but seriously, look up photopea
Wish I knew how to read mayan. That’d be badass.
The Mayans descendants do too.
The great free software that works on windows and I have personally tried (some are only free for personal use, but others are completely free):
- Photo editing, book editing and graphics by Canva - Affinity: https://www.affinity.studio/
- Movie Editing by Black Magic -Davinci Resolve: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
- 3D animation, movie editing, modeling, sculpting by Blender: https://www.blender.org/download/
- Digital painting by Krita: https://krita.org/en/
Have not tried
- Motion Design by Maxon - Autograph: https://www.maxon.net/en/autograph
- Animation by Canva - Cavalry: https://cavalry.studio/en/
- Photo manipulation by Gimp: https://www.gimp.org/
- RawTherapee: https://rawtherapee.com/
- Darktable: https://www.darktable.org/
- Rapid Raw: https://www.getrapidraw.com/
Some of those are free as in beer, but not free as in freedom. Relevant distinction to keep in mind.
I would love to be free of Adobe CC, but unfortunately this is the case. The alternatives are getting better, the gap is closing, but it is still there. Adobe’s time will come, but it’s not soon enough.
Ngl learning new UI is pretty easy.
…When you’re under the age of 35.
Honestly I would tell people like this screenshotted poster to suck it up or go fuck themselves, because this is free software that is provided for you as is and for use as you wish. If you think the software isn’t “adjusted enough” to meet your needs, then place requests for features in the relevant channels, be patient and try to work with the existing tools on offer, or keep shelling out booku bucks for Adobe’s continually enshittifying service.
Accept your fate with the corpos instead of bitching that the community effort options aren’t in your Goldilocks zone, shitbag.
God, this is why I hated Apple users at my old IT job. They’d bitch about the continually enshittifying status quo of their software and platform, and in the same statement reject all alternatives for not being “a smooth transition”.
Edit: on a more positive note, Kritia, FreeCAD, and Kdenlive are all great and multiplatform.
I think this is a needlessly combative stance. If your goal is to get new users to engage with the development side, calling their criticism “bitching” isn’t going to do that. Most software users don’t have the first clue about software development and wouldn’t even know what exactly to say if given a suggestion form. The best feedback a lot of new users can give is “the user experience is clunky and unintuitive”.
It’s not the same, the idea is that you are suggesting things that are not suitable replacements. You can’t then say “bUt ItS fReE sOfTwArE” as it that makes it a suitable replacement.
That’s the kicker though. The poster framed it as Adobe was the only game in town that was abusing them, a friend told them about a service that was free and had their entire feature set, but it was rejected due to UI and platform concerns.
Not all free software will reach feature or UI parity with their proprietary competition. That’s just reality. However, if you are paying a grand total of $0 for the alternative and have no interest in being constructive either through submitting a feature request or contributing code (donating doesn’t have an obligation for anything so in this circumstance that wouldn’t factor), then you should just either accept the software “as is” (which is a key component of most licenses), or accept that it’s not for you.
Stay with the devil that you know if you disregard positioned alternatives for not being “suitable enough”, and if you want to change that, be proactive and open-minded. Not bitch.
I read it more as a critique on the self-satisfied recommendation for something that just isn’t the drop in replacement they’re making it out to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I love foss software. 3 out of 4 computers in my household run linux and I‘ve converted a handful of people already.
However, I couldn’t and wouldn’t replace photoshop with gimp/krita, premiere or davinci with kdenlive, etc. for the time being. Not because they’re bad but because I use them professionally and cannot take any risks. Adobe is shit but their software is a known quantity.
Privately, I would never pay for Adobe (not paying anyways, my boss does). And for personal use and maybe smaller (somewhat tech savvy) freelancers, I‘d absolutely recommend everyone at least try the FOSS alternatives.
But, I‘d never go „um akhtshually, foss program xy is just as good as adobe program xy“. Because while they might be as powerful in theory, that doesn’t help if they’re a hurdle to use.
That’s a fine, nuanced take. I think the key part is that accepting that you are using a flawed option because it’s critical for your employer’s standard practices or required for a client’s needs (or is the only option that is acceptable to said employer or client) is perfectly fine. You are accepting that the enshittified software is aggravating and not what you’d prefer, but aren’t dismissive of alternatives and would consider them if you had the flexibility to.
What I’m trying to poke at here is people finding the “perfect savior” to their existing tools that were made out of choice (that enshittified) or complacency (unwilling to move until they find something that is effectively a reverse engineered clone). Of course, that usually doesn’t exist, so they whine about how “FOSS doesn’t match everything I want!” despite being capable of learning and not truly bound to their tools by say an employer.
“Hurdle to use” (In my opinion) is just the outcome of being used to the old platform rather than poor design by the developer (even if some FOSS projects may need some UI love).
There are indeed a lot of people who completely dismiss good things because they’re not perfect.
But I‘d argue „hurdle to use“ goes a bit further.
