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I haven't used any Adobe products since they started doing the subscription-only model. I want to use it, they typically make good enough software, but I have a

I haven't used any Adobe products since they started doing the subscription-only model. I want to use it, they typically make good enough software, but I have a line in the sand that I will not pay for a subscription. I want to buy my software and own it and use it for as long as I want. Basically my options if I don't want top pay a license fee for forever is to find alternatives, or pirate the software. I've opted for the former, but either leads to Adobe getting $0 from me, where they could have gotten >$0 if they had had a "pay outright" program. I have generally found good enough alternatives with their competitors (Toonboom is generally good enough for basic animation, Krita is good enough for artsy stuff, Final Cut Pro is good enough for video editing).

johndhi 2y ago
You'd pay $1500 or whatever for a perpetual Photoshop license? I wouldn't
- tombert 2y ago
  I mean, sure, there's probably an upper bound of a number I'd pay, and I don't do enough photo editing to justify paying really any amount of money for Photoshop. For software I'd actually use though? Upper bound is probably $600 judging by what I paid for Toonboom Harmony. Honestly if I had known about Moho at the time I probably would have gotten that since it's considerably cheaper and on Humble Bundle fairly often. I'm not in a creative industry so it's tough for me to know "fair" numbers, just "what can I justify as a toy" numbers. I like to occasionally whip out an animation tool and draw stuff with stick figures, and I like having that readily available, and I don't want my tool to change from under me so I don't want transparent updates. I just want to buy my software once.
- bobim 2y ago
  That's dirt cheap for a software you can make a living off. For FEA or CFD one would need to shell off in the order of 50-100k plus 20k per year. 1500? I would.
  - SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
    But not all of us make a living off of Photoshop. I'm a programmer. I periodically need to make a tiny tweak in a file that's been created by a real artist, or I want to edit a photo I took, or whatever. It's insane to spend $1500, or even $500 (the CorelDraw buy-it-outright price) for hobby and occasional-use software like that. And yeah, I use other things like Affinity Photo, which is Good Enough for many of my purposes, but it's just annoying to not be able to use the same software as my artists--unless they flatten the image before giving it to me, it's a crap-shoot whether I can import it in anything but the exact version of PhotoShop they were using. It feels like extortion: I have to pay the artist to make the tiniest changes because I can't edit the original file, or I have to pay Adobe an outrageous sum to do it myself. Lose-lose.
    - bobim 2y ago
      Fully understood, this carefully engineered vendor lock-in is the cherry on the cake. It's in all CAD software for no reason and forces you to follow the herd. Open standards should be imposed by state actors...
    - goosedragons 2y ago
      If you're paying artists to make art in PS, are you not doing it for something you make money off of? Or are you just really deep in the hobby that you're nearing professional level? Photoshop was never $1500 either. CS6 was $700. The design standard CS6 suite was $1300. Maybe hunt for artists that use the reasonably priced Clip Studio Paint instead? It's pretty popular among manga and the like artists anyways.
      - SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
        Realistically, I'm looking for artists that are good first. And 98% of them use Photoshop. Not going to restrict myself to non-Photoshop artists.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      > I have to pay the artist to make the tiniest changes because I can't edit the original file Hire the artist and ask them for the files exported into a format you can open. If they refuse, hire somebody else. I do agree with the sibling that open standards should be set by state actors. But they should only make them available, not mandate them into private actors.
- jimmaswell 2y ago
  I wouldn't pay $1 for Photoshop when GIMP is free and open source. It's been my daily driver in a personal and professional capacity for ages, and Photoshop offers nothing special for me.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    If GIMP is a replacement for you, you're not Adobe's target customer.
    - ipaddr 2y ago
      But you are their average customer
    - jimmaswell 2y ago
      I'd be interested to know exactly what task Photoshop is capable of that GIMP isn't.
      - bornfreddy 2y ago
        I agree with you in principle, but there is one big task where Gimp can't compete: importing PSD files. Kudos to Gimp developers for the level of psd support it has, but it's not perfect (naturally).
      - adzm 2y ago
