Among the most significant changes with this year’s Elements releases has little to do with new features but instead concerns the ways users purchase and own the software. While prior versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements have been lifetime licenses — the user buys the software and then owns it indefinitely — this year’s release has moved to a three-year license term.
Fuck Adobe. They are the epitome of the greedy, toxic software company.
I switched from Photoshop over to Krita last year. I’ve tried Gimp in the past, but just can’t adjust to the UI. Krita is different too, but not to the same degree. I’ve been enjoying it. It’s well-made and very powerful, with very good online support.
Can recommend the Affinity suite for anyone looking for some good alternatives.
Darktable is alright for LightRoom replacement as well.
Swapped to the Affinity suite a few months ago and have been loving it. DaVinci Resolve replaced Premiere. Still having trouble finding a decent After Effects replacement though. I’ve been eyeing Natron but haven’t tried it yet.
Oh yeah resolve is great as well. Love how they all have iPad apps too, moved so much of my workflow to the couch.
What does natron offer that you would use it over fusion (in davinci resolve)?
To be honest, I never considered fusion to be the same thing. But I guess it is. Hmm. Thanks for that insight. I’m going to look into fusions features more.
it’s funny that affinity designer can parse PDFs much better than illustrator
Inkscape recently also got decent multipage import and export for multipage pdfs and honestly it works great!
edit: I just realized I’ve been gushing about affinity for a while. sorry you can just read the next two paragraphs if you just want what’s relevant to you and not “hey you know what else is cool about affinity?”
yeah i haven’t used inkscape but designer 2.x blew my mind. I had a job recently to change the design and my only source was a 2-page PDF. I opened it in illustrator and it just insisted on outlining all text from page 1 and keeping all text for page 2 but in different text objects for every line.
tried it in affinity designer, I noticed there’s an option that says “Favor editable text over fidelity”. voila. both pages with selectable text in a single text box per column. if I don’t select the option it does the line by line separate text object thing but for both pages as well, so it’s still better than illustrator. idk why illustrator insists that the first page cannot possibly be interpreted as text.
also corner rounding, offsetting paths and adding transparency gradients being nondestructive tools rather than the tedious and/or destructive methods in illustrator is enough for me to stick to affinity.
the only things I’m missing is the repeat action command and the view bleeds toggle, which is mind blowing that it didn’t exist in designer. there are dumb workarounds but I don’t like that. also more controls over swatches would be nice, like why don’t they have folders…
still, other than these maybe three things which are not deal breakers for me, I prefer affinity pretty close to 100% of the time now. it’s faster too, and being able to switch personas for most use cases rather than launching Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator at the same time is a godsend.
they also innovated and came up with the patented new concept called Consistency™. apparently if you’re one company that publishes several pieces of software, you can just make it so the same exact tools work the same exact way across all your software. genius!
meanwhile adobe doesn’t even have a standard drop shadow effect for all adobe products.
Second recommendation for Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement. 👍
How does the affinity suite work for surface pattern design? My girlfriend does that on the side and is super annoyed at Adobe, but pain/disability limits the time she can decide to it, so hasn’t had the energy to try that one yet.
Have you tried https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP for a Photoshop themed GIMP?
Today I went to cancel the Adobe stock trial, and during this extensive cancellation process, they tried to score me on another package for a year, and when I checked, it didn’t include the product which I was fucking canceling… Which is just insane and ridiculous!
Hey I’m canceling this product.
Oh ok. You want to give us a bunch of money for more unrelated products?
At this point, I treat Adobe like malware on my personal systems.
Enshittification seems to be accelerating.
they said, linking to an LLM-generated song
Pretty fun dumb thing to play with. Use it to entertain friends and impress luddites.
Occasionally someone is able to manually finesse it into making it do something actually cool.
luddites weren’t anti technology, they were pro workers rights. they would find gpt style ai offensive.
I dubno, luddites like me aren’t impressed at it. We’re rolling our eyes at it.
Literally everyone hates Adobe. At this point I’m shocked there hasn’t been a consortium of companies pushing for alternatives.
It’s not even just about the money. So many companies rely on a workflow and business model that Adobe can change on a whim at literally any time they like. That’s a level of trust I’m surprised that so many companies and governments are completely fine with.
That’s a level of trust I’m surprised that so many companies and governments are completely fine with.
Crowdstrike. 'Nuff said.
They keep buying up anything that’s an alternative. They need Monopoly sanctions.
YSK: you also don’t own games on steam, it’s all licenses and they can all be revoked.
That is why i archive
piratedDRM-free copies of some games i know i will come back to for Nostalgia in many years.Note that a lot of games on steam don’t have any DRM, either. It’s probable that if you have large library, a lot of your installed games will run without steam, if you go and start them from their exe.
So you can likely archive at least some of your steam games by simply keeping them installed, or even squirreling away the install folder somewhere.
GOG also lets you download the installers for your games so you can play them with or without GOG. A notable part of their service is the games do not have a GOG drm.
Not sure what you mean by with or without GOG, but their whole thing is that none of their games have DRM.
AFAIK, you end up with identical installs even if you use Galaxy to download and install your games, and the installs will continue to work even if you uninstall Galaxy. The actual game files are exactly the same.
I think the installers boil down to convenient self-decompressing archives for getting the game files onto your machine.
If you have the game files for a GOG game installed using any method, those can be moved around, copied, and run with no problem.
