This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
After using Adobe CS6 for 10 years as refusing to upgrade to CC I switched to Mac and got the Affinity programs. Cost $50 for each of the Photoshop, Illustrator and Publisher equivalent programs with no monthly costs. Universal licensing across all platforms!
Also the developers are in Ukraine
And theyre probably feeding your harddrive to an AI while pretending they dont know anything
A surprise to no-one
It won't stop until creatives stop paying.
There are alternative tools available, but the number of people I have seen not want to learn a new UI is high. Adobe knows this, so they continue to raise prices.
So what are the best options now? Been away from the photography hobby for a long time. Looking for something to process my Fujifilm raw files and making small repairs to my family history photos.
darktable.org Darktable is like Adobe Lightroom but open source, and I honestly think it's better at this point.
I mean it's not just not wanting to learn a new UI. It's that a company uses Adobe as it's standard so if you don't have experience with it they won't hire you. And if you try to come in using a different tool they're just gonna end up forcing you to use Adobe.
How many users are actually working in a company that uses Adobe? Aren't most users just casual, or even if they make money of art, working solo? (So, no need to conforme to an industry standard)
I might be totally wrong tho
I wouldn't be surprised if at this point with the prices they charge, most of Adobe's users are either working somewhere that has it, or are students who want to work professionally with it, or are people in between jobs who need to keep up skills in it for when they can go back to work. Most anyone I talk to who isn't doing things professionally and doesn't plan to go professional will use something like Gimp instead of Photoshop if cost is an issue.
Outside of this though there's also just the fact that it being the industry standard does tend to cause non-professionals to use it too. Whether it be because they view it as better then the alternatives, or they want to get experience in case they ever want to use it professionally, or they just haven't heard of anything else and the tutorials they were able to find for what they wanted to do used Adobe products.
Either way though I bet that the majority of the money Adobe makes is from companies buying tons of pro licenses rather than from individual people using it.
Is it the case that most creatives cancel their subs when they get that job? Does the job have a site license (assuming Adobe even allows site licenses)?
Yes, creative jobs near universally provide licenses to creative cloud. Aside from companies not hiring people without that experience, the amount of saved assets and templates, along with the deep integration between apps makes the prospect of a full “migration” a ridiculously expensive prospect.
The value in these assets is not just in video files or pictures you can easily migrate to another app. It’s the complex scripts and templates that allow creatives to make custom branded content on the fly. Like a lower third that adjusts styling depending on the name you put in, and auto resizes to fit the text, etc.
Is it just me, or does that sound like a monopoly?
Do any creatives attempt to create assets for another platform?
I'm really not blaming creatives on this one. Obviously they need to make money. But this seems like a clear case of advantage being taken against one skillset by virtue of monopoly.
I'd say it seems like the key issue affecting creatives, if AI didn't exist.
As an outsider: how did we get to a point where every creator is limited to one box?
And this is how normie's behaviors and consumption pattern affect everyone
Wouldn't have noticed. 😏
"Trump and his damn tariffs made us do this!!" /s
I would argue that the open source alternatives to much of adobe software suite is better and free so fuck Adobe
You would be wrong. There is nothing close to Photoshop and many others. Sadly that is the case.
Photopea has been great, probably not the best for power users, but it’s basically a clone of the Photoshop UI.
I switched over to Affinity since 2019. I never saw any need to go back to Adobe.
Affinity is awesome, at least until Canva starts demanding a subscription model.
Well at least we have alternative for maya= blender ,premier = davinci resolve,about Photoshop yeah there no same level powerful tools the closest I used is krita.
That works. I think I could probably get away with using Inkscape instead of illustrator, but it would be a struggle, because with it I can't copy paste vectors to other apps. InDesign is completely alone in it's category.
Adobe is the standard everyone uses. You can't be a pro and collaborate without it.
It's like 35€ per month. There are so many subscriptions out there now. Everything is a subscription. 35€ isn't even that much anymore, considering all the apps you get.
Personally when I even using I don't give them a penny ,always pirate edition and btw it's possible to run Photoshop cs6 through wine.
Still worth it.
I'd rm -rf my computer rather than using adobi*** products.
Exactly, you are not their target user.
Many people, including myself until recently, would also do a lot to rid themselves of adobe, but for us it just isn't possible.
On the other hand, their subscription isn't that high, compared to so many other subscriptions.
$60 per month (if you sign a 1 year agreement) is sky high for software subscriptions. Sounds like Stockholm syndrome.
Yeah but nobody buys it at full price. You can get it for 35 by just asking. Thats most likely not the highest subscription of the person using their apps.
And I don't want to defend them at all. Finally I don't need them anymore after almost 20 years. Stoked about it.
DaVinci Resolve left the chat
Do you see this guy ?
His name is Shantanu Narayen. Chairman and CEO of Software.
In 2010, he made $875 000 dollars a year.
Today - 15 years later - he makes $43 million dollars a year :
https://aflcio.org/paywatch/ADBE
Like most big company CEOs, he makes sure only friends are named on the board.
For him, it's just a game. "How high can I go? I love milking these stupid peasants"
Serif has entered the chat.
Edit: FYI every time you try to cancel your subscription they offer a year at $39.99 per month for a year. Last year I tried to cancel and they gave me that offer. At that price it’s a pretty good deal so I took it; well it just so happens that today that year was up and when I tried to cancel the offer popped up again. So i guess I’ll stay with them for another year.
You're signing up your soul away.
Well I make money with it so it’s not bad. Maybe next year they don’t give me the discount and I cut them off.
Yay Serif. Although, aren't they Canva nowadays?
Yes but so far no signs of enshitification as far as I can tell. I’m itching to switch to them but Adobe keeps roping me in. The thing that was holding me back the most was the lack of ai tools like erasing backgrounds and selecting subjects but it looks like they just added those features in February. So it looks like I’ll be evaluating who my graphic software provider for then year will be by the end of this month.
Yep
