I've been a Photoshop user since the mid‑90s, moving from Photoshop 3 in school to CS2 in 2005, CS5 in 2010, and finally the Creative Cloud (CC) subscription in 2013. At first the CC model felt like a dream—always up‑to‑date and with handy sync services. Over the years the Creative Cloud app turned from a useful native tool into a sluggish, web‑based mess, and Adobe even discontinued the synced files feature in 2023 after a year of pushback.

My workflow changed too; PSDs were replaced by Sketch and Figma, leaving me only to touch up images occasionally. Meanwhile updates stopped arriving, got stuck, or reset my preferences, and the app began silently altering system files for license checks. The final straw was Adobe swapping native UI controls for web‑based ones and making uninstallation a nightmare. After wrestling with a confusing cancellation process and a broken Creative Cloud uninstaller, I finally switched to Apple’s Creator Studio and Pixelmator Pro, and I haven't looked back.