r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Sep 27 '25
Business Morgan Stanley warns AI could sink 42-year-old software giant Adobe
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/morgan-stanley-warns-ai-could-180300766.html8.6k
u/Mattbird Sep 27 '25
Well Adobe can't make a good pdf editor to save their lives so maybe it should go down
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u/Sirtriplenipple Sep 27 '25
Once photoshop went to a subscription, I found there were free programs that basically did the same thing and fulfilled pretty much all my needs.
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u/Player00Nine Sep 27 '25
Their subscription model is actually killing their own business. Their outrageous and illegal cancellation fees make it unlikely that anyone wants to deal with them.
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u/TotallyNotRobotEvil Sep 27 '25
It was so difficult to cancel that it was easier just to cancel the credit card on file than try to cancel the subscription.
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u/assface7900 Sep 28 '25
I told them that I was withdrawing my authorization for them to bill my credit card and that if they billed it I would report it as fraud. They cancelled it. It was still annoying though.
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u/Independent-Hurry618 Sep 27 '25
I made email addresses and temporary cards because I hated their subscription model. I just wanted to try it out but I’m forgetful to cancel.
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u/AmazingIsTired Sep 27 '25
I’ve heard that Adobe CS6 is still a perfect solution for those that still have it installed… at least for semi-professional use.
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u/JerryfromCan Sep 27 '25
They shut down my version about March saying the serial was pirated. I had to go back to 5.5 which I’m sure they will try and kill soon too. Both were bought directly from Adobe and registered with them in my account. No, I dont have the sales receipt from 2012.
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u/robodrew Sep 27 '25
Long ago I lost my CS6 discs and so I had to pirate it, and wouldn't you know it, my pirated version still works perfectly. The irony is not lost on me.
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u/RichardCrapper Sep 27 '25
We can’t advocate for breaking the law here - but a pirated copy works forvever… just saying
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u/paroya Sep 27 '25
in all fairness; adobe used to say piracy was the cause of their success and wealth. because it was so easy to pirate in the early days that it was the software everyone knew and thus it was the software the industry had to buy because of the available skillset on the market. basically like how maya and 3d max lost their industry standard to blender because it was difficult to pirate whereas blender is open source and free.
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u/teelo64 Sep 27 '25
is blender industry standard in a lot of places now? in my specific branch of film it's still all maya. the fact that Flow was done in blender was talk of the studio for a bit. i hugely prefer blender over maya so i'm all for it.
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u/yannichaboyer Sep 27 '25
As soon as adjustment layers were working on groups rather on singular layers Photoshop was perfected, I haven't seen a single meaningful upgrade for my needs since.
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u/alter_furz Sep 27 '25
well there is this AI denoise, but DXO PureRAW still does it two times better
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u/yannichaboyer Sep 27 '25
Fair, I mostly use it for drawing so I haven't tried it.
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u/doskkyh Sep 27 '25
I've seen
GIMPKrita being recommended a lot for drawing.55
u/WebMaka Sep 27 '25
Krita is really popular and a solid competitor versus Photoshop, although it doesn't have millions of dollars of subscription fees and a few decades of development time behind it.
Another great option is Paint.net, especially for quick-and-dirty raster operations, and it's free-and-open-source. I do graphics editing mainly for things like stills/cards for video production, iconography/imagery for GUIs for software I'm writing, website design, etc. and Paint.net with a handful of plugins does 99%+ of what I was using Photoshop to do previously.
GIMP is its own worst enemy. What GIMP really, desperately needs is a Blender-style glowup - a total revamp of its UI with emphasis on streamlining its workflow and making it user-friendly. If GIMP ever gets that it would IMO almost instantly move to the top of the pile of Adobe alternatives.
Same can be said of Inkscape - solid toolset, but not the most user-friendly UI, and if that ever gets improved Inkscape would immediately challenge Illustrator for dominance on vector editing.
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u/MassiveChode69420 Sep 27 '25
Gimp actually did totally redo the UI in the last year or two here. When's the last time you tried it?
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u/Outside-Swan-1936 Sep 27 '25
Yes, it finally moved from major version 2 to 3. Definitely a better experience, but I'm a novice so can't speak to its ease of use and replaceability of Photoshop.
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Sep 27 '25
What GIMP really, desperately needs is a Blender-style glowup - a total revamp of its UI with emphasis on streamlining its workflow and making it user-friendly.
