1y ago

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

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

While it appeared as satire, Abode says it is dead serious about taking on Adobe.

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.”

BrainWorms @lemm.ee

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

petapixel.com /2023/07/26/after-raising-235k-abode-remains-committed-to-taking-on-adobe/

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TechNews @radiation.party

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

petapixel.com /2023/07/26/after-raising-235k-abode-remains-committed-to-taking-on-adobe/

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159 comments

I'm highly sceptical of this shipping in a state that can compete with Adobe at the end of it all. The branding itself is asking for trouble, which is just plain stupid if you are serious about long-term and sustainable development of the whole suite, and 180k is not enough to even put together a competent alternative to Illustrator, not to mention Photoshop and InDesign.
And before people start claiming that you can fund this by outsourcing to Eastern Europe / India etc, please bear in mind that you usually get what you pay for. A competent developer with enough experience to actually make this happen won't come cheap, and opportunistic juniors with big ambitions won't deliver.
I wish this project all the luck it can get, but I'm personally banking on Graphite and Inkscape from the FOSS world and Affinity suite from (as of yet) less corpo commercial offerings.
- Case in point. I’m still waking up and thought that said adobe is 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
- Just to add in here, a few years back I decided to make a project to cut adobe out of my life.
  I wanted to start by giving all the FOSS tools a go first.
  In the end, I decided none of them were up to scratch. Inkscape is clunky AF, gimp is a PITA, darktable was pretty clunky but usable.
  In any case I landed on the affinity suite for a PS, Illustrator, and InDesign alternative, and I got very cheap / free versions of Skylum Luminar for Lightroom although that's going to shit with every release.
  DaVinchi for video editing. Not yet found a competent replacement for AE.
  
  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.
  
  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 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.
  
  How did photopea rank?
- Had never heard about Graphite, thank you! I'll try to stay updated about it. But please feel free to post important news about it in this community, whenever there'll be steps forward.
- and opportunistic juniors with big ambitions won’t deliver.
  Have you ever heard about photopea.com? Made by ONE guy.
  
  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.
- Just not Canva. We have customers that use Canva and, unless they use presets, the results are universally awful.
- Yeah, that this is a name and logo that they even entertained for half a second is pretty strong evidence that they're not up to this challenge. This is like starting a law firm and calling it "Buttfuckers". No one is going to take you seriously, and you not seeing the problem means they shouldn't.
  
  “Buttfuckers & Sons” 😅
  
  If you read the words under the title you'll know it's not going to be the name for the tools.
- To be honest if this was released on 1st of April, it would have been a perfect prank. I don't think it's realistic the buy once, own forever approach if you don't have any other source of income. Like Blackmagic has with their hardware so they can afford to do a buy once type of deal with Davinci Resolve.
  A more realistic approach would be like Affinity where you buy every major release, every 3-4-5 years.
  Even if I agree with him 100% and I switched to Davinci/Affinity, the whole branding and naming feels like a well made shitpost and I cannot take it seriously.
  
  I get where you’re coming from, but for me, I HATE the Adobe corporation, so the shitpost feeling of Abode truly abides.
- What about Akira? Is it still being developed?
- While your skepticism is valid, it's important to consider that competition doesn't solely rely on branding but also on innovation, user experience, and pricing. The concerns about funding and developer quality are legitimate, but success can be achieved by striking the right balance. While alternatives like Graphite, Inkscape, and Affinity have their merits, it's worth keeping an eye on emerging projects as well. For a broader perspective on outsourcing development, this article on IT outsourcing in Europe (https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/it-outsourcing-europe/) can provide insights into potential options and considerations for ensuring competent and successful development, addressing some of the concerns raised.
  
  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.
- Just fyi engineers in every other part of the world are as good or better than Americans or whatever you may consider “developed” countries. I’m not in love with outsourcing considering I’ve lost my job to it a couple times. But it’s not because the devs across the world aren’t fantastic amazing people.
  
  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.

Took me 3 reads to notice that ABODE is not ADOBE
Maybe I'm a little dyslexic after 8 hours of work.
- Bruh, till I read this I was so confused, like Adobe is taking on Adobe? lol, what?
  
  I thought the article was going to be about a trademark dispute, lol.
- Jesus Christ thank you. I thought I had a stroke.

tfw dyslexic people trying to read this post
- I have dyslexia and had such a hard time. Took like 3 reads to get it right
  
  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.

Affinity is available today. The products are great, the pricing is reasonable, and it is not subscription based.
- I’ve used Affinity for many years, I really like it, and for the low one-time price, it’s been a spectacular value. That said, it can no longer even compare to Photoshop given their incredible AI capabilities and some of their other integrated features. In my case, I’ll stick with Affinity because I’m more of a hobbyist, but if I was a graphics professional, I’d most certainly have to use Photoshop.
  
