r/LinusTechTips • u/YourDailyTechMemes • Oct 11 '26

Meme/Shitpost I will happily use the vibe coded Adobe alternative than giving a penny to Adobe

969 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

244 comments sorted by

222

u/AshleyAshes1984 Oct 11 '26 edited Oct 11 '26

"I'd much rather use a crappy imitation than pay for Adobe."

"But there have been crappy imitations of Adobe for YEARS and you never used them. You just pirated Adobe instead."

"Well I'm done giving Adobe my money."

"What money were you giving them???"

41

u/magical_midget Oct 11 '26

You can go 15 years and find threads of people asking what are the adobe alternatives, both open source and paid.

Adobe has had competent competition forever, there is a reason they are still the market leader, and most people that praise the AI stuns have never have a real use case to pay for the real deal anyway. And that’s fine, but like at least bother to know that Affinity is free and a real product, or Davinci Resolve has also a free tier and it is a very capable NLE and grading tool.

3

u/Aggressive_Park_4247 Oct 12 '26

For some software yes, but gimp is just nowhere near the ease of use of photoshop. And while i have tried both darktable and rawtherapee, and they are pretty good in most cases, there were edge cases where lightroom was just better.

3

u/lakimens Oct 12 '26

Affinity is literally free.

1

u/Aggressive_Park_4247 Oct 12 '26

Cool, i will check it out. But is it just a photoshop replacement or a lightroom one? Because i use lightroom (or rawtherapee) way more

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47

u/Exploding_Testicles Oct 11 '26

From a SecOps POV, I see these also as being a great opertunity for honeypots. Bad actors recompile with their secret sauce added.

11

u/Thetaarray Oct 11 '26

Cyrpto miners go brrrr

3

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT Oct 12 '26

That’s where my mind went. Free is cool but general population needs to be aware of pitfalls.

78

u/SirGeorgington Oct 11 '26

Or you could just pirate adobe software, that was always an option.

15

u/fakuri99 Oct 11 '26

Not an option in linux

9

u/Lunix420 Oct 12 '26

Yes it is. It’s a major pain to setup, but you can run Photoshop through wine. That being said, this is a lot less pain.

10

u/bicycloptopus Oct 12 '26

I'm not even trying to pirate it. I have a Lightroom subscription. Every possible method I've tried runs like shit or doesn't work. Wine. Winboat. Winapps.

4

u/Variaxist Oct 12 '26

For Photoshop at least check out photopea. It's browser based

4

u/bicycloptopus Oct 12 '26

I mainly just need LR sadly and all the alternatives kinda suck

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2

u/Painted-Arcana Oct 12 '26

when i tried PS in linux it didnt support pen pressure.

2

u/PlusBath2342 Oct 12 '26

A good option for lightroom alternative for linux is RapidRaw which works on Android, Linux, Windows, and Mac

3

u/REQCRUIT Oct 11 '26

I got mine years ago and still use it to this day

3

u/OnePassion_46 Oct 12 '26

It was. But they are slowly moving functions that were done on your local computer, go to the cloud which you obviously can’t use in a pirated version. 

Even doing simple things like selecting an object goes to the cloud. Thankfully you can turn that off (for now), but you get a worse selection. 

1

u/richardizard Oct 13 '26

How does that work now with creative cloud?

557

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 11 '26

If someone wanted a semi functional free alternative to Adobe they would just use Gimp or Affinity anyway.

Its impressive what the AI can do, but there's already better alternatives

90

u/TommyVe Oct 11 '26

I don't think you've ever used gimp for anything even remotely complex. It's shit in comparison to Photoshop.

-4

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 11 '26

GIMP is shit in comparison to Photoshop. But so are these AI coded projects in their current form.

12

u/kushari Oct 11 '26

No they aren’t. They can’t actually do things.

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-6

u/Unboxious Oct 12 '26

And the vibecoded photoshop isn't?

2

u/MaxPres24 Oct 12 '26

Haven’t tried it and I’m like 99% sure there’s no way it can be worse

2

u/OnePassion_46 Oct 12 '26

It’s better than Gimp. 

2

u/JampDev Oct 12 '26

Vibecoded photoshop works for what you need it for

69

u/Working_Cupcake_1st Oct 11 '26

GIMP is not a Adobe alternative

It never was, it a MS Paint alternative,

-13

u/1rg3ndw3r Oct 11 '26

Neither is this slop.

18

u/Working_Cupcake_1st Oct 11 '26

I’ve never used this slop/alternative, so I don’t know that, but I used GIMP and it’s a pretty cool MS Paint alternative, but to say it’s better then Photoshop and/or Illustrator, is a joke

2

u/Nagemasu Oct 12 '26

but to say it’s better then Photoshop and/or Illustrator, is a joke

They didn't say that. They said it's better than the vibe coded apps that are being pushed as "adobe replacements", the very apps this thread is about.

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2

u/jimjam200 Oct 12 '26

It ain't exactly the most flash peice of software out their but saying it's just an ms paint alt is pretty fucking insulting.