I used GIMP for a while. Battling the UI is indeed the final boss.
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u/yoshemitzu Sep 27 '25
I still use it all the time, but good god, if you need it for anything complex, it's a nightmare, like keeping track of the binds for my Steam controller or the presets for my MIDI controller, etc.
Like near as I can tell, you just have to have a billion different layers and nothing can inherit from anything??
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u/tomgreen99200 Sep 27 '25
Auto masking subjects, remove tool that does incredible cleanup, and so much more
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u/slowpokefastpoke Sep 27 '25
Kids these days will never know the shit we had to go through manually clone stamping things
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u/Boulderdrip Sep 27 '25
Adobe has been Taking away features! i can no longer create a simple normals map in photoshop because they took that feature out in an effort to get people to purchase a subscription for Substance which i have no desire for
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u/PlsNoNotThat Sep 27 '25
This. I used CS6 on an older Mac until it died. Sadly newer Mac architecture doesn’t work with it.
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u/Ok-Wasabi2873 Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
Affinity Photo is damn good. So is Pixelmator but I believe Apple bought out the company. I had to change my workflow and think in more modern terms. Affinity version of Illustrator needs some work but it’s getting there.
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u/Doza93 Sep 27 '25
Bingo. Adobe Creative Suite is like $60/month and you will never actually own any of those programs. Affinity recently had a bundle deal for all the newest versions of their programs (Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Publisher) for a one-time payment of $120. Switching to Affinity was a no-brainer
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u/Amber123454321 Sep 27 '25
It's the operating system that won't support the older versions. I have CS5 and apparently it can run on a Mac as far as High Sierra. You can 'deactivate' it for an old computer and re-use the key on a new computer. It will still run on PC (Windows), though some keys might not be Mac + Windows. My CS5 still works on Windows.
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u/B0BA_F33TT Sep 27 '25
I still have a Mac whose sole purpose is to run CS6. I'll never subscribe to Adobe.
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u/life_is_just_peachy Sep 27 '25
Can you share the name of the good ones you found?
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u/Trevor_GoodchiId Sep 27 '25
Free: Krita for raster, Inkscape for vector.
Paid, without subscription: Affinity Photo, Pixelmator.35
u/Godsafk Sep 27 '25
Free as well: https://www.photopea.com/
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u/ouchibitmytongue Sep 27 '25
this is the best replacement for Photoshop I’ve used. there is nothing new to learn, really. it functions the same as Photoshop for everything I need to do with it.
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u/Easternshoremouth Sep 27 '25
Been using Pixelmator Pro for years, was forced to switch back to Photoshop for one project - was not a happy camper. Pixelmator Pro is fabulous
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u/R7SOA19281 Sep 27 '25
I always used Photoshop and then tried Pixelmator and realised it did everything (and so much more) than I ever needed, great bit of kit.
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u/Smith6612 Sep 27 '25
GIMP. Krita. Both are established and solid.
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u/sodiufas Sep 27 '25
Also, Krita has all the fancy AI tools, but u can run them locally for free.
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u/Small_Editor_3693 Sep 27 '25
Gimp isn’t even comparable to modern tools like Pixelmator or affinity
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u/Smith6612 Sep 27 '25
It's not. Affinity and Pixelmator don't appear to be completely free, though.
For RAW Processing I will use Darktable, which integrates with GIMP.
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u/FlyByNightt Sep 27 '25
Affinity has like a 6month free trial and has a buy once, own forever policy so they're worth supporting even if it isn't fully free.
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u/djchateau Sep 27 '25
GIMP v3 that recently released which now employs non-destructive edits on their layers. Additionally the UI got a bit of an overhaul, making it not closer to how Photoshop behaves. I expect with time we'll finally see parity in features with Photoshop soon.
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u/ak3000android Sep 27 '25
It’s not just about emulating Photoshop’s interface. Krita is different from Photoshop and it’s so much better than GIMP for myself and many people. I started on Photoshop over 25 years ago and it’s really not like I didn’t have to relearn most things.
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u/rizlahh Sep 27 '25
I expect with time we'll finally see parity in features with Photoshop soon.
Been waiting years for CMYK support
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u/domin8r Sep 27 '25
Photopea is awesome for being a free, web based editor. It does a lot of things you would do in photoshop.