        AI features. Content aware fill. Better masking / feathering tools. Layer effects and composition. Text handling by far. Vector layers. Smart objects. Dynamic link to other creative applications. Brushes x1000. Pen input. Smart selections.
        tombert 2y ago
        DiffusionBee on Mac has AI infill on images, and the models run locally and it’s free and open source. I have to think that someone is looking at implementing that in GIMP, at least as a plugin.
dangerboysteve 2y ago
"ToonBoom, is generally good enough for basic animation". What? This is the premier 2D animation package used by most of the top studios.
- tombert 2y ago
  Oh no question, bad phrasing on my end, I sort of meant it inverted. Toonboom is excellent if you're a professional. I'm very much not a professional, I barely know what I'm doing. I think Flash/Animate appealed to someone like me, because I found it easier to draw some goofy thing really quick and animate it. I feel Toonboom has a much higher learning curve and isn't really for people like me. It's not insurmountably difficult or anything, just that I'm not really the target audience and as such I don't know that it's a good fit for "basic" stuff, if that makes any sense.
jimmaswell 2y ago
Adobe software isn't quite "good" in my experience. The company is an Oracle: all-in on giving the right bullet points to pointy-haired managers but with a palpable paucity of technical merit. I have to work with Adobe Experience Manager and it's a weird, painful, slow/inefficient kludge, not to even get into the licensing terms and what devs are "allowed" to do on their own servers. Acrobat Reader stands out in my memory only as that extremely slow, bloated thing you launched by accident, then closed 5 minutes later once it loaded to use Sumatara instead. They killed Flash by neglect after buying it from Macromedia - we might still have it around if they invested in it properly and made it up to par for the iPod. Thankfully we finally have good emulators that work in the browser to see the vast amount of old Flash content. Creative Suite is fine and mostly functional from what I hear, but they didn't make that codebase either, and I've never felt limited by free or cheaper alternatives like GIMP or Sony Vegas. (I find it baffling how people rag on GIMP - I use it in a professional and personal capacity and I love it, and I'm familiar enough with Photoshop to compare it.)
- tombert 2y ago
  I don't think Vegas has been Sony for quite awhile has it? Vegas is great, but as far as I'm aware there's not really a way to get it running on Mac, and I don't own a Windows computer anymore (I still will VM it if I really need it). For my video stuff I've been using Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion for the last couple years since it's a one-time purchase and I think pretty good. I'd like to use Premiere and After Effects but, as stated, I don't want to pay for subscriptions. I don't know enough about photo editing to say if GIMP sucks, I've used it before and it seems fine.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    It's Vegas Creative (MAGIX), now... https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/ https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah I looked it up shortly after posting that comment. I wish they'd release a Mac version, because that was actually my favorite video editor on Windows. It would be really great if they made a Linux version but I'm not holding my breath for that.
bobthepanda 2y ago
There is also the affinity suite where you can get the whole suite for less than the annual cost of photoshop alone.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  Affinity software is exceptionally good. 50% off right now, btw... https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
- eastbound 2y ago
  DaVinci! https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
- Blackthorn 2y ago
  I so wish they were a viable option to replace Illustrator for certain printing things. But they just have this slightly different output that the printing house I'm trying to use (Tayda) doesn't jive with.
w0m 2y ago
> subscription-only model When did they do that? I guess I only really use Lightroom; but you've been able to buy each major release outright for ~1.5years of subscription (last I worked it out)
- tombert 2y ago
  I believe CS6 was the last version of Adobe Animate you could purchase outright. I don't know about their other products as much. I even emailed Adobe sales representatives two years ago to see if I was missing something, and maybe there was a way to buy it that I wasn't seeing. They made it very clear that subscriptions are the only way now.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    CS6 was followed by Creative Cloud for all their products.
sureIy 2y ago
> Adobe getting $0 from me Yeah but they’re getting all the money from everyone else. Adobe are not idiots, they ran the numbers and figured that subscriptions bring in more money. If that means tombert won’t give them money, good riddance.
dclowd9901 2y ago
Realistically, you can’t use the software forever anyway unless you’re planning on never upgrading your computer.