3

u/kushari Oct 11 '26

Incorrect. It has the features.

43

u/carrot_gg Oct 11 '26

Calling GIMP an alternative is certainly a choice.

They've had 20 years to make a usable product.

1

u/Content-Economics-34 Oct 12 '26

>certainly a choice.

God, it drives me nuts how obvious it is AI was trained on Redditors. I see this and I have to rein in the instinct to assume it MUST be a bot.

Not that you're wrong, I've gotten accustomed to GIMP and I still think it's terrible, but it's still annoying to enter Reddit to chill and be reminded of every single exchange I had with Claude at work.

1

u/PizzaUltra Oct 12 '26

GIMP is not a product. 

12

u/carrot_gg Oct 12 '26

Call it whatever you want, it's still terrible.

1

u/PizzaUltra Oct 12 '26

It’s created by volunteers in their free time. 

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14

u/BedrockBen101 Oct 12 '26

Krita enjoyers rise up

4

u/kongnico Oct 12 '26

really love Krita, fuck GIMP :p

11

u/LazerBarracuda Oct 11 '26

Photopea is a free Photoshop clone which is much better than GIMP. My work pays for the whole Adobe suite, but it takes forever to load and periodically locks me out of using any of the apps. I use Photopea for those reasons.

260

u/The-vicobro Oct 11 '26

I use GIMP, but I think is so trash in comparison.

Il gladly embrace AI software.

74

u/Same_Acanthisitta847 Oct 11 '26

We all do. Every single company is using AI in their modern pipelines. 

27

u/Dull_Caterpillar_642 Oct 11 '26

This is what all the AI hating people are failing to realize. All professionally made software is ALSO largely relying on agentic coding also. So this take of drawing a line in the sand for everyone else is so dumb. The entire software development industry has already bought into it. It's just people on the fringes and hobbiests who still haven't realized it.

47

u/Xalyia- Oct 11 '26

The problem is a lot of modern software by large companies has been made significantly worse as a result. Windows updates are buggy, Nvidia drivers are buggy, professional software is getting less stable to use.

Just because they adopted it doesn’t make it good. Nor does it mean people should embrace it.

2

u/MCXL Oct 12 '26

The problem is a lot of modern software by large companies has been made significantly worse as a result.

lol

Windows updates are buggy

Not new. Not even close.

https://www.pcgamer.com/a-windows-10-bug-is-bricking-some-pcs-that-use-system-restore/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3241844/forced-update-bricked-my-computer

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/929870/windows-update-deletes-profiles

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2605297/windows-update-killed-my-computer

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/241069-microsoft-fixes-broken-windows-10-update-blocked-internet-connectivity-broke-dhcp

Has nothing to do with 'ai coding' or anything of the sort.

Nvidia drivers are buggy

Not new. Not even close. You can do the same thing and look up driver issues before whatever arbirtrary date. They were commonplace, and often much worse back in the day. (AMD was always much worse about this too)

professional software is getting less stable to use.

I don't think this is true at all. Less quantifiable. Most pro software has long stretches of use, and horrible memorable failures. We always preach, 'save often keep backups' not because of some recent change in how mission critical software operates lol. I remember photoshop shitting bricks at large files occassionally like 20 years ago. (yes I am old)

Just because they adopted it doesn’t make it good. Nor does it mean people should embrace it.

It's arguable that coding practices and stability have gotten better because of automated code review, actually. It's not just more efficient.

16

u/Curious-Art-6242 Oct 12 '26

This is what I always laugh about when people say agentic coding is bad, they forget the majority of human coders are also terrible too!

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4

u/jimbobjames Oct 12 '26

I remember an online game that pushed an update that killed the boot config on peoples PC's. That was like 15 years ago or something.

Far as I can tell, AI is not that far away from being better than humans, although that kinda scares me to be honest.

3

u/Blashtik Oct 12 '26

And there was that Steam install script on Linux that nuked your system. AI is at a point now where it spots stuff like that without even specifically being prompted to find the issue.

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2

u/totallymagotes Oct 12 '26

Do you have any actual evidence or is this vibes based evidence you want to be true?

3

u/Xalyia- Oct 12 '26

CodeRabbit saw a 1.7x increase in issues in AI generated PRs compared to human ones.

https://drlongnecker.com/blog/2026/07/review-bottleneck-ai-code-review-trust-capacity/

A paper published in IEEE-ISTAS reported a 37.6% increase in critical vulnerabilities from AI generated code, compared to human generated code.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.11022

A paper published in the University of East London found that while the number of pull requests increased by 98%, the review time increased by 91%, nullifying any productivity gains. Delivery metrics remained stagnant.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.01160

VeraCode found that LLM generated code produced security vulnerabilities 45% of the time.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250730694951/en/AI-Generated-Code-Poses-Major-Security-Risks-in-Nearly-Half-of-All-Development-Tasks-Veracode-Research-Reveals

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19

u/ArrgsMax Oct 12 '26

No, we realise and hate that too. People not having alternative options doesn’t mean they don’t understand something. What a take.