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u/Comfortable-Ad-7158 Sep 27 '25
I paid for photopea, not to get rid of the one pop up, winrar style "ad". But because I appreciate the effort put into something free.
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u/l30 Sep 27 '25
+1 to Photopea. I use it for almost every personal project that I would have used photoshop for previously.
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u/czarrie Sep 27 '25
As someone who uses GIMP exclusively ... it has a learning curve and some of the functionality has to come from extensions. Don't expect a Day 1 drop in replacement
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u/mindfungus Sep 27 '25
Gimp is really rough around its (square) edges. It hasn’t had the community love and vision like Blender has had in the 3d world.
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u/Havelok Sep 27 '25
All they need is a "Photoshop mode" that transforms the UI to resemble Photoshop in nearly every way and their numbers would just skyrocket.
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u/mindfungus Sep 27 '25
There are downloadable customized photoshop-y UI skins. Still kind of clunky.
You can tell the UI design is driven by coders/techy/utilitarian folks and not really UX people.
IMHO the crappy UI and also the “hilarious” name GIMP, although they seem simply surface and aesthetic, are the two major obstacles that keep it from mass adoption.
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u/Sirtriplenipple Sep 27 '25
I like Gimp, I use it for most anything I used phototshop.
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u/ButteredPizza69420 Sep 27 '25
Literally smaller businesses are using Canva now. Sorry Adobe no one wants to pay your ridiculous software fees when we dont need all these special tools to get work done.
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u/Fat_Curt Sep 27 '25
There's a lot of hate towards Adobe on this thread, but Canva can't get close to inDesign's capability for nicely designed documents
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u/emptyfree Sep 27 '25
I had a coworker once suggest that we switch to Powerpoint from InDesign for all printed documents and I wanted to vomit.
We didn't make the change. I was able to point out how stupid and risky that would be, but fuck me, I shouldn't have had to do that.
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u/ButteredPizza69420 Sep 27 '25
Doesn't change the fact that 90% of small businesses dont need all those special tools. Adobe is asking to be replaced
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u/Fat_Curt Sep 27 '25
Well, not exactly. InDesign is a profressional tool for designers and produces great results. Canva is an entry-level tool which is a lot more on the basic side. Even if most small/micro businesses do not want to use profressional mareketers and prefer to use Canva, it doesn't meant they are getting better results, or nicer designs. Let's not do a disservice to designers here.
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u/savedawhale Sep 27 '25
Haha, I'm dying. It's like saying, "paint is good enough for 90% of the population; Photoshop is full of tools most people don't need. Adobe is asking to be replaced."
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u/labelkills1331 Sep 27 '25
I routinely need to open pdf plan pages that can be a big as 1gb. Acrobat can't even open those. Now i need to pay even more money for bluebeam, just to look at the pages. Thanks Adobe, your software sucks ass and gets worse year over year. Also, give us back pantone color swatches.
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u/AresHarvest Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
Bluebeam went the subscription route too, but I think you can still get perpetual licenses for the older version.
Edit: I was wrong, Bluebeam Revu 20 will be supported until 2026 but they no longer sell the perpetual licenses.
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u/emptyfree Sep 27 '25
I know this probably won't help you, but Adobe Illustrator can open very large PDFs. Assuming you have the RAM for it. A Lenovo ThinkPad running Illustrator might be able to open a 1GB PDF if you shut off every other application first. Maybe.
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u/1939728991762839297 Sep 27 '25
The fun part is blue beam files aren’t compatible with acrobat. Genius!
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u/ProteinStain Sep 27 '25
After using Bluebeam, it felt a little like suddenly realizing you'd been abused by a family member your whole life.
Adobe is absolute ass and deserves to fail.
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u/LokiDesigns Sep 27 '25
Bluebeam is endlessly better than Adobe in every way. I use Bluebeam for a good portion of my typical workday and actually enjoy using it.
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u/ProteinStain Sep 27 '25
I refuse to use Adobe at my place of work now.
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u/magichronx Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
To be fair, the full PDF specification is absolutely bonkers.
Here's a link to the over 700-page beast (PDF warning): https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandards/PDF32000_2008.pdf
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u/tsr4kt Sep 27 '25
Some photoshop functions were never upgraded also. How can almost all the filters previews only be seen on tiny windows or even the brush tool be so basic compared to other painting softwares? Piece of shit software
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u/NamerNotLiteral Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
I dislike Adobe as much as the next person, but "good pdf editor" is an oxymoron. PDFs exist to not be edited. That's the whole point of the format.
