Adobe and Cruft

I do a lot of design work. So do lots of other people; there’s something a lot of us have in common, and it’s a strangely intense love/hate relationship with Adobe’s tools.

I use a lot of Adobe tools regularly. I use Photoshop for image editing, and (sometimes) Illustrator for vector editing. I use After Effects for animation, and I’ve played with some of their web design tools.

Almost all but the web design tools have something in common: the feeling that it’s build on layers upon layers of highly polished, occasionally optimized spaghetti.

Fire up Photoshop, and what am I greeted with?

A woman with her hair trailing behind her, transforming into trees in a forest as it fades backwards. Now, that’s a beautiful piece of art, but as it hangs on my screen for seconds at a time I’ll focus on the other part: several dozen names, and a copyright dating back to the ‘90s.

Photoshop is old. It’s really, really old. It’s slow to start, slow to use, and parts of its UI look fresh out of 2002 (and run like something fresh out of 1980). That’s not the tool I want to use to create something beautiful. Illustrator feels even older.

It’s time for a rewrite. With nice comments in the code so it can be maintained for a long time and enough resources to get it done quickly. Adobe needs to put their weight behind it and push it as far as it can go.

Photoshop has an amazing legacy, but every single Photoshop tutorial I’ve been given began with “this is really slow and old, but the only way to get stuff done.” Photoshop might need to be a large program, but it should also be a fast program; it should not have 3D modeling or video editing tools built in. It should edit photos, fast. Illustrator is closer to ideal, but it should be far faster, and it could be. Sketch is proof of that.

Sketch is a one-time purchase of $99, less if you’re a student or educator. Pixelmator is $30. For the cost of just a few months of access to Adobe’s tools you can get both. You save money even if they both do a paid upgrade at full cost, 3 times every year.

Obviously, people need to be able to open their old files. Adobe should make any new software compatible with old files. That’s something a company like Adobe should be able to handle.

A program so old and bloated that its users feel like they’re tied to it in an ecosystem where competitors offer better performance and lower costs is a program on its way out. Adobe, don’t let Photoshop die.