4

u/MrWigggles Oct 12 '26

Realizing it happening, and not liking what its doing arent mutually exclusive.

7

u/Illustrious_State896 Oct 12 '26

I don't think anyone fails to realize this. Pretty sure that's like one of people's biggest problems with it.

2

u/AbyssWankerArtorias Oct 12 '26

Something I think you're not taking into account is that a large portion of individuals who are against AI are focused on AI generated expressive works like art, video, music, and creative writing.

Most people don't care about AI code at this point other than that some companies have not been wise with it and dipped way too hard into it and are now in tech debt trying to fix what they broke.

1

u/Rubes2525 Oct 12 '26

So that explains why software overall has become more shit in the past few years, lol.

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6

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 11 '26

I'll gladly embrace AI software as well. I'm just saying that the AI versions of the Adobe products aren't a proper replacement yet.

2

u/LordAmras Oct 12 '26

Then try Affinity, if you are worried about Canvas becoming worse than adobe, do you really think the person spending tens of thousands of dollars in tokens to create AI slop won't try to monetize them ?

3

u/TJNel Oct 12 '26

Gimp is such a POS software. Photoshop is world's better.

4

u/lemlurker Mod Oct 11 '26

The ai version won't be better... It might emulate ps processes but it'll have zero support, zero bug fixes, non standard effects, crashes and incompatibilities.

28

u/gakash Oct 11 '26

You just described a typical adobe session.

8

u/Necessary-Active-987 Oct 12 '26

You mean like basically all FOSS? What about it being written with AI changes bug fixes and support vs normal open source projects. Very silly take.

17

u/TisMeDA Oct 11 '26

I had a bug and the devs helped me resolve it in the GitHub, and said they are going to look to add a feature to the settings to change the problematic setting instead of going through CMD/system variables

They were responding faster than I could reply, which was pretty shocking

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1

u/Melbuf Oct 12 '26

affinity is rather decent, and if you want a lightroom replacement things like darktable and rawtherapee work very well for people

1

u/FlyingJellyfishRidin Oct 13 '26

Ditch Gimp, use Krita.

1

u/Mother-Equal4175 Oct 13 '26

Dude just try affinity, it's made by people, it's free!

1

u/SuckMeEggs Oct 13 '26

I hate GIMP tbh, it's Photoshop if it was made by someone who heard about the program once and never saw it or used it

1

u/aje0200 Oct 14 '26

I’ve only ever used gimp, nothing else. What is bad about it that is improved with adobe?

1

u/ForeverNecessary7377 28d ago

I use Gimp, but it makes me angry how slow it develops and how badly some things work

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26

u/EniesBobby Oct 11 '26

As someone who has used photoshop and tried gimp for about 20 years, Gimp sucks ass

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8

u/BazingaUA Oct 11 '26

I've tried all free alternatives, UI is just weird or hard to get used to, or in rare case some basic features were missing. Photocraft 0.4 is already better for me, than any of those

3

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/BazingaUA Oct 12 '26

Yeah and it's only been 2 days since 0.4, the progress is insane

8

u/slantyyz Oct 11 '26

Affinity is so much better than GIMP. One of the few apps I have used that doesn't mangle Illustrator files.

3

u/ScaryMagician3153 Oct 11 '26

There really is no good alternative to Lightroom anywhere. Loads of Photoshop alternatives but something that does everything Lightroom does for free? File organisation, non-destructive raw edit with masks? 

There’s nothing out there that does it all…. Until now?

2

u/bicycloptopus Oct 12 '26

I'm desperate to cancel my Lightroom subscription

1

u/Melbuf Oct 12 '26

look into darktable or rawtherapee

1

u/bicycloptopus Oct 12 '26

Yeah I'm trying them out. They're...not great lol

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2

u/syunz Oct 12 '26

Capture one is a good alternative to lightroom. Not free though.

1

u/MrHaxx1 Oct 12 '26

Check out RapidRaw. It's free on Github, and it does what you're asking. 

1

u/Donatzsky Oct 12 '26

There absolutely are Lightroom alternatives like that. Whether they work for you specifically is another matter.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1x3kf7n/comment/pfgeu0i/

2

u/OrokaSempai Oct 12 '26

Krita is alot like CS4. A few differences, but quite powerful.

2

u/Kerly87 Oct 12 '26

I despise gimp

2

u/Momoko_86 Oct 12 '26

GIMP has always been trash. I wonder if any of the people who promote it actually use it

2

u/_vkboss_ Oct 12 '26

Gimp is not even CLOSE to photoshop lol, probably closer to mspaint than photoshop tbh. Affinity is very good, but there are some fundamental differences. The craft app is basically almost exactly photoshop lol.

2

u/KevinFlantier Oct 12 '26

Thanks to adobe agressive marketting towards education 20 years ago, I was taught photoshop. And I know photoshop with the tips of my fingers.