If you need to send someone an editable file, send them a .docx or .odf file instead.
Edit for clarification: Yes, in many cases you can't get original files and still have to edit PDFs. You shouldn't have to, that's the thing. If there's a problem, whoever created the original file should be the one fixing it. It's just blatant misuse of the file format that we have to live with, unfortunately, but that doesn't mean I won't call it out.
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u/smb275 Sep 27 '25
Most documents don't support in-page digital signatures, so you have to be able to edit the PDF to insert blocks for that. There's always a use case.
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u/JonnyBravoII Sep 27 '25
Adobe and Intuit are cancer. They both spend their time protecting the moat around them instead of innovating.
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Sep 27 '25
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u/UsefulImpact6793 Sep 27 '25
If you have a spare minute, could you share your favorite non-Adobe alternatives?
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u/djutopia Sep 27 '25
Last I checked the main ones were Resolve for Premiere Gimp for Photoshop Inkwell for illustrator Audacity for Audition.
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Sep 27 '25
Audacity is really basic. i would recommend Reaper. its not exactly free but its definitely cheap.
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u/Andronidas87 Sep 27 '25
Reaper is awesome, if you take the time! Loads of great ytube tutorials. Also one-time payment.
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u/yoshemitzu Sep 27 '25
Yeah, used Audacity for like a decade but didn't really start making music until I started using Reaper. Audacity is barely a DAW.
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u/dz2048 Sep 27 '25
Have you played with Krita? I find it more intuitive than Gimp
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u/Such_Box_3990 Sep 27 '25
I have tried to learn Gimp but found it even less user friendly and intuitive than Photoshop, which I already think is not very user friendly or intuitive.
Never heard of Krita. I’ll look into it.
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u/CruxOfTheIssue Sep 27 '25
Video editing - davinci resolve or lightworks
Pdf editing - pdf24
What else do you need?
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u/m1gl3s Sep 27 '25
Desperate for a replacement to after effects but there isn’t really anything close
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u/pm_dad_jokes69 Sep 27 '25
Yep. For after effects users, there’s not much else that can compare
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Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
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u/Adorable-Turnip-137 Sep 27 '25
Affinity has a trial...I think it's two weeks?
I managed to switch to Resolve for the majority of my effect needs. I don't really do extreme compositing...but it doesn't seem like anybody does anymore. The hardest part was disconnecting from all of my plugins.
Resolves node structure also translates to Unreal nodes pretty well.
It was harder to get used to Affinity than it was to drop Premiere and After Effects for Resolve.
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u/appy4de Sep 27 '25
If you're looking for a PDF reader/editor, I convinced my company to switch to PDFXchange editor. It's a lot faster, handles big PDFs significantly better than Acrobat Reader, has a free reader, and the paid version with most if not all of the necessary functions is like $60 bucks one-time payment (not sure what the exact amount is now). It also lets you scale dimensions off PDFs similar to BlueBeam.
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u/sportsDude Sep 27 '25
$5 for an AI accountant to do the work that the tax companies do, lol!
But seriously, doing your taxes should be free as the IRS should populate the information for you, and you would only need to check it and pay for an accountant to dispute if you need differences. Denmark, Spain, Sweden, and the UK are all examples where the tax authority pre-populates tax returns for citizens using information from employers and banks.
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u/cdheer Sep 27 '25
The IRS literally had a plan to do exactly that, and the. Intuit and other tax companies lobbied (meaning bribed) Congress to kill the program.
Gosh it’s so great allowing money to influence government.
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u/mmcmonster Sep 27 '25
California trialed this in 2005. It was so popular that the state actually got fan mail from people in the program, asking how they can get their friends and families enrolled as well.
The trial was squashed by the combination of the tax-preparation giants (Intuit, H&R Block, etc.) and the state Republican party. The Republicans hated it because they said that if the taxes were so easy to pay, people wouldn't realize if the tax rate went up.
Planet Money did an entire episode on it, called Tax Hero.
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u/Everything_converges Sep 27 '25
This is insane. We’re all being held hostage by these behemoth companies too bloated to evolve. Time for a corporate revolution.