UX is obviously a part of that. It’s the main reason you can’t make me touch gimp, for example.But, on top of that, a lot of those foss programs require a more involved setup, especially if you want all features to work. Getting hardware de-/encoding to work in kdenlive, for example, isn’t necessarily something everyone can easily do but something that’s absolutely necessary for professional use.
And of course there’s the endless gamble, whether the foss community will happily aid you or curse you, when you’re asking for guidance.
Or if the tutorials and documentation need you to use the terminal for setup or certain features.
Most paid software has both a large community of users (forums, tutorials) and is polished to an extent that every idiot can install and start using it.That’s what I mean with hurdle. I’m personally tech savvy enough, that I could deal with any problem that might occur, even if I‘m not willing to learn a developer designed UI, but lots of people I know would not.
That’s why, for example, for video editing software, I love to recommend DaVinci resolve. It’s closed source but it’s free, polished n powerful. (And in my humble opinion better that Adobe premiere in every single way). Good software doesn’t have to cost anything, but it also doesn’t always have to be foss either. There’s a middle ground.
This person wasn’t saying that software developers are awful for not tailoring FOSS to their specific desires, they’re venting about something that frustrates them. People should be able to vent without someone telling them to fuck themselves
Then place it in the issues/suggestions tab of the project instead of mocking the project on mainstream social media. If you’re that upset with the labor of others that you get to coast on for free, you don’t belong in the conversation.
I’m tired of dealing with these kinds of people, and I’m willing to infer that maintainers, IT personnel, and friends trying to help this guy with their proprietary problems are too.
I think it’s OK to complain about free software on social media. It’s also OK to tell people that sometimes, if they want something to be better, they might need to be the ones to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. But not everyone has the time or the technical wherewithal to fix every tool they use. I sure couldn’t implement every improvement I ever thought of for free software, I don’t have the time.
But I think It’s still nice, for maintainers and for people thinking about getting into open source, to get a rolling feel for what gripes a lot of people share about open software. If I have a problem and I know a lot of people share my frustration, I’m much more motivated to try to fix it than if it’s something I and no one else care about.
I have a hard time taking a rant seriously when it includes such a neologistic gem as ‘booku’.
Inkscape as well
Inkscape kicks ASS god i love Inkscape
A lot of people in this thread getting real defensive about objectively shit FOSS UI/UX. It’s not just driven by corporate familiarity or laziness, it’s a pretty major shortcoming in open source projects that never gets addressed because we constantly downplay it.
Designing for user experience isn’t solely Apple’s modern consumerist method of dumbing down, hiding complexity and smoothing corners for the largest audience. Human centered design is a deeply researched field going back to (at minimum) the second industrial revolution. Tool ergonomics, assembly line efficiency, poka-yoke design, control panel layouts for nuclear power plants, etc, etc.
I’m not asking for a design masterpiece every time but just glance at some UX guides. Require a UI review process beyond “I like how it looks”. And please, God, please condense your settings menus and make them searchable.
Are these western-centric UX guides only? Do you have UX information for different cultures?
As someone who is planning to make software for others to use and have it be as user-friendly as possible, thank you… and I hope I can make something you can thank me for later.
If you don’t want to face the inconvenience of learning something new to escape the grasp of technofeudalism suffer in silence, serf
I see this genre of post going around a lot, and it just reeks of learned helplessness.
Yeah, I get it, sometimes you’re stuck in a situation where, for whatever, the alternatives aren’t viable or practical. You feel trapped. We all do. But why is the first instinct to gripe at the cool free software for not being quite what you wanted instead of getting mad at the rapidly enshittifying megacorps that put you into this trap you’re in to begin with?
that, and it reeks of consumerism and a desire to feel superior.
“haha those stupid nerds and their shitty nerd software, i’m much more sensible for using corporate software that actually works (except it doesn’t but ignore that)”
Linux only? Yes please. Do you know your distro waifu/catgirl/catboy? It rules.
I’d like to file a complaint, my distro didn’t come with a catgirl? ☹️
Counterpoint: All distros come with Xenia, she’s a canonically trans foxgirl.
To be fair, open source apps usually have terrible UI
At least UIs are standard now, back in my day (and still some today) people would make everything a CLI and then bitch at you when you told them that their very computationally efficient video trimming tool is cool and all, but editing video from the terminal is worse than CBT.
Yeah, there are lots of FOSS projects that have very obviously never had input from an artist or UI designer. The Venn diagram of “people who have the programming skills to make good FOSS” and “people who know how to design a good UI” consists of two almost entirely separate circles.
There’s also the attitude that you’re seeing in this thread, where if people had a problem with UX the response from the devs is basically “skill issue, git gud”
If it’s documented… Skill issue or help out.
Hot take: adobe products also have shit UI and are actively being made worse; it’s just that people are used to it (at least until adobe decides to change something again)
I’m not thinking of any Adobe competitors, actually.
