Technology

I mean it's not just file format problems as well. It's also the fact that generally you'll need a professional license for whatever software you're using since you're not using it for personal use and it's probably cheaper and easier to buy a ton of licenses from one company then splitting it between different companies based on what people want. There's also the fact that especially for bigger companies they'll have custom tools and templates already made that work in that software. Some of that is file format for things like templates but any custom scripts or tools would probably have to be rewritten to support other types of creative tools. Plus at the end of the day it's just easier if all of your employees are using the same tools so they can collaborate easier and ask for help on things easier.

Yes, creative jobs near universally provide licenses to creative cloud. Aside from companies not hiring people without that experience, the amount of saved assets and templates, along with the deep integration between apps makes the prospect of a full “migration” a ridiculously expensive prospect.

The value in these assets is not just in video files or pictures you can easily migrate to another app. It’s the complex scripts and templates that allow creatives to make custom branded content on the fly. Like a lower third that adjusts styling depending on the name you put in, and auto resizes to fit the text, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if at this point with the prices they charge, most of Adobe's users are either working somewhere that has it, or are students who want to work professionally with it, or are people in between jobs who need to keep up skills in it for when they can go back to work. Most anyone I talk to who isn't doing things professionally and doesn't plan to go professional will use something like Gimp instead of Photoshop if cost is an issue.

Outside of this though there's also just the fact that it being the industry standard does tend to cause non-professionals to use it too. Whether it be because they view it as better then the alternatives, or they want to get experience in case they ever want to use it professionally, or they just haven't heard of anything else and the tutorials they were able to find for what they wanted to do used Adobe products.

Either way though I bet that the majority of the money Adobe makes is from companies buying tons of pro licenses rather than from individual people using it.

I'm not sure "like lightroom" is true. It has an entirely different paradigm to editing, with modules and such instead of a single state

Affinity is awesome, at least until Canva starts demanding a subscription model.

Exactly, you are not their target user.

Many people, including myself until recently, would also do a lot to rid themselves of adobe, but for us it just isn't possible.

On the other hand, their subscription isn't that high, compared to so many other subscriptions.

That works. I think I could probably get away with using Inkscape instead of illustrator, but it would be a struggle, because with it I can't copy paste vectors to other apps. InDesign is completely alone in it's category.

Adobe is the standard everyone uses. You can't be a pro and collaborate without it.

It's like 35€ per month. There are so many subscriptions out there now. Everything is a subscription. 35€ isn't even that much anymore, considering all the apps you get.