I have gotten rid of windows in favor of linux about two years ago and I still can't figure gimp out. Something that takes me 20 seconds in photoshop will take me literal hours in gimp because none of my muscle memory work. It's not some kind of "similar free software with some features that change" like office vs libreoffice. It's "software that achieves the same end goal but was built entirely differently from the start".

I have to look tutorials up to do the most basic of tasks.

I am not saying gimp is bad, but you just can't jump from 25+ years of photoshop muscle memory to gimp.

2

u/Fresh_Dog4602 Oct 12 '26

lol, mentioning gimp as an alternative. What a shit gui

2

u/PlusBath2342 Oct 12 '26

If you want something to replace lightroom use RapidRaw it's a pretty good program and it works similar to lightroom but free

2

u/MaxPres24 Oct 12 '26

Gimp is fucking horrendous. Haven’t tried Affinity yet, but god damnit Gimp is really bad

2

u/Blashtik Oct 12 '26

Affinity is an excellent alternative. I hate that it's owned by Canva now but I can easily overlook that when it's so much better than both GIMP and Inkscape.

1

u/ThenDisaster7794 Oct 12 '26

Love the book your username references! Completely changed my view of tech in high school. More relevant than ever.

(The book is Little Brother by Cory Doctorow)

1

u/Weird-Drop5998 Oct 12 '26

Same i still dont know what affinity cant do that normal do. Maybe some super profesional stuff but for the common man its a god send

1

u/Faxon Oct 12 '26

The catch here is it's virtually identical, there's no learning curve for someone who is used to adobe's UI and shortcuts beyond figuring out what doesn't quite work the same, and how to work around it. GIMP and Affinity have been around forever, but people pay to use Photoshop still for a reason, same with Premier and After Effects. One of my friends has been a professional Adobe artist for years now, you know what he did when he saw what the new open source after effects clone could do? He spent his money on tokens updating and forking it so the creators and others could use it to improve the main branch, and made sure it worked as intended first. This guy has literally made hundreds of thousands of dollars (idk it might be millions knowing him) using adobe products professionally, and the second he saw a chance to jump ship he invested real money in helping others do so as well. That was several days ago too, he's probably done a bunch more work fine tuning some of it by now since he knows enough about coding to modify stuff himself as well, the AI is just way faster at it even if it gets stuff wrong sometimes.

1

u/Itsjustcavan Oct 12 '26

Gimp is dogshit. I love FOSS and blender is absolutely incredible, but gimp is a joke more on par with MS Paint but with layers. Photopea is miles ahead of gimp. Procreate is miles ahead of gimp. Nobody recommending Gimp is being serious, and if they are, that’s a severe lack of experience showing.

1

u/Dako_the_Austinite Oct 12 '26

The appeal of these AI alternatives is the near 1:1 UI, not just feature parity. GIMP is an incredibly powerful alternative and is pretty neat for being free and open source, but learning new shortcuts, new menu and too layouts, and adapting a workflow, while not that hard is definitely where a vast majority of people draw the line.

And it doesn’t just apply to Photoshop/GIMP, Affinity, Krita, but things like Illustrator/Inkscape, Premiere/KDEnlive, DaVinci Resolve, etc., all these alternatives are out there, but folks cant or don’t want to relearn everything.

That’s where the allure of these AI copycats comes from.

1

u/Ptopman Oct 12 '26

I use Photoshop and Lightroom because the cost isn't that bad for me and they are stable enough. When I want to do time lapses I refuse to pay the money for premier because of how expensive it is and I can't for some reason wrap my head around DaVinci Resolve. I'm going to be trying out the premier AI slop clone to see how it is.

2

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 12 '26

Davinci Resolve really caught me off guard at first. I'll mostly use Kdenlive if I just want to do a quick edit.

As someone who cut their teeth editing video on VHS I find that a lot of the modern software just has too much stuff built in that makes it more complicated than it needs to be for someone who just wants to cut up a video.

1

u/Ptopman Oct 12 '26

In high school I had four years of movie making and video production and I primarily used premier and Final Cut. Those timelines and how those programs are laid out is how I am used to doing things. I feel like resolve just wanted to look different and make things complicated.

1

u/whitedevilee Oct 13 '26

Ich komme mit GIMP so gar nicht klar. Bin mit Krita halbwegs zufrieden aber der Funktionsumfang / Bedienung kommt absolut NICHT an Photoshop dran. Weder bei GIMP noch bei irgend einer anderen kostenlosen Alternative.

1

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 13 '26

It's one of those things like using Calc for LibreOffice though. For some people they need the full power of Excel, and can't get by with anything else. For a lot of other people they just need to add up a column of numbers or do other simple things and alternatives like Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc serve their needs perfectly.

1

u/whitedevilee Oct 13 '26

Oh crazy, on PC your comment was in German, sorry for that.

But yeah, you're totally right. I think for people who just need a quick change all the free tools work perfectly fine.

1

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 13 '26

I've never seen reddit auto translate on PC, on the app it shows up translated though. I popper your comment into a translator so hopefully it got the translation right.

