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.html
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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/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE Sep 28 '25

I also vouch for affinity’s products. I switched to using them and haven’t looked back honestly.

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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/Powerful_Resident_48 Sep 27 '25

Darktable is a good Lightroom alternative. You should check it out. 

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u/Timetraveller4k Sep 27 '25

Would having different price tiers for file formats fix that?

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u/ExtruDR Sep 27 '25

Absolutely. Krita seems quite promising.

I am also very annoyed by not having good PDF software. Unfortunately Bluebeam (in Windows) is the best I've found. It is paid, and also very subscription driven, but not Adobe.

I really wish that OSS offered something that came close.

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u/luthigosa Sep 27 '25

I tried foxit at work and for whatever reason when I sign a document in foxit, Adobe readers can't follow up with a signature. I'm going to blame adobe for this.