johndhi 2y ago

You'd pay $1500 or whatever for a perpetual Photoshop license? I wouldn't

tombert 2y ago
I mean, sure, there's probably an upper bound of a number I'd pay, and I don't do enough photo editing to justify paying really any amount of money for Photoshop. For software I'd actually use though? Upper bound is probably $600 judging by what I paid for Toonboom Harmony. Honestly if I had known about Moho at the time I probably would have gotten that since it's considerably cheaper and on Humble Bundle fairly often. I'm not in a creative industry so it's tough for me to know "fair" numbers, just "what can I justify as a toy" numbers. I like to occasionally whip out an animation tool and draw stuff with stick figures, and I like having that readily available, and I don't want my tool to change from under me so I don't want transparent updates. I just want to buy my software once.
bobim 2y ago
That's dirt cheap for a software you can make a living off. For FEA or CFD one would need to shell off in the order of 50-100k plus 20k per year. 1500? I would.
- SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
  But not all of us make a living off of Photoshop. I'm a programmer. I periodically need to make a tiny tweak in a file that's been created by a real artist, or I want to edit a photo I took, or whatever. It's insane to spend $1500, or even $500 (the CorelDraw buy-it-outright price) for hobby and occasional-use software like that. And yeah, I use other things like Affinity Photo, which is Good Enough for many of my purposes, but it's just annoying to not be able to use the same software as my artists--unless they flatten the image before giving it to me, it's a crap-shoot whether I can import it in anything but the exact version of PhotoShop they were using. It feels like extortion: I have to pay the artist to make the tiniest changes because I can't edit the original file, or I have to pay Adobe an outrageous sum to do it myself. Lose-lose.
  - bobim 2y ago
    Fully understood, this carefully engineered vendor lock-in is the cherry on the cake. It's in all CAD software for no reason and forces you to follow the herd. Open standards should be imposed by state actors...
  - goosedragons 2y ago
    If you're paying artists to make art in PS, are you not doing it for something you make money off of? Or are you just really deep in the hobby that you're nearing professional level? Photoshop was never $1500 either. CS6 was $700. The design standard CS6 suite was $1300. Maybe hunt for artists that use the reasonably priced Clip Studio Paint instead? It's pretty popular among manga and the like artists anyways.
    - SomeCallMeTim 2y ago
      Realistically, I'm looking for artists that are good first. And 98% of them use Photoshop. Not going to restrict myself to non-Photoshop artists.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > I have to pay the artist to make the tiniest changes because I can't edit the original file Hire the artist and ask them for the files exported into a format you can open. If they refuse, hire somebody else. I do agree with the sibling that open standards should be set by state actors. But they should only make them available, not mandate them into private actors.
jimmaswell 2y ago
I wouldn't pay $1 for Photoshop when GIMP is free and open source. It's been my daily driver in a personal and professional capacity for ages, and Photoshop offers nothing special for me.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  If GIMP is a replacement for you, you're not Adobe's target customer.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    But you are their average customer
  - jimmaswell 2y ago
    I'd be interested to know exactly what task Photoshop is capable of that GIMP isn't.
    - bornfreddy 2y ago
      I agree with you in principle, but there is one big task where Gimp can't compete: importing PSD files. Kudos to Gimp developers for the level of psd support it has, but it's not perfect (naturally).
    - adzm 2y ago
      AI features. Content aware fill. Better masking / feathering tools. Layer effects and composition. Text handling by far. Vector layers. Smart objects. Dynamic link to other creative applications. Brushes x1000. Pen input. Smart selections.
      - tombert 2y ago
        DiffusionBee on Mac has AI infill on images, and the models run locally and it’s free and open source. I have to think that someone is looking at implementing that in GIMP, at least as a plugin.

