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Can someone plz enlighten me how Figma competes with Adobe? AFAIK Web/app designers use either Sketch or Figma, publishers use Illustrator and photographers use Photoshop/Lightroom. At least that's how it's been back in the day. Is that no longer the case?


That whole market was Photoshop and Illustrator for a long time. That changed because of better and cheaper alternatives (like Sketch).

They have tried and failed to get it back and now seem to have given up on competing and just bought the competition instead.

It's also not just UI. Figma is a very capable vector and general purpose graphic tool. Figma made a lot of common things much easier than they are in Illustrator and Photoshop. While being online and fully collaborative. It's really an amazing tool and imo Adobe was rightfully threatened by it as I don't believe they could deliver anything close. It would just continue taking over more use cases.


While Figma is a great vector tool it doesn't hold a candle to Photoshop when it comes to image editing. There's a reason photographers use Photoshop for retouching photos.


Yeah but adobe's other 'star' product is illustrator a vector tool.


I see people using Figma a lot for UX design and storyboards. Illustrator seems to be used more by graphic designers.

If true, that would make them complementary products not competing products in the same market.


Adobe has XD, which is a direct competitor to Figma as a vector based design tool that includes prototyping functionality.


Thanks, I've never actually seen anyone use it in practice but turns out that Figma has a 31.73% market share in the Collaborative Design And Prototyping category, while Adobe XD has a 15.14% market share in the same space


There is absolutely no way those statistics are even remotely accurate


Where are these stats from?



People are moving away from designing in photoshop to figma in large numbers hence the 20bn.


But Photoshop is not a vector design tool? I thought this move happened in the 90s


you seem to think that vector vs. bitmap is a design concern. it isn't. designers care about their form and their function. a better tool means an easier path in the design process, it doesn't matter the tool, vector or bitmap.


I sometimes consult with internal design teams and a lot of them just never switched away from photoshop


The agencies I've worked at only started dumping Photoshop around 2015-ish, going for Sketch and XD.


There are use cases where Figma and Adobe already directly compete:

- Product wireframes/mockups

- Memes/social media posts

- Simple vector creation/editing

And that list is only expanding.




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