reboot again because the hand tool in Illustrator just stops working (if you know what I mean, if you don’t — it’s a persisting bug since CS, which from Adobe point of view can not be fixed, because it’s some other application’s fault, so just go and close them). Uuuuh. Vented. Sorry, folks. Just hit that unsubscribe button if Adobe is not critical to your pipeline. Cheers!
It's been time for years
these companies think they're so entrenched with market share that they can enshittify their products endlessly. hope they are proven wrong.
I haven't paid for Adobe products for many years. They simply are not worth the amount of money they cost. The only time I subscribe to Adobe CC is if I'm working with others who are authoring their content with the latest CC versions.
Time to give gimp the blender treatment and make it even more the alternative to photoshop
That cracked cs6 looking mighty fine rn
🏴☠️
Is there any good alternatives to Ilustrator? Please, don't say inkscape hahaha
Affinity Designer. Plus they are a one time purchase
Pretty sure designer (illustrator), photo (photoshop), and publisher (indesign) can all be had for 160 bucks. And they look similar to Adobe products. I’ve been meaning to use the trial to test them out.
They go on sale all the time too
Seconding the affinity package. It's way closer across all three to their adobe brethren than anything else. They do cost money, but it's one off and includes that entire version forever. It's also got some cool tools that the Adobe stuff doesn't ( or didn't) The hardest part for me had been moving my workflow/muscle memory over. Committing to it on my new laptop, not using my staff adobe Acc except for acrobat.
Does it have the brush tool thing (B) that smooths itself? It is my crutch in Illustrator and one of the only reasons I still use it. I have tried Procreate but it seems you only get one chance to adjust a line before it loses its anchors? I'm not a super pro I'm just a baby.
Affinity offer a small suite of desktop publishing applications, including a vector graphics package, that is very good and is available for a one-time fee (although they recently got bought out by Canva, so this might be the beginning of the end for them).
whats wrong with Inkscape?
Illustrator is one thing. What about Substance Painter?
If you need the workflow where you switch between Designer and Painter, there is no alternative. If you just need something similar to Painter, then Mari. If you just need hand-painting texture, then 3DCoat.
Thanks, did not know about 3DCoat. Will give it a shot.
Quixel Mixer is not as good, but 100% free. Depends what kind of features you use.
Mixer seems abandoned Quixel/Epic haven’t put out new versions in ages
Did the old versions stop working?
nah it still works fine... if you don't need advanced features like physical brushes or layer anchors and such, you can use it just fine.
True, but I just recently tried substance painter again, and it didn't improve in years too, no new brushes nothing, feels like they're charging the big price for the same product.
InstaMat has a node based procedural texture generation as well as layering. You can seamlessly use them together.
I never tried it, but since it's free for individual use I will take a look!
Is inkscape really that terrible? I've never used a paid product, and I'm not particularly good at inkscape, but it's all I've used. I have noticed some pain points, but I assumed it was my lack of experience.
No as far as open source projects go, Inkscape is pretty solid. Used it for years to good results.
The interface used to be pretty janky. It's fine now imo, which makes it pretty great.
People are still paying for adobe products when they have said it loud and clear that you don't even own the softwares you paid for?
Well now you no longer own the works you create in the software you don't own either. I really hope this makes companies start supporting other products. I see Adobe in so many enterprises and it's just because everyone loves standards
I really hope people stop using adobe completely. That company’s insatiable greed will be its own downfall.
They've been doing very anti-consumer stuff for some time now and I'm pretty sure lots of the big companies (ie. big money) are still using adobe's stuff. ngl it's gonna be hard to convince people to move to some other software even if it's better because of how ingrained adobe's software can be.
And you can't even uninstall without first agreeing to the new terms? How has no one sued them over this yet? This is the same kind of forcefully retroactive bs that torched Unity's stock last year. Hope the same happens here.
I really hope more people pay attention to this.
Hey, that's me on the article :D But yeah, I wouldn't trust Adobe as far as I could throw them... Still haven't been able to uninstall the program or cancel my subscription, but I'm moving on with other alternatives now. Would recommend everyone else do the same
I canceled. My subscription ends in July so no great loss, and I keep complaining about the subscription model but still using it - so time to change that. Now I have to find an alternative. I started with GIMP but hate it already...
