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Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off. Though, obviously

by dagmx 2y ago

Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off. Though, obviously as per the article, this is a pain to do. It’s really a shame there’s nothing comparable to Adobe’s products on the really pro-artist end of things. Companies like Serif have tried with Affinity but it’s lackluster when you really need to do some high end work. OSS stuff like Krita, Inkscape and Gimp have improved a lot but there’s still a huge gulf. Photoshop is perhaps the easiest to replace, but the rest of the suite like Illustrator really has no competition when it comes to functionality. Affinity Designer lacks so many of the gradient tools, shape repetition, and even certain alignment tools. InDesign similarly has many QoL features that Affinity Publisher lack. After Effects has some competition but nowhere near the ecosystem it provides. I guess premiere and animate (previously flash) have a lot of competition but that’s about it? For reference of where I’m coming from , I own licenses to the full Adobe suite and the full affinity suite. I have professionally done art and programmed for features in multiple domains for a decade and my work has shipped with major products from FAANG-like companies. I totally think the alternatives can replace Adobe products at some level, but the level of tooling I need and that Adobe has provided, is currently unmatched. It would be great to see better alternatives someday.

imabotbeep2937 2y ago
This is true of literally everything in the new economy. Internet? Wait until the moment your "promo" cost ends and your bill goes from $80 to $150, threaten to quit, oh wow magically you can have $80 again and a free mobile phone line. Any subscription service is like this. I sometimes grab a Blue Apron when it's 65+% off which is anytime I want. My ex used to do this with clothing subscriptions, up to 80% off. There are laws against things being "always on sale". But now they're just being used to punish lazy customers who don't keep up on their promos. Only lazy or ignorant people pay the "real" price. Oh hey would you look at that, another billion dollar IPO with no plan for profitability went bankrupt. Weird.
- nkozyra 2y ago
  I had T-Mobile starting in ~2003 and it included unlimited tethering. After they introduced the Netflix included offer I inquired and they offered an "upgrade" that they swore up and down would not change my current service. After agreeing, I was traveling and tried to tether and boom nothing. Their upgrade that would change nothing got me out of this grandfathered situation. Over time the cost of Netflix resulted in a higher fee for Netflix and ultimately I pay more for less. Can't trust any company not to do anything in their power to squeeze another dime out of you.
  - Almondsetat 2y ago
    Why accept oral promises when a contract with the term is definitely available? I guess you didn't record the conversation so why not giving the papers a look?
    - nkozyra 2y ago
      It's a lesson we all have to learn at some point, that was mine. Recording calls is always tricky because of party consent rules, although telling people you're recording probably puts some guardrails on behavior.
      - bityard 2y ago
        "Your call may be recorded for quality assurance," is ubiquitous when calling the official sales/support number for any US company. However, every single one of those call centers _also_ instructs their employees to hang up immediately if they are told (or have good reason to suspect) that the _customer_ is recording the conversation. It sounds hypocritical (and it is), but this rule comes from the company's legal department, whose sole job is to shield the company from legal liability.
        reaperman 2y ago
        When I’m recording (usually using the Rev app on iPhone if its not particularly sensitive or legally confidential information) I always start the human conversation with something like “hey so this call is recorded right? Thats what the message told me when I picked up. Just double-checking that we should consider this call to be recorded?” I figure that it is completely legally unnecessary but it guarantees there’s an understanding between all human participants to expect a recording, which brings it in line with my own personality morality when conversing with an “innocent / relatively powerless human” (my morality exceeds the ethical and legal framework we operate in).
chimen 2y ago
Only if you can cancel your sub. They are taking money from my account even after 6 years, each month, and I can't cancel it. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40619329#40619770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40619329#40619770)
- acdha 2y ago
  Have you disputed the charge? If the bank is refusing to honor your request, that’s both reason to switch banks and to try small claims court to get your money back.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Have you filed a complaint with the FTC and your state's attorney general? https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/
- auggierose 2y ago
  That's why you always sign up for one of these things with something like Revolut, which will give you a new credit card number for each subscription.
  - chimen 2y ago
    I had no Revolut back then
  - noisy_boy 2y ago
    I have seen some of the sites not work with these "throwaway" cards - when I supplied my regular card, it worked.
    - auggierose 2y ago