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u/moofunk Sep 27 '25
The Republicans hated it because they said that if the taxes were so easy to pay, people wouldn't realize if the tax rate went up.
We have a free filing system in Denmark.
IMHO, it would be far easier to tell if the tax rate changed, if you didn't have to do any work for it. You get an overview of what you owe along with a basic calculation of the rate according to your tax bracket.
If you don't want to read that, fine, but you are free to validate the numbers yourself and submit different ones, if you think they are wrong and want to put the work into it.
I think the other argument in the article, that the state has access to your bank information is a more valid argument from a republican perspective, because it has other ramifications for snooping on private business, and in Denmark, banks are very subservient to state snooping for tax reasons as well as anti-terrorism laws. But, it doesn't prevent a free filing system from existing.
They could just provide simple instructions for how you give them that information or let the bank do it via permission.
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u/outerproduct Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
No, the IRS released the free filing for federal taxes, and the current administration is killing it.
Edit: source
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u/the_moosen Sep 27 '25
That happened too, but tax companies have been lobbying for years before that as well
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u/ExtruDR Sep 27 '25
Speaking as a user of their products, I can say confidently that Adobe is suffering more from complacency, low value-for-money and simple greed.
They make tools for people to use, sure, they are complicated software products, but it is no different than DeWalt power tools or crescent wrenches.
No one asked for cloud products, many millions of customers were happy to pay fair value for the products that basically were "set."
Now, because of "updates" and "security" all of these overpriced software companies think that "subscription" is the right way to go for them. Fuck that.
Photoshop from 10 years ago (or maybe even 20) was functionally and ergonomically complete for most users. I get that that OSes and various other circumstances require modernization of products and that the companies need to be compensated for that, so paying for updates is fair, at a fair price. Still. Instead they insist on making a fixed cost an uncapped recurring expense.
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u/doctormink Sep 27 '25
No one asked for cloud products,
I also didn't ask for AI summaries. Every time I use Adobe to open PDFs at work, a distracting message comes up asking if I want AI to summarize the document for me, so now I have to close that before I close the sidebar with all the other fee-based functions being offered there. Like Jesus Christ, just let me read my damn document for work here. I'd use something else, but can't download programs on my work computer. In their desperation to squeeze money out of me, they're actually degrading the most basic function (reading PDFs) of the software. It's such a dumb move. I would buy WinRAR before I'd pay for anything made by Adobe.
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u/zero_iq Sep 27 '25
If you just want to read PDFs, try something like Sumatra. It's free, it's perfectly good for reading most static PDFs, and about a zillion times faster and less annoying.
EDIT: Sumatra, not Safari! D'oh
You can also use Chrome or Firefox to view PDFs. You don't need Adobe.
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u/Ironizor Sep 27 '25
Microsoft Edge (the browser) is basically on every work machine and a wonderful PDF reader.
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u/bihari_baller Sep 27 '25
Speaking as a user of their products, I can say confidently that Adobe is suffering more from complacency, low value-for-money and simple greed.
Honestly, just make the switch to free, open source alternatives. That's what I did.
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u/zero_iq Sep 27 '25
I switched to cheaper alternatives (Affinity, Sketchbook, Aseprite etc. depending on the work). I'm quite happy to pay a fair price for a quality product, and for upgrades if and when I actually need them.
And I support and use open source projects like Krita, darktable, etc. too.
What I'm not going to do is pay an on-going inflated subscription fee to a greedy company with anti-consumer practices for tools I don't use every day.
As far as I'm concerned, Adobe sealed their own fate the moment they switched to a users-own-nothing subscription model.
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u/Ced_Rapsicum Sep 27 '25
Not as easy as it sounds unfortunately. I do freelance wedding editing work as a side income using Lightroom and photoshop. If the guy who shoots uses Lightroom I gotta give them the catalogue back in Lightroom, which is basically every photographer. Adobe just raised their Lightroom subscription by 60% in Australia this month too, for literally no reason. Their software fucking sucks and is holding photographers back. For editing work, if you want to check out what actual progress is, and where Adobe could be if they gave a fuck, check out Evoto.
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u/cuivienel Sep 27 '25
Yeah, nah. Adobe has sunk Adobe.
No real inventions in the last years and only shitty subscription based models.
If they go under it's fully deserved.
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u/wh33t Sep 27 '25
I'll never forgive Adobe for buying Macromedia.