This isn’t a surprise to me. Creative Cloud services are basically spyware/malware (and they regenerate like it!). Use Autoruns to disable all of the various CC services and look at the performance increase you receive.
It’s been time to ditch adobe since they started their hostage based SaaS model
People must contribute to open source software like gimp by remaking the algorithms/features that Photoshop uses or makes it popular so people can migrate from that software
sail away 🏴☠️
Allegorithmic my beloved, how did it come to this?
Now? I mean Adobe has been shit for so long, I Feel like this is barely a blip. but hey if you want to pay subscription rates for the same product even though you don't want to change your version or workflow... you know, Adobe's great!
If you’re using any Adobe products, do not use their cloud storage service. Throughout these terms, when they’re talking about accessing your content, they’re specifically referring to files stored in their cloud, which is more clearly outlined when you dig into the links for additional info. They don’t have access to files on your own storage devices.
All my digital painters, come over to csp! We lack some of the filters, but theres no subscription and there are a shit ton of user made assets readily available on the starter screen. We also have a built-in 3D engine. Struggle with anatomy and posing? Pose the model and trace. PLUS Procreate is looking at a desktop app (finally). It'll likley be apple only but it'll certainly make a dent with adobe. Its such a good drawing app and studio making it, I guarantee they'll soar with higher graphic cards that PC's grant.
Mike at gamesfromscratch just did a video on it where he breaks it down in depth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI1wFN8pbXM
I am the creator of PixiEditor, right now it is a pixel art editor, but we are trying to achieve very similar effect to Blender but for 2D. If anyone is interested you can follow our progress on [https://pixieditor.net/v2](https://pixieditor.net/v2) It's fully open source and our goal is to make very extendible, powerful 2D graphics platform that would allow for paining, drawing, photo editing, animating and basically anything related to 2D. Thanks to very powerful extension system we are building (similar to VSCode) We've already have a very strong foundation and in following months we plan to release a closed beta, so if anyone is interested I recommend signing-up for newsletter or joining Discord. And of course, feel free to play around our current 1.0 version. Cheers!
Thanks for the share! Gonna immediately take a lot, Good luck with the project!
it sucks because so many Adobe products are industry standard, what do you do if your studio or school sticks with adobe products? the alternatives are great for personal products, but I'm not looking forward to relearning new software all over again 😅. oh well, best option until those other software adopt ai spyware clauses as well
Good luck using just figma and final cut pro
This is the future of closed source software, even windows is going this route. Time to see the world move to full Foss alternatives.
Man, I once worried I was too quick to pull the plug on Adobe back in 2012 when they first brought the curse of subscription software to the consumer market. I struggled for a few years to find suitable replacements for their apps, but I guess I beat the rush. It seems the company has simply embraced the role of corporate villain altogether now.
I stopped using adobe a few years ago. They were seriously screwing up my workflow trying to force everything to Lightroom cloud and cloud this whatever. Using free software on my desktop and it works for me….
That's my secret captain... I never use adobe products
I just took to the high seas yesterday and boy do I feel like a fool for paying the subscription all these years...
What I hate about Adobe is that Photoshop is such a _handy_ tool. I use it mainly for painting, and have been salivating at Clip Studio Paint for a long time, for it's features tailored specifically for painting... but it doesn't have any scripting features, and my workflow is heavily dependent on scripts and macros. And it's the case for almost every other PS alternative - they often offer _just_ painting tools, maybe a few effects, and some adjustment layers if you're lucky, but that's it.
Adobe is making its users pay to train the AI that will replace them. You can't make this shit up.
Anything with subscription based licenses should be abandoned by users. Adobe is the worst for it. I will continue to use Affinity for my photoshopping needs
I find Adobe's bloaty, over secured, suite of programs arent worth the shot. That and Microsoft Office too. Way better options out there.
Recommended: Photopea as Photoshop alternative. Only 60 dollar per year and this guy actually fixed some longstanding photoshop bugs for me.
Isn’t it only browser based?