  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.
- Affinity is just great and reasonably compatible with Adobe files. It's been my way out of the Adobe hegemony, after trying for Corel or Opensource tools for years. Without the creative cloud client crashing life has been so much more enjoyable !

as a dyslexic person I had to read that 6 times to see the difference.
- I'm not dyslexix, and I didn't realize the issue until I saw your comment.

I think he'll just deliver some reskinned FOSS projects at best.
Its one thing to make a color chart, its a whole other thing to make all of Adobe.
- This wouldn't be a bad thing. If someone had the money and time to alter GIMPs interface and layer handling to work more like PS and reduce the learning curve, it would be very nice.
  
  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.
- He says it will be closed source on the kickscammer page
  
  So ultimately the goal is to just lock people into his own ecosystem. Nice.
- Well Stuart Semple is someone who has generally been quite reliable in what he does and a fairly prominent artist, so he presumably understands how the Adobe tools work. He probably doesn't have the technical know-how on how to build it. The article mentions that it's a team of sixteen people right now without the funding presumably.
  I mean the worst case is they pick an existing project like gimp, krita, darktable or inkscape and brings in enough features to Adobe parity. That isn't a bad outcome at all.
  
  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.

If I depend on yours software to work, I'm not willing to pay a subscription. Period.
- I'd happily pay for a 2023 Adobe Lightroom classic. Unfortunately Adobe doesn't offer this, but I can find it sailing the high seas branded this way.
  It'd be cool to just buy it and get a year's worth of updates with the option of going subscription then
- What? If you require a hammer to do work you refuse to pay for hammer?
  
  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.

how about working with already existing adobe alternatives and help get them better
- After the Pantone fallout last year, I cancelled my Adobe subscription and bought Serif Affinity's apps and haven't looked back. Yes, there are a few work arounds and even almost a year in, I'm still looking up the occasional tool/feature that is comparable but I have saved $55/month. The ONLY features I miss are GREP and Scripts in InDesign but I have lived without them.

He's right, Adobe's grip on users is bullshit. I just doubt that he's gonna be the guy to fix it.

This article confirmed I’m still dyslexic
- I read the title 10 times and was still confused until I saw your comment. And I'm not even dyslexic.
  Or am i...?
- I just kept thinking of Abode Security

I kind of wish he'd just raise money for or contribute to existing FOSS Adobe alternatives that are still feature-lacking.

Does anyone else think this will go to court over copyright infringement? Purposefully similar name and same industry.
- Copyright? Only if the code is the nearly the same.
  Are Adobes patents still valid?
  The trademark will end up in court, where the standard is "likelihood of confusion."
  
  "Abode" will absolutely get destroyed thru the legal process even if they don't lose the lawsuit.
- Yeah, I do think that they should pick a different name as theirs is very easy to mistake for Adobe. I had to read the headline twice because the first time it sounded like Adobe was taking on itself. I understand the desire to give them a "fuck you", but that name will just cause confusion that will likely hurt both brands.
  I hope that "final branding" that no one has seen yet involves an entirely new name and that this one was just used in the meantime to generate publicity.
  
  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?
- Its trademark, not copyright. And it is deliberate. A lawsuit is likely to generate more value in publicity and news coverage than the case will cost.
  That's why they deliberately chose an infringing mark.
  
  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
- mike rowe couldn't keep mikerowesoft.com. it's his actual name, too. no way abode is allowed to exist in any space remotely adjacent to documents, software, or media/arts.

Color me skeptical
The Foss community already tried for years. And the gap is widening even more thanks to AI.
- Speak for yourself. GIMP rules, and DaVinci Resolve (not OSS, but still free) does just fine.
  Fuck Adobe.
  
  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!

Poor timing in light of the recent Supreme Court Ruling. Stupid name, stupid decision, all of that Kickstarter money essentially gone.
- That’s nuts - if it was a bottle of alcohol meant to parody the brand that’d be one thing, but it’s a fucking dog chew toy.
- Wether I agree with how trademarks are legislated or not, I don’t understand why anyone would expect that they could use another company’s trademark on a sold product, regardless of the industry they are operating in. It’s not hard to imagine people would be confused that Jack Daniel’s in this case, decided to release a funny dog chew toy, and regardless of the #2 wording being acceptable or not, Jack Daniel’s would have no way to ensure product quality to protect their trademarked brand that’s printed right on the damn thing. Supreme Court got this right in my opinion.

It's not FOSS but I've been using Photopea since I ditched Adobe years ago, it's a decent alternative.

