this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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[–] Johnnyvibrant@discuss.tchncs.de 263 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Adobe hasn't lost anything, they have tied up "design" for any business use. Its a total monopoly.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 66 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yeah, this is kinda BS.

Adobe don't care. Nearly every design firm is going to ask you about your Adobe experience, so you can use their Adobe software.

Maybe some of their designers will use GIMP. But that's like saying your office also uses libre office and Linux. Which is extremely rare.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Design lead here. I know photoshop like the back of my hand, but I also know Pixelmator (Mac only), Sketch and Affinity. All are very nice interfaces, one-time, or major version licenses, and smaller, responsive dev teams.

There are compromises in all software, but my team uses Pixelmator and Affinity because we’re a small company and it won’t hurt their design skills to know more tools besides the Adobe suite.

Gimp for a long time had shitty shortcuts and was quite unfriendly to Mac users (the REAL vendor lock-in in the design world btw). Him is just too slow to load, and ugly to look at, similar but less so with Inkscape.

Big firms might be harder to change, but it’s possibly and there are really good alternatives that Adobe probably worries a little about. Unfortunately they aren’t FOSS for the most part.

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[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 42 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Right? I hate the phrasing in this headline. Adobe isn't somehow "owed" those millions so it's totally backwards to call that a loss. Fuck that noise.

They're a business, they should earn their revenue by fostering a healthy competitive environment and then winning through innovation and customer loyalty. Not the monopoly licensing and subscription lock-in BS they've been doing for decades.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 13 points 2 weeks ago

My kids keep screwing Nintendo. The other day I saw my kid grab a Lego, he slid it on the table and then made it jump over an orange.

I'm waiting for the letter from their lawyers.

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[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 140 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Look... I like gimp a lot and Jehan is a G.

Adobe has lost basically nothing. Because Gimp is still ridiculously underpowered compared to Adobe Photoshop (let alone the rest of the suite). That is perfectly fine since the vast majority of users don't need those capabilities. But the people who do (e.g. professionals)? There is really no other choice.

[–] damnedfurry@lemmy.world 50 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, that title's last sentence is just a straight-up lie, lol

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[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 weeks ago

Do execs really hate him? Competition validates the marketplace and your product. Plus they can afford to develop more features than the open source community can produce in the same amount of time. So they can always argue you are paying for the additional features.

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[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 71 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

This is like movie companies saying that me pirating a movie cost them money.

Absence of a free thing isn't going to magic some money into my wallet with which to buy your thing, I'm still broke AF.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 46 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My gramma totally screwed Intel. She never used a computer in her entire life.

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[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 62 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Because of Adobe's hatred and abuse of their users, Adobe lost millions of dollars.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Corporate has a strategy to win those customers back, in all such industries, buy out your competition and enter into a shittrust with remaining competitors, agreeing to both maximize revenue rather than compete for favour.

Anti trust has been dead, courts have been captured, customers have no choice, stonk goes back ups.

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[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 49 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Man ain't nobody lost money because of Gimp. Flawed argument aside, at least Blender could be in for a shout

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 28 points 2 weeks ago

Last year Blender got a shout out at the Oscars from the makers of Flow.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And Inkscape, fuck Adobe :)

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[–] Inucune@lemmy.world 45 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Adobe didn't lose money. You can't lose money you never had.

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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 43 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

I used Photoshop professionally for nearly 30 years. I retired and don't need it anymore, so now I use GIMP on Linux for the few personal projects I want to make.

GIMP's interface leaves a lot to be desired. One example, in Photoshop the Channels tab shows all the channels and includes any masks you make, they look and work similarly to the layers, and it's intuitive--when you learn one, you know the other. GIMP doesn't work that way, in fact I've yet to make sense of the channels.

