Adobe

Saying Goodbye To Adobe

It's time to say goodbye to Adobe and their predatory memberships, and lack of support.

David Bixler

Nov 10, 2024 — 5 min read

You've probably heard about some of the controversy surrounding Adobe's ToS. Unfortunately, I've been seeking alternatives to Adobe's Creative Cloud suite for a long time, for a myriad of issues.

Many other people have had performance-related issues for decades. This Reddit thread highlights a few.

Many other people have had performance-related issues for decades. This Reddit thread highlights a few. Some of the most glaring issues should be non-issues for any software boasting the features AE does.

Images, like the one above, only took a few minutes to figure out in Affinity Designer 2. The whole interface is designed to be as no-nonsense as possible. I wish I could say the same about Adobe products. Photoshop, After Effects, seem deliberately designed, in many cases, to be more complicated than necessary. Performance concerns aside, these products seem daunting to most people.

The more capable a thing is, the more complex it is... but does it need to be? Affinity's suite of apps challenge this.

But many other apps like Blender bring into question the necessity for After Effects and Premier Pro at all. Blender has a fully-featured video editor, built in. Say nothing of the fact that it's completely free, and capable of effects which come with a hefty pricetag if you want to achieve them in After Effects.

Made in Blender

For Free!

After Effects Plugin ($180+)

Expensive, chonky, performance-heavy, limited

Many plugins like Plexus have been on AE-users' wishlists for a long time. Some AE and Premier Pro plugins are very expensive, and AE, is already, quite expensive.

Unless you use multiple Creative Cloud apps on a regular basis, the expense really can't be justified. The same effects and results can be achieved for free, and often with less performance issues, and more versatility.

I'll spare you my experiences with Adobe's plugin marketplace. Photoshop plugins are a nightmare unto themselves.

Substance Painter, Designer and now Modeler are great software, but they are shipped under a $50/mo plan that, if I'm completely honest, I never really took advantage of. I paid the monthlies, then barely used the software, because let's face it, who needs to constantly create procedural textures and paint models? This product is not niche, but it's also not necessary for the vast majority of work asset artists do.

Free alternatives to Substance exist with Material Maker (Itch), ArmorTools. ArmorLab is a feature-rich node-based procedural texture suite, similar to Substance Designer. ArmorPaint is a material painting suite similar to Substance Painter. Both are free, available on Github. Compile them for your system yourself, instructions are in the github pages.

The Practicality

While it may take a bit more for a designer to produce their vfx, graphics, etc... The absolute deluge of bad plugins, lack of support, and advertisements for paid addons can be skipped.

The high road here is, of course, not pirating. My stance for anti-piracy is well known among my friends and family, but when a company makes you wholly dependent on their technology, jacks up the price, then leaves its userbase to suffer and languish... cards on the table.

In my case, I showed my cards, found myself with a winning hand, and left the table with my chips. My livelihood wasn't on the table. I can walk away from Adobe and never miss them, even though I've mastered nearly all of their products.

If you find yourself in similar territory, I urge you to explore Material Maker, Affinity and Armor products, and venture onward.

And that's just the beginning.

Here's a list of some of my favorite tools, free and paid.