https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/20/ec_rules_adobes_20bn_buy/
Software duo must respond with remedies – plus: closing deal in '23 likely a Figma of their imagination
Adobe already killed almost all competition in the creative space and I hate that. I'm thankful for software like Davinci Resolve and the Affinity apps.
Recently learned about Krita too, which is more for art but it's nice
There's a plugin for AI generation now
I wish we can get a Krita, Inkscape, GIMP ecosystem that rivals their offerings. I recommend these tools to most of my students (gamedev) because they're already great, but if they wanna work in this area in industry they're also forced to learn Adobe..
There is actually a wip project that aims to do just that, unite all these FOSS apps in one, interconnected ecosystem.
I don't remember what it was called, I'll get back to you once I find it again.
It's OpenCreativity
There's also GIMP as a Photoshop alternative
And Dark Table as a Lightroom alternative
Both are pretty great IMO
I'm not sure what you mean, I've found it quite easy to use though it does have a learning curve like most things
When was the last time you tried it?
Oh, I used to like Krita. That's disappointing that they're yet another on the AI train
Why though?
The image generation algorithm is open source and it runs locally. Artists can use it instead of giving up their art to some company to abuse. We've had tools like this for years, this is just better and easier to use
Obligatory shout out to Blender, the most amazing community project ever. And GPL'd to boot! Suck it Adobe! obscene crotch tugging gestures
Kdenlive is also a really cool video editor. I use it occasionally. You don’t see many professionals using it but honestly it can do a lot more than what most people give it credit for.
Blender has a video editor in it too... hell Im surprised it doesnt have a full photo editing suit in it at this point
Tried it. Personally, didn’t really work for me. Blender is great 3D software, but video editing is not its forte. (And that’s fine! Do one thing and do it well.)
I wouldnt call it amazing compared to Davinci Resolve for example, but for smaller fast jobs its pretty good and very versatile.
Adobe should have Never been allowed to buy Macromedia, what a massive crime that was. I had fully shifted off all Adobe products and was using Macromedia for everything... then that happened. Its all been downhill since that.
You just made me remember Dreamweaver. Moving to DW from FrontPage felt like moving to IntelliJ Idea from Eclipse.
For anyone using Figma, there's a free open source alternative called PenPot that's quite decent.
American capitalism no longer innovates. It now only stifles competition through patent abuse, regulations that make market entry difficult to impossible and domination of market resources. If all of that fails then they buy the competition and increase prices before repeating the whole cycle all over again.
This is why my digital art pipeline is FOSS at every turn. I dropped like $300 for Substance Designer / Painter's indie license. I was so excited to learn it.
...and then it got "rolled into the AdObE FaMiLy" and is subscription-only (right after they promised angry users they would do no such thing and we didn't believe it for a second) and now it's mega bloated "iNdUsTrY StAnDaRd" lock-in-ware like the rest.
So I basically just learned my lesson about commercial software rug-pulls.
As a counter example there are fields like machine learning where there is a lot of “capitalist” innovation
A barely useful autocomplete bot that runs on crowd sourced data that doesnt learn but gets filtered to be slightly more useful ks such a lame idea of innovation. It might be slightly useful over time but its definitely being overblown to separate morons from their hoarded wealth
if it's so useless why have you not created a similar sham to get billions in funding? is word2vec and similar breakthroughs also non-innovative or shams in your views?
Cause even if i came up with the scam i dont have the people to invest in it to make it worth billions? You need the gamblers with money already to be willing to hand it over.
Scientology didnt come out of nowhere. The creator was already a best selling author. You need the rubes before you can have the successful scam. Also because i dont have the drive and just want to live my life not dealing with that many people and wearing a mask forever.
And wait is word2vec just basically doing basic word association inside of thw already hugely associated word base to find common replacements inside word context? Dude.... You could just have a lookup table of synonyms. Its just extra processing power for the sake of extra processing power. Its like people forgot to do things smartly and just show off how they can brute force laziness
ok, I don't see why you could not create something "useless" if that's all you need to get funding... openAI didn't have microsoft. startups that have "useless" ideas don't "have people" either. they have innnovations (or useless ideas according to you) . Most people with an opinion on the topic should be able to understand the value of word2vec and form an opinion on the vailidty of your perspective.
