Back To The Drawing Board: How Adobe really puts the challenge to open source creative tools

 Mid-November 2021

Adobe vs. Open Source: A fresh look

It had to happen.

In a bid to go freelance, I took advantage of a sale and subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud again. So far, so good. (Except for the clients thing.)

I haven't thrown away my open source apps. I learned a great deal from using those limited tools to get better at skills like design, animation, post-production anything. You should absolutely consider it.

But I've gotten so much done since I re-subscribed. How's it going? Well...

Photoshop vs. ....anything? 

Is there actually a competitor of any kind to Photoshop? Is Gimp or Affinity Designer worth mentioning here? The oldest graphic design software still around, which means it's actually a bit bloated with all kinds of effects. So adjust your toolbars wisely!

I might as well fill this space and mention how cool transparency settings are - you know, Multiply, Overlay, Screen, that stuff. I am just now learning how artists give depth to their drawings or bright shine to their colors (or deep resonance or vivid glow or...) It's in setting the transparencies for any object (tip: duplicate it and add a color dodge to the top copy). Why didn't anyone tell me?!

On that note, I'm getting better at paths vs. shapes with the pen tool. And other things we didn't learn in art school...mainly because I'm "Adobe didn't exist when I went to college" years old, but still...

So much to learn! Some things are weird - you can never copy/paste to the same layer? You have to merge them after the fact? Oh well, guess I'll do that - not a major obstacle.

Oh, and Photoshop's animation tool is not shabby at all (using Save As Web to make GIFs is a little weird, but OK).

Which leads into...

After Effects vs. OpenToonz

I'm a bit disarmed with how good After Effects really is. I just did a walk cycle character with no other drawing program - no Illustrator or nothing! (I'll get to that in a bit.) I'm learning more about what After Effects' art tools can do. But I did import some Illustrator files to make a more elaborate scene, and I've started working on VFX (I still need to do Mocha tracking, though).

And I reopened OpenToonz...and the experience felt really bad in comparison. Ignoring for the moment some eaten files from their update, because I'm gentlemanly:

Gradients? Transparencies? Is that something the OpenToonz developers felt nobody could use? Or it's just that nobody wanted that ticket? You can do these in Javascript, forpetesakes.

And After Effects makes it simple to make characters and backgrounds look positively beautiful, or as beautiful as your drawing hand and imagination can make them. OpenToonz, on the other hand, has that absolutely ridiculous FX schematic window where you can put these things in, never see them work, and never understand why. And don't get me started on that table > level > sheet system. Man, did I miss keyframes and whip connections.

A little embarrassing, I'm afraid, to look at OpenToonz now. It's fine for teens to cartoon with, but not usable for mograph applications.

Which reminds me:

Flash: What went wrong? 

Adobe Animate is basically Flash with a new name. It still exports SWF files, forpetesakes. Fortunately, you can export to OpenGL so people can actually use it. Exporting to HTML5 is doable, but weird. It produces tons of spaghetti code. Unless you're preserving a legacy thing, it doesn't make sense to do it this way.

But I've experimented with it - I'm really not into coding anymore, but I feel as if I have a duty to see if Actionscript can still be used to make interactive stuff for the new web. I'll get to it eventually, honest.

And what about Blender?! 

If you do 3D animation or even just 3D art, it's still the low budget king. It does good 2D animation, too. I've covered it in depth here, but as far as it being a After Effects competitor? It's acceptable. But I really spent a lot of time working on it's idiosyncrasies and weird quirks to get to where I am after a few days of trying the new After Effects. So I may be biased.

For putting your films together:

Premiere Pro vs. DaVinci Resolve

I certainly love DaVinci Resolve. When I need to do editing, it's easy and solid. It's also a great 3D animation tool and a decent 2D one. Davinci Resolve vs. Blender is a challenge worth considering!

I used Premiere Pro for my last post-production gig and it's not too bad. If I do more editing stuff, I'll do a taste test.

Audition vs. Audacity

I'll skip over how Audacity has had terrible security issues, to the point of being considered a spyware menace. But when it comes to digital audio...bits are bits. I do decent musical recording in GarageBand, and Audition doesn't do synthetic instruments. (Yet.) I'm looking forward to using it to master more audiobook recordings - again, should I be able to procure more gigs.

So these two categories are still under investigation. We shall see!

Illustrator vs. Inkscape 

This is actually a close call. There really isn't many major issues one drawing program has that the other doesn't. Inkscape did have a problem with remembering the kind of line I wanted to use for a particular piece - you have to set it in Settings to "Use last style". On the other hand, I wish Illustrator had the Duplicate (Cmd+D) command, too. 

Illustrator has the brushes, though. Like Photoshop, it has the giant online library resources that a wayward open source program like Inkscape can't hope to catch up to. (Brushes for OpenToonz would be great as well.)

It's nice to have Typekit, too.

Open Office or Google Docs vs. InDesign, Celtx, Word...

For those mundane tasks that we all have to do in our home office - writing resumes, editing design portfolios, setting up presentations for the big meeting, pretending to be a screenwriter - Open Office is an unsung hero. I may be paranoid, but I still feel weird about having my resumes in the cloud - and I couldn't imagine putting something important like financials in my Google Docs folder. Experts on security may disagree, of course.

I like the templates for things like screenwriting (not quite as easy as Celtx, but that program is dying out so...) And making portfolios in PDF is great.

So is Adobe Creative Cloud still great? Is it worth all the money?

I think it is. If you can cost justify it for what you need it for, you're going to be happy with your investment. I am so productive and feel more inspired, too.

But what about open source? Are you abandoning the scene?

Open source still matters, it's useful for people who are starting and learning, and it's a fount of valuable tools and opportunities for today's creative worker or any office worker.

One makes the other flourish and grow and thrive, when you think about it. Adobe has the vision and the money to make the tools that open source developers reverse engineer so young people can learn how to make anything they want. It's a good ecosystem.