      There are two different kinds of Revolut throwaway cards: One that works just one time, and one that works indefinitely, and you need to cancel it manually. The one that you cancel manually works more often, for example in scenarios where they will first make a "test" deduction of $0.00, and then the real deduction.
liendolucas 2y ago
Is that a pro-tip? I mean, I wouldn't give them a penny more for having this attitude towards customers in first place. The real pro-tip at least for me would be to pay once for a product that I can use without being enslaved to a for-life subscription. It really really pisses me off how most commercial software is offered today. F** all that.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  The really pro-tip would be “try paying for an imaginary alternative I just made up!”?
egypturnash 2y ago
I get the impression from my friends in the animation industry that Toon Boom’s animation suite pretty much dominates the industry. Flash hung on a while but TB has so many features designed for the particular craft of assembling a small army of people who collaborate on making a moving and talking drawing. I keep on thinking of ditching ~25y of specializing in Illustrator for TB lately but I really just do not feel like paying $1k/y for a subscription to it. They have cheaper subscriptions but one of the ways they differentiate them is by limiting the effects, and “constantly pushing the limits of Illustrator’s effect system” is one of the reasons I want to move on from it.
- dagmx 2y ago
  Toon Boom’s domination really is very regional. But that’s one reason I list flash as having competitors. In Canada, you’ll find a lot of the larger shops use toon boom and the smaller shops use Flash/Animate. When you move out to Asia, the balance changes quite a bit the other way but you also see a lot more players in the form of OpenToonz etc entering. Especially on the anime front.
  - egypturnash 2y ago
    god it's like there's actual multiple viable options, is that even legal any more. My animation friends are all in the LA scene; they all started out in Flash cartoons in the 00s and some of 'em kept on using it for a pretty long time but it seems to have pretty much vanished. I really gotta make some time to grind on tutorials for Toon Boom or this copy of Moho 14 I have on my computer and see if I actually want to animate again once I get over the hump of "how does this giant toolkit even work".
tomschlick 2y ago
> Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off I have found the same to be true with SiriusXM radio as well. You can ask the chat bot to cancel your account when a promo runs out and it will take you back down from $19/mo to like $6/mo. I setup a calendar item so I know when the promo is going to expire and do this. It's a PITA but it only takes 5 minutes.
- meowster 2y ago
  Their discounted rate is $5/month. I once called them to stop sending me mailers, and they said they'll stop for two years, I said no, stop forever. I took my vehicle to a place that sold my information to SiriusXM and they resumed the mailers. But this time... I just created an account on their website and changed my address to their headquarters and phone number to their phone number. They can spam themselves for all I care! (I've done this with other businesses that don't respect their potential customers with great success! Often the people I speak with don't seem to recognize it when I give them their company's address or the 800-number that I'm called them at.)
spookie 2y ago
I don't think there's such a huge gulf between Krita and Photoshop for digital artists. I do work with it professionally all the time, mostly dealing with texture work for CG.
- dagmx 2y ago
  Digital artists is a pretty wide term. But if we’re limiting it to stuff like illustrations and texturing, it’s very capable. I’ve introduced it in several areas specifically for that. however for other things like photo retouching and product design, Photoshop has a pretty wide moat at the moment
tambourine_man 2y ago
> Photoshop is perhaps the easiest to replace I wish
jwells89 2y ago
For Photoshop specifically (and perhaps other CC programs, but I'm less familiar with them) another problem compared to alternatives is that a great wealth of instructional material (tutorials, paid video courses, etc) are built around Photoshop. While there are ways to make alternatives more Photoshop-like, there's always going to be unreconcilable differences which bring unwelcome friction when the goal is to learn whatever the material is teaching rather than screw around with keybinds and UI configuration. More projects that aim to adjust existing FOSS alternatives to more closely clone Photoshop would be of great help here. There used to be GIMPShop[0] that did this for GIMP but it's unfortunately been defunct for a long time now. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop
altruios 2y ago
I've only ever used Krita, really. What features am I missing from photoshop? What is that gulf that I do not see?
- dagmx 2y ago
  Krita is geared towards illustrative work versus photo vs editing/product design. While it can do both, it misses or is behind in several areas 1. Photoshop has a much better template and smart referencing system 2. Photoshop has better photo retouching tools in the form of healing or switching working spaces to tune filters. 3. Photoshop has better image manipulation tools like warping and perspective correction I do really like Krita, and I’ve replaced Photoshop use for illustrative use cases for several studios and individuals with it. So it really depends what you do, but Photoshop just has a lot of little and big things that add up which prevents me switching myself.
  - altruios 2y ago
    Ah... so it seems there is nothing deficient for artists. Just photographers?
