Extensive knowledge of Adobe software is typically a requirement for being hired for any job in the creative industry, meaning you usually have to have learned it in school and paid for your own license before you’ve even started your career. Self-employed artists are similarly locked in when they’ve invested decades into learning Adobe’s tools, customizing their workflow within Adobe’s software suite and saving their entire archive of work in their proprietary formats. The switching cost is just too high for most people at that point.
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Weathering Software Winter by Devine
As an artist you spend time developing a skill, you become a Photoshop illustrator. When your connection to the internet fails and the software locks up, that skill that you thought was yours was actually entirely owned by someone, and can be taken away.
A consequence of our tools being owned by someone else, when our tools become an extension of ourselves, when we think with them.
See also: Scale requires deskilling
