Making music artwork. Alternatives to Adobe?

[BertKoor]

OK so now my needs have changed, i want to be editing AI pictures

Change the prompt until it's OK?

and adding text for record covers

Any image editor will do... GIMP?

and also making short promotional reels for instagram.

Insta' is not my platform, but you'd do that right there (I imagine) : just feed it a couple of images and that's your reel?

Would Adobe be my best choice now?

Adobe has more than one product. You mean PhotoShop?
Never (imho)

[Spring Goose]

OK so now my needs have changed, i want to be editing AI pictures

Change the prompt until it's OK?

and adding text for record covers

Any image editor will do... GIMP?

and also making short promotional reels for instagram.

Insta' is not my platform, but you'd do that right there (I imagine) : just feed it a couple of images and that's your reel?

Would Adobe be my best choice now?

Adobe has more than one product. You mean PhotoShop?
Never (imho)

Thanks Bert. I've been trying different prompts but generally most of the AI pictures has something i would like to remove from the picture. I'm actually covered for just adding text because i already have Affinity 1.
A "reel" on instagram is a video upto one minute with audio. There's all sorts of interesting things which could be done i assume with a video editing software.
Yes i believe Photoshop is the best for removing unwanted things from a picture, also Adobe has video editing software but it's still an expensive subscription.

[BONES]

stopped payin adobe subscription and went to affinity and davinci.... best choice ever.

I got Affinity as possible replacements for Adobe CC but realised pretty quickly that I had wasted my money. They have all the features but the workflow/GUI is even worse than Adobe's, which I'd have thought was almost impossible.

If you want to do AI stuff, have you had a look at Paint in Windows 11? It has Co-Creator for making AI generated images and it now supports layers.

[Spring Goose]

If you want to do AI stuff, have you had a look at Paint in Windows 11? It has Co-Creator for making AI generated images and it now supports layers.

Cheers for that!

[zion rebels]

stopped payin adobe subscription and went to affinity and davinci.... best choice ever.

I got Affinity as possible replacements for Adobe CC but realised pretty quickly that I had wasted my money. They have all the features but the workflow/GUI is even worse than Adobe's, which I'd have thought was almost impossible.

If you want to do AI stuff, have you had a look at Paint in Windows 11? It has Co-Creator for making AI generated images and it now supports layers.

err i found the opposite....

infinity workflow much more fluid. Not things from 2 decades bloated together.
the only hard part was to detach from adobe.. much more a emotional feeling.

no AI interest.

[BONES]

I've always f**king hated Adobe. Their workflow is appalling - you have to know all the hotkey combos to be in any way productive and those hotkeys are completely different in different applications within the bundle. It's the worst. But Affinity doesn't improve upon it at all. It's just different, not better. At the end of the day, nothing else comes close to Xara.

[seafire]

MS Paint has never let me down

[penbox_eu]

GIMP for sure is amazing. I make all my graphic design on there. https://www.deviantart.com/unclehando
like The only reason to have photoshop and adobe is if you are a professional. they expect you to know adobe cs. I'm tryna get more into freelance for graphic design and GIMP + Inkscape is just as good for stuff as Photoshop + Illustrator

+1 for The Gimp.
I didn't knew Inkscape instead, it's very interesting and worth a try.

[eLawnMust]

GIMP is well, 'OK'... Never liked Inkscape the way it's setup but do like SodiPodi which was what Inkscape was before it became Inkscape...

If you want a true, free photoshop killer then ChaSys Draw IES is the way to go, updated this April probably another update anytime now-

https://www.jpchacha.com/chasysdraw/

[BONES]

What OS does it run on? Without Windows and macOS versions, it's not going to have much of a market and it's not going to be any kind of "Photoshop killer".

[pekbro]

People knock PS, but it's still the king in my book. Adobe subs are not popular, but they've kept mine at the original rate without ever raising it to the actual current cost (over double what I pay) without me even asking. I can't say they've not treated me well. Since I have to have it for clients on occasion, I can't complain.

[planetearth]

What OS does it run on? Without Windows and macOS versions, it's not going to have much of a market and it's not going to be any kind of "Photoshop killer".

According to the Download page, "Although Chasys Draw IES is built for Microsoft Windows, it is possible to run it on a Mac by using Parallels or Boot Camp, or on a Linux machine by using Wine."

Some of the screenshots look like Win7; some like Win10. As donationware, it looks interesting, but not nearly as powerful as Photoshop.

Steve

[satYatunes]

I checked out the chasys draw IES yesterday and have the same feeling as planetearth above.

Like it or not Adobe is really good. I have moved away from it to Affinity but I still do some stuff in it that is quick and easy for me. Especially the pattern layer fx. Plus there are many assets floating around on the net free and commercial both. Affinity is serving me well and now I am doing 99% graphics work in it.

There is no serious competition for Adobe AE in both commercial and free world. I haven't used their new apps but have heard good things about them.

Gimp 3 released and I was expecting some UI/UX overhaul but still disappointed. I am gonna give it a serious whirl in near future. Inkscape did a good job upgrading the UI to modern standards but the UX is still bad.

IMO many open source/free apps suffer in UI/UX dept. Interestingly they don't even learn from the apps that's nailed it.

[pekbro]

Painter is very good too, you can get that off the humble bundle for next to nothing occasionally. Not the latest version, still, a quintessential package. Clip Studio is another good one, with features similar to both PS and Illustrator.

[whyterabbyt]

There is no serious competition for Adobe AE in both commercial and free world.

The serious competition in compositing is Nuke. Its so serious it'll make your nose bleed.

(And there's also DaVinci Resolve.)