Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦's posts Post Back to profile
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

While #Adobe is doing an absolute stupid with their new licensing terms, and (now Canva-owned) #Affinity slashes prices by half in a "flash sale", I am once again asking people to consider supporting #FLOSS tools instead.

Yes, they are far from perfect.

But with a small fraction of what these closed source vendors are raking in, these tools could be made immeasurably better.

And they won't end up bought up and enshittified, as experience with past attempts at doing that to FLOSS tools shows.

8 June at 0:19 | Open on mstdn.social
13 comments
Gabriel Pettier

@rysiek indeed, #blender3d is an exemple of how far this model can go, a strong community supporting the devs with money can make all the difference.

8 June at 0:28 | Open on mas.to
Nyx

@rysiek
I agree with your sentiment, however no-one is moving from Photoshop or Affinity Photo to GIMP.

The open source software movement needs to organise themselves better. GIMP has had years – and received grants – and it has not resulted in software that is competitive with Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

One of the reasons Affinity Photo was successful was that it had a lot of similarities to Photoshop's tools and UI – even the shortcut keys. The only hope for FOSS would be either doing the same, or investigate whether it would be feasible to turn Krita into a Photoshop competitor – instead of being predominantly a drawing tool. Assuming the Krita developer would even want this.

As much as I dislike Adobe, for professionals Photoshop only has to save someone 30-60 minutes per month to justify it's cost – which it does. As the situation currently stands, it would be like telling farmers to get rid of their tractors and use horses as they're cheaper.

It's inevitable that Canva will move to a subscription model. Canva will initially make the subscription optional (in the next year or so), then within four-five years they will almost certainly move to subscription only for anyone wanting to use the software fully. So any FOSS competitor would need to be ready for that, however they will still need to be competitive because a lot of non-professional geeks and enthusiasts will either just stick with their current Affinity version indefinitely or move to Photoshop Elements (where no subscription is required).

@rysiek
I agree with your sentiment, however no-one is moving from Photoshop or Affinity Photo to GIMP.

The open source software movement needs to organise themselves better. GIMP has had years – and received grants – and it has not resulted in software that is competitive with Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

8 June at 2:50 | Open on infosec.exchange
Brad Larsen

@Isthmus @rysiek yes, sadly!

I haven't seen anything comparable to Lightroom. I've looked several times, as I've really wanted to ditch Adobe for years (not a fan of their now discontinued cloud, their monthly fees, or their daemon programs that seem to believe they are the only software running on your computer). But nothing else has been in the same tier for digital photography.

8 June at 4:14 | Open on infosec.exchange
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@Isthmus ah, the inevitable "tools are not there yet, community needs to organize themselves better" take.

Look, I understand very well all the reasons why FLOSS tools in the space are sub-par. But I also understand that they will never improve if the energy is spent just on repeatedly belaboring that point.

You don't want to get involved, no problem, just don't.

The fewer people do, however, the longer FLOSS tools will not be viable alternatives to the closed Adobe and Affinity products. 🤷‍♀️

8 June at 10:32 | Open on mstdn.social
Alex Ștefănescu

@rysiek chipping in to mention i've used Krita (for digital painting), Gimp (for general-purpose processing) and Inkscape (vector art) for digital art and they are pretty good! one can even script automations to deal with repetitive processing.

8 June at 4:15 | Open on chaos.social
Timo Laine (he/him)
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@timolaine and Krita, and Blender (which already is amazing), and anything else out there. Dealer's choice.

8 June at 10:25 | Open on mstdn.social
Khleedril

@timolaine @rysiek Why not--they are perfect complements.

8 June at 11:50 | Open on cyberplace.social
Baldur Bjarnason

@rysiek While I agree with the sentiment, I’ve tried again and again for over twenty-five years to use FLOSS photography apps they’re generally outright unusable for me

No doubt they work for other people but Gimp, Darktable, and every tool for photography I’ve tried is just UI hell for me, even when they have the actual functionality (which is rare). Even the ones that are somewhat learnable (they’re never actually usable) tend to break on HiDPI screens

Krita and Penpot are great, though.

8 June at 10:36 | Open on toot.cafe
ian

@baldur @rysiek
I get excellent results from using GIMP, Digikam and RawTherapee together. But, as a keen amateur, I don't need commands for bulk editing or high productivity like a pro might need, even though my hobby process is very efficient thanks to #Digikam at the centre. Which is very a powerful DAM, and often overlooked.

Also, be prepared to see GIMP gaining traction as it introduces important new features due soon. Non destructive working is not far off.

@baldur @rysiek
I get excellent results from using GIMP, Digikam and RawTherapee together. But, as a keen amateur, I don't need commands for bulk editing or high productivity like a pro might need, even though my hobby process is very efficient thanks to #Digikam at the centre. Which is very a powerful DAM, and often overlooked.

8 June at 11:37 | Open on social.vivaldi.net
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@baldur I did not say "please use FLOSS tools", I merely said "consider supporting them". :blobcat:

8 June at 12:07 | Open on mstdn.social
Boyko Vatev
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@traffopost got bot out by Canva, I would be surprised if it doesn't get enshittified and/or switched to subscription model.

8 June at 12:08 | Open on mstdn.social
Go Up