After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

Same, actually! And that happened even after I had my morning coffee too.

I especially like how “legal issues” is not even in “Risks and challenges” section on Kickstarter.

What can possibly go wrong?

It took until reading your comment and then going back to check the title again for me to realise it didn’t say Adobe twice.

I'm still not sure that's not what it says

The only open source replacement for Adobe that really works for me is Audacity. And that’s probably more because I’m not a very advanced audio editor compared to my demands when it comes to photo and video editing tools, rather than an actual statement on the quality of the tool itself.

Next to the edit tab is the Fusion tab in Davinci :), that's your AE replacement.

How did photopea rank?

I actually prefer Krita over GIMP, even for photo editing. I can't stand how bad stylus support with GIMP is and I much prefer Krita's UI. I wish Krita would focus on areas beyond drawing more, as Krita is quite close to being a good program for editing photos in my opinion.

I have never used Adobe's or Affinity's products though, as they aren't available for Linux and are therefore not an option for me. I would probably consider them, but those companies apparently decided that I am not worth their business.

In my opinion Paint.net is a lot better than Gimp. Tried both and the former has given me a much more pleasant time.

ShotCut works pretty good for basic video editing.

I actually really like Darktable. It took some time to get used to, but I bounced from Lightroom to Apple Photos to Darktable as Image editors. Unlike the others, I feel no need to leave Darktable now that I'm used to it.

I've never heard of that project, looks pretty cool! To be clear, I do not say that "one guy" cannot possibly make great software. Passion projects are a thing. What differentiates them from the Abode situation, in my opinion, is that passion projects rarely have strict deadlines and paying backers who expect software that is Adobe-level in terms of quality and polish in a roughly 1 year.

“Buttfuckers & Sons” 😅

If you read the words under the title you'll know it's not going to be the name for the tools.

I get where you’re coming from, but for me, I HATE the Adobe corporation, so the shitpost feeling of Abode truly abides.

The root commenter wasn't claiming that foreign engineers can't be good, but rather that good foreign engineers are already charging competitive rates because they can, so there's not a huge amount of savings to be had there.

TL;DR:

Semple, a multi-disciplinary British artist, promised to build “a brand new suite of world-class design and photography tools, with an uncanny similarity to the tools you’ve been indoctrinated in.”

“There’s a really urgent need for a suite of creative tools for creators that they actually own rather than rent. In a way, this first started when Adobe and Pantone decided to paywall the Pantone colors and I created Freetone — which was a free color plugin so creators could continue to access their palette,” he says.

“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,”

“I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”

Creating a new design is always an arduous task. I like how you discussed a British artist Semple. His aim is to create new design and photography tools in competition with Adobe. I think that the competition in the startup area is so high that you can't relax even for a minute. Plus I liked how you addressed concerns with regard to legal issues and the importance of innovation and competition in tech startup ideas. As we talk about startups and raising capital I advise you to look at this article about tech startup ideas. The most popular niches for growing startups for now are Artificial Intelligence, Telehealth and Virtual Medical Services, and Remote Working. EdTech Startup, Biotech Startups, and IoT startups.

I thought the article was going to be about a trademark dispute, lol.

I don't have dyslexia and I had a hard time as well... but I just woke up so IDK

I don't and until the comments explained it I couldn't see it either.

High-end professionals avoid Adobe like the plague. Photoshop still doesn't have decent EXR support or 32-bit support.

It's great for 5-person design studios, maybe.

A subscription isn't buying a hammer. A subscription is buying access to a hammer. Access that can be revoked at any time. That's not very reliable.

If you require a hammer to do work, you just buy a hammer that you can use for the rest of time or until you buy a better hammer.

You don't pay $10 dollars a month for the rest of time for the same hammer you could have just paid for previously. Especially since HammerCo might up the price, go out of business, or flat out stop offering the hammer subscription you rely on, and you lose access to your vital resource.

What a dumb argument.

When you shove crayons up your nose and you're only paying a subscription for those crayons, you're going to have to return the crayons after the subscription ends

But see if you bought those crayons, you could leave them up there as long as you'd like.

I'm not buying a hammer subscription

I buy a hammer. I don't want to depend on another company for my hammer to work.

Subscribe to go fuck your dumb analogy.

I buy a hammer. I don’t rent it. When I buy a hammer I pay up front for the one I’m getting and keep it until it breaks or I replace it (and even when I replace it I likely keep the old one). I’ve got four hammers that I’ve had for between 20 and 4 years. And I paid for each of them once.

A hammer is actually a great example for typical fully up-front paid software. You buy it and get to keep it in its state. At some point it breaks because of bugs, incompatibilities etc. and you'll have to buy a new hammer.

Yeah, after working with photoshop for some time, switching to GIMP takes a huge effort to learn. It's just so alien.

I mean, PhotoGIMP exists, I've tried that.

So ultimately the goal is to just lock people into his own ecosystem. Nice.

The worse case you mention is probably actually the best case scenario tbh. If they deliver beyond that it'll be a bonus. Right now, this is just looking like yet another Kickstarter self-filling water bottle scam in the making.

As it's going to be closed source, the project is worthless

GIMP + Inkscape UI refresh and I'd fund the shit out of that.

Blender took me a lot of time to master. It's not exactly bad. The only thing is stuff is hard to find. And if you don't use it frequently, you'll eventually forget how to use it.

During COVID, I decided to give Blender a shot. It did work out, and I started creating some cool stuff. Then a few months passed, and when I reopened it, I was like, uh.....

Curious.. do you like Gimp? I actually loathe it, and I've tried to change that many times. The most basic tasks feel like an unintuitive struggle for me. Photoshop on the other hand, feels easy to use, once I understood the concepts and learned a few basic shortcut keys.

Davinci is straight up way better than premiere lol

Openshot, kdenlive, handbrake, we got a bunch of options.

GIMP is for hobbyists. Ir has a broken core that needs a rewrite to fix.

Way better alternative is Affinity Photo.

Really wish davinci had a flatpak or appimage

GIMP does rule!

"Abode" will absolutely get destroyed thru the legal process even if they don't lose the lawsuit.

I read it as Adobe battling Adobe as if there was some inner strife. And I'm a pretty good reader, if I do say so myself.

This is so obviously stupid, because that $235k they raised will end up going straight to Adobe all because they wanted to be edgy?

I'm not sure its a sure thing for adobe (the established company) that this newer company is infringing per se. You need to do business with the trademark to 'use' the mark - the caption makes it sound like they will change their mark before doing any business? On the other hand, advertising counts as doing business where the mark is associated but that can get a bit tricky..

If we assume this is not an advertisement, then it's just like anyone else scribbling down the logo of another company on a sheet of paper and saying I made a thing

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

That's just, like, your opinion, man

If you've read the article, they mention that nobody has seen the final branding yet. The logo we see now is not what they're using to sell the product.

He's also had other projects like a free Pantone competitor that he's defended successfully. Apparently he knows what he's doing.

I don't think it would be a direct competitor. Photopea is an ad-financed application that runs in the browser. I doubt that it's trying to cater to professionals but rather to average users who wouldn't buy Photoshop anyways. The goal of Abode is to provide a Photoshop alternative that can be purchased without a subscription, which is indeed intended to be used by professionals who don't want to or can't bear the monthly subscription costs anymore. See this part of the article:

“I noticed how expensive the subscription was and so many designers wrote to me and told me they could no longer afford to use Adobe for their work. I thought I might be able to help so I launched the crowdfunder to make us all a software suite that was truly ours.”

In the end he could possibly make more bank by contributing to Abode's products.