"Oh, Adobe. I've been an Adobe user for a very long time. My primary tool is Photoshop, which I have used daily since before there was a World Wide Web. I dabble with the other tools in Adobe's Creative Cloud suite. I primarily use Illustrator to create vector designs for my laser cutter, and Lightroom to enhance some RAW-format photos. My wife loved Adobe Express until they completely changed the UI one night. And I used Premiere, the Adobe video editing tool, until it crashed more than 100 times during one video. I switched to Apple's Final Cut Pro (which has a one-time fee) after that."
"A few years ago, a credible Adobe competitor, Serif Ltd., released its Affinity software suite. Affinity had a photo editor that competed with Photoshop and Lightroom, a vector design tool that competed with Adobe Illustrator, and a page layout tool that competed with Adobe InDesign. Each tool was sold for a one-time price of $50. I purchased the Affinity Photo editor, which I found to be quite powerful. But I have decades of Photoshop muscle memory. Something I could accomplish in Photoshop in minutes took me an hour in Affinity, not because Affinity was bad, but because I wasn't familiar with it. As time savings is super important for me, I stuck with Photoshop."
Photoshop remains a primary, heavily used tool with deep user muscle memory, influencing workflow choices. Adobe Creative Cloud pricing rose from $50 to $70 per month, exceeding $800 annually. Serif's Affinity suite offers one-time $50 apps that compete with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, presenting a lower-cost alternative. Affinity can be powerful but unfamiliar interfaces can slow tasks compared with Photoshop, preserving Photoshop for time-sensitive work. Canva introduced a free 'Creative Operating System' with AI design capabilities that, combined with Photoshop, can cost about half of Creative Cloud. Adobe Express UI changes and Premiere instability have prompted some users to switch to alternatives.
Read at ZDNET
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