If you’re a young creative trying to make it in design, photography, or video, Adobe has you in a chokehold, and they know it. For years, they’ve been making it harder (and more expensive) to use their software, locking us into endless subscriptions while refusing to fix basic issues.
And now? They’re using our work to train their AI, without asking, without paying, and without a care in the world.
Let’s break down how Adobe is exploiting young creatives from every angle.
1. The Subscription Trap: Pay Forever or Lose Everything
Remember when you could just buy software? Yeah, those days are gone. Adobe’s subscription model means:
💸 $60+ a month for Creative Cloud = $720 a year (minimum!)
💸 Stop paying? You lose access to everything.
💸 Want to cancel? You get hit with a 50% early cancellation fee.
It’s a scam disguised as convenience. They’ve made it impossible for freelancers and young designers to own their tools outright. You either keep paying forever or get locked out of your own work.
2. Their Software Is a Mess (And They Don’t Care)
For the insane amount Adobe charges, you’d think their software would run perfectly. Instead, we get:
🚨 Premiere Pro crashes mid-project (hope you saved your work).
🚨 Photoshop updates randomly break features that were working fine.
🚨 Creative Cloud runs in the background, eating your RAM like a parasite.
They keep adding AI tools and flashy updates, but won’t fix the basic performance issues that have plagued their software for years.
3. Adobe Is Training AI With Your Work For Free
Here’s where things get really messed up. Adobe is developing AI tools like Firefly, which they claim is “ethically trained.” But guess where the training data comes from? Creative Cloud users.
🔍 Adobe’s Terms of Service allow them to analyze your content for “product improvement” (aka AI training).
🔍 They never explicitly told users their work was being used this way.
🔍 They’re now selling AI tools trained on your work, while you get $0 in return.
Adobe wants to profit off AI-generated art while stealing from the very people who made it possible. They claim they “don’t train AI on customer content,” but if no one called them out, would they have admitted to it? Doubtful.
4. Adobe’s AI Is Replacing the Creatives They Exploit
Think about it:
⚠️ Adobe profits off AI-generated images and edits.
⚠️ The AI is trained on work made by real designers and photographers.
⚠️ Instead of paying those creatives, Adobe is using AI to replace them.
They want our ideas, our styles, and our creativity, but they don’t want to pay us for it. Instead, they’re training AI to make design cheaper and faster for businesses, while cutting actual creatives out of the equation.
5. There Are Alternatives (But Adobe’s Grip Is Strong)
Adobe has spent decades making itself the industry standard, which is why so many companies require their software. But you don’t have to stay trapped.
🚀 Affinity Suite (One-time purchase, NO subscriptions.)
🚀 DaVinci Resolve (Better than Premiere + free version!)
🚀 Figma & Canva (Easy design tools for free.)
If enough people start ditching Adobe, the industry will have to adapt.
TL;DR: Adobe Is Exploiting Creatives From Every Angle
🔴 They trap you in overpriced subscriptions.
🔴 Their software is buggy and unreliable.
🔴 They train AI with your work without paying you.
🔴 They’re actively replacing designers with AI.
Adobe acts like they support creatives, but in reality? They’re profiting off our work while making it harder for us to succeed.
