TL;DR:
Semple, a multi-disciplinary British artist, promised to build “a brand new suite of world-class design and photography tools, with an uncanny similarity to the tools you’ve been indoctrinated in.”
“There’s a really urgent need for a suite of creative tools for creators that they actually own rather than rent. In a way, this first started when Adobe and Pantone decided to paywall the Pantone colors and I created Freetone — which was a free color plugin so creators could continue to access their palette,” he says.
“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,”
“I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”
I’m highly sceptical of this shipping in a state that can compete with Adobe at the end of it all. The branding itself is asking for trouble, which is just plain stupid if you are serious about long-term and sustainable development of the whole suite, and 180k is not enough to even put together a competent alternative to Illustrator, not to mention Photoshop and InDesign.
And before people start claiming that you can fund this by outsourcing to Eastern Europe / India etc, please bear in mind that you usually get what you pay for. A competent developer with enough experience to actually make this happen won’t come cheap, and opportunistic juniors with big ambitions won’t deliver.
I wish this project all the luck it can get, but I’m personally banking on Graphite and Inkscape from the FOSS world and Affinity suite from (as of yet) less corpo commercial offerings.
Case in point. I’m still waking up and thought that said adobe is taking on adobe
Same, actually! And that happened even after I had my morning coffee too.
I especially like how “legal issues” is not even in “Risks and challenges” section on Kickstarter.
What can possibly go wrong?
Now you guys know what it’s like to be dyslexic!
It took until reading your comment and then going back to check the title again for me to realise it didn’t say Adobe twice.
Took 4 takes for me to finally work out what it said
I’m still not sure that’s not what it says
Just to add in here, a few years back I decided to make a project to cut adobe out of my life.
I wanted to start by giving all the FOSS tools a go first.
In the end, I decided none of them were up to scratch. Inkscape is clunky AF, gimp is a PITA, darktable was pretty clunky but usable.
In any case I landed on the affinity suite for a PS, Illustrator, and InDesign alternative, and I got very cheap / free versions of Skylum Luminar for Lightroom although that’s going to shit with every release.
DaVinchi for video editing. Not yet found a competent replacement for AE.
The only open source replacement for Adobe that really works for me is Audacity. And that’s probably more because I’m not a very advanced audio editor compared to my demands when it comes to photo and video editing tools, rather than an actual statement on the quality of the tool itself.
How did photopea rank?
Next to the edit tab is the Fusion tab in Davinci :), that’s your AE replacement.
I actually prefer Krita over GIMP, even for photo editing. I can’t stand how bad stylus support with GIMP is and I much prefer Krita’s UI. I wish Krita would focus on areas beyond drawing more, as Krita is quite close to being a good program for editing photos in my opinion.
I have never used Adobe’s or Affinity’s products though, as they aren’t available for Linux and are therefore not an option for me. I would probably consider them, but those companies apparently decided that I am not worth their business.
In my opinion Paint.net is a lot better than Gimp. Tried both and the former has given me a much more pleasant time.
gimp has more features, and with that, a steeper learning curve.
a 20+ year old version of paint shop pro beats paint.net
I actually really like Darktable. It took some time to get used to, but I bounced from Lightroom to Apple Photos to Darktable as Image editors. Unlike the others, I feel no need to leave Darktable now that I’m used to it.
I think darktable is one of the better alternatives for Adobe software.
A couple of years ago, I took a Lightroom workshop and did all the tasks with darktable. I was amazed at how similar it actually is and I managed to keep up with the workshop, even though I didn’t use darktable nor Lightroom before.
ShotCut works pretty good for basic video editing.
and opportunistic juniors with big ambitions won’t deliver.
Have you ever heard about photopea.com? Made by ONE guy.
I’ve never heard of that project, looks pretty cool! To be clear, I do not say that “one guy” cannot possibly make great software. Passion projects are a thing. What differentiates them from the Abode situation, in my opinion, is that passion projects rarely have strict deadlines and paying backers who expect software that is Adobe-level in terms of quality and polish in a roughly 1 year.
Fair point.
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Had never heard about Graphite, thank you! I’ll try to stay updated about it. But please feel free to post important news about it in this community, whenever there’ll be steps forward.
Just not Canva. We have customers that use Canva and, unless they use presets, the results are universally awful.
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They have managed to build software suites that have been stable, consistent, and near the cutting edge of their industry for decades while avoid significant bloat and legacy hangover.
Are we talking about the same Adobe here? Adobe software generally does work but avoiding bloat? Have you installed Reader lately? They have their share of instability as well.
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Yeah I had the same reaction. Adobe software is pretty great, but that’s in spite of running slow. If I had to pick 5 words to describe adobe products, I might pick bloat as one of them.
Yeah, that this is a name and logo that they even entertained for half a second is pretty strong evidence that they’re not up to this challenge. This is like starting a law firm and calling it “Buttfuckers”. No one is going to take you seriously, and you not seeing the problem means they shouldn’t.
“Buttfuckers & Sons” 😅
If you read the words under the title you’ll know it’s not going to be the name for the tools.