Also, typically one would expect filters to only be applied to a selected layer and even to a selection within that layer. Some GIMP filters apply to the whole image, flattening my layers, and creating new ones. Fortunately, these are made in a new document, so you don't lose anything, but the filter cannot be applied to a partial image, you'd need to pull the result back into your original image and mask out the part you wanted. Very strange.

I could go on about how selecting works and doesn't work, but I won't.

No, Adobe has not "lost millions" due to GIMP, they haven't lost a cent. People who use GIMP were either never going to pay Adobe a cent, or already have and are using GIMP now, for similar reasons to my own. Virtually no one uses GIMP professionally at any volume of interest to Adobe.

It's a good and useful tool, but it's severely lacking compared to Photoshop.

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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 39 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

If pirating Photoshop counts as a lost sale then so does downloading GIMP.

If so, this man is one of the greatest software pirates ever.

[–] Johnnyvibrant@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Adobe pretty much encouraged piracy up until about a decade ago, that way they got schools to train (for free) potential future customers in their way to use design software.

TBH I don't understand why they have gone with the subs model they currently have, its kind of cutting the blood line from their future customers.

Competition is always a good thing, FOSS competition is the best thing in my opinion.

This guy is a hero, but not because he is trying to fuck Adobe but rather he is helping free design software from (massive) cost which most people cannot afford.

More designers, better art to my mind.

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[–] ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah nope, if the same product is available for free then the only way to prove a "stolen sale" is if someone had previously paid for the subscription and then cancelled to use the free version of the same product.

Anything else is just the hand of the free market doing it's thing. If Adobe executives are malding because someone made a cheaper (or free) alternative then they have two honourable routes available:

  1. Add more value to their products to convince people their price tag is worth it.

  2. Reduce the price they charge.

But they'll literally do anything else but those two, including astroturfing messages like "open source software is piracy", so stop spewing corpo bullshit!

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[–] thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

They did not "lose" any money; they never had it

What they lost is potential customers

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[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 31 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I should mail this guy $5. Or, like, an edited image of a $5 bill with his face on it.

[–] Sunflier@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Ach@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I followed your advice and got Jehan Page's face tattooed on my face. My wife left with the kids because of it and man, does this rule. Thanks for the sage words dude.

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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 weeks ago (17 children)

What many people don't think about is that open source / free software is anti-billionaire software.

Since all software is bits, and it's free and easy to copy bits, to make money from software, a company needs to build a "moat". A moat is something that protects your company from people choosing alternatives. Open source software is built without a moat, so that anybody and everybody can access it. And, if you build with the GPL anybody who builds something based on your software is forbidden from building a moat of their own.

This means that it's really hard to get rich building free / open source software. But, it also means that in any area where there is free / open source software it's much harder for fully commercial, closed source, for profit companies to make big profits. Enshittify too much and people will just switch to the alternative, even if the alternative is significantly less stable, not as easy to use, is lacking features, etc. Piss people off too much and they might actually invest engineering money on improving the open source alternative.

Adobe is a big company with their fingers in many different pies. Photoshop is only one of their products. Gimp alone can't do much to hold Adobe back, but it does limit what they can do with Photoshop and still expect to make money from it.

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[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 27 points 2 weeks ago

Switched to GIMP from Photoshop probably 15 years ago. Adobe didn't lose any money, however, I've always pirated from those greedy fucks.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

A few of the replies here, those making those replies, could do with having someone introduce them to the concept of "put up or hack up", and getting into a Free Software philosophy mindset, and out of a consumer mindset.

GIMP's free software. Free to use, study, share and change... You the user are empowered. Even if you yourself lack aptitude (beyond just having never tried), you can still seek the services of others, be it those you pay to implement what you want, or, form a community of like minded individuals with similar needs to be met, and from there, start to make it as you want. These days, even LLMs can help curate the software into forms more suited to your needs. ... That is, where that's not already happened, or where there are reconfigurations you were simply not aware of, because it had not occurred to you to search for such, having been conditioned to stay in the box by the consumer mindset the corporation curated in your mind. It's refreshing to get out of having your mind curated by the corporation, and into using your mind to curate your software.