    - starkparker 2y ago
      Yes. Photoshop, which is photo and image editing software for photographers, has more features for photographers than Krita, a painting program for artists.
      - dagmx 2y ago
        That’s a pretty curt dismissal given that tons of artists paint in photoshop and have for decades. Photoshop is a great painting app that rivals krita for painting. That it does other things well or originated for just photo editing doesn’t take away from that.
        elcomet 2y ago
        I think you misread the parent. He didn't say Photoshop is bad for painting. He said Krita is bad for photo edition.
oregoncurtis 2y ago
Davinci Resolve is miles better than Premiere. I don't do a lot of compositing, but I know more and more people are starting to use it over After Effects as well.
- dagmx 2y ago
  Resolve is better than Premiere on its own (hence why I list premiere as having competition) but the Fusion compositing is not a comparison for After Effects, but rather for something like Nuke. While After Effects does some compositing (and it’s decent at it but poor in comparison to Nuke/Fusion), its’ stronghold is motion graphics. There’s very little other than Cavalry to compete with it. And with that comes the benefit of Premiere: live updates to my edit when using After Effects.
giobox 2y ago
> Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off. The issue though is this often only works for many subscribers for a small window each year, when the *annual* "renewal" occurs. The problem with much of the Creative Suite subs, and what the FTC are also suing over, is that it looks and smells like a monthly sub you can cancel at any time, but you often can't - its “annual paid monthly” as the linked article describes. The big problem is their ridiculous “annual paid monthly” plan - you often can't cancel, or it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to escape “annual paid monthly”. I know plenty of people who needed Creative Suite for one month who fell into the “annual paid monthly” trap assuming it was a typical subscription service. > "Adobe pushes consumers to its “annual paid monthly” subscription plan, pre-selecting it as a default. Adobe prominently shows the plan’s “monthly” cost during enrollment, but it buries the early termination fee (ETF) and its amount, which is 50 percent of the remaining monthly payments when a consumer cancels in their first year."
- corobo 2y ago
  If you are stuck in this situation open a chat with support and ask to cancel with the reason "My new employer is paying for my Adobe subscription" to get the cancellation fee waived. I can't guarantee it still works but it worked for me and at least 3 others I know of Adobe deserves to get slapped down for this practice and I hope they are forced to change it, but something to try in the meantime
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
After Effects competition is the furthest away I feel. Everything else I could get by but nothing has the same toolset as AE
w10-1 2y ago
> you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off That used to be true at NYTimes and WaPo. But new WaPo management does the reverse: - offer to keep at same price? No? - offer to re-up at 50% more? No? - offer to re-up at 100% more? No? With the election coming up, they're determined to raise prices, and they know all they need to about you.
anigbrowl 2y ago
This and the unified user interface - most Adobe products have the same look and feel, and it happens to be a good one.
robotnikman 2y ago
This used to work for me. Then this year I tried it again, and they only offered me 2 options: 1. Get 50% off for 3 months 2. Get access to only Photoshop for the same price
esskay 2y ago
You can also sometimes get it very cheap via random country specific deals. They had one last year for Latvian students. Excecpt it had zero checks in place to ensure you actually were a student. I think I paid something like $4 for a year of Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premier, Adobe Stock, etc. Of course it goes without saying, if you do this use a burner card. They dont ask for/check for a valid address or anything like that so when it comes to the stupidly complex to cancel renewal process you just walk away and let their threats go to an empty inbox. I've got zero issue with anyone pirating their software at this point, Adobe deserves it for the crap they've pulled over the last few years.
SuaveSteve 2y ago
Want Amazon Prime and can wait? The free trial will come around again. Or the reduced one.
sinecure 2y ago
You are spot on about Adobe's products not having adequate alternatives. I see a lot of new artists online saying to use Affinity or Gimp, but they do not compare. Even Blender lovers, myself included, who have embraced the open source alternative would be shocked to see what features they are missing compared to the top tier tools like Maya. I'm curious why certain categories of software receive little to no competition, while others see a lot. I feel that Silicon Valley's focus on social media oriented smartphone apps has drained a lot of the talent and capital that could have been working on alternatives to Microsoft Office, Adobe's suite, Maya's 3D, etc. Procreate is an excellent example of a young team coming in and dominating the tablet art tool market. For a measly $12 you own procreate forever, and it is easily the most functional art tool on the iPad. I don't know why we haven't seen similar attempts at Adobe's dominance anywhere else.
- ebiester 2y ago
  It's almost like if you have tens of millions of dollars to invest in your product yearly, you can afford to maintain and build more features.

