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Ask HN: What hardware/software do you recommend in a post-Adobe world?

21 points by tangent-man ↗ HN
I have been using a 2012 Mac-mini with a copy of Adobe Creative suite CS6 which was fine* for what I wanted to accomplish. I mostly use Photoshop and a little bit of Illustrator; I intend to learn InDesign as well one day… The problems I have are the latest version of OSX no longer works with CS6 and running OSX Mavericks is getting more and more dodgy as it is no longer being updated with security updates and I don’t want to shell out the huge spondoolies to Adobe (and I don’t want to be tied into a software-as-a-service deal anyway).

*+ I am peed off with Adobe/Apple for never really sorting out a glitch in Photoshop CS6 see: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussio...

I am thinking of going back to Windows. I have a legit copy of Photoshop CS5 that still runs under windows 10 fine and to be honest I think Microsoft for all their sins are better at enabling you to use your old software that you have actually paid for on there new OS’s than Apple. I would probably buy a new Mac-mini if I could still use CS6 on it, but alas I am too peed off with Adobe/Apple right now.

I am thinking of shelling out on a New PC Rig instead and bighting the bullet and learning Affinity Photo and Design instead for the long term. I think this is goodbye OSX (pretty as you are) and Hello to Windows 10 dual booted with Manjaro -for giggles…

Does anyone have any other suggestions? I haven’t used GIMP for a while but last time I used it I didn’t get on with it (maybe I am a bit thick). I liked Krita a lot but it seemed a bit buggy- not complaining its free.

I am only designing like Youtube Thumbnails and the Odd poster doing a bit of WebDev HTML/CSS and that sort of thing.. I don’t work in the design industry or anything.

15 comments

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officeplant
Given it's not critical to my workflow (or job) I just use GIMP for editing, Krita for digital art hobby tinkering. I used to just use CS2 for the longest time due to the "free" status of it with the serial key mishap. Working on learning blender for multiple uses.

If I had to do this as a job there isn't much doubt that I'd be on a work provided Adobe subscription like many others suffer through.

Personally I try to focus on software that has the largest variety of supported ecosystems. (ie. Gimp and Blender support Win x86 and Mac/Linux x86 & arm64) I don't like using tools that I have to throw away just because I'm on a Pinebook Pro for the weekend experimenting with low powered ARM nonsense. Although blender support is janky on many ARM devices depending on your level of OpenGL support, thinks are improving gradually.

For me it makes a lot of sense to try and be as hardware/software platform agnostic as possible with my software choices. It's massively helpful that I make music with a DAW called Renoise because it's the same program whether I'm on Linux/Windows/MacOS outside of what they use for the audio backend in each OS.

In the end there is nothing wrong with just building an intel/amd powered desktop and installing Win10 or some sort of mainstream linux solution for the sake of your time and sanity. Although keep in mind Win10 is less than 5 years away from EOL.

tangent-man
Hopefully by then Windows 12 will be out ;o)
dlsa
Krita is working out very well for my pixel wrangling tasks. The people around me also appreciate the improvements in workflow compared to gimp and photoshop. I just can't go back now, they're both too clunky. Usual caveats apply: I'm not in a studio full of photoshop power users that demand standardisation. That's a big factor.

Also, I'm not a graphic design guy. But when I need layers of pixels and brushes and the rest of what I consider required tools, Krita is my tool of choice. Kind of like Blender for 3D, although we also use that for 2D now since the newest upgrades have gone through.

cpach
Affinity is a very good choice. Probably the best you will find.

As a Mac user I prefer Acorn though, since its GUI feels more native.

cwdegidio
I'll definitely second Affinity. I use both Affinity Photo and Designer. I find it has all the features I would expect from something like PS or ID. The only issues I have ever had with it is relying on 20 years of Adobe muscle memory, but every time I use it I get that much more comfortable with it.
randomluck040
It might be the “Adobe muscle memory” for me as well but I’ve tried daily driving Affinity for a week and I can’t get used to it. I don’t understand the UI, sometimes it’s slow and laggy (coming from PS this is huge…) and some functions don’t work as they do in PS (as in “don’t produce satisfying outcomes”). Do you do photo editing by any chance?
cwdegidio
I used to when I was still an active photojournalist. These days I mostly use it for mocking up user interfaces, making concert flyers, and creating player aids for my TTRPG group. I just recently got back into photography after about a 13 year hiatus after leaving the media to become a developer. That's where the Adobe muscle memory is biting me. Every time I sit down to edit some photos, I swear I have to look something up in Affinity at least once per session with it.
randomluck040
Thanks for answering! How comfortable is dodge & burn and working with layers in Affinity and did you try out frequency separation in one way or another by any chance?
open-source-ux
I have all the Affinity apps (Photo, Designer and Publisher) and they are all excellent alternatives to the Adobe equivalents (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign). Unlike Adobe apps, Affinity apps are not subscription-based.