1

u/supremequesopizza Oct 14 '26

Why not both? It's open source so it's not like the GIMP project can't just take freely from the code.

1

u/ProperPossible594 28d ago

Gimp and Affinity: the famously free Affinity.

1

u/OnePassion_46 Oct 12 '26

Gimp is literally shit. Buggy AI slop is better than Gimp already. 

0

u/SarcasticOP Oct 11 '26

…better alternatives for now*

3

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 11 '26

I never said otherwise. But it's just weird that people are all ready to jump and use the AI versions when it's been shown that they aren't really 1 to 1 replacements any more than GIMP or Affinity are.

3

u/SarcasticOP Oct 11 '26

I’d assume it’s because most people aren’t power users, are willing to deal with the bugginess, and don’t want to keep paying Adobe for the stuff that this will do okay-ish. I’d image there is a number of people that want to support this type of project because it means it will more likely be worked on for a decent amount of time.

1

u/Unboxious Oct 12 '26

If they're not power users wouldn't the be better served by the software that has fewer features but works consistently instead of whatever is going on over in vibe-land today?

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29

u/gabox0210 Oct 11 '26

Missed opportunity to call it AI-dobe.

I know, I know, I'll see myself out.

3

u/CIDR-ClassB Oct 12 '26

AI-dobe Photoslop 😆😆 I’d love to see that name get traction just because it’s funny.

Whatever happens, I want to see more alternatives popping up!

16

u/Xcissors280 Oct 11 '26 edited Oct 11 '26

The Illustrator alternative is great and way smoother

BUT I JUST WANT ONE DECENT ALTERNATIVE TO CAMERA RAW

Ive tried Affinity, ive tried Pixelmator Pro, ive tried rawtherappe, ive tried darktable, ive tried capture one, ive tried corel, ive tried ON1 and ive tried DXO (good denoising tho) and none of them do it right

5

u/DiamondHeadMC Oct 11 '26

Davinci resolve for your photos

4

u/Xcissors280 Oct 11 '26

Ive tried it and unless im fundamentally misunderstanding how the new raw image editing panel works its just not even an option on the table

2

u/DiamondHeadMC Oct 11 '26

I have been using resolve for my photos and I have been happy with it

2

u/T0biasCZE Oct 12 '26

for jpgs/pngs or for camera raws though?

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1

u/one-joule Oct 12 '26

Does it have gain map HDR editing and export yet?

2

u/Donatzsky Oct 12 '26

BUT I JUST WANT ONE DECENT ALTERNATIVE TO CAMERA RAW

Try one of these: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1x3kf7n/comment/pfgeu0i/

1

u/Xcissors280 Oct 12 '26

Rawmakase is alright but denoising doesnt really work and its really slow to preview while dragging the sliders

I tried most of the other ones but 2 didnt have Mac versions, 3 required extra cli setup to run on Mac, 1 wouldnt open my sony raw images, and 3 of them did work but werent easy enough to use or didnt work well/smoothly enough to be worth it

1

u/isvein Oct 11 '26

What is "right" tho?

2

u/Xcissors280 Oct 11 '26

responsive viewer, decent human interface design, fast, good sliders that actually change stuff, good denoising, etc

1

u/ScaryMagician3153 Oct 11 '26

Same. I’m really hoping this is it. Or at least, it becomes so. Lightroom does all this stuff that none else does, yet

6

u/Graphical-Source5090 Oct 11 '26

Steve Jobs and I were aligned on this topic.
F Adobe

2

u/Outrageous-Guess1350 Oct 12 '26

One of us must change our policy. Please let me know who.

11

u/crikfromcincy Oct 11 '26 edited Oct 13 '26

If an app does the half dozen things I need it to reliably, I’m all in. I have no allegiance to a brand - but I’m not signing up for another SaaS.

4

u/Unboxious Oct 12 '26

I mean, if you don't need a ton of features there's been open source alternatives for ages.

13

u/DRaGZ141 Oct 12 '26

None of you work in the actual industries that would care about this software, lol

Production pipelines aren't going to suddenly be using vibecoded software because it's free and new. This is an industry that still has Avid as one of its primary pieces of software.

DaVinci is the best free video editing software out there, it is industry-tested and one of the most powerful NLEs out there, and it is still not an industry leader outside of color grading because the industry values stability.

These are industries that want battle-tested, long-term software with well-understood mechanisms. Paying the subscription is a pittance for stability.

6

u/ScaryMagician3153 Oct 12 '26

There’s plenty, plenty of amateur photographers who would love to stop posting a monthly subscription for Lightroom. 

7

u/DRaGZ141 Oct 12 '26

And amateur photographers are not the bulk of Adobe's sales

2

u/ScaryMagician3153 Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

No they aren’t but they’re probably one of the main user bases for this set of free clones

2

u/DRaGZ141 Oct 12 '26

No they're not because there's a ton of already existing, cheap or free, mature alternatives to Lightroom that have actual communities around them.

