Comment by ptero

> Adobe had a huge moat forimage and video tools because they were historically very hard to develop. ... Adobe's labyrinth of menus is legacy.

I am not sure. I heard the same arguments from the gimp crowd for years. But they always kept talking about solving their own problems (programmatic changing of imagery for web development), not the problems creative, non programmer users had and were willing to pay for solving (interactive manipulation based on visual feedback, which is how many creative types tend to work). They vehemently opposed improvements that were critical for hobbyists and professionals, like insisting on staying with 8-bit colors forever.

As a result, 25+ years later, gimp is a niche tools with its main draw being that it is free. Adobe spent a lot of time understanding workflows of target users.

When I, a pure hobbyist, work on my photos in Photoshop my feeling is immediately "ah, it really does what I want". As much as I hate Adobe business practices I gladly pay their subscription ransom to have Photoshop when I process my travel pictures.

I am not sure the new crowd understands paying users (and not "I will use it for free and watch ads" folks) any better than gimp used to. But I wish them luck. My 2c.