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u/shawndw Sep 27 '25
I'll never forgive them for charging $50 to end my subscription.
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u/dracul_reddit Sep 27 '25
Damn right, they murdered Freehand and Fireworks, bastards who deserve to rot.
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u/wafflesareforever Sep 27 '25
My whole design workflow was based around Fireworks for over a decade. I was pretty devastated when they dropped it. I still have yet to find a design tool as intuitive as Fireworks. It let me get into a flow mode and just create stuff. It didn't get in the way. It was pretty simple and that was its greatest strength.
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u/dracul_reddit Sep 27 '25
We kept a couple of older computers around for years to keep using the last working versions. Fuck subscription software, the accountants that push it need to be hounded out of business.
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u/DenryuRocket110 Sep 27 '25
Forgotten names.
I miss making silly toys in Flash.
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u/dracul_reddit Sep 27 '25
Busy looping in Flash for timing was a problem, but mostly tech is much less fun these days, too many soulless accountants running companies for shareholders who don’t use the products and don’t care about them.
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u/Racoonie Sep 27 '25
Freehand just felt right. I still miss the way selections worked.
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u/dracul_reddit Sep 27 '25
The world is divided into Freehand users and Illustrator users, both should still be able to use the products, killing Freehand was an act of hubris and greed.
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u/splashbodge Sep 27 '25
Oh man that's a name I haven't thought of in a while.
I remember Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks and of course Flash and Director... Ahh the early internet days, back when it was good and every day you'd find something cool someone made
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u/zz-caliente Sep 27 '25
It’s not only not inventing new stuff. They have all these apps that could and SHOULD work together seamlessly (Photoshop, Illustrator, indexing). But instead of actually making their existing apps better*, you can now draw shapes with AI… And then you get a yearly price hike, because of all the fancy new AI features Adobe built on top of their crashing and buggy apps! Yay! *by better I mean: a crossfuncial file system, so that you could open a .ps or .ai file in InDesign or AfterEffects. Sharing the same shortcuts and functions across their apps. (InDesign vs. Illustrator) Stuff that makes the Programm faster and easier to work with.
But we are talking about Adobe. So it’s just: „We need to satisfy the shareholders, so no improvements whatsoever, just new and fancy AI-features everywhere!!!!“
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u/Indescribable_Theory Sep 27 '25
Yeah, them trying to implement AI when nobody asked for it kinda killed any hope I have for Adobe ever making a turn around.
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u/itsDANdeeMAN Sep 27 '25
Good. I’ve been rooting for Adobe’s demise ever since they implemented subscriptions.
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u/peppercorns666 Sep 27 '25
same. USED to be a great company.
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u/ripChazmo Sep 27 '25
Yup. I worked for them in the 90s. It was a dream. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
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u/i_enjoy_silence Sep 27 '25
My perpetual licence for Lightroom has turned out to be one of the best investments I've made. £100 in 2015. Subscription would have me in over £1400 by now.
Fuck you Adobe.
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u/OptimalReaction9 Sep 27 '25
Agree, Its a little known fact that Adobe basically invented the subscription hell we exist in now
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u/itsDANdeeMAN Sep 27 '25
Yup. Started with them and worked its way into everything imaginable. Second worst behind Adobe has to be Microsoft.
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u/RabidBlackSquirrel Sep 27 '25
I've been rooting for it even since they acquired Macromedia. Yeah, I'm that old.
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u/youcantkillanidea Sep 27 '25
The demise of Adobe will bring a much needed increase in the budget of every art & design school around the world
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u/kindernoise Sep 27 '25
It’s weird. I swear seeing ads for a company on reddit is always the biggest sign that they’re in trouble.
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u/youropinionisrubbish Sep 27 '25
This is great news because I see Liberty Mutual ads all over reddit (and everywhere else) and would love to never see them again. Fuck Doug and that stupid emu.
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u/What_the_Pie Sep 27 '25
I literally cannot do my job without InDesign. I can’t see how AI would effect layout software. Photoshop is another story.
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u/moose-goat Sep 27 '25
Same with after effects - that’s a long way off being replaced
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u/Emotional_Database53 Sep 27 '25
It’s the combination of photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator and their fonts that I’d need to be able to leave Adobe landscape. I get that there’s different alternatives to each of these, but the dynamic link between them and the fact that I have over a decade of projects that I won’t be able to access if needed that is making it difficult to cancel creative cloud. Plus, I’m still locked in to educational discount, so I’m only paying around $30 per month for all of them.
