• cygnus@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    5 months ago

    The only apps I’ve used that come even remotely close are those by Serif/Affinity, but even they don’t have feature parity. They were also just bought out by Canva and will likely become fully enshittified soon.

    • frog 🐸@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      5 months ago

      The one thing I’ve been dissatisfied with Photoshop for, in comparison to another app, is its traditional media analogues do not come even close to Painter’s, and I’ve not been able to get any brushes set up in a way that replicates them. There’s professionals that use Painter in addition to Photoshop because of that, and I expect I will as well - but I really notice the features missing that I use a lot in Photoshop.

      • cygnus@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        I couldn’t paint to save my life, so I didn’t know about that aspect. How does Krita stack up?

        • frog 🐸@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          5 months ago

          Been a while since I used Krita, so it’s hard to compare Krita from 3 or 4 years ago with Photoshop 2023, but it was okay. Better than GIMP, but unless there’s been some major changes, it doesn’t have anywhere near the versatility in tools and filters as Photoshop.

          This feels like the key difference between Photoshop and the others. There’s an awful lot of stuff that previously I would have to do manually, sometimes over several hours, that Photoshop can do in seconds, either because there’s a tool or filter for it, or sometimes just because Photoshop is so much more responsive. This is really hard to quantify in an objective way, far more so than pointing out whether a feature is present or absent, but… I use an art tablet and Photoshop just responds to the pen better.

          So like it’s not really that it’s impossible to do amazing work with the free apps, it’ll just take a lot longer. I liked your analogy in your other comment, about the e-bike vs pickup truck: you definitely can move that half a ton of crushed stone with an e-bike, but it’ll be quicker and less work with a pickup truck.