A few years ago, I cut the cord from all Adobe products and canceled my Creative Cloud subscription. In my latest YouTube video, I discuss why and also the software I now use instead.For a while now, photographers have asked me how I managed to free myself from using Adobe products. I learned the software I currently use while I still had a Creative Cloud subscription. Eventually, I used these other applications more and more, and I was able to replace much of my Adobe workflow. At that point, it was an easy decision to leave Adobe.
This decision isn't for everyone, of course, and it heavily depends on your specific workflow and needs. However, it's been working well for me, and as of today, I have no regrets about cutting the cord. In the video, I speak about replacing Lightroom with Capture One and the reasons why I prefer Capture One for things like tethering and editing. I also discuss the software I now use for video work, and then, of course, how I survive without Photoshop.
The most important part is to understand what you will gain and lose by changing software. As with everything, there are compromises, and for me, the biggest ones are learning a new interface, which takes a lot longer than it used to when I was younger, as well as losing some of the AI tools that Photoshop offers. I don't use generative AI often, and when I do, it's for simple things like extending a backdrop or removing a distraction, and there are other options for this as well.
Let me know in the comments below if you are using Adobe or have moved away from its software in favor of something else, and enjoy the video.
Join the Fstoppers community for free
-
Post comments and join in the discussions
-
Browse the site ad-free
-
Share your work and get featured in the community
-
Compete in the photo contests for fun and prizes
11 Comments
I managed to dump both Adobe and Microsoft in one go!
Installed Linux Mint. Installed Darktable, which has a steep learning curve, but once you understand it, it's good, very good. Even installed a whole catalogue of film emulation LUTS, including a very good Kodachrome LUT.
I also managed to get Affinity v3 working natively in Linux! Look up One Click Affinity On Linux.
Also worth looking at Rawtherapee and RapidRAW, which is still in a development phase, but definitely will be a force in the future.
All free. Times are hard.
Very cool. Unfortunately I don't have the tech skills to do this haha
Because I don't like to be milked like a bio-industrial cow, I gave Adobe the boot as soon as they started to force the subscription model on everybody. I by far prefer to buy a perpetual licence and to make my own decisions on when to upgrade, so I changed to ON1 Photo RAW (they offer both a licence- and a subscription- model). Never looked back since, but hey, I'm not a pro, just an enthousiastic hobby-photographer.
These subscriptions are out of control and I don't blame you. Every company expects us to pay monthly for life!
I'd like to ditch Adobe, but I've got lots of hours of work tied up in Lightroom. Photoshop would be easier to ditch.
Yep, it's definitely not easy. I gradually transitioned away for most of the software I was using.
I dumped Adobe for Affinity a while ago.
Basically Illustrator, Photoshop and a lot of indesign.
There are a lot of missing features in affinity and I'm much slower doing the same things but Adobe price has become way to high and I had no choice.
Things I miss. For example The spelling correctors (copilot, antidote, prolexis) don't work in Affinity publisher. You can't vectorize a whole document with templates in Publisher.
I do most of what I used Illustrator for in Canva nowadays.
Well this is dated since ArtCraft launched a few days ago. Free clone of all Adobe products. 99% feature parity in a few months, but works really great now. Same interfaces and shortcut keys. Super fast and lightweight. Uses your GPU. Adobe finally gets what it deserves, but other SAS companies are now also at risk.
I dropped the vid last week, and a day or two later I saw the news about that clone of Adobe.
Selection doesn't work as intended, and also many bugs, it's pre-alpha. I would wait to see, if there will be any true bug hunting and maintaining of the code.