After 6 months, I've had to resubscribe to Adobe PS. I work with too many people who send me PS files and there is no alternative that can open and save them reliability. It sad how many "helper" apps Adobe installs and how often they try to connect to the internet. I block them all, but it's scary. I have to unblock them every 30 days. Please do not suggest alternatives unless you know for a fact they load and save .psd files seamlessly. Do not suggest GIMP or I block you.
@grumpygamer I learned on Photoshop and none of the other tools seems to be able to mimic the workflow well enough. I’m just too efficient in Photoshop compared to the alternatives. Also Canva bought Serif so that’s up in the air.
I'm so sorry you're locked into a closed vendor, like so many of my friends in the art world.
I just hope that one day, at least one Open Source app will be able to read and save those formats with high fidelity (and has enough features to allow to do your job).
@grumpygamer Have you tried getting your hands on an old version of photoshop that was less shit? I'm not sure what the "best one" was, but I know you can get pre-cloud versions
@grumpygamer I mean you could also maybe ask the people you work with to send you a different non proprietary format, surely that wouldn't be an unreasonable ask right? Totally makes sense this would happen but I genuinely hope you don't have to stick with that subscription for too long.
@grumpygamer I literally cancelled my subscription today (they increased the price again?!) Currently I'm winging it with Affinity + Clip studio, but I then don't have anyone sending me .psd files, which is much easier. But yeah, currently, I don't think there's any real alternative.
@grumpygamer yeah :-( I have decades of muscle memory for PS yet I’d be willing put in the time to learn other tools to avoid Adobe. But the lock-in from exchanging files with others is the thing that would make the attempt pointless. I wish there was a way out!
@grumpygamer Since you're a Mac user, you probably know Pixelmator Pro, right? As an Ex-Photoshop user it's a fantastic replacement for me (even uses many of the same shortcuts), it can import and export .psd files, and it's a onetime pay: https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/
@grumpygamer ImageMagick can save PSDs to other formats, including exporting separate layers. I've only used it as a command line tool though, not sure about the GUI experience.
@grumpygamer I had a bunch of psd files that broke GIMP and Pillow - IIRC they used extra alpha channels. I think the psd-tools python package was able to extract the data I wanted, but it was still a pain.