The three open source apps I prefer over "closed" ones. And that not because they're Open Source but because they are free and awesome.

GIMP2 & Blender & Audacity.

Fuck all the alternatives.
Photoshop & C4D (CC ~800€/y),
Maya & 3dsMax (each ~2000€/y),
Magix with their 100 different shitass software,
and so on..

I fucking hate Gimp. I'm all about free software, and actually don't think i've anything "paid" installed on my mac. But Gimp is awful, its so buggy, so slow and missing so many basic features

@practiseSafeHex tell me about that missing basic features.

It's super fast for me EXCEPT on starting up for the first time. I've gotta admit

Sorry bro but everything that's not Photoshop is pure cancer.

Nothing comes close.

@nickpapoutsis Have you tried Affinity Photo ?

@Alice I've seen the logo a few times. It's one-time pay alternative?! Wow. It has a test version and is in the windows store? Damn, I'll check on it!

I wanna do illustrations and I have gone through all the free options - Inkscape, krita, gimp etc on my mac. They were all quite hard and buggy to use.

Finally decided to pull the plug and try adobe illustrator and I actually liked it much better.

I'm gonna be subcsribing to their monthly plan in few days. I know many people hate subscription and i was no different but thanks to the monthly plan, i don't have to break my bank.

@Alice i had looked into it but considering long term benefits, I don't mind paying subscription to adobe. I'd get life long updates and basically there is unlimited amount of free tutorials and guides at my disposal on internet to explore and an established community. Also the integration with other adobe services is seamless.

From a business perspective, the subscription model assures that the company is not going to be bankrupt and stop supporting the product because of continuous revenue from its subscribers. I don't mind being a patreon of a product I liked.

The monthly fees of subscription is quite negligible considering the return I can make from my work.

@BambuSource I absolutely agree with Blender, it's fucking phenomenal.
But gimp is nowhere close to Photoshop and while Audacity is okay (I've used it a fair bit) it's nowhere close to Reaper or Audition (to which it comes closest) for raw audio editing power.

Blender is great for getting into graphics, gamedev, 3D design and many more I mean u can even run genome sequencing

But at some point the widly options of it become a pain in the ass that's why noone uses it a professional level.

So don't compare Blender to Autodesk programms or cinema3d PLS!

@nickpapoutsis Just wanted to say that that's an opinion, not a fact :)

@linuxxx I haven't used Affinity so excluding that everything else is cancer compared to Photoshop and that's a fact.

@nickpapoutsis If someone likes any other software product than photoshop better than photoshop, then it is *not* a fact.

You can disagree with it, though.

@linuxxx agreed. There are even people preferring mspaint lol

@linuxxx There are people out there that really like eating actual shit.

That doesn't change the fact that shit is still shit.

@nickpapoutsis There are people out there that like drinking beer. That doesn't change the fact that beer is still beer.