by dagmx 2y ago

imabotbeep2937 2y ago

This is true of literally everything in the new economy. Internet? Wait until the moment your "promo" cost ends and your bill goes from $80 to $150, threaten to quit, oh wow magically you can have $80 again and a free mobile phone line. Any subscription service is like this. I sometimes grab a Blue Apron when it's 65+% off which is anytime I want. My ex used to do this with clothing subscriptions, up to 80% off. There are laws against things being "always on sale". But now they're just being used to punish lazy customers who don't keep up on their promos. Only lazy or ignorant people pay the "real" price. Oh hey would you look at that, another billion dollar IPO with no plan for profitability went bankrupt. Weird.

nkozyra 2y ago
I had T-Mobile starting in ~2003 and it included unlimited tethering. After they introduced the Netflix included offer I inquired and they offered an "upgrade" that they swore up and down would not change my current service. After agreeing, I was traveling and tried to tether and boom nothing. Their upgrade that would change nothing got me out of this grandfathered situation. Over time the cost of Netflix resulted in a higher fee for Netflix and ultimately I pay more for less. Can't trust any company not to do anything in their power to squeeze another dime out of you.
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  Why accept oral promises when a contract with the term is definitely available? I guess you didn't record the conversation so why not giving the papers a look?
  - nkozyra 2y ago
    It's a lesson we all have to learn at some point, that was mine. Recording calls is always tricky because of party consent rules, although telling people you're recording probably puts some guardrails on behavior.
    - bityard 2y ago
      "Your call may be recorded for quality assurance," is ubiquitous when calling the official sales/support number for any US company. However, every single one of those call centers _also_ instructs their employees to hang up immediately if they are told (or have good reason to suspect) that the _customer_ is recording the conversation. It sounds hypocritical (and it is), but this rule comes from the company's legal department, whose sole job is to shield the company from legal liability.
      - reaperman 2y ago
        When I’m recording (usually using the Rev app on iPhone if its not particularly sensitive or legally confidential information) I always start the human conversation with something like “hey so this call is recorded right? Thats what the message told me when I picked up. Just double-checking that we should consider this call to be recorded?” I figure that it is completely legally unnecessary but it guarantees there’s an understanding between all human participants to expect a recording, which brings it in line with my own personality morality when conversing with an “innocent / relatively powerless human” (my morality exceeds the ethical and legal framework we operate in).

chimen 2y ago

Only if you can cancel your sub. They are taking money from my account even after 6 years, each month, and I can't cancel it. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40619329#40619770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40619329#40619770)

acdha 2y ago
Have you disputed the charge? If the bank is refusing to honor your request, that’s both reason to switch banks and to try small claims court to get your money back.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Have you filed a complaint with the FTC and your state's attorney general? https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/
auggierose 2y ago
That's why you always sign up for one of these things with something like Revolut, which will give you a new credit card number for each subscription.
- chimen 2y ago
  I had no Revolut back then
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  I have seen some of the sites not work with these "throwaway" cards - when I supplied my regular card, it worked.
  - auggierose 2y ago
    There are two different kinds of Revolut throwaway cards: One that works just one time, and one that works indefinitely, and you need to cancel it manually. The one that you cancel manually works more often, for example in scenarios where they will first make a "test" deduction of $0.00, and then the real deduction.

liendolucas 2y ago

Is that a pro-tip? I mean, I wouldn't give them a penny more for having this attitude towards customers in first place. The real pro-tip at least for me would be to pay once for a product that I can use without being enslaved to a for-life subscription. It really really pisses me off how most commercial software is offered today. F** all that.

llamaimperative 2y ago
The really pro-tip would be “try paying for an imaginary alternative I just made up!”?

