Hey dude, it’s up to the individual. Sure. But know the consequences. These big companies can squash you and your business like a bug. You want that sword of damocles hanging over your financial head? That’s on you.
One thing I notice, all the guys who do this for a living are warning OP about basing a business on pirated software (and assets). It’s only the piracy advocates who say otherwise.
It’s not a moral question for me. Strictly practical.
Every corporate client I’ve contracted for has required a written statement confirming licensing and original asset creation.
It’s in the deliverable and the fact that you’re making money with a pirated suite. It exposes you and your business to a lawsuit so expensive you’ll be run out of business for life. It’s like a business and financial death sentence.
This isn’t a moral question. It’s one thing to pirate for personal use, quite another to build a business on pirated software. Especially when the consequences of getting caught are so severe.
I use the FOSS stuff to make money with. But if you’re going with Adobe for business, and I used the Adobe suite for over a decade and like it, then pay for it. Not out of some moral nonsense, because I don’t give a shit. But because creating deliverables with pirated software puts your business at serious risk. They don’t really care if you pirate to learn the suite, but once you start making money you pay or they’ll sue you into the ground.
If they ever do find out, they’ll sue you and your business into the ground. Either pay for it or find an alternative.
I paid for Resolve Studio and use FOSS tools. Mostly because I regularly render on the cloud and FOSS gives me the freedom to do this legally without licensing hassles. IMO, it’s not even the cost, it’s the compliance hoops that make commercial software so onerous to run on clusters.
If on Win or Mac, the Affinity Suite and Resolve are good alternatives. If on Linux, my experience is to break up asset creation between GIMP for cutouts and background creation and Krita for compositing. Neither on their own come close to Ps but together they get much closer. GIMP has the better clone stamp and heal tool, and fantastic guideline support, while Krita has nondestructive adjustment filters and layer styles for nondestructive text effects. Inkscape is excellent, like 90% of Ai.
Finally, your clients. I sell works for hire. Once my clients pay, they get all the original files plus deliverables. That they can use free tools to change assets matters to some of them. It gives them the freedom to hire someone else, or do it themselves, or just trust me that I’m not fucking them by stringing them along. Use Adobe and you can’t sell that to your clients.
But everything depends on who your clients are and what they need. Big corporate clients won’t care about that. So every business plan is different and tailored to its target client.
I got my start shooting drone footage of empty lots for architecture firms, then building 3D models of a proposed building by their plans, and compositing the footage together with motion tracking. First in Maya and then Blender. They’d use that to sell their client. This was just over ten years ago, after I’d burned out as an IT director.
Every one of those architecture firms demanded a written statement affirming licensing of all my software and any external assets used. They also required NDAs for all plans I saw. And that I have a registered business, with a tax code.
I later added motion graphics and animated logo design for small production houses and they all demanded the same.
I also do a lot of mom and pop work, which could go under the radar. But I learned early on to play by the rules. As an IT director I handled licensing audits and those companies are real sticklers. Every little motherfucking thing they can ding you on they will.
This is the real world where pros play.