The only reason that I still use galaxy to open the games is because it will upload your saves to their cloud.
Heroic can actually do that too, now.
Pricing seems to be the same as the previous version. They could have at least charged a little less for the much shorter licenses.
and own
Are you sure?
Fuckingcapitalists
Commies will never pay for Adobe
The scummyness of this company knows no bounds.
The new license comes in this really cute collar! To activate it. Simply lock the collar on the user’s neck and bam! You got 3 years of free Adobe Acrobat and Elements!
Do not take the collar off. It is secured by Battle Royale Inc. it will remove the user’s neck area separating the top part from the bottom part. It’s a very strict but effective license option!
I recently moved to Affinity Photo, so far so good.
I use Krita for photo editing, it’s open source and it’s free!
Affinity got bought up by Canva. It’s only a matter of time that it will get enshittified. They are already giving non-profit and education subscribers free access to Affinity. Bet they will phase out perpetual licensing in the future.
Next time just pirate it. The Affinity people already got their fat cheque.
Nah, I’m happy to pay to own software I use but I refuse to rent it like Abobe wants.
I fucking hate Adobe so much. Their software has been in a nose dive for years now. I still have to use it for work at the moment, but I’m slowly seeing signs that alternatives are picking up enough adoption to finally ditch them.
Who uses their shitty programs anyway? There are better alternatives for them all.
Perpetual licenses are just scams. It’s always startup type trick to get new clients during on-boarding phase for startups. It should be forbidden. It was similar for uber when they were undercutting opponents with their under the cost prices
“Perpetual licenses” are what used to be called “normal sales.” Every “licensing” scheme except perpetual ones are scams!
No, they are just impossible to offer. Imagine such a license given to company which can “live” for centuries. Impossible. Perpetual licenses are almost impossible to offer. If they are possible it’s calculated that 99.999% of them will last than the expected timefrime np 3 years
A perpetual license doesn’t mean the company supports it forever; you know that, right? I have a copy of Quickbooks 2015 that I got the license key for from a closing company for about $25. I will never have to pay another dime for it, it’s a perpetual license and will run indefinitely. I just don’t get any updates at all, and I can’t run anything that requires updates or subscriptions like payroll or advanced features. But that’s absolutely fine for my purposes and works the same for many, many people. This is how things should be - if I’m fine with using an outdated version, there is zero reason I need a subscription license.
Not sure I trust Reckon to work indefinitely. I think it still has to phone home every five years or so, but not sure.
Once again if you bought a product ( like boxed software version ) yes ( with no support ). If you bought a service it’s impossible. People still believe that something may be free
A perpetual licence for a service isn’t possible, yes, but software is a product, and something you can absolutely buy once. You typically only get support for a limited time though.
I can easily imagine it. I’ve still got boxes full of software on floppy disks and CD-ROMs that I “perpetually licensed” (a.k.a. bought), so don’t try to bullshit me that it isn’t possible!
Because it’s a product ( CD ROM ) not service ( gog or steam ) so don’t bulshit me
The same software purchased digitally doesn’t magically become a “service”. Coincidentally, you can absolutely download and backup all your GOG games and then “own” them the same way you own your old CD ROMs.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog see point 2.1 You get personal right to use gog services. As I said you rent it
The same thing is in the terms and conditions for each of your old CD ROM games. The point is that they can’t physically keep you from using the DRM free software that you backed up locally.
The perceived difference has nothing to do with the game being a “service” or that perpetual licenses are not economically possible for “services” but with the fact that by the power of the Internet companies now have a way to brick your stuff remotely. And you accepted it when they put it in instead of voting with your wallet. Because you wanted Half Life 2 just so so so badly.
They’re doing it because they can, not because they have to.
gog services
That’s for their services. Any software you buy from them can be downloaded and used forever. Even if GoG goes out of business.
The games I bought (not licensed) on Steam are also products (not services). Anybody who claims otherwise is either a self-serving liar or a fucking moron.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3062995463267283250/ show me then terms of service or example product eula
EULAs don’t have to say “you own this forever” because it’s implicit. Just like when you buy bananas at the grocer you aren’t forced to sign a EULA that says you can eat the banana or make a smoothie with it but can’t use it to make nuclear weapons or commit war crimes.
Let’s break this down: a product is an object that is delivered to a buyer. A service is an action or group of actions that is performed for the buyer. If I have to keep running my servers for your game client to connect to, push updates or offer tech support, I am providing a service because it requires me to keep doing something for the thing to work. If, on the other hand, all I do is give you some code you can run entirely on your machine - and it doesn’t matter if I give it to you on a CD, a floppy, via digital download or if I print it out as a big book for you to type yourself into a hex editor - then our transaction is finished when I deliver it to you and you pay me. There isn’t anything to license because now you own that copy of the code. My participation in what you do with it is finished, just like the grocer’s is finished when you leave his store with the bananas.
Do you understand now?
Perpetual licences are usually given for a certain version of a program though, with updates for a limited amount of time. You don’t get the new version of the software.
You can, however, continue to use that old piece of software in perpetuity.
I’m not so sure about all perpetual licenses being scams. I’ve personally used Jetbrain’s perpetual fallback license for the 2018 version of their IDEs for 4+ years until I decided to renew. I never once felt scammed there, so I would say there IS a right way to do perpetual licenses.
