Courtesy to Twitter user XdanielArt (date of publication: 8 June 2024)
I really like this layout, it's easy to read
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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The Affinity Suite is so worth it. Pay a single time and get all the apps on all major OSes instead of the stupid subscription bullshit Adobe tries to lock you into.
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I’m no layout expert, but I did do some desktop publishing about 15 years ago 10 min in Scribus had me tearing my hair out. Installed InDesign and, while it’s still not easy to catch up on the modern capabilities, it was worlds ahead.
GIMP is just fine for casuals. It’s not close for professionals.
Truthfully I think that one major issue with open source programs that don’t have corporate involvement is that people who are great at code don’t always have the same skill in UI/UX. However, with support and a larger community, great things can happen. The barrier is getting that adoption level. If more people casually use the product and contribute financially or in code, it will help tremendously.
I used to do layouts for children’s books back around 2010. The company used pagemaker still. I tried scribus, and the books I did manage to finish produced pdfs not usable by the print shop. I ended up buying a copy of CS5.
Now I use affinity suite, I am still learning it all.
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For PDF "your browser" should be the default recommendation. Firefox allows to add text and images now. Gimp can also be used to edit PDF.
Xodo and Xchange are both feature rich, lightweight, and easy to use programs. Browser view is fine for a peek but quickly feels clunky.
Browser is nice. On Linux though, Okular is superb (except for its occasional problems with forms).
I'm really disappointed not to see Okular there. It's FOSS, and it's very cozy and useful.
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What's the Audacity/Tenacity deal?
A few years back Audacity got acquired by a commercial entity. They then proceeded to cause some controversy regarding user privacy.
I think they walked back some of them, and changed the installer to allow disabling the data collection; but by that time, a few forks have started popping up. Tenacity seems to be what many people eventually settle on.
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Enshitification by owners of Audacity including telemetry. They eventually backed down, but that was after Tenacity forked off it and people started using and improving it.
What state is tenacity in these days?
I can't press the record button without it crashing and it fails to see half of my audio inputs, so I'd say not great.
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Apparently Audacity has been bougth by a company which subsequently did crap with it. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/s9isqj/help_tenacity_a_fork_of_audacity_after_its/
Not sure how good Tenacity currently is
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As much as I am loath to admit it, nothing comes close to feature parity with Photoshop. All the others are pretty replaceable, but if you are a professional who depends on a lot of the really advanced features you’re going to have a hard time replacing it. GiMP isn’t even close tbh. I admire the work they’re doing but they are a decade behind PS.
Good news is that is not most people.
What's your opinion on Affinity (Designer/Photo)?
If you’re getting down and dirty with color correction, object removal/replacement, and just depend on a lot of plug-in’s for your sauce, Affinity is lacking. Most people who use photoshop, however, do not need all that. Affinity is a solid program that definitely works for prosumers and below, as well as some professionals (depending on use case).
And I get it’s not popular to talk about but Adobe has fully embraced AI and some of their tools are legit. I don’t use it, but some folks really like firefly.
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Sorry, there just are no alternatives to Photoshop, with Affinity Photo being the closest replacement nowadays, to the classical PS functions. Affinity Designer feels the same for Illustrator.
What about Krita? Not sure exactly what Adobe product it would be an alternative for though. I know a lot of what people use it for used to be done with Photoshop, but I think Photoshops core demographic is a slightly different use case. Also Inkscape as an Illustrator alternative?
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See, my problem with these types of resources is if you have to list more than one thing per thing the landscape may not be there for a full replacement.
That's not a hard rule, I do think some of these are a better first choice, or a better-for-some applications first choice. I'm just often frustrated by the way these things are communicated.
Well, on the other hand, it's by far not always the case that the program one person is currently using is already the best choice for their use case. For example, in the process of degoogling, I've begun using a lot of programs that are actually better for me than the ones I previously used (e.g. Notesnook > Google notes). Of course there's friction/effort involved in finding the best replacement, but there's just no way around that if the goal is to get away from the defacto standards.
Sure. And I love finding better solutions, particularly when they're for a thing I do for my own sake.
But if you're a newspaper that is ingesting hundreds or thousands of pictures a day from dozens of photographers and having half a dozen people editing all that input into a database that a dozen composers and web editors are using at the same time sometimes janky but universally familiar is a lot more valuable than "better at this thing on interesting ways".
