In December 1982, the creative world changed John Warnock and Charles
Gesche launched their business: Adobe Systems. Neither knew that their simple organization would one day rule the world of creative processes.
Today, Adobe sports the Creative Cloud, a collection of apps that work together under the Adobe ecosystem to streamline content creation. Some of the most notable is Premiere Pro, Adobe’s flagship video editing software; Photoshop, the most popular photo manipulation tool on the planet; and Lightroom, a photographer’s all-in-one workspace. For a professional content creator, paying a monthly fee of just over $50 a month for any app they could need is a dream come true.
It is no surprise, then, that Adobe has become the industry standard in many fields. Photoshop has never been rivaled in its editing ability, and many content creators use Adobe’s ecosystem for most of their work. Adobe certifications are much sought-after, with job sites such as LinkedIn providing essential training in the software.
Yet Adobe does not hold a monopoly on creativity. Recently, programs such as Procreate and Da Vinci Resolve seek to be an affordable, powerful alternative to Adobe. Procreate is a graphic design and illustration program similar to Adobe’s Illustrator.
Stephanie Ibarra, junior architecture major, enjoys Procreate’s ease of usability but is tentative about its ability to rival Adobe.
“I don’t see Procreate replacing Adobe at its current state,” Ibarra said. “It still lacks a few things like keeping the resolution when scaling something back up, but it has been updating like crazy recently and I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues at the rate it does. If Apple were to buy it off, it would take over Adobe Suite after a couple of years or so.”
Lauren Jannicelli, sophomore graphic design major, said she was drawn to Procreate for the same reason. She said it was incredibly accessible to her.
“I prefer to use Procreate because when I started doing art-related things, it was all graphite and paper,” Jannicelli said. “When I started taking graphic design classes, it was a lot harder for me to do stuff with the mouse — it didn’t feel right. When I (used Procreate) on my iPad, it felt a lot more natural.”
Michael Eaton, professor of film studies and film production, said Adobe has not been the industry standard in a film for most of its lifetime. He said that, for the most part, other programs in 2020 are fairly professional and provide similar results.
“Pretty much all of the software now does the same thing — it’s all very similar,” Eaton said. “You can use these programs for any purpose. A lot of this talk that goes on in the industry about (which programs are better) is almost beside the point.”
For most creatives, Adobe is still the best option. However, as software continues to develop, Adobe may one day lose its crown.
