[whstl]

I feel like tools like Sketch and Figma ate a big chunk of Adobe's lunch, though.

20 years ago every designer I knew were using Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks. Those were taught in universities. Some designers I work with started there. Today I know exactly zero designers using those.

Sure there is XD but Adobe is merely playing catch up here. I have worked with a single person who uses it, and it was right before they were transitioning to Figma.

It is also funny seeing some co-workers (including designers!) using Photopea instead of Photoshop.

[noduerme]

Still working on the print design side... I work with lots of designers who use other tools for photo editing and illustration. As do I. For vector art and for finalizing work for pre-press, though, everyone is really still stuck with Adobe. Their closed standards dominate the industry. If you don't deliver work in PDF or AI format... then what? You don't deliver 8 meter wide billboards as PNG files. And trying to edit PDFs saved from other software is really difficult. Trying to import AI files to other software often loses layers, path groups, blendings and effects. The truth is, for anyone art directing print work, your designers and illustrators may be allowed to use whatever suits them, but at the end of the day everything that goes out has to go in Adobe's formats.

[pjmlp]

Sketch is only relevant in US, and a few other places on the planet where devs use Macs.

Figma is the champion to look out for, hence why Adobe tried to acquire them.

[brulard]

I feel sketch fell out of favor as well. 12 years ago it was everywhere. I have seen it replaced by figma and very rarely mentioned nowadays. And I say it as a frontend dev who worked with different designers over the years.

[whstl]

Yep. Sketch was the first real competitor Adobe had, but Figma was a different ball game.

[whstl]

I never worked in the US, but Sketch was huge in the two places I worked (Europe and Latin America), to the point companies that worked together with Microsoft (a couple shops I worked for) were purchasing Macs just to run it.

Figma pretty much replaced it overnight.

[pjmlp]

I bet those two places were swimming in money then, as Southern Europe and Latin America are not regions where most developers are swimming in money, US style.

To put this in perspective, in Portugal that would be about two months salary, assuming running expenses, where minimum wage is about 800 euros, and top jobs in IT pay around 1 500 euros after taxes.

Everyone that owns a Mac tends to buy them in on credit, or with bundles with their mobile/cable operator, which are anyway credits in disguise.

[whstl]

Never worked in Southern Europe. In Germany, everyone had Macs in the companies I worked.

In Latin America... The last Mac I bought there was about half of my IT salary there, but that was 2012, a couple years before I left. So it was ok for companies to purchase them. Today? Probably not... I don't even know anyone who's still there and working for local companies.

[pidgeon_lover]

I've liked Icons8's Lunacy as a free alternative to Sketch and Figma. It works with Sketch files and Figma projects, and isn't Mac-exclusive or a website like Figma.

[brulard]

Photopea has implemented surprisingly large fraction of photoshops features, and having it implemented in a way familiar to photoshop users makes it very useful tool already. And that without installing, just as a web app? Or PWA if you want? Very nice.