In today’s tech world, AI can make or break your product.
Sounds too intense? Ask Adobe. Adobe has had a terrible few days in the wake of the Terms & Conditions fiasco they created to supposedly train their AI on the licensed content of the creators. Evil, yet dumb.
If that was not enough of a let me hug the furnace to see if it's hot moment, they went ahead and tried to work around the initial mistake.
What does this all mean for creators, freelancers, agencies, and of course Adobe themselves?
Who Am I & Which Boat I Sail In?
To get into the crux of the whole drama, let me put my perspective into the argument.
I’m a Photographer by passion and use Lightroom and Photoshop to edit my photos. I like Illustrator and use it as a beginner. For these purposes I end up paying an exorbitant amount of subscription fees to Adobe, coz there is no choice.
Do I care about my data and creative license? Not to the extent a freelancer and/or creator would care but I value my privacy and authenticity of the art I create.
Here’s a link to Adobe’s updated TOS -
A clarification on Adobe Terms of Use | Adobe Blog
Here’s the original update -
I will spare the latest news where US Govt is suing Adobe for the Hard-To-Cancel Subscription model which is misleading at best.
There is a very crucial question here - Does everything have to be a Subscription?
Subscription vs Licensing
Those were the fun times when we bought a piece of software, struggled to get it installed, wrote down the license key, and kept it secretly stored to forget and did not bother with the creators until the updates broke something.
Today’s world makes a point to get in our faces to remind us every month that the developers of the software did a major favor on the users and we have to pay the rent or else face eviction.
There is a Calendar app asking us to pay $5 a month, a Notes app asking us to pay as much as $10 to $15 a month and some are charging $20 to connect to API of prominent apps. So, Where does it stop?
Probably not anytime soon, but I already have subscription fatigue.
My whole gripe started when I decided to move away from Adobe Creative Suite and started looking for an alternative. The only criterion was to not pay a subscription.
Competitor Analysis And Quest to Find My Affinity
With only one criterion I went about searching for the best Adobe alternative.
The first option I saw was the popular Affinity Suite. The recently Canva-acquired Adobe competitor is very popular with creatives and freelancers when they aren’t forced to work with the industry standard.
To my absolute shock, they provide a one-time licensing for their latest version of the software suite. The suite includes a Photo Editor, Designer, and Publisher. Everything I would need to be a creator machine.
There is a free trial as well -
Creative Software For Professionals | Get 50% Off Today
My search lasted a whole 10 minutes, which it took for me to create an account and get a free trial.
Not to rush into another walled garden, I was eager to look at open-source alternatives as well.
Open Source & Free
There are some tremendous open source & free tools on the market. The Linux community is growing faster than ever and in the creative space, it is a pleasant surprise to see such improvements.
A few options caught my eye and to my surprise were as good if not better than the mainstream options.
- Krita
- Gimp
- DarkTable
They are very capable and if I were to move to Linux any time soon, I would fall back to these options.
My Affinity to My Passions
My current editing flow is simple. I rely more on my Camera settings and Lens than post-processing. I am yet to find the look that recognizes my work.
That being said, I was looking for something to manage my library and edit RAW pictures. No subscriptions and easier to use were the other criteria I added to my search.
Finally, I ended up purchasing the Affinity Studio for Mac and iPad.
If you are interested in the review of Affinity Photo, I will post that somewhere next week once I use it for a while. Also, I have some amazing photos from my trip to Hallstatt just stewing and brewing. Watch out for an update to my website!
I would also like to know your views on this topic. Please subscribe below and add your comments so we can collaborate and have deep-dive discussions on such topics.