egypturnash 2y ago

I get the impression from my friends in the animation industry that Toon Boom’s animation suite pretty much dominates the industry. Flash hung on a while but TB has so many features designed for the particular craft of assembling a small army of people who collaborate on making a moving and talking drawing. I keep on thinking of ditching ~25y of specializing in Illustrator for TB lately but I really just do not feel like paying $1k/y for a subscription to it. They have cheaper subscriptions but one of the ways they differentiate them is by limiting the effects, and “constantly pushing the limits of Illustrator’s effect system” is one of the reasons I want to move on from it.

dagmx 2y ago
Toon Boom’s domination really is very regional. But that’s one reason I list flash as having competitors. In Canada, you’ll find a lot of the larger shops use toon boom and the smaller shops use Flash/Animate. When you move out to Asia, the balance changes quite a bit the other way but you also see a lot more players in the form of OpenToonz etc entering. Especially on the anime front.
- egypturnash 2y ago
  god it's like there's actual multiple viable options, is that even legal any more. My animation friends are all in the LA scene; they all started out in Flash cartoons in the 00s and some of 'em kept on using it for a pretty long time but it seems to have pretty much vanished. I really gotta make some time to grind on tutorials for Toon Boom or this copy of Moho 14 I have on my computer and see if I actually want to animate again once I get over the hump of "how does this giant toolkit even work".

tomschlick 2y ago

> Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off I have found the same to be true with SiriusXM radio as well. You can ask the chat bot to cancel your account when a promo runs out and it will take you back down from $19/mo to like $6/mo. I setup a calendar item so I know when the promo is going to expire and do this. It's a PITA but it only takes 5 minutes.

meowster 2y ago
Their discounted rate is $5/month. I once called them to stop sending me mailers, and they said they'll stop for two years, I said no, stop forever. I took my vehicle to a place that sold my information to SiriusXM and they resumed the mailers. But this time... I just created an account on their website and changed my address to their headquarters and phone number to their phone number. They can spam themselves for all I care! (I've done this with other businesses that don't respect their potential customers with great success! Often the people I speak with don't seem to recognize it when I give them their company's address or the 800-number that I'm called them at.)

spookie 2y ago

I don't think there's such a huge gulf between Krita and Photoshop for digital artists. I do work with it professionally all the time, mostly dealing with texture work for CG.

dagmx 2y ago
Digital artists is a pretty wide term. But if we’re limiting it to stuff like illustrations and texturing, it’s very capable. I’ve introduced it in several areas specifically for that. however for other things like photo retouching and product design, Photoshop has a pretty wide moat at the moment

tambourine_man 2y ago

> Photoshop is perhaps the easiest to replace I wish

jwells89 2y ago

For Photoshop specifically (and perhaps other CC programs, but I'm less familiar with them) another problem compared to alternatives is that a great wealth of instructional material (tutorials, paid video courses, etc) are built around Photoshop. While there are ways to make alternatives more Photoshop-like, there's always going to be unreconcilable differences which bring unwelcome friction when the goal is to learn whatever the material is teaching rather than screw around with keybinds and UI configuration. More projects that aim to adjust existing FOSS alternatives to more closely clone Photoshop would be of great help here. There used to be GIMPShop[0] that did this for GIMP but it's unfortunately been defunct for a long time now. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop

altruios 2y ago

I've only ever used Krita, really. What features am I missing from photoshop? What is that gulf that I do not see?

dagmx 2y ago
Krita is geared towards illustrative work versus photo vs editing/product design. While it can do both, it misses or is behind in several areas 1. Photoshop has a much better template and smart referencing system 2. Photoshop has better photo retouching tools in the form of healing or switching working spaces to tune filters. 3. Photoshop has better image manipulation tools like warping and perspective correction I do really like Krita, and I’ve replaced Photoshop use for illustrative use cases for several studios and individuals with it. So it really depends what you do, but Photoshop just has a lot of little and big things that add up which prevents me switching myself.
- altruios 2y ago
  Ah... so it seems there is nothing deficient for artists. Just photographers?
  - starkparker 2y ago
    Yes. Photoshop, which is photo and image editing software for photographers, has more features for photographers than Krita, a painting program for artists.
    - dagmx 2y ago
      That’s a pretty curt dismissal given that tons of artists paint in photoshop and have for decades. Photoshop is a great painting app that rivals krita for painting. That it does other things well or originated for just photo editing doesn’t take away from that.
      - elcomet 2y ago
        I think you misread the parent. He didn't say Photoshop is bad for painting. He said Krita is bad for photo edition.

