Photoshop Celebrates 25th Anniversary With 'Top 25 Under 25' Artist Showcase

Everyone bashing photoshop here has no clue about what goes on in the professional creative world. It comes mainly from ignorance and intimidation from it being a very complex program that can do anything graphically or photographically. Its an industry standard. I use it every day and it's made my job a hell of a lot easier as a creative professional with all the new features that come out. Everyone from designers to photographers to artists to.......you get the point. If people are happy with other great alternatives like pixelmator that's great, but most pros use photoshop. Not sure what the point of bashing it is.....other than crying that it's getting too complicated for you.

That's like saying you'd rather use iMovie and Premiere is such a bloated piece of garbage. It's clear that some have noooooo freakinnnnn clue.

25 years and still bloatware. Sure it's very good at it's job but now it's just bloated and you can't even pay for it once and own it. For all but the heaviest image editing work, Pixelmator is looking like a great alternative.

Photoshop one day will go the same route as flash. Both very bloated. And I do hope pixelmator and others really become good enough to be accepted by the industry for light tasks and maybe one day even heavy tasks too. Then PS can finally start to die like flash is slowly dying now.

Meh.

I've been using Photoshop since version 7, in 2002, and, despite all the company's failings and questionable business practices, was rather fond of Adobe software until their clown of a CEO decided that its users weren't being milked hard enough already and imposed that CC crap upon us all (the technical justification behind the decision – more frequent and granular updates –, by the way, is a blatant lie, as the “CC 2014” moniker might as well have been “CS8”).

The way Adobe veered off course with their AIR and Flash shenanigans also goes to show just how out of touch they are with the market at large… Seriously, it took a disruptive platform with an incompatible browser and an open letter by Jobs for the web to be finally fixed and purged of proprietary, accesibility-averse plugins and, even then, those morons were in full denial mode for more than a year.

To add insult to injury, they were lucky (or were they?) for not having been the target of an antitrust case on account of their purchase of Macromedia (and the subsequent and, in my opinion, monopolistic, anticompetitive and downright criminal discontinuation of FreeHand; either the acquisition should've been blocked altogether or, at the very least, they should've been forced to sell off all FreeHand-related patents and IP by regulators).

After a long, stable 25-year-long reign, it's safe to say that the barbarians are at the gates already… The Pixelmator, Acorn and iDraw archers came in front and showed the way, and now it's up to the folks at Serif to knock 'em down with their Affinity Photo battering ram.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

For all the people saying that this won't be a viable contender until it is ported to Windows, I beg to differ; nowadays, the Mac is, more than ever (except perhaps in the early 90's, back when Ps 1.0 was launched first on the Mac and Windows 3.0 was still in its infancy) the dominant platform in creative circles, and it's not like Serif doesn't have a long history of developing Windows applications already. :rolleyes:

But anyway, since the cross-platform case is a strong one, I am also predicting that once these guys look at the combined revenues of the Designer, Photo and Publisher components come next year, they will announce a cross-platform Affinity Suite 2 shortly afterwards (whether they scrap the Plus Suite altogether or keep developing it as a Windows-only, “Elements-esque” prosumer counterpart to Affinity is anyone's guess – though if I were in a position to decide that, I *would* bet the company on Affinity, go straight to Adobe's jugular and not even bother with the prosumer market, as that space probably has low margins and an infrequent upgrade cycle) and, well, it could very well be game over for Adobe in the professional photography, illustration and DTP fields (not a small chunk of their overall market, and they have serious competition on the professional audio and NLE markets already, leaving only AfterEffects as an isolated monopoly; as for Lightroom, as Apple has shown us before, I'd venture to say that it's probably not *that* hard to clone or replace, seriously). I don't mean “game over” in the classical sense that they would file for bankruptcy soon (if ever! Just look at Microsoft; 800lb gorillas, especially those deeply entrenched in a few software niches, can take years to falter) or even lose the market share majority they currently enjoy, but “game over” as in being forced to seriously rethink their software licencing and pricing model…

And only then I, as many other, might consider switching back to Adobe's offerings; however, by then, we will have partially learnt new tools and workflows and, if the support is there (plug-ins, tutorials, overall academic and industry acceptance, etc.), may end up sticking with Affinity. That Adobe doesn't get this and is probably laughing their competitors off while extorting and bullying their loyal users – yes, bullying, as in treating them like pirates and making their legally paid and licenced software actually harder to maintain and less reliable than if otherwise pirated – just shows that company's deep, culturally entrenched hubris and contempt for all things decent.

We're 25 so stuff anyone over?

Yep. Apparently Adobe now thinks the only groundbreaking work is by people three years out of college. Personally I find this hilarious.

25 years and still bloatware. Sure it's very good at it's job but now it's just bloated and you can't even pay for it once and own it. For all but the heaviest image editing work, Pixelmator is looking like a great alternative.

Bloated? That's all you can say? It's a piece of software that is nearly limitless in creative possibilities. You refer to that as bloatware?

Photoshop one day will go the same route as flash. Both very bloated. And I do hope pixelmator and others really become good enough to be accepted by the industry for light tasks and maybe one day even heavy tasks too. Then PS can finally start to die like flash is slowly dying now.

Sounds like a personal grudge, not an educated opinion.

I am very sad that Aperture is not being supported any longer. I have recently started using pixlemator. Given that I am not a big photo editor, but just using it for my personal stuff, it seems to do what I want.

I had learned to hate Adobe because of Flash and AIR and never supported PS as a result. Maybe I was being too harsh, but now with their subscription approach, I will definitely never try them. Way to expensive and from what I read, not worth it considering what you get from other competitors for a lot less.

Of course my opinion is totally based on my bias after experiencing Flash, the fact that I don’t do professional editing, and that I have never actually used their tool, so I could totally be missing something here. :)

Flash isn't Photoshop. If anything, Flash was an acquisition from Macromedia 10 years ago with inherent limitations. The two pieces of software are fundamentally different, both in design and output. Try forming an opinion that isn't descended down from a Steve Jobs letter.

Pixelmator is rapidly improving, and the developers are putting their success to good use. If they can keep up the pace and continue to add features it will definitely start to compete with Photoshop. For people like me who aren't pros but need a graphics/photo editor every so often, I have no need for photoshop. Plus they struck gold with their $30 price point that is a one time only fee. I bet most willing to give up a few features for the massive difference in price.

Or for those who actually use the software to its capabilities, there's no way I'd "give up a few features" for an immediate price difference.