It doesn't mean you can't displace a clunky, comfortable king of the hill. Adobe itself used to be pretty good at doing just that. Premiere used to be the shitty alternative kids used because it was easy to pirate before it became THE editing software for online video. The new batch of kids are probably defaulting to Resolve these days, so that one feels wobbly. Other times you just create a new function that didn't exist and grow into space previously occupied by adjacent software, Canva-style.
But if you see a piece of industry-standard software with a list of twenty alternatives broken down by application, skill level or subsets of downsides the industry standard is probably not about to lose their spot in favor of any of those anytime soon.
if you have to list more than one thing per thing the landscape may not be there for a full replacement
And it would be even less if there had to be only one thing per thing.
One of the strengths of the FOSS metacommunity is the variety in designs and results. Big Corpo abuses economies of scale and locks you in with a "one shoe fits all solution" because they under the table also chisel and file your feet; FOSS has (largely) no such restrictions so they can afford to try things and see what results and, more importantly, what evolves. Not everything has to be a copy of corporate, and we shouldn't act as if it had to be.
Woof, I don't know if I can pick up what you're putting down.
Particularly for professional use nobody is trying to have fun and exciting new solutions for UI or functionality every week. Industry standards get to be industry standards for a reason. It's useful to be able to just go hire someone that knows how to work on the software platform you're working and your clients are working and your providers are working.
For casual home use, go nuts, I don't mind. And there is certainly room for multiple things to remain relevant at once, especially if the concepts are close enough that crossing over is trivial or easy.
But I don't need to edit video in seven different pieces of software, I need to get the video edited. And if I need three people editing video I need them all to be editing video in the same thing, or at least in things that are perfectly interoperable. Standards aren't a corporate imposition, even if corporations benefit greatly from lobbying themselves into becoming the standard.
File format standards certainly, and OSS generally embraces those (at least if they're non-proprietary), but UI doesn't have to be standardized. On the other hand though not everything needs to be a unique snowflake. UIs should take the things that work well and experiment with what doesn't.
Lets also not pretend that proprietary apps don't screw around with UI design just as much. I can't count how many times now Microsoft has redesigned the UI of something that was perfectly fine and didn't need redesigning only to end up making it worse.
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Ehh... As somebody who is old enough to remember before the standardization and consolidation of software, I disagree with you.
A workforce that are trained in more software options makes them more valuable to the company. It pushes for constant innovation. It's not efficient, but innovative processes almost never are. It also increases the difficulty to replacing experienced employees.
The widespread adoption of Photoshop as the standard has depressed wages and increased job insecurity. I also suspect that the trend of simplification in designs is the direct result of this. Mediocre talented designers are selling boring easy to create designs to artistically blind CEO's.
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Yeah I just want a tool to get my shit done and get paid
A newer alternative to After Effects: https://pikimov.com/
It's still got a ways to go, but it's off to a good start.
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Honestly, GIMP is not a good alternative to Photoshop. I know, "it's free" is enough for many people, but it ... just isn't.
I love love love GIMP!!!
But yeah it's not a PS alternative, and tbh that's not really what it's supposed to be or what its developers want out of it. it's different
Yeah I really like what they’re doing and I applaud their efforts, but they are a solid decade behind PS when it comes to feature parity.
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With GIMP 3.0 it's a bit better at least, they've finally added non-destructive editing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfaq-Cm1ZkA
Full changelog here:
https://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.0.html
I'd dare say that unless you've already learnt Photoshop (and have to unlearn it) then Darktable+GIMP works fine for home photo editing.
If you're used to Photoshop and your skills with it is what puts bread on the table... then I completely understand not switching tools.
As somebody who has been trying to decided which of the RAW photo editors to use, I can tell you that Darktable has a steep learning curve over Lightroom. The UI is incredibly dense and the names of sliders don’t make sense unless you’re an image science expert.
I'll take your word for it, I've never used Lightroom.
Whenever I played around with Darktable it seems finding a tutorial to get the effect I wanted was just a minute of searching away, and there's a ton of beginner tutorials available too.
https://www.darktable.org/2024/12/howto-in-5.0/
But then I was the kid that rtfm the game manual on my way home from the store and love dense UIs as an adult. :)
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Yeah but it should tell you something that they just figured out non-destructive editing by 2025. Love the team, want to see it succeed, but it’s not PS at all.
My understanding is that a lot of tech debt has been removed with the release of 3.0 and I'm hopeful it will make future updates simpler and faster. :)
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