Adobe is going to get absolutely trounced by GenAI. They've got so many competitors coming at them from all angles.
Also, innovation capital (engineers at startups) experience outsized rewards at startups when disruption happens. The better engineers will flock to more nimble outfits and reap the benefits.
Adobe has been thinking about GenAI longer than you probably have (probably added because this is HN and you never know).
I got to talk to a product engineer about some of their work back in 2021, and he was describing generative (and even generative-editive) capabilities they had in hand that most associate with the last two years, they were just figuring out how to productize them, many of which they have.
I have my own complaints about Adobe products and choices but they are far from out of the game, and they’re probably going to be fine, especially if a lot of people make the mistake of thinking of them primarily as a dinosaur Figma competitor.
Adobe has SOOO much money though that it will take a giant force to unseat them. Not to say we shouldn’t keep trying (I love Krita) but they have made sure they’re on the top of the totem pole. Complete with spyware on every designers computer.
This. I heard "gimp is free and will kill Adobe within a year or two" from 1997 or so. As much as I hate Adobe's methods it still wins hands down in UX for image editing. So, as a hobbyist, I have no plans to cancel my subscription.
I wish for some real competition in this space, but it will take a LOT of effort to dethrone Adobe. My 2c.
Yes, and it's not clear that those startups will fare better than gimp.
Adobe spends inordinate amount of effort to understand the problems that users are solving and make UX that users love. As the result Adobe has tons of money to improve the product. Users curse its business practices, white an occasional "goodbye Adobe" or "FU" messages but keep buying subscriptions.
The moat around this should not be underestimated. My 2c.
Figma is a whole lot easier to replace actually you can now actually with a self host OSS that came up with and bring your own api key from antrophic or open ai
While technically, Figma is just a web app tool. Replacing it would be hard. It has a ton of features, it’s well designed, it exports working wireframe mock ups you can use to demonstrate functionality. It’s good software.
entire design industry???? like are you sure that there are people out there works using photoshops,premier,illustrator etc that want more complex tool set???
Not a single person wants more complex tools. They want more capable tools maybe but never ever a more complex on. What is the benefit of increasing complexity except to show off?
Are you in design? How does increasing complexity benefit you personally?