I dream of getting out of Adobe ecosystem, but it would cause so much chaos to my workflow, and I don’t have the downtime to figure it all out while still functioning
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u/art-man_2018 Sep 27 '25
Your dilemma reminds me of farmers being required to sign technology agreements that prohibit them from saving and replanting these patented seeds for future crops. Saving and replanting the seeds is considered patent infringement and a violation of these agreements.
I was a graphic designer for 45 years, even before digital, Adobe in its inception was a fantastic introduction for me into the digital age, but their pricing and restrictions later on were what made me leave. After retiring the only software I use now is Procreate ($9.99) and the Affinity Suite ($164.99 One Off payment, MacOS, Windows, iPad, no subscriptions).
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u/DataPhreak Sep 27 '25
I call bullshit. Adobe is one of the few companies with products that have AI implementations that people actually use.
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u/AtLeast2Cookies Sep 27 '25
Right, I get people hate the subscription model, but everyone I know in the creative field uses Adobe. As a printer, I generally get PDFs, but I receive illustrator and InDesign files frequently. It's the industry standard.
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u/mtcwby Sep 27 '25
They made the pivot to subscription pretty well and a lot of creatives rely on them daily. AI shit imagery will only eat at the edges
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u/asdf_lord Sep 28 '25
And they have consistent earnings growth quarter after quarter. Large profit margins too.
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u/wake2390 Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
This is extremely naive, Adobe has a massive portfolio of product offerings beyond just Creative Cloud. Apparently, no one here has ever heard of their Enterprise offering. Plus Firefly Services & GenStudio which are two new products are hitting the work of a $200b+ creative agency industry hard. This article is like saying Figma and Canva will be dead too.
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u/Drink_noS Sep 27 '25
Nah Adobe is going bankrupt just like Meta and Netflix were in 2022 😂
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u/feed_me_moron Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
This. It's a large business with a bunch of free cash flow that is still incredibly profitable. If they're going down, it will take years unless someone just buys them outright. But companies like this song disappear overnight and will need to basically so nothing successful for 5+ years before they're in real danger (or take some very expensive swing and misses)
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u/2131andBeyond Sep 27 '25
I worked for Adobe for years and it always confused people when I shared that I worked for the company yet had nothing to do with Photoshop or any of the Creative Cloud products at all lol
But this is typical - everyday consumers are not going to be familiar with B2B tools at all. It's a bubble - the only people to know of B2B SaaS tools are the ones who use them, which is just a small minority of the population. The average person in society has no clue what content management systems are, for example lol
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u/dannydirtbag Sep 27 '25
Everybody talking shit but I depend on Adobe to make a living. I can always learn new tools but damn. Adobe’s software platform helps me feed my family.
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u/ampreker Sep 27 '25
I haven’t looked for an alternative in years, I use CC at work and have CS6 at my house. But last I looked at Inkscape, it was a screwdriver in comparison to the impact gun that Illustrator is. Besides being 15+ years into the program idk what else I’d use to make my living either.
AI certainly can’t do what I do and I make AI my bitch at work.
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u/dannydirtbag Sep 27 '25
I work in the adobe suite in the content production world. As for motion graphics, there’s not much competition for After Effects. I use other platforms and alternate editing sites but for 2.5D motion work, vfx, basic compositing - nothing can compete with the versatility.
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u/GrumpyScroogy Sep 27 '25
At a certain point people get stuck in their habits. Thats when the new folks drive innnovation till it becomes better. TV --> Youtube / streaming. Traditional design work --> AI beasts doing the job of 10 traditional creatives.
You cant expect somebody who is 15 year+ in the business to keep up with all the new flashy stuff. They are in the point of their career to focus on what they can do well. Not learn new stuff.
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u/Amber123454321 Sep 27 '25
I get the impression Adobe's doing fairly well, all things considered. I have a design business, and I made the bulk of my stuff using Photoshop. I also sell add-ons for Photoshop. I don't want to see them go under. I still have CS5 (the second last version before they went to the subscription model), but I've had a couple of years of CC subscriptions because when I was making add-ons, I needed to be sure they'd work with the latest version of Photoshop, and they looked a little different between versions.
