[johnnyanmac]

I mean, sure. But on the other hand:

- Paint is not only free but built-in

- Paint.net is free and covers most of what I'd need to do

- GIMP is free. Cumbersome, but if I need to do any batch operations that's when I bring out a full suite.

If I only need to do a quick edit for some hobby thing, I'm not frought for options.

>but it's just annoying to not be able to use the same software as my artists

So you are a professional? If you have artists at your beck and call and it's not a forboding deadline, I don't know why you wouldn't ask the artist to make the edit.

There's definitely a debate to be had about proprietary file formats (I work in games, so I completely understand that with its 3d equivalent that is the FBX format... thankfully there are very slow moves to cast that away), but I'm not sure I have a good solution. I don't necessarily think a company should be forced to open source/spec its own tooling.

[SomeCallMeTim]

> I don't know why you wouldn't ask the artist to make the edit.

Have you ... worked with artists? To get them to produce technically precise artwork?

The point would be that sometimes it takes 4-5 turnarounds with an artist to get something exactly right. Something that I, as a non-artist but skilled app user, can do in less time it takes to explain what I need to the artist a single time. So it's about saving my time and not having to pay for hours of artist time for something I can do in 10 minutes.

What I'd like to see is tiered licenses. They're being greedy and I refuse to patronize them. That's what it comes down to. I'm not saying they should be forced to do anything. Just that I don't like what they're doing, and therefore end up having to work around their software rather than using it.

I have a license for the last one they offered for a fixed cost; bought it for a steep discount when the new licenses were the Next Big Thing. But they won't get any more of my money until they offer the software at a reasonable price tier.

[johnnyanmac]

>Have you ... worked with artists? To get them to produce technically precise artwork?

Yes. But I work in games, so maybe I was expecting professional artists working on complex assets and not a grab bag from fiverr for some UI art. Anything "simple" probably takes them 2-5 minutes and maybe a few turnarouns while I could maybe take an hour of edits for much worse quality.

>What I'd like to see is tiered licenses. They're being greedy and I refuse to patronize them.

I agree completely. But I know there's no such thing as a smooth migration, especially when working as a team.

It's sad, but they have a lock on the market for a reason and that moral stance won't be without some growing pains or compromises. I'm sure we both know trying to get an artist to migrate tools is much harder than a programmer.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Well, I think you could say I've worked in games too. [1]

In fact, it's in games that the artists, especially when working with 3d, had the hardest time getting the precise kinds of changes that I would need.

But even in 2d, if they, say, created a sprite, but then left a few pixels non-100%-transparent in the corners of the image, I could ask them to go find those pixels and erase them...or I could do it myself.

And if they don't get them completely erased, then there will still be artifacts on the screen and the texture atlas packing will be screwed up.

Yeah. I've been doing this for a long time.

And no, I don't have much hope of getting artists to migrate. I'm just tilting at windmills.

[1] https://www.mobygames.com/person/13230/tim-mensch/