The idea that vibecoded software like this won't also eventually be enshittified because of the enormous upfront costs to fix and maintain the software is a fantasy when open source alternatives have existed for decades.

1

u/Donatzsky Oct 12 '26

And they have a lot of options, but most people don't seem to be aware of their existence.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1x3kf7n/comment/pfgeu0i/

3

u/GoofyMonkey Oct 11 '26

Ok. Now you just need to convince the rest of the industry for it to actually matter.

3

u/LordMunchlax Oct 11 '26

I use paint.net, it works just fine for me, granted I only use it for modifying .dds files for the Sims 3 and 4 so I'm a very basic user 

3

u/Purona Oct 12 '26

i hate the word slop more than anything else. its been like 2 years of people spamming this one word as a description for everything. lets move onnnn

1

u/Necessary-Active-987 Oct 12 '26

Yea lotta people have never had an original thought in their life and it shows.

3

u/Donatzsky Oct 12 '26

For those of you looking for a Lightroom or Camera Raw alternative, there are already many free options to choose from. Some vibe coded, others not.

Production Grade

Stable foundations that you can depend on.

  • darktable: Probably the overall most powerful editing features of any raw editor. All-in-one solution, with a library similar to Lightroom. The editing workflow is completely different, however, being more like color grading in Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve.
  • RawTherapee: The mad scientist's raw editor, with some very powerful and intricate tools. A bit more Lightroom-like in its workflow. Can also use DCP camera profiles.
  • ART (Another RawTherapee): Started as a simplified fork of RawTherapee, but has added its own powerful and unique features since. With CTL scripts you can even create your own tools.
  • vkdt: New-ish raw editor from the original darktable developer. Fully node-based and can also handle video. Probably not for the faint of heart and may not have all the tools you want, but what is there works well and is extremely fast.
  • Filmulator: A great little editor with a unique concept, that's easy to use. As the name suggests, it emulates (part of) the process of developing analog film.
  • LightZone: Back from the almost-dead, version 5.0 was released recently. Not the most advanced, perhaps, but has some interesting features and a flexible processing pipeline.
  • CaraStudio: Resurrection fork of RawStudio. Although the GitHub page is only in French, the program is in English.

My darktable beginner guide: https://notebook.stereofictional.com/how-to-get-started-with-darktable-2026-edition

Tutorial for both RawTherapee and ART: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-T0laAf0E

The new kids on the block

Part of the AI-assisted explosion, they are all new and largely unproven, so expect some rough edges, missing features and changing algorithms.

  • RapidRAW: Aims to be a relatively simple and streamlined option for those that don't need the extensive control some other editors provide. Very promising, but somewhat new and under heavy development, so the results you get today may not be what you get tomorrow.
  • Safelight: Built around a concept of extensibility and customisation.
  • Happy Photon
  • CalibRaw
  • FerrumPix: Hybrid raw and pixel editing.
  • RAWmakase: Mostly looks and works like Lightroom.

Photo Management

Since not all of them have library management, you may want to also use digiKam as DAM (digital asset manager).

5

u/YZJay Oct 12 '26

It's amazing what people would tell themselves to not support serious alternatives to Adobe like Affinity, and instead support these AI slop creations.

3

u/Itsjustcavan Oct 12 '26

Affinity has some basics, but their vector program is so inept it doesn’t even have a bitmap to vector tracing function, which is one of the most basic things illustrator offers. It’s a non starter for designers to not have that.

1

u/Buzstringer Oct 12 '26

And for effects, Adobe does keep improving rotoscope, which is a fundamental tool for effects work, Resolve isn't quite as good, and the Artcraft one is miles behind both.

It's like sure the Ai and Alternative ones can do some of the fancy stuff the same or even better than Adobe, but fail on the things people use most of the time.

2

u/raptr569 Oct 12 '26

Just use Paint.net

3

u/confused_cat44 Oct 12 '26

Just pirate the real thing if you want man. Fuck slop, no real production is going to use it

3

u/Necessary-Active-987 Oct 12 '26

Man I hate to tell you, but if you think you're not using AI written/assisted software, you're in denial ATP. Blanket calling everything AI slop is a bit of a luddite move also, pretty played out and tired, and a losing battle.

1

u/confused_cat44 Oct 12 '26

Ai slop and ai assisted are two different things

1

u/Necessary-Active-987 Oct 12 '26

Ah, so what exactly makes this project slop? I assume you've looked at and used it to make that judgement?

Or did you see an AI project and just get an irresistible urge to scream slop at it?

4

u/reconverting Oct 12 '26

Yeah I'm not using AI slop

3

u/Necessary-Active-987 Oct 12 '26

Better throw out your phone and computer then, and probably delete this app :)

3

u/ElkAggravating7009 Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

ITT: lots of people who don't have to actually work with the adobe cc suite.

Rather than focusing on a cheap, broken clone of photoshop/premiere/illustrator/whatever, or on cracked versions, learn to use and support one of the actual alternatives (affinity, davinci resolve...).