Either the user controls the software, or the user is controlled by the software and those who control the software.

It's a different philosophy. Not just a different platform for you as a "consumer". You're not a cash-cow for the corporation, with Free Software. You can contribute. Scratch those itches yourself. You may find others share the same itch. Giving back, is a much more rewarding experience than just hoping daddy corporation will give you what you want while you continue to atrophy your abilities.

Put up or hack up. ;)

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[–] foodandart@lemmy.zip 25 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Annnd well they should lose millions!

NGL, I paid out the ass for PSCS3 waay back in 2007 - Universal binary.. PPC AND Intel installer - and FWIW, I'm still using it. In point of fact it's why all my Macs are dual boot with Mojave (32-bit support) so I can continue to install and use it. Homegirl is no how, no way gonna rent what I should be able to own.

(As Adobe no longer has the CS3 activation servers online, if you've still got an installed, activated, instance of the PSCS3 kicking around somewhere, copy the actual application itself out to a backup location.. so when you use the installer in a system capable of running it, you can swap the newly installed, inactivated copy out for the activated one you have in backup. Just do NOT try and launch the program before you do the swap.. This works for PC copies of CS3 as well as Mac..)

[–] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Personally, I can recommend a VM for that reason. Activate it once and then just copy the VM over to a new PC, Backup location, etc. Turn on internet access for it when activating, turn it off and leave it disabled for the rest of your life. Worked like a charm for me.

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[–] bstix@feddit.dk 24 points 2 weeks ago

The GIMP user would never have paid Adobe for Photoshop anyway.

If anything, it actually helped people get into photo editing and ended up using Photoshop at their work.

[–] SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago

Before I retired last year, I was web developer for a community college. We had a graphic artist, but frequently I needed to just do a quick resize or change format for a web image. GIMP got the job done without the resource gluttony of PS.

[–] BC_viper@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago

Ive used gimp since 2010. Its so good. I used to be a lot better at it back in university than I am now. But it still use it all the time.

[–] flemtone@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

I know quite a few professionals that use GIMP and Inkscape just so they arent locked into the adobe ecosystem and monthly/yearly fees.

[–] stenAanden@feddit.dk 17 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)
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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Such a horrible product name.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, Adobe is just mud

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yah, Adobe execs are crying about GIMP in their mattresses stuffed with thousand-dollar bills.

Bullshit, atomizing and pandering headlines aside, GIMP is a great program for light-duty graphics work and very easy to learn how to do impressive things with and a great intro to graphics programs and photo editing before investing in a more robust program.

[–] verdi@feddit.org 16 points 2 weeks ago

Lets make it billions!

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Jehan Pages, you have bestowed my life with an abundance of badly edited memes and given me a trade that can I be proud of (making badly edited memes in Gimp), thank you.

[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago
[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There's also Krita if you're more of an artist

[–] enthusiasm_headquarters@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Maybe you mean a more "brush and canvas" interface without complexity and distraction. I'm an artist that uses gimp. They are both great, Krita is just made with ease of use and emulation of irl tools in mind. GIMP can do emulation stuff too, but it can also do tons of other things, even video fx and animation.

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[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm so thankful to people like Pages who work hard on free alternatives.

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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

What are some other good open alternatives to GIMP?

Having been in the design trade for 20 years, I’ve mastered countless design applications, but GIMP’s UI is something I have always struggled with.

My goto these days has been photopea when I need something fast and free… but it’s not open and it’s ad supported.

[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Here, you can filter by OS and license.

https://alternativeto.net/software/gimp/

Honestly the GIMP interface is way better than it used to be (5-10 years ago?). The old multi-window design always frustrated me but with the single-window tab view it feels much more normal.

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[–] Beryl@jlai.lu 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Try Krita, it doesn't do everything GIMP does but depending on your workflow it might do the trick for you.

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