Image editors struggle to find a usable Adobe alternative
Photographers, digital artists, and casual editors looking beyond Adobe want tools that fit their workflows, budgets, and platforms. They report missing features, clunky interfaces, steep learning curves, and uncertainty about options such as PSD support; needs range from photo processing to simple raster edits, so no single replacement is likely to suit everyone. A carefully maintained comparison and migration guide could help people choose without promising a like-for-like replacement for the entire Adobe suite.
For photographers, digital artists, and casual image editors. Mentioned from Jul 2019 to Jul 2026 on Bluesky, GitHub, Hacker News and Stack Exchange.
16 different people described this problem in 15 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 6.1/10
- Frequency
- 10.0/10
- Willingness to pay
- 5.0/10
- Momentum
- 4.7/10
- Who pays
- Consumers
- Competition
- High
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
I would happily pay $300 for a raster editing product that is just "It's Photoshop CS6 from 2012 with bug fixes but no added features from the last 13 years and no subscription plan and also Adobe doesn't get any of the money
In desperation I turned to GIMP but it is so bad that I now use Photopea. I would pay for a modern functional equivalent of Paint Shop Pro, but I don't know that it exists
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 5 places to find your first customers
- 14 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks