this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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I boot up my Windows partition to be met with fucking Adobe Acrobat trying to sell me a paid plan. I need to dismiss that pop-up within Acrobat before I can close the whole thing and it looks like Adobe are pumping their content marketing into Acrobat itself.

Who is going to open a PDF then be like, "Okay, I guess I'll see what Hasan Minhaj has to say about fucking PDFs." I would need to be super bored at work to do that.

Fuck this shitty company and their bullshit bloated program. Sumatra all the way, the only reason I keep Acrobat around is to sign the occasional PDF

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[–] OgdenTO@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If you're 25-30, and your main circle isn't frequently discussing:

~ PDFs on Adobe Spaces

And is instead discussing:

~ Other file formats or on other social media channels

Then it's time to elevate your circle

[–] daniyeg@hexbear.net 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

adobe acrobat is so fucking bloated like holy shit i just want a PDF editor not whatever 200 different outdated functionalities you have tacked onto it.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 11 points 1 day ago

Our office (small graphic design/print company) is 100% adobe and the constant "try this new feature!" bombardment from them across the entire suite is straight hell. I obviously don't need their shitty LLM to summarize the booklet i just exported out from InDesign, why even ask?

[–] jackmaoist@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago

Thankfully I have an IPad to send PDFs to sign them.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

everyone talking about PDF files really confused the adobe marketing people

[–] tombruzzo@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago

I could see some marketing ghoul at Adobe getting a daily AI summary saying something like "There's a 3000% increase in people aged 14-19 talking about PDF files on Tiktok. Gen Z really loves your product!" And not interrogating the deeper context at all

[–] blunder@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Under my vision of communism once you make something that works (PDF viewer) you can just fucking leave it alone

[–] Snort_Owl@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Under communism the aberration that is PDF wouldn’t exist

[–] Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How is PDF an aberration? It's a perfectly cromulent document format for documents that you need to actually print.

[–] kleeon@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Exactly. PDFs are quite stable and well-defined, unlike most other document formats. People assume that pdf files are meant to be edited/parsed and get mad at it when they can't do that. It's just not their purpose

[–] Alisu@hexbear.net 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Pdfs can absolutely be edited, though

[–] kleeon@hexbear.net 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Any file format can be edited if you try hard enough. PDFs just don't make it convenient. You can definitely do some basic edits, like changing a string or moving an image around, but even that is not guaranteed to be easy

[–] Alisu@hexbear.net 1 points 11 hours ago

Depending on where it was made, it can be fully edited. If you save a pdf correctly from illustrator, for example. And even if you don't, sometimes you can still open it and edit, it's just going to be kind of hard, the text boxes usually break

[–] Snort_Owl@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Its not that people assume its that businesses ask for it, having to deal with editing a pdf which should not be edited because some stupid job application wants me to do it or some random crusty government function that isn’t qualified to use a computer thought it was basically a word document.

Well i guess under communism nobody will be asking me to edit pdfs then its purpose as a utility for printing will be its use…. Printing its reactionary I will not be taking questions

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 2 points 18 hours ago

Printing its reactionary I will not be taking questions

Smashing the four olds that is just cadre smashing four different printers

[–] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

It’s an aberration in the sense that the format is owned and controlled by one private company.

[–] blunder@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Wait I love PDFs tho

[–] kleeon@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks Adobe, but I don't really want to spend time with a bunch of PDF files

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago

if your circle of friends is not talking in adobe spaces, get new friends

[–] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I have use Adobe Reader to sign PDFs at work occasionally and feels like it's just gotten worse. No, Adobe, I don't want an AI summary of my document, and I definitely won't pay for your bullshit kitty-cri-screm Plus there's the way they charge creative types ridiculous amount of money for their software as a SeRvIcE.

:adobe-cool:

[–] tombruzzo@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I've been meaning to post a rant on here about how dogshit adobe products are. For years I thought I was bad at using photoshop because I didn't study graphic design, but then I started using programs like Krita, Inkscape, and Davinci Resolve and discovering actual workflow. Then coming back to the adobe products I realised how poorly designed they are. Also, you'd think there would be some consistency between products in a suit. Not the fucking case with Adobe where the workflow to add stroke to text is different between programs and so are the keyboard shortcuts for basic commands. A loose cadre of FOSS products can maintain consistency, why can't the industry standard fucking suite?

[–] i_drink_bleach@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is no unity between "Adobe's" product line because Adobe doesn't make products. Like Autodesk, they buy competitors then fire all the people that made said product. They don't share work flows or tool patterns because they are all made by completely different people.

I learned Photoshop on PS2. Not Creative Suite 2, Photoshop 2 from 1991. I still use an ancient pirated copy of CS5. I've been trying to transition over to Krita, it has some great tools, but holy shit I hate the way they do layers. Maybe I'm just old as fuck.

I really wish there was a free vector suite that was as good as AutoCAD. I despise Illustrator. I can use it, I'm good at it, but only because I had to be. AutoCAD is hands down so much better at vectors than Illustrator. AutoCAD is an Autodesk product though and there are no human words that can adequately describe how much I hate Autodesk.

[–] tombruzzo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Many such cases. Even Microsoft Office was a series of acquisitions and their shit still sucks.

By far the worst for me was using Marketing Cloud with Salesforce. It is so poorly integrated and full of zombie features from before the acquisition it might as well be a separate product, not the marketing automation software offered by Salesforce themselves

Don't get me started on Illustrator. I'm used to Photoshop after a decade but I tried to start using Illustrator for better vector work and for a laser cutter. Every useful thing is hidden. Everything you'll never use is up front in the menus. Esoteric keyboard shortcuts for tools you don't need. Basic features have no button or UI element associated with them. Bounding boxes and snapping works differently than Photoshop.

Then when it comes to Photoshop and pros using it for painting, there are now so many more cooler paint-emulating software out there. It makes PS feel extremely outdated with its brush control and having to figure out the right blend mode combination and that stupid triangle-line brush facsimile in the interface.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 5 points 1 day ago

Holy shit that's been the hardest part for me becoming a graphic designer this past year. I started my job knowing fuck all about graphic design, but all the command keys are different from InDesign to Photoshop to illustrator. It's garbage, but at least I don't have to pay for it.

[–] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I’m not an artist or anything, but from I’ve heard the reason people pay for Adobe’s shit is because it’s the “InDuStRy StAnDaRd”, not because it’s good. If you don’t know the workflow of their software, you’re at a major disadvantage.

[–] LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Anything that annoys Adobe is a good thing at this point

[–] miz@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

imagining an Adobe product where you pay $22.99/month and they psychologically torment an executive

i'll do it for free tbh. just pay shipping!

[–] ea6927d8@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Digitally sign it or draw in it with the mouse or something else? If the latter, couldn't Firefox do it?

[–] kalabaza@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Was about to say that, digitally signing is something many clients can do

[–] tombruzzo@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

I think I saw in the last update you can so maybe the ol' acrobat has pulled its last trick

[–] mayakovsky@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

Adobe has completely fucked up acrobat. The stupid paywall on basic features was already bad, but now the software completely sucks and the stupid fucking AI shit has made it awful. MF I just want to read my pdf in peace.

[–] bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 day ago

adobe spaces is the new tumber

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago

Foxit PDF reader. Free and old so no subscription bullshit. There's a nag screen if you use the print to PDF driver which is better than Microsoft's but that's it. Well worth it.

[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

I have to use Acrobat DC at work once a quarter to do one thing and I hate it. I use PDF X-Change the rest of the year.