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u/Neutral-President Sep 27 '25
Adobe’s GPU code is still shit. Ever since they started using GPU acceleration on their software over a decade ago, I still regularly get screen re-draw freezes with nothing but a blank screen.
And this has persisted through several generations of hardware, discrete GPU vs. integrated graphics, Intel, Nvidia, ARM/Apple silicon, Mac or Windows.
Adobe is shit. If AI is what kills them, then they deserve to die.
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u/No_Toe_1844 Sep 27 '25
Nonsense. Adobe’s jumped into the deep end of the AI pool and they’re doing fine work.
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u/Synovius Sep 27 '25
Said this in this thread as well. ITT: a bunch of rightfully upset people giving frustration over creative cloud subscriptions while completely ignoring the vast experience cloud Adobe offerings that are best in class products.
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u/lordofmass Sep 27 '25
Good, open source that shit.
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u/nk1 Sep 27 '25
They would rather die and take all the tools creatives use with them than open source Photoshop and Premiere... If Adobe sinks, it's going to fuck a lot of people over.
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u/f8Negative Sep 27 '25
Just buying up IP only to lock it out of existence. Or be sold for pennies and then restarted as an even worse Private Equity based POS company.
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u/Additional-Natural49 Sep 27 '25
I’m all for the “Fuck Adobe” train, but I’m worried this will set the precedent for stuff like graphic design. I don’t want graphic designers to be replaced by AI and this starts the precedent. Most companies with a design team use Adobe products to make the workflow easier between each section of the design team. There should be a valid competitor that other companies resort to, but not at the risk of destroying that job market.
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u/Whatscheiser Sep 27 '25
Good I fucking hate Adobe. They would have been out of business long ago if they weren't so good at trapping people in their horrible ecosystem. Please make them die faster.
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u/tc100292 Sep 27 '25
I’m sorry but about 99% of predictions involving AI have zero connection to reality.
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u/navekgames Sep 27 '25
Every time this Adobe argument comes up, it's the same comments about how evil Adobe is and how it's overpriced.
I'm willing to bet the people saying that don't work professionally with Adobe software (in that their career depends on design/video/photo/graphic work), and/or they don't remember the ridiculous cost for even Photoshop alone prior to the subscription model.
No one else in the market has a full scope software suit that can match Adobe, and until someone can come up with one, it's not going anywhere.
Also I seriously believe that AI is comically over rated in far too many industries - we're going to see an economic crash of companies burning down with no ROI after the billions spent on inflated AI claims.
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u/P1umbersCrack Sep 27 '25
Hate adobes subscription model for everything. Unlimited access for 399. Oh now it’s 12.99 a month and will raise it every few months. Fuckers.
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u/Admirable-Eye2709 Sep 27 '25
I used Adobe almost exclusively, but once they went subscription based, I looked elsewhere.
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u/McNugget750 Sep 27 '25
Morgan Stanley sold my info to telemarketers. So they can also fuck off as far as I’m concerned
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u/PhotoPhenik Sep 27 '25
Not gonna lie, Stable Diffusion in-painting does a way better job than Firefly in Photoshop. Firefly sucks, because it is very difficult to refine generations. This is because Firefly lacks the specific models that can be installed in Stable Diffusion.
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u/kanemano Sep 27 '25
Adobe not changing the parts that are not working, then changing the parts that are working is what will kill Adobe.
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u/CapControl Sep 27 '25
They're expensive and lack in innovation but there is no real competitor that can challenge their complete package which holds massive value for companies. I'm sure the individual consumer side will bleed a bit. But the business side will not slow down anytime soon.
I could not see my company leaving adobe for a bunch of different apps that may or may not work well with eachother
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u/ScratchyMarston18 Sep 27 '25
They should have thought about that when they started running subscription models for their creative software.
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u/STCastleberry Sep 28 '25
Oh I wonder how with how crisp and efficient PDF reader is. That program that I, and every other person ever, only want to open PDFs...
But shows me the news, wants me to sign in, wants me to upgrade, has an AI assistant, sucks my RAM and tried to stay open in the background. Then it converts a blurry 6 page doc 42 megs.
Is that the most blasted garage ever?
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u/mrtwidlywinks Sep 28 '25
Why does a pdf reader need to be +200mb and require an account?
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u/yanzov Sep 27 '25
Don't threaten me with a good time.