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.”
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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.
Check out photopea
I mean, PhotoGIMP exists, I’ve tried that.
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.
GIMP + Inkscape UI refresh and I’d fund the shit out of that.
I don’t know about inkscape but with GIMP I get the feeling that the devs are happy with how it is. Someone will probably will need to fork for a significant paradigm shift to happen
As it’s going to be closed source, the project is worthless
SPEZ)!!
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.
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.
I am not a fan of closed source either. They’re planning to sell lifetime license of the whole suite around 150 USD. From reading the FAQ, it seems like they want to at least make the components open source.
He’s right, Adobe’s grip on users is bullshit. I just doubt that he’s gonna be the guy to fix it.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Great idea, but the money they have is barely enough to make a dent in the development scope they are aiming for.
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.
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.
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.
Fair point.
Just not Canva. We have customers that use Canva and, unless they use presets, the results are universally awful.
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.
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.
In my opinion Paint.net is a lot better than Gimp. Tried both and the former has given me a much more pleasant time.
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.
ShotCut works pretty good for basic video editing.
How did photopea rank?
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 think darktable is one of the better alternatives for Adobe software.
A couple of years ago, I took a Lightroom workshop and did all the tasks with darktable. I was amazed at how similar it actually is and I managed to keep up with the workshop, even though I didn’t use darktable nor Lightroom before.
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.
I was gonna get mad you at first, but then you provided some sweet links. 😂 Thank you. And also good luck to abode. The more competition the better.
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?
Now you guys know what it’s like to be dyslexic!
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.
Took 4 takes for me to finally work out what it said
I’m still not sure that’s not what it says
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.
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They have managed to build software suites that have been stable, consistent, and near the cutting edge of their industry for decades while avoid significant bloat and legacy hangover.
Are we talking about the same Adobe here? Adobe software generally does work but avoiding bloat? Have you installed Reader lately? They have their share of instability as well.
Yeah I had the same reaction. Adobe software is pretty great, but that’s in spite of running slow. If I had to pick 5 words to describe adobe products, I might pick bloat as one of them.
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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.
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.
If you read the words under the title you’ll know it’s not going to be the name for the tools.
“Buttfuckers & Sons” 😅
What about Akira? Is it still being developed?
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…?
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Adobe are awful. I hope they go soon and bring their shitty Reader in the same way Flash went.
Affinity is a great Adobe alternative.
Affinity is awesome. I’ve used Serif products over the years and they’ve always provided exceptional value