One of my many gripes with Inkscape is the steep learning curve. If this new application fixes it, I'd see myself using it as long as I don't have to rent the software.
- Inkscape is one of the better open source UIs IMO. There's a lot to learn about vector vs raster graphics but that's not the fault of Inkscape.
  Gimp took a while to figure out.
  Blender has got the be one of the steepest learning curves out there though. Not that the UI for Blender is bad. It's just that there are 5-6 different sections and each section is like learning a new app. It's huge and does everything.
  
  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.
- I believe Inkacape was initially devised as a corel draw alternative, the dominant vector image editor at the time, so it's like that, but simpler.
- Agreed. Why does FOSS feel like they have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to UI. Just take what people know and run with it. It's literally the same functions (Béziers, splines, etc)

Oh, it's that guy. The "Semple vs Kapoor" stuff was funny.
Before I recognized who was doing "abode" I was going to say that name was just asking for trouble, but yeah, he knew what he was doing.
- His pigments are pretty cool. I’ve used several over the years and quite liked them.

Unfortunately I think the name is kinda poor. I get why they named it but the SEO is always going to be bad against Adobe.

Great idea, but the money they have is barely enough to make a dent in the development scope they are aiming for.

How can you even take them serious when their name is literally "Abode"?
- Because the dude abodes.
  
  That's just, like, your opinion, man

Adobe are awful. I hope they go soon and bring their shitty Reader in the same way Flash went.

Oh look, i dropped my 🏴‍☠️
- For my magnum seedbox
  
  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- Getting harder and harder these days, though. Hard to find a trustworthy source, and when you do you basically have to airgap the application to ensure that Adobe can't weasel in a phone home call and flag the software as illegitimate. And they are integrating an increasing number of AI tools now that will simply not function if the application can't connect.
  I still have a "discounted" copy of Photoshop CC 2016 on a 10-year-old MacBook that I've been using. But the computer itself is on its last legs and I don't think I can rely on it much longer. When it goes, I'll probably have to look into other options.

Kinda off topic but the title of this post made me think; Do you think Adobe HQ is referred to as the “Abode”?

I think I figured out the meaning behind the Abode icons:

It Is Po Od
It is pood
Gotta love the guy.

What about Acrodat? I really hope they make Acrodat.

Awesome guy! I hope he will succeed with this project. I'm also wondering if that guy who made photopea.com is in his team, because if not he should definitely hit him up.
- @hardypart I have no inside info obviously but why would he join? He is making bank with photopea, why support potential competition?
  
  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.

Photoshop has been around for over 3 decades. It's original patents must have expired by now.
I am also curious how software like Photopea exists. It is a direct Photoshop rip off. But it only runs in your browser. For small jobs it is fantastic since the layout is exactly the same as Photoshop, unfortunately for larger projects it doesn't have the speed that a natively installed app would have. Still check out the website if you need Photoshop functionality without paying Adobe's prices.
But how has Adobe not shut that site down since it mimics Photoshop so closely?
I wish Abode well and would love to see what they come up with.
- Patents and Trademark are two separate things:
  Patents relate to new inventions and/or ideas, and they eventually expire
  Trademark relates to the brand image of a company, and that does not expire
  The issue I see is not so much that Abode is aiming to make an Adobe Suite competitor, but rather that they are so purposefully mimicking the brand and image of Adobe in doing that. I think it is likely that the courts will rule this to be blatant trademark infringement
  
  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.

That name really sucks tbh. I suppose they should change the name. Adobe's current updates really bottlenecks my max spec PC, that's why I switched from Premiere to Davinci Resolve. Biggest switch in my career, but so far I'm currently loving it!

Like others, I'm doubtful he will produce anything with that little, I hope I'm wrong.
Maybe if he was forking existing open source projects and polishing them it's possible, but it's supposed to be closed source.

Someone tell Semple that Anish Kapoor is working with Adobe, that ought to make him extra spicy in the lawsuit.

I‘m not yet convinced. Not enough to see what this is going to look like. And I don‘t find the copycat-name very serious. I hear already the lawyers knocking on their doors.
For alternatives to Adobe I can recommend Affinity software, which is a non-subscription alternative and Photopea as a free browser alternative for PS.

Affinity is a great Adobe alternative.
- Affinity is awesome. I've used Serif products over the years and they've always provided exceptional value

Give it a rest . It's a cheap tool for any professional.
- I’m a professional that depends on Adobe to do my work. I can pay the subscription, yeah, but that’s not the point.
  The point is we used to be able to BUY the software, we don’t own anything anymore and Adobe has us by the balls

159 comments