To be honest if this was released on 1st of April, it would have been a perfect prank. I don’t think it’s realistic the buy once, own forever approach if you don’t have any other source of income. Like Blackmagic has with their hardware so they can afford to do a buy once type of deal with Davinci Resolve.
A more realistic approach would be like Affinity where you buy every major release, every 3-4-5 years.
Even if I agree with him 100% and I switched to Davinci/Affinity, the whole branding and naming feels like a well made shitpost and I cannot take it seriously.
I get where you’re coming from, but for me, I HATE the Adobe corporation, so the shitpost feeling of Abode truly abides.
Just fyi engineers in every other part of the world are as good or better than Americans or whatever you may consider “developed” countries. I’m not in love with outsourcing considering I’ve lost my job to it a couple times. But it’s not because the devs across the world aren’t fantastic amazing people.
The root commenter wasn’t claiming that foreign engineers can’t be good, but rather that good foreign engineers are already charging competitive rates because they can, so there’s not a huge amount of savings to be had there.
What about Akira? Is it still being developed?
While your skepticism is valid, it’s important to consider that competition doesn’t solely rely on branding but also on innovation, user experience, and pricing. The concerns about funding and developer quality are legitimate, but success can be achieved by striking the right balance. While alternatives like Graphite, Inkscape, and Affinity have their merits, it’s worth keeping an eye on emerging projects as well. For a broader perspective on outsourcing development, this article on IT outsourcing in Europe (https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/it-outsourcing-europe/) can provide insights into potential options and considerations for ensuring competent and successful development, addressing some of the concerns raised.
TL;DR:
Semple, a multi-disciplinary British artist, promised to build “a brand new suite of world-class design and photography tools, with an uncanny similarity to the tools you’ve been indoctrinated in.”
“There’s a really urgent need for a suite of creative tools for creators that they actually own rather than rent. In a way, this first started when Adobe and Pantone decided to paywall the Pantone colors and I created Freetone — which was a free color plugin so creators could continue to access their palette,” he says.
“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,”
“I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”
Creating a new design is always an arduous task. I like how you discussed a British artist Semple. His aim is to create new design and photography tools in competition with Adobe. I think that the competition in the startup area is so high that you can’t relax even for a minute. Plus I liked how you addressed concerns with regard to legal issues and the importance of innovation and competition in tech startup ideas. As we talk about startups and raising capital I advise you to look at this article about tech startup ideas. The most popular niches for growing startups for now are Artificial Intelligence, Telehealth and Virtual Medical Services, and Remote Working. EdTech Startup, Biotech Startups, and IoT startups.
Took me 3 reads to notice that ABODE is not ADOBE
Maybe I’m a little dyslexic after 8 hours of work.
Bruh, till I read this I was so confused, like Adobe is taking on Adobe? lol, what?
I thought the article was going to be about a trademark dispute, lol.
Same lol
Jesus Christ thank you. I thought I had a stroke.
tfw dyslexic people trying to read this post
I have dyslexia and had such a hard time. Took like 3 reads to get it right
I don’t have dyslexia and I had a hard time as well… but I just woke up so IDK
Even after reading the post I still wasn’t sure how Adobe was taking on Adobe.
I had to read it a few times and I don’t have dyslexia either. Abode and Adobe are close together words.
I don’t and until the comments explained it I couldn’t see it either.
Affinity is available today. The products are great, the pricing is reasonable, and it is not subscription based.
I’ve used Affinity for many years, I really like it, and for the low one-time price, it’s been a spectacular value. That said, it can no longer even compare to Photoshop given their incredible AI capabilities and some of their other integrated features. In my case, I’ll stick with Affinity because I’m more of a hobbyist, but if I was a graphics professional, I’d most certainly have to use Photoshop.
High-end professionals avoid Adobe like the plague. Photoshop still doesn’t have decent EXR support or 32-bit support.
It’s great for 5-person design studios, maybe.
Didn’t know that. What do the high end pros use?
High end pro’s use any tool that is better suited for a job, including Photoshop.
Affinity is just great and reasonably compatible with Adobe files. It’s been my way out of the Adobe hegemony, after trying for Corel or Opensource tools for years. Without the creative cloud client crashing life has been so much more enjoyable !
If I depend on yours software to work, I’m not willing to pay a subscription. Period.
I’d happily pay for a 2023 Adobe Lightroom classic. Unfortunately Adobe doesn’t offer this, but I can find it sailing the high seas branded this way.
It’d be cool to just buy it and get a year’s worth of updates with the option of going subscription then
What? If you require a hammer to do work you refuse to pay for hammer?
A subscription isn’t buying a hammer. A subscription is buying access to a hammer. Access that can be revoked at any time. That’s not very reliable.
If you require a hammer to do work, you just buy a hammer that you can use for the rest of time or until you buy a better hammer.
You don’t pay $10 dollars a month for the rest of time for the same hammer you could have just paid for previously. Especially since HammerCo might up the price, go out of business, or flat out stop offering the hammer subscription you rely on, and you lose access to your vital resource.
What a dumb argument.
