Adobe Isn’t Just a Tool Anymore — It’s a Walled Garden, and Power Users Feel It

In the early 2010s, Adobe was where creativity and software innovation intersected. Fast forward to 2025, and Adobe has transformed from a suite of design tools into something more complex — an ecosystem trying to do everything. The question is no longer what can Adobe do — it’s what does Adobe let you do?

Let’s talk about the friction.

The Adobe Subscription Trap Is Now an Ecosystem Lock

Adobe Creative Cloud used to be a convenient way to access world-class software. Now, it feels like Adobe is less interested in giving you tools and more focused on locking you into its sandbox.

Take Photoshop and Illustrator — once flagship products with loyal user bases. Their integration with Adobe Express, Firefly AI, and stock services has reached the point where it’s hard to use them without bumping into paywalled features, cloud sync nudges, or asset marketplaces. Yes, the tools still work. But Adobe’s aggressive cloud push means even local file management has been quietly nudged out in favor of the company’s walled cloud architecture.

For enterprise clients, that makes sense. For independent designers, small studios, or power users who want control, it’s a headache.

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AI Integration Is Half Useful, Half Upsell

Adobe’s AI toolset, branded under Firefly, has some genuinely impressive capabilities — generative fills in Photoshop, text-to-image in Express, and context-aware retouching in Lightroom. But while Adobe markets this as empowering, it often feels more like a showcase than a solution.

For example, Firefly’s generative fills are watermark-free only for premium users, and Adobe aggressively segments access to features even within paid tiers. There’s no real transparency about how much GPU horsepower you’re actually tapping into — it feels a lot like you’re renting power from a machine Adobe keeps under lock and key.

It’s not a power feature if you can’t tune it. That’s where Firefly diverges from open-source AI tools like Stable Diffusion — with Adobe, you get the slick interface but none of the underlying control. If you want reproducibility, versioning, or local inference? You’re out of luck.

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Workflows Are Now Designed to Funnel, Not Flex

Ask any experienced designer and they’ll tell you: the power of Adobe used to be in how you could hack it. Scripts, actions, panels, and plugin ecosystems made Photoshop and Illustrator infinitely extensible. That’s changed.

Adobe’s newer tools — like Adobe Express — are aggressively simplified, and its core apps are being flattened into that mold. There’s a clear strategy here: funnel new users into a “just works” interface, and discourage complexity. The problem? Power users are now underserved.

For instance, CEP (Common Extensibility Platform) is effectively deprecated. UXP, its replacement, is more secure but dramatically limits what plugins can do. There’s also less documentation, more approval hoops, and tighter API access — Adobe doesn’t want third-party developers doing too much, especially if it competes with their marketplace.

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The Alternatives Are Catching Up — Fast

Ten years ago, there was no real Photoshop competitor. Today? Affinity Photo, Figma (before the Adobe acquisition attempt), Procreate, and browser-based tools like Photopea and Canva are carving out serious chunks of Adobe’s dominance.

Why? Because they offer speed, ownership, and (most importantly) clarity. You buy it, you use it. No mystery fees, no cloud-dependency traps, and often better performance on mid-range hardware.

And for AI-native users, Adobe’s closed model is a dealbreaker. Open-source tools like ComfyUI, InvokeAI, or even plugins inside Blender and Krita give creators far more control over generative outputs than Firefly — without the license throttling or pixel-count limits.

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What Adobe Still Gets Right — For Now

This isn’t a takedown piece. Adobe is still the industry standard for a reason. No one touches After Effects for VFX work. Premiere Pro, for all its quirks, is still deep enough to power everything from indie films to YouTube empires. Photoshop’s brush engine is second to none.

And their commitment to cross-device sync, cloud libraries, and integrated font services like Adobe Fonts (RIP Typekit) still saves time for teams.

But the tradeoff is now clearer than ever: Adobe’s value is convenience and ecosystem lock-in, not freedom or flexibility.

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So, What’s the Play for Creators in 2025?

• If you’re building a lean workflow, consider a hybrid model: Affinity + open-source AI + Blender or DaVinci Resolve.
• If you’re a dev or plugin creator, start exploring UXP alternatives or build outside Adobe entirely. There’s more oxygen in independent ecosystems.
• If you’re all-in on Adobe, learn to master their cloud tools, but don’t expect the same sandbox you had five years ago. The game has changed — you’re not buying software anymore, you’re leasing access.

Adobe’s evolution is a case study in what happens when great tools become great platforms — and what gets lost in the shift. For pros who grew up in the wild west of early digital creation, it feels like the frontier is closing. But that just means it’s time to explore new terrain.

Want to see breakdowns of non-Adobe workflows, plugin deep dives, or AI-powered design pipelines? Drop a comment or hit us up on X. Tech Dimension is diving deeper this year.