I mean, yeah. A broken clock is right twice a day.
Which I know doesn't exactly equate to the current situation, but do remember that the point of capitalism isn't innovation: it's earning the most amount of money.
Innovation is just a happy little coincidence thanks to competition in a fair market.
When AMD was down in the gutter, Intel was just fine making token "innovation" in the CPU market while mostly taking it easy on the RnD while raking it in. Something they, eventually, got gotten for by AMD and more recently Apple silicon. But now, let's say, Intel was allowed to buy AMD... Maybe Apple still would've switched to their own designs eventually, but PC's undoubtedly would still be stuck on 4, maybe 6 cores.
Monopolies are the anthesis of innovation, and monopolies are what corporations will move towards without adequate regulation.
I was responding to the claim that “capitalism cannot innovate “ i am aware that innovation generally is not the goal but that is not the point i am contesting.
the claim is that American capitalism no longer innovates
innovation is not going bankrupt and clearing the way for another company. control and innovation are not even remotely close.
Did someone manage to uninvent LLMs and the innovations that came shortly before like transformers? EDIT: ah i see that people are gatekeeping the innovations. so are attention networks also "barely useful"? if so why aren't you guys improving upon it or creating another sham if it's so meaningless and just smoke you should be able to get a billion in investments.
Seriously, how will that kill competition? I could probably tell 10 free tools from the top of ma head.
Tell us just ONE that is as capable and effective as Figma.
Designers don't use Figma because it's "trendy", we do it because it's the best tool for the job. The only free tool that comes even close to being good enough is PenPot, and even that is years away from being a true competitor.
There are collaboration tools in Figma that simply do not exist in the competition, so your ability to list tools that are also capable of drawing rectangles with round corners doesn't mean anything if you can't properly manage a design system that is reusable with a team of a dozen designers or more.
Figma is no freebie tool. It's an industry standard. People train in it and use it for their living.
There are many free tools, sure, but not many tools that are accepted in corporate environments.
Figma is the current trendy choice for design software in big tech. But give it a few years and it'll change again. Tech is full of followers.
Personally I find it to be absolute garbage. It's so much harder to navigate and use as a non-designer than something like zeplin.
That could perhaps be explained by the fact that Zeplin does not have in any way the same goal as Figma.
Zeplin is not a design software, it's a presentation and sharing platform. Yes, the one-trick pony is easier to navigate than the software used to create the damn ponies, that's not much of a surprise.
I literally said I'm a non-designer so why would I know about the design side? Nice job being a fucking asshole about it.
The topic is competition in software for designers. I have no idea what the fuck you think your point is, but I’m pretty sure it’s irrelevant.
It is not irrelevant. The simple truth is that designs in figma are absolutely useless unless they are being accessed by non designer. And as a non designer myself I find search and navigation quite lacking. Other aspects, like dev mode, are good, though.
No, that was Steve Spielberg, you're thinking of the guy who jumped all over the Microsoft stage shouting "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOP--gaaaassp--DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!"
No, that's Steve Ballmer, you're thinking of the award-winning lead actor of HBO's hit series: "Boardwalk Empire"
Naw fam, that's Steve Buscemi, you're thinking of that lovable "Crocodile Hunter" who taught us all to love and protect nature by loudly sneaking up to terrifying reptiles and poking them with sticks.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Updated The European Commission says Adobe's proposed $20 billion purchase of web-first design collaboration startup Figma will harm competition in the region unless the pair devise remedies to resolve this.
The transaction would represent the most expensive sale of a privately owned software company in history, and was flagged as a concern by 16 member states of the European Union in February, such is the lack of credible alternatives to Adobe on the market.
The EC leaned in for an in-depth investigation of the merger in August, and late on Friday evening - in the Euro time zone - it delivered the damning preliminary verdict in a Statement of Objections.
By erasing Figma as a competitive hurdle, Adobe would also tighten its grip on the supply of vector and raster editing tools, the EC added.
The sale was first announced in September 2022, and served to unsettle some developer customers of Figma, ones that were worried Adobe would kill off the free version, or its own XD software, anxiety the clearly EC shares.
The EU's regulator isn't the only one taking a keen interest in the $20 billion merger; the UK's Competition and Markets Authority and the Department of Justice's antitrust team are also inspecting the proposal.
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