ActivePresenter vs. Adobe PhotoShop vs. Markup Hero

ActivePresenter is designed for professional trainers, educators or teachers. So, it's best to use it for educational purposes like creating training videos, eLearning lessons, interactive training videos. You can also use it as a tool for content creation like making tutorial videos for YouTube or other social video sharing platforms. Making online courses for local training or selling online is also a great fit of ActivePresenter.

Photoshop is a useful tool for everything from creating social media graphics to editing and sizing photos. There is a bit of a learning curve, so you need to have a bit of experience to master it and use it for a variety of tasks. You also need to have a good sense of file organization so you can find files quickly without losing track of them.

Incentivized

For us, it's sending real estate setup sheets with multiple properties and lots of comments and feedback. It's great for quick feedback and shares. If I need to make a custom graphic tho its not quite powerful enough as Photoshop or other tools. The former is about 90% of my use cases, the latter only 10% so it's still worth it. But I can see they are adding more and more design oriented features so I suspect I won't need Photoshop much longer.

• making tutorial videos with screen recording and video editing.
• Creating interactive eLearning lessons.
• Creating software simulation
• Making demo videos for software products
• Design complete responsive eLearning courses
• Export eLearning courses into SCORM or xAPI for uploading to an LMS

• The fact is that you may quickly pick things up on your own by spending time without using any other resources.
• It is the program that brings the phrase "to make PhotoShop" to almost all languages. It's not just a photo editing program.
• Practical and beautiful results are filtered by filtering the desired work without drowning in details.

Incentivized

• Quickly adding annotations
• Sharing links to screenshots or marked up PDFs
• Always editable and accessible from any device

• it could be more helpful to have built-in library
• AI features like Auto captions
• Improve transition effects and video effects
• more built-in templates for Text

• The effect applying time could be faster.
• There could be a smarter way to make mockups using smart objects, maybe by directly selecting an area, and generative AI can automate a few steps.
• If Photoshop can suggest the right stock imagery in case the generative AI doesn't get the right answer.

Incentivized

• Teams is basic right now; looking forward to more permissions and team folders
• Love the insert image, but would like to be able to make my own library of images
• Needs rotate when uploading from my iPhone - they're sideways right now

We get a lot of use out of this software. It's vital for work with production in our industry and has a lot of cross-functionality - creating social media images, retouching photos, editing photos, creating gradients, and more. It's pretty fuss-free in that we haven't had to reach out to support and the program hasn't crashed on us. We are trained on the software (so again, this isn't for beginners), but for detail-oriented designers and creatives like ourselves - it's a no-brainer.

Incentivized

It's easy to use like MS PowerPoint . The UI looks similar to what I've been using for over decades. I am an old man, and I can use it to create so many different types of content. Great one! No excuse buying the software.

Adobe PhotoShop is a professional-grade tool that requires months/years to get a grasp of how to use it well. Even then, after over a decade of using Adobe PhotoShop both casually and professionally, I feel like I'm still unfamiliar with a large percentage of the available tools. Without a dedicated training program, it can be extremely overwhelming and/or you may not get good use out of it. That being said, once you do get comfortable with it, the layout and workspace are excellent with myriad shortcuts that speed up your workflow exponentially. Put in the time to learn it, and you'll love it.

Incentivized

Adobe Photoshop is very reliable, but is never 100%. There have been times when Adobe Photoshop has had trouble opening, but nothing a little computer restart couldn't fix. I use Adobe Photoshop on a Mac for both work and at home on a daily basis, and I would be lost without it.

Speed can be an issue when you are dealing with large files for large format printing or billboards. When working on web images, speed is not an issue.

While I never contacted Adobe directly, there is so much content out there in the form of YouTube videos, Lynda/LinkedIn learning that almost any issue, including bugs, can be worked around (and this method is generally faster as there's no turnaround time involved).

Incentivized

So, I received the training at the HQ and it was train the trainer training. A good time, I spent a week at their campus

I took a course so it really helped. I didn’t take the course until much later after beginning to use it, so I wish work would have sent me right off the bat. It would have alleviated a lot of frustratinon

Incentivized

It's simply easier to use and has more features than the one in the list. Added to that, the license price of ActivePresenter is so much more affordable than others on the market.

[Adobe] Photoshop offers the best photo editing as well as content creation. The layer-by-layer approach of [Adobe] Photoshop helps to work between two apps or even two PCs of entirely different Creative Cloud apps seamlessly. The stability and the speed of the tools in photoshop make it even better to make a canvas of creativity.

Incentivized

Markup Hero stands out because it is truly web based and supports PDFs (among a host of other file types). The annotation tools are significantly smoother and always editable. I don't know of any other products that provide a web experience that allows for edits at anytime. Plus the team is clearly working hard to iterate the product and regularly delivering new features.

It seems expensive compared to the free/cheap programs now available

Incentivized

• It's one time purchase license.
• It's the best desktop app for eLearning in 2025.
• Pay one time, use forever is a great point of ActivePresenter
• Their support team is absolutely the most responsive and nice people on earth in my opinion.

• Adobe PhotoShop in general is a great time saver.
• It does take a long time for the program to start up, however
• The most difficult task is onboarding new employees into Adobe PhotoShop who don't have experience with it. It's an investment for their future so we see value in it.

Incentivized

• Productivity - Save at least 30 mins per day per employee
• Organization - No more hunting through emails finding content I sent to someone
• Communication - My clients better understand our suggested properties when I add annotations.