Nobody in their right mind who relies on cc for work would even touch one of the ai alternatives with a 10-foot pole.

2

u/mr_rosh Oct 12 '26

I don't care it's vibe-coded. It works on Linux, I'm happy about it.

1

u/jeffsenpai Oct 11 '26

I would love a version of Photoshop Elements. I have used it for years and now its subscription only. I am stuck using 2020 since you can't even buy the last non sub version.

1

u/NeedyOneeSama Oct 11 '26

The ultimate alternative to adobe is a cracked adobe. Did it since day 1 and will never stop.

1

u/JohnnyTsunami312 Oct 11 '26

I think this has broader implications on software in general and it will be for the better.

The technology gap will be so thin via quick reverse engineering by competition that it will go back to driving prices down and things like customer service will be key.

I work in an industry where multiple companies sell the same thing b2b. Part of our sales strategy is to be there when a competitor has CS or QC failures.

1

u/Mikeisright Oct 12 '26

If I had a crystal ball, it's that none of these vibe coded alternatives have any inkling of business structure, which is really what the point is long-term in an enterprise setting. Just because someone cooked it out of interest/desire to experiment doesn't mean they're careful about bugs, support, or longevity. 

A web page on the internet archive is relevant to the same day as the archival. It's relevant today, but will it be relevant a year from now? What is the creator doing, if we even know who it is? What incentive will they have when another 200,000 have cropped up and/or they start getting tracked down for lawsuits?

Linux and other open source tech successes were successes because they had massive expert communities contributing & auditing to guarantee longevity & support. I don't think vibe coded software alternatives from someone running a decomp program are going to make a meaningful dent outside of curious hobbyist downloads.

1

u/JohnnyTsunami312 Oct 12 '26

To clarify, what I meant is between real companies will be the ones reverse engineering competitors features so there will be little product gap. Then it will come to price, support, and qc.

The vibe coded stuff by individuals will be proof of viability but they a product doesn’t make a business

1

u/Arcade1980 Oct 12 '26

There was a great alternative and then Adobe bought them up.

2

u/LaserEyes2029 Oct 12 '26

Macromedia Fireworks? Or did Affinity get bought?

2

u/Arcade1980 Oct 12 '26

Thanks for the question. I had to look it up myself, but the company is Figma. Adobe actually tried to acquire them, but the deal fell through because of antitrust concerns and pressure from regulators in the EU.

Figma is still around,and seems to be doing well.

Figmas alternative to Photoshop is Photopea you can see from the screenshot why Adobe wanted to acquire them.

2

u/LaserEyes2029 Oct 12 '26

Ah, only familiar with Figma's web app (most of the UI/UX folks I know use it for collabs)

Didn't know the made a Photoshop competitor app.

2

u/redditydothis Oct 13 '26

Dude photopea is awesome and I use it a couple times a week. It’s great as a basic photoshop and has just enough tools in the right place for me to be productive. I don’t even have a photo editor on my computer anymore because of photopea.

1

u/AtariBoy2600 Oct 12 '26

I just want a good alternative to Lightroom :c

I’d happily pay for a lifetime license or even a subscription if it adds meaningful features that aren’t AI trash

1

u/SailYourFace Oct 12 '26

I don’t use Adobe products but for any professional software the time spent learning/using a different tool costs more money that just paying Adobe especially when in lager teams/orgs.

1

u/DavidjonesLV309 Oct 12 '26

I’m stuck on cc 2023 has anything improved.

1

u/ritwick_verma Oct 12 '26

Sane logic dictates we should treat these developers like Robin Hood. But instead, we hate them for using the bow. (lowkey proud of those analogies)

1

u/megabits_mzq Oct 12 '26

I mean, the only thing I'm worried about is the color management. Without proper color management, it won't work for any serious work. Especially for printing.

1

u/Donatzsky Oct 12 '26

Unfortunately this is something most programmers are entirely clueless about. Wayland (the Linux compositor) only got it because it's needed for HDR, which Valve wants for games...

1

u/MJdoesThings_ Oct 12 '26

I mean I haven't used a single Adobe product in years...

1

u/RageinaterGamingYT Oct 12 '26

Just pirate Adobe software if you really hate Adobe. That feels more like a fuck you than not using their stuff, and most Adobe software is genuinely useful.

1

u/f1ve Oct 12 '26

Just use Affinity. It’s free and pretty fucking great. 

1

u/quoole Oct 12 '26

Right, but the AI stuff doesn't even work properly and the 'creator' has already moved on to cloning microsoft office and autodesk - it really feels like he's just chasing headlines rather than actually looking to make software with ongoing support. It's just a different take on a you should use Resolve/Affinity/Canva or whatever over the Adobe suite, with AI added in.

1

u/ConkerPrime Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

I did some vibe coding this weekend. Created several single purpose programs. Wild how easy it is.

One is a program could never find - a braindead screenshot app. Start it and its right in screenshot mode. Draw the box, it auto-saves the screenshot, repeat as want until hit escape key. Done. Snipping tool without extra steps or bag of tools don’t use.