oregoncurtis 2y ago

Davinci Resolve is miles better than Premiere. I don't do a lot of compositing, but I know more and more people are starting to use it over After Effects as well.

dagmx 2y ago
Resolve is better than Premiere on its own (hence why I list premiere as having competition) but the Fusion compositing is not a comparison for After Effects, but rather for something like Nuke. While After Effects does some compositing (and it’s decent at it but poor in comparison to Nuke/Fusion), its’ stronghold is motion graphics. There’s very little other than Cavalry to compete with it. And with that comes the benefit of Premiere: live updates to my edit when using After Effects.

giobox 2y ago

> Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off. The issue though is this often only works for many subscribers for a small window each year, when the *annual* "renewal" occurs. The problem with much of the Creative Suite subs, and what the FTC are also suing over, is that it looks and smells like a monthly sub you can cancel at any time, but you often can't - its “annual paid monthly” as the linked article describes. The big problem is their ridiculous “annual paid monthly” plan - you often can't cancel, or it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to escape “annual paid monthly”. I know plenty of people who needed Creative Suite for one month who fell into the “annual paid monthly” trap assuming it was a typical subscription service. > "Adobe pushes consumers to its “annual paid monthly” subscription plan, pre-selecting it as a default. Adobe prominently shows the plan’s “monthly” cost during enrollment, but it buries the early termination fee (ETF) and its amount, which is 50 percent of the remaining monthly payments when a consumer cancels in their first year."

corobo 2y ago
If you are stuck in this situation open a chat with support and ask to cancel with the reason "My new employer is paying for my Adobe subscription" to get the cancellation fee waived. I can't guarantee it still works but it worked for me and at least 3 others I know of Adobe deserves to get slapped down for this practice and I hope they are forced to change it, but something to try in the meantime

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

After Effects competition is the furthest away I feel. Everything else I could get by but nothing has the same toolset as AE

w10-1 2y ago

> you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your sub and they’ll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to 60% off That used to be true at NYTimes and WaPo. But new WaPo management does the reverse: - offer to keep at same price? No? - offer to re-up at 50% more? No? - offer to re-up at 100% more? No? With the election coming up, they're determined to raise prices, and they know all they need to about you.

anigbrowl 2y ago

This and the unified user interface - most Adobe products have the same look and feel, and it happens to be a good one.

robotnikman 2y ago

This used to work for me. Then this year I tried it again, and they only offered me 2 options: 1. Get 50% off for 3 months 2. Get access to only Photoshop for the same price

esskay 2y ago

You can also sometimes get it very cheap via random country specific deals. They had one last year for Latvian students. Excecpt it had zero checks in place to ensure you actually were a student. I think I paid something like $4 for a year of Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premier, Adobe Stock, etc. Of course it goes without saying, if you do this use a burner card. They dont ask for/check for a valid address or anything like that so when it comes to the stupidly complex to cancel renewal process you just walk away and let their threats go to an empty inbox. I've got zero issue with anyone pirating their software at this point, Adobe deserves it for the crap they've pulled over the last few years.

SuaveSteve 2y ago

Want Amazon Prime and can wait? The free trial will come around again. Or the reduced one.

sinecure 2y ago

You are spot on about Adobe's products not having adequate alternatives. I see a lot of new artists online saying to use Affinity or Gimp, but they do not compare. Even Blender lovers, myself included, who have embraced the open source alternative would be shocked to see what features they are missing compared to the top tier tools like Maya. I'm curious why certain categories of software receive little to no competition, while others see a lot. I feel that Silicon Valley's focus on social media oriented smartphone apps has drained a lot of the talent and capital that could have been working on alternatives to Microsoft Office, Adobe's suite, Maya's 3D, etc. Procreate is an excellent example of a young team coming in and dominating the tablet art tool market. For a measly $12 you own procreate forever, and it is easily the most functional art tool on the iPad. I don't know why we haven't seen similar attempts at Adobe's dominance anywhere else.

ebiester 2y ago
It's almost like if you have tens of millions of dollars to invest in your product yearly, you can afford to maintain and build more features.