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> The point most are missing is that, $600/annum maynot be a big deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual designer.

There was a theory, back before the subscription era, that the reason stolen/fake Photoshop license keys would work across multiple versions was that Adobe actually wanted people to be using pirated Photoshop at home. The people pirating Photoshop were theorised to turn into the same people who'd demand it at their workplaces, and Adobe was quite happy to go cash in on the corporate licensing. Easily piratable Photoshop was a free training program for future Adobe customers, who weren't going to pay for a copy to use at home, anyway.

Who knows if there's any truth to that, but it doesn't work in the subscription era, which definitely opens up some space for competition.

One early Adobe exec explicitly spoke of pirates as building product mindshare and as sales funnel. Couldn’t find those quotes, but did see the concepts have been researched and codified:

> Based on research conducted by Microsoft, Adobe and Disney … 83 percent of all pirates in mature markets are opportunistic and legally-inclined and will pay for software.

https://www.cleverbridge.com/corporate/software-pirates-your...

It also allowed Adobe to wipe out competition that was targeted towards the home market (why would you pay $99 for Paint Shop Pro when you could pirate Photoshop for free?)

Even when it comes to open source. There's been many people I've recommended gimp to who insisted on pirating Photoshop instead.

These are people who would balk at the idea of downloading a song illegally or pirating most software, but somehow Photoshop was different.

Not professionals or people who needed advanced unavailable features or anything, people doing tasks easily accomplishable with gimp. Simple image editing and stuff.

Because GIMP was and is a pile of garbage in terms of UI and UX.

The same fate of entirely too much open source software. If it looks like trash and is difficult to learn, people are going to give up on it.

Gimp is getting better tho.

It is true that miracles never cease.

But it works

Gimp was really really horrible in UX though

>These are people who would balk at the idea of downloading a song illegally or pirating most software, but somehow Photoshop was different.

Because the moral compass suggest Adobe is big, evil greedy for profit company so stealing from them makes you feel less guilty. And since everyone is doing it and it becomes a norm then why not do it?

>The point most are missing is that, $600/annum maynot be a big deal for a company, but it is a huge deal for an individual designer.

I seriously thought that the rather easy way to crack Adobe and Autodesk softwares was to lure in indie designers and engineers such that it becomes their go-to tool in their professional jobs.

In addition to price discrimination, this is why productivity app companies often give it at dramatically reduced prices or even free to independent creators (usually dollar revenue limit) and edu.

I have been moving to the Affinity Suite and never have I missed anything from Adobe. I love to work in it and I don’t have to pay per month.

I've attempted this transition a few times, and keep failing. It's not so much that the apps are inferior than that my habits with Adobe are so ingrained. It's very hard to force myself to keep using Affinity long enough to get used to it, when I have the corresponding Adobe app right there and I know I can get my task done in a fraction of the time. Logically I know that this is short-term thinking, and the investment in switching would be worth it. But in the moment when I need to get something done, it's tough.

I'm in your camp, but still have paid-for copies of the Affinity Suite because despite once been a total PS and AI - and by extension Adobe itself - fanboy and having used them since the mid-nineties, I now absolutely loathe Adobe and its subscription model.

Unfortunately for me, Illustrator (which along with Firefox is the software open all day long, every day) is too muscle-memoried. I've had it set up to my perfection for a decade or more, and it feels like it'd take about the same again to veer the fuckwit supertanker that is my brain towards Affinityland.

That's odd. I've found the keyboard shortcuts and tools to be similar enough (v and a being the most used) and annoying UX things, like every nudge of the cursor keys adds an undo step, have been done properly instead.

You probably fall in the advanced or expert category, and what I did is simply do a few key elements from things I was able to do easily in PS and practice it in Affinity (for instance certain layer actions or layouts)

A few months in Affinity and you already are saving money, if that’s important to you.

I am in your camp, too. My muscle-memory investment in the Adobe product line, especially Photoshop, Illustrator and After-Effects, is approaching 30 years old — more than half my life — and that really locks me in for professional, get-it-done-now, reasons.

How does Affinity Photo compare to LightRoom? I've tried everything from Luminar, to CaptureOne and nothing really works quite as well as LightRoom for various reasons.

I love all the Affinity products so far but the RAW part of Affinity Photo is where the suite falls a bit short in my opinion.

Things I miss most when compared to Lightroom are:

- the ability to quickly create circular and gradient masks and apply a set of setting to them

- Edits are not saved into a .xmp file like Lightroom does. Once you developed your image and closed the Raw editor, there is no way to apply the exact same settings again if you want to tweak something later.

I think a Lightroom competitor was on their list (but for a while now, hope it arrives soon!)

Apple used to have Aperture, and until they stopped development, it was miles beyond LR for the core "RAW library" workflow. I hate that Apple killed it.

It has a special workspace for editing RAW and can do most things Lightroom does. However it isn’t a streamlined experience, so I usually use one program to star and sort in directories and Photo to do the final edits. Darktable is what I use for sorting.

I don’t think there is a competitor that matches both editing and DAM capabilities of LR.

VMWare Workstation Player 16 + Windows 10 + Cracked Photoshop + Unity Enabled Session. Solves it for most people.

> Unity Enabled Session

Can anyone explain more about this part? I know the rest but this isn't showing up on Google as a phrase.

VMware's Unity mode lets a window in a VM appear as if it's a regular window on the host OS[0]. OP is saying you can run a cracked copy of Photoshop on Windows and have it "seem native" even on MacOS or Linux (though in practice the usual small things will differ: menu, some keyboard shortcuts, save as dialogs, etc).

I haven't used Unity mode for a case like this but back when it supported Linux guests I used it occasionally to "bring" some Linux windows to my Windows host and it was remarkably good. I was sad when they dropped Linux guest support from Unity-mode, but running vcxsrv and using X-forwarding is a good enough replacement, so I suppose it was a sensible move on their part.

0: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/16.0/com.v...

> The employers would be more than happy to accommodate that request (who does not like free money).

Not sure where your optimism is coming from...

At least for the time being, it will bring mixed environment which is far more costlier than just running Adobe for everyone.

And then when it comes to making the switch entirely, you will drop the efficiency of the senior designers who had decade(s) of experience on Adobe platform who are actually making money for the company and even after that, there will be shops doing business with your company still sticking to Adobe passing PSD files around and you have to give them good excuse that you don't accept PSD anymore.

That's why Adobe is being so arrogant with its pricing and their pitifully performing software never gets any better.

But I agree, Adobe needs to get out of everyone's way for the better future of design business.