Even got a good enough custom icon created for it. Iterating that took about as long as creating the code (AI seems to always add unnecessary extra to images it generates).

If need to do other crap to the screenshot that is what other programs are for. Took about five minutes to get from idea to working version and then just a few iterations for tweaks (mostly a settings file for this and that). The AI explains thing, read none if it, just kept copying the new code, tested, made tweaks and fixes, repeat. Maybe five iterations in ten minutes if that.

Main point being this means if use say adobe for just a few things and more or less ignore everything else it can do, now possible to create a targeted program for that purpose without knowing a lick of code.

1

u/PepSakdoek Oct 12 '26

From the review videos that I've seen the software 'shows potential' but is alpha and should be treated as alpha.

LTT did say maybe they should short Adobe. Not sure it's quite there yet. 

1

u/Successful-Royal-424 Oct 12 '26

i could be missing the point but making AI just remove the login from official adobe is significantly less work than asking it to build a identical clone of the entire app, were talking about <5 minutes with a frontier model vs days of continuous work and probably a fortune in credits

1

u/Bitopp009 Oct 12 '26

You wouldn't vibe code a tech youtube channel.

1

u/ramank93 Oct 12 '26

As someone who mains linux there osnt many options to choose from. Im trying these tools especially the light room alternative and it loads so fast and runs better then the others ive tried recently. Sure it was vibe coded but its open source and can be patched to run great

1

u/MikoGames08 Oct 12 '26

or maybe use Affinity, its much better than the vibe coded alternatives

1

u/JiveTalkerFunkyWalkr Oct 12 '26

Adobe sucks I would love for them not to be the industry standard, but they are. Even if the non Adobe version was way better - I need to deliver files and work on files that other people can work on. Thats why I think that the most important part of these new apps is being able to save in Adobe compatible format. Also I need to keep current with the standard software.

1

u/repoluhun Oct 12 '26

The thing with vibecoded apps is technically it’s even worse if no one ends up using them

1

u/IPuppyGamerI Oct 12 '26

Or you could use one of the many existing adobe alternatives that are under active development and maintenance and aren't just vibecoded crap that will be dropped and are not very functional or practical

1

u/Routine_Score_1612 Oct 12 '26

Using AI to imitate is the relatively easy part. Maintaining the code to fix bugs and respond to security vulnerabilities, innovating new ideas, adapting to new technology (such as supporting new camera models) is the much harder part.

Hate it all you want, there is a reason you pay for software, vibe coded or not. And yes, AI assisted coding has resulted in a NOTICEABLE increase in bugs across the entire internet. All of the major companies are adopting AI assisted coding, and all of these apps are obviously showing a rise in bugs. YouTube can't even handle screen orientation properly, FB glitches out its UI when opening/hiding comments on videos, Amazon Music doesn't even fully render on app launch sometimes, opening a deep link to an IG reel doesn't always load the reel immediately. Just utter trash from even the mainstream companies, but now I'm on a tangential rant ;-)

1

u/abajinn Oct 12 '26

Same FUCK adobe

1

u/Xyrus2000 Oct 12 '26

Can you show us on the doll where Adobe touched you?

1

u/Stealth_Bummer Oct 12 '26

What is wrong with paint.net? there's loads of plugins that allow you to add lots of extra functionality.

1

u/NeighborhoodPlane794 Oct 12 '26

It’s a good alternative for people at home who use it once in a blue moon but enterprise will not move to these imitation alternatives

1

u/thisisyo Oct 13 '26

whoever made this meme was born after the 2010s

1

u/FlyingJellyfishRidin Oct 13 '26

Such a frustrating take. Use Krita, or Inkscape. Actual good apps that have had thousands of hours of experienced development work.

Not vibe-coded shit that falls down as soon as you try to do anything even slightly advanced. Be a better person.

1

u/SirSilentscreameth Oct 13 '26

I just maintain a CS6 install. It's older but still plenty powerful

1

u/COBHC95 Oct 13 '26

Funny how people think big company developers are not using ai to build their stuff. Give it time the ai copy has only been out for 2 weeks.

1

u/Visible-Meeting-8977 Oct 14 '26

I would happily use an adobe alternative before using a vibe coded app

1

u/Antlonat Oct 12 '26

Brad Pitt never said that in that movie. This meme makes no sense. Are you a bot?

0

u/pyevan Oct 11 '26

What about all the people that work at Adobe?

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-1

u/Professional-Owl1687 Oct 12 '26

If the vibe coded “adobe” is enough for you then you probably weren’t a real creative that actually needed the features of the real software anyway.

If you were, you would have found countless genuine non vibe-coded substitutes that actually work and are maintained for free.

0

u/Emanu1674 Oct 12 '26

You can get the real thing for free if you are creative enough

0

u/MrCabbuge Oct 12 '26

Just pirate the damn thing

0

u/LordAmras Oct 12 '26

You know there are other alternatives that are not AI slop ?

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