Note that the Affinity apps are feature rich and produce professional results, but they are not designed to mimic all the tools in Adobe apps i.e. Affinity apps are not feature-equal to Adobe (by design).

If you are designing YouTube thumbnails or posters, then the Affinity apps will be more than capable.

There are also a fairly large number of tutorials on the Affinity apps, particularly on YouTube. And if you ever get stuck trying to achieve something in Affinity Photo, there's enough overlap between Photo and Photoshop that you can usually follow a Photoshop tutorial and recreate it in Photo.

The Affinity website has a showcase of work made in their apps: https://affinityspotlight.com/

If Affinity feels like overkill for you needs, an online template service like canva.com might be worth a look. Canva have ready-designed templates you can modify (including posters and YouTube thumbnails). They have a free tier and paid subscription tier.

thatsamonad
I’m a pretty casual user who does some basic photo touch ups and and occasional vector art design. For my use cases I use Pixelmator Pro (https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/) and it works perfectly. It’s also dirt cheap (40 USD without any discounts) for what it does and they have a decent trial period.

The biggest downside is it’s macOS only.

randomluck040
Can you elaborate whether dodge and burn is a straight forward process and if you have ever done something like frequency separation and whether that works or not? I‘m currently looking to get rid of my sub-life…
apeescape
I use Photopea for my very limited photoshops needs. It's a free, in-browser tool that's pretty powerful IMO. Hopefully that's helpful.
joeld42
I use Affinity's apps and sometimes Krita, and Procreate on iPad for drawing. I haven't been able to completely switch off of photoshop yet, not because of features just because I am so used to the workflow for a lot of things, but it's a goal for next year.

I've been a super loyal Adobe fan for a long time. I would probably have kept using PS forever if they had just literally stopped developing it, but between moving familiar feature (randomly changing how scale-preserve aspect works??) and breaking everything (zoom and navigator is just super flaky nowdays, the text tool is completely bonkers lately). Some of the stuff they added is useful, the embedding "smart layers" was helpful for a few things but caused me some headaches too, but I don't really care to relearn everything.

They're really bad at the "We made this better" thing, for example, the new brush tools are certainly better and i guess a big improvement, but was doing a lot of digital painting years ago and now just use it occasionally and I don't know how to use them, and all the old skills I had are gone. I'm sure I would agree that almost every change would be better if I had the time and motivation to relearn them but, if I have to take the time to relearn something I'm just going to relearn the hot new thing (like Procreate) instead.

brtkdotse
Just dropped my CC subscription because 98/100 times I need to design something I say “fuck it” and do it in Canva in less time than it would’ve taken Illustrator to load.
noduerme
If you found CS6 buggy... you'd hate Photoshop / Illustrator CC 2022. Rife with bugs and basic problems with saving that mess with the workflow. Adobe is even once again making "Save for Web" a "legacy" feature, meaning they will remove it and replace it with... nothing. Adobe support is nonexistent at this point. There's no one home, and the decisions they make are terrible. Yes, the "select object" tooling and some of the new neural filters are pretty amazing, but if you can't get simple things like a Save dialog right... what's the point?

I'm looking for a new vendor too. I would love to cancel my company's CC subscriptions. The problem is we're meshed into the Adobe ecosystem to a certain extent, in particular editable AI/PDF files are still the only real option for getting graphics with movable type to printers who need to do on-the-fly modifications before going to press (so our studio isn't swamped with "please change the date on this ad and send us a new outlined version").

However, it's become clear that Adobe is now leveraging its monopoly to sit back and charge monthly while breaking, abandoning, and failing to fix software that worked for years.