When you shove crayons up your nose and you’re only paying a subscription for those crayons, you’re going to have to return the crayons after the subscription ends
But see if you bought those crayons, you could leave them up there as long as you’d like.
I’m not buying a hammer subscription
I buy a hammer. I don’t want to depend on another company for my hammer to work.
Subscribe to go fuck your dumb analogy.
I buy a hammer. I don’t rent it. When I buy a hammer I pay up front for the one I’m getting and keep it until it breaks or I replace it (and even when I replace it I likely keep the old one). I’ve got four hammers that I’ve had for between 20 and 4 years. And I paid for each of them once.
as a dyslexic person I had to read that 6 times to see the difference.
I’m not dyslexix, and I didn’t realize the issue until I saw your comment.
I think he’ll just deliver some reskinned FOSS projects at best.
Its one thing to make a color chart, its a whole other thing to make all of Adobe.
This wouldn’t be a bad thing. If someone had the money and time to alter GIMPs interface and layer handling to work more like PS and reduce the learning curve, it would be very nice.
Yeah, after working with photoshop for some time, switching to GIMP takes a huge effort to learn. It’s just so alien.
Check out photopea
I mean, PhotoGIMP exists, I’ve tried that.
He says it will be closed source on the kickscammer page
So ultimately the goal is to just lock people into his own ecosystem. Nice.
I am not a fan of closed source either. They’re planning to sell lifetime license of the whole suite around 150 USD. From reading the FAQ, it seems like they want to at least make the components open source.
Well Stuart Semple is someone who has generally been quite reliable in what he does and a fairly prominent artist, so he presumably understands how the Adobe tools work. He probably doesn’t have the technical know-how on how to build it. The article mentions that it’s a team of sixteen people right now without the funding presumably.
I mean the worst case is they pick an existing project like gimp, krita, darktable or inkscape and brings in enough features to Adobe parity. That isn’t a bad outcome at all.
The worse case you mention is probably actually the best case scenario tbh. If they deliver beyond that it’ll be a bonus. Right now, this is just looking like yet another Kickstarter self-filling water bottle scam in the making.
As it’s going to be closed source, the project is worthless
SPEZ)!!
GIMP + Inkscape UI refresh and I’d fund the shit out of that.
I don’t know about inkscape but with GIMP I get the feeling that the devs are happy with how it is. Someone will probably will need to fork for a significant paradigm shift to happen
This article confirmed I’m still dyslexic
I read the title 10 times and was still confused until I saw your comment. And I’m not even dyslexic.
Or am i…?
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I just kept thinking of Abode Security
One of my many gripes with Inkscape is the steep learning curve. If this new application fixes it, I’d see myself using it as long as I don’t have to rent the software.
Till then, Inkscape all the way.
Inkscape is one of the better open source UIs IMO. There’s a lot to learn about vector vs raster graphics but that’s not the fault of Inkscape.
Gimp took a while to figure out.
Blender has got the be one of the steepest learning curves out there though. Not that the UI for Blender is bad. It’s just that there are 5-6 different sections and each section is like learning a new app. It’s huge and does everything.
Blender took me a lot of time to master. It’s not exactly bad. The only thing is stuff is hard to find. And if you don’t use it frequently, you’ll eventually forget how to use it.
During COVID, I decided to give Blender a shot. It did work out, and I started creating some cool stuff. Then a few months passed, and when I reopened it, I was like, uh…
Curious… do you like Gimp? I actually loathe it, and I’ve tried to change that many times. The most basic tasks feel like an unintuitive struggle for me. Photoshop on the other hand, feels easy to use, once I understood the concepts and learned a few basic shortcut keys.
I don’t mind it. I am not a heavy graphics editor though. Usually just basic functions and those are decently usable. I haven’t found much that’s really stupid design wise or workflow related.
Agreed. Why does FOSS feel like they have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to UI. Just take what people know and run with it. It’s literally the same functions (Béziers, splines, etc)
I believe Inkacape was initially devised as a corel draw alternative, the dominant vector image editor at the time, so it’s like that, but simpler.
how about working with already existing adobe alternatives and help get them better
After the Pantone fallout last year, I cancelled my Adobe subscription and bought Serif Affinity’s apps and haven’t looked back. Yes, there are a few work arounds and even almost a year in, I’m still looking up the occasional tool/feature that is comparable but I have saved $55/month. The ONLY features I miss are GREP and Scripts in InDesign but I have lived without them.
He’s right, Adobe’s grip on users is bullshit. I just doubt that he’s gonna be the guy to fix it.
Kinda off topic but the title of this post made me think; Do you think Adobe HQ is referred to as the “Abode”?
Oh, it’s that guy. The “Semple vs Kapoor” stuff was funny.
Before I recognized who was doing “abode” I was going to say that name was just asking for trouble, but yeah, he knew what he was doing.
His pigments are pretty cool. I’ve used several over the years and quite liked them.
I kind of wish he’d just raise money for or contribute to existing FOSS Adobe alternatives that are still feature-lacking.
It’s not FOSS but I’ve been using Photopea since I ditched Adobe years ago, it’s a decent alternative.
