I feel like it's even advantageous to them to pirate. If everyone wanting to work in graphic design pirates Photoshop, they'll know how to use it in the business world, and their work will buy it because it's what everyone knows.
So cgpeers has been the best place to get those from for me buuut they closed registrations a couple of years ago now. I can throw a link to the 2024 monkrus version I grabbed though. Not sure how people are with straight up linking things in here though.
At this point, I'd say it's not just correct but a moral obligation. Adobe has caused incalculable damage to the softwarescape by buying up smaller but popular companies, shoving their products full of AI crap, and putting them behind a subscription.
Allegorithmic used to have Linux releases for several of their Substance products. They no longer exist. Guess what fucking happened.
Technically Substance products work too on Wine, but with a massive hit to performance because they use the GPU through some esoteric API that isn't covered by DXVK or VKD3D.
I’d like to interject for a moment. What you are referring to as Linux is in fact GNU/Linux or as recently i have taken to calling - GNU+Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself but rather another free component of a full functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Also because companies that students will apply to work for after graduation look for proficiency in said products because they’re what the vast majority of the industry uses.
If you manage to go through college studying digital media without touching an adobe product you are going to have a hard time finding a job when that’s reflected on your resume.
Adobe doesn’t deserve that exclusivity considering how shit some of their products have gotten and their trash subscription model but that’s the reality.
Adobe used to not give a shit about piracy for personal use, and a reasoni t was so easy to pirate. They knew a lot of those kids making memes would grow up to be either paying customers or work for someone that is.
Sadly it hasn’t had a new release in 2 years. It will probably go the way of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop, which aimed to do the same before it was discontinued
That said, this probably isn't true if someone is transitioning from Photoshop, which is probably the context of this discussion. I have seen people who start with Gimp without knowing Photoshop and they got into it fairly quick.
Using Gimp and expecting the same logic and structure as Photoshop will indeed lead to initial difficulties.
I don't want to get into a war here. Am sure there's things more complicated in Gimp than PS, but also vice versa.
Either way, I know a number of people who do stunning work with Gimp in little time.
I often find this is the biggest obstacle with moving people to FOSS solutions. People want an alternative to Photoshop, so you show them Gimp, and they immediately get frustrated because they try to apply the logic and design philosophies of Photoshop to Gimp. People want an alternative to Windows, so you show them Linux, and they immediately get frustrated because they try to apply the logic and design philosophies of Windows to Linux. And then when it doesn't work the same way, then obviously that is a deficiency of the alternative, and not simply them having to learn a new way of doing things.
Serif's Affinity suite isn't free, but the UI is much more approachable than GIMP's. The maintainers also aren't being weirdly defensive about a name that's a pun of a slur or sex thing.
Affinity is hella cheap, all things considered. And once you authenticate your installed software, you never have to be online again to use it.
It's so nice, I'm definitely gonna buy it some day, unless GIMP and Scribus somehow manage to impress me until then. Inkscape is already great, but those two...
Pixelmator, Sketch and Affinity apps on MacOS has been my replacement for pirated Adobe products for a long time now. Pixelmator is like $30 one time and really fast with non destructive color correction and Mac shortcuts. None of the terrible GIMP UI.
It's sad to say but Photoshop smokes basically all of its competitors except the ones that get into a specificic niche, but even then stuff like illustrator and lightroom compete well in that marketplace.
Photoshop may not be FOSS but it may as well be considered free due to the rampant piracy. I frequently recommend it forgetting it's a subscription based Ad*be made product.
Hell yeah I should have said that really. My friend has an embroidery machine and we use inkstitch for inkscape to do that.
I don't really move between lightroom, inkscape and Photoshop often but I do move between premier pro, after effects and audition often enough via the way they embed into eachother, and I presume there is similar functionality between those. This helps cement me using something like audition over audacity just because I'm trained on premier pro and don't wanna retrain on DaVinci Resolve.
Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer finally broke my pirated Photoshop/Illustrator addiction. They are affordable seriously good alternatives with a classic 'pay once for a major release' model instead of a subscription. I'm a fairly advanced user and there was nothing I miss from the Adobe products, although real professionals may have more complex needs.
Pretty steep, it's software aimed at professionals, and it shows. There are a few tutorials from Black Magic design where you can download the source media and follow along, which I found very useful.
I found you really need to spend a few evenings learning the software before you actually edit anything.