dangerboysteve 2y ago

"ToonBoom, is generally good enough for basic animation". What? This is the premier 2D animation package used by most of the top studios.

tombert 2y ago
Oh no question, bad phrasing on my end, I sort of meant it inverted. Toonboom is excellent if you're a professional. I'm very much not a professional, I barely know what I'm doing. I think Flash/Animate appealed to someone like me, because I found it easier to draw some goofy thing really quick and animate it. I feel Toonboom has a much higher learning curve and isn't really for people like me. It's not insurmountably difficult or anything, just that I'm not really the target audience and as such I don't know that it's a good fit for "basic" stuff, if that makes any sense.

jimmaswell 2y ago

Adobe software isn't quite "good" in my experience. The company is an Oracle: all-in on giving the right bullet points to pointy-haired managers but with a palpable paucity of technical merit. I have to work with Adobe Experience Manager and it's a weird, painful, slow/inefficient kludge, not to even get into the licensing terms and what devs are "allowed" to do on their own servers. Acrobat Reader stands out in my memory only as that extremely slow, bloated thing you launched by accident, then closed 5 minutes later once it loaded to use Sumatara instead. They killed Flash by neglect after buying it from Macromedia - we might still have it around if they invested in it properly and made it up to par for the iPod. Thankfully we finally have good emulators that work in the browser to see the vast amount of old Flash content. Creative Suite is fine and mostly functional from what I hear, but they didn't make that codebase either, and I've never felt limited by free or cheaper alternatives like GIMP or Sony Vegas. (I find it baffling how people rag on GIMP - I use it in a professional and personal capacity and I love it, and I'm familiar enough with Photoshop to compare it.)

tombert 2y ago
I don't think Vegas has been Sony for quite awhile has it? Vegas is great, but as far as I'm aware there's not really a way to get it running on Mac, and I don't own a Windows computer anymore (I still will VM it if I really need it). For my video stuff I've been using Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion for the last couple years since it's a one-time purchase and I think pretty good. I'd like to use Premiere and After Effects but, as stated, I don't want to pay for subscriptions. I don't know enough about photo editing to say if GIMP sucks, I've used it before and it seems fine.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  It's Vegas Creative (MAGIX), now... https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/ https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah I looked it up shortly after posting that comment. I wish they'd release a Mac version, because that was actually my favorite video editor on Windows. It would be really great if they made a Linux version but I'm not holding my breath for that.

bobthepanda 2y ago

There is also the affinity suite where you can get the whole suite for less than the annual cost of photoshop alone.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
Affinity software is exceptionally good. 50% off right now, btw... https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
eastbound 2y ago
DaVinci! https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Blackthorn 2y ago
I so wish they were a viable option to replace Illustrator for certain printing things. But they just have this slightly different output that the printing house I'm trying to use (Tayda) doesn't jive with.

w0m 2y ago

> subscription-only model When did they do that? I guess I only really use Lightroom; but you've been able to buy each major release outright for ~1.5years of subscription (last I worked it out)

tombert 2y ago
I believe CS6 was the last version of Adobe Animate you could purchase outright. I don't know about their other products as much. I even emailed Adobe sales representatives two years ago to see if I was missing something, and maybe there was a way to buy it that I wasn't seeing. They made it very clear that subscriptions are the only way now.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  CS6 was followed by Creative Cloud for all their products.

sureIy 2y ago

> Adobe getting $0 from me Yeah but they’re getting all the money from everyone else. Adobe are not idiots, they ran the numbers and figured that subscriptions bring in more money. If that means tombert won’t give them money, good riddance.

dclowd9901 2y ago

Realistically, you can’t use the software forever anyway unless you’re planning on never upgrading your computer.