Download an abandonware version or the last released non-cloud version.

Use a VPN before downloading via bittorrent.

https://rentry.co/megathread

Krita is good. I have no idea if it's an appropriate replacement for all or most of Photoshop's use cases, but it's been a pretty damn good replacement for frozen-in-development-hell-for-a-quarter-century-and-desperately-needs-a-new-name Gimp.

Literally all my college professors struggle with Adobe's PDF reader since it bombards you with pop-ups and terrible UI design. It's depressing to watch.

https://www.photopea.com/

Completely free, usable in browser, no download necessary

its wild how much companies are going out of their way to make a better experience than actually paying them lol

I've been sticking to http://photopea.com/ which does everything I need it to do. It is also usable on phone, which makes it great for quick memes

My high school digital media class taught us how to use the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I fell in love with it and have used it while vehemently not using PS.

Me, every time I reboot into Windows for InDesign.

gimp has done everything I've needed it to for many years. Now that I have a pen tablet, Krita is growing on me

I'm still using a weird pirated 2015.5 version of photoshop. I've used the modern versions for professional stuff and genuinely the only thing the 2015.5 version is missing is the mirror function. All other improvements have been incremental.

Inkscape for free illustrator

I am cursed to use adobe products for my work as a teacher. I have to suffer through the new AI bullshit, AND Photoshop 7, which came out in 2003. I didn't learn photoshop until about 2013.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find teaching supplements for PS7 in 2025?

meanwhile my gf bought Pixelmator Pro on sale for a one-time $20 license and that software kicks complete ass. it's so good.

I have a legit license for the last non-cloud version that you could own outright (CS6) and they've made it such a pain that I find it easier to outright pirate it despite having the physical disks

2. Advertising, so much advertising.

They stick in ads into the app? I had no idea. That would drive me insane. Does anybody have an example? Google was - no surprise - total garbage. It only gave me ads made with Photoshop.

i use a very old copy i took from school years ago

I use it at work from time to time to create door badges for coworkers. This morning I used it and had to click out of 3 AI prompt prompts just so I can do the 1 fucking thing I went there to do.

I have not pirates a copy of it in years. Does it have more features than gimp?

It seems like they even made pirating it harder. I torrented a copy of cs6 and it still didn't work.

Just use paint . net

I've only ever used PS against my will in a photography class in college.

I opened the latest illustrator and it is the first time that it buffered for a good 1 minute. My previous pirated version never had that problem

Piracy is my best friend and can be yours too, welcome aboard matey!

I would really like to be able to use machine learning tools for content-aware fills or easily masking out a figure that has transparency. I have yet to figure out how to do that easily in Krita. Sounds like it's not worth risking the adobe fishhook to see what they've got though.

My partner is a professional photographer and is pretty much locked into the Adobe ecosystem. It's fucking shit. Its the slowest buggiest piece of shit software I've ever seen. The PC runs like absolute shite because of all the bloatware that comes with Adobe creative suite.