Developers on macs, you have lots of alternatives! Affinity Designer and Pixelmator, for vector and raster graphics. Apple Motion is still in the app store for compositing.
Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
51–60 of 68 posts
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#52I work in the vfx/animation industry and I have to say that I find Adobe's Creative Cloud billing is horrible for studios. The idea that you have to commit to a year is terrible for post-production companies because they scale up and down wildly. Need 10 artists for one week? Sorry, you'll need to commit to renting 10 licenses of Creative Cloud for a year! Other software that is even more expensive than Adobe's Creative Suite (like Autodesk Maya) have also moved to a subscription model, but Autodesk allows you to rent Maya by the month, if you want. Adobe is getting the best of both worlds here by not allowing you to own their software and at the same time not giving you flexible rental options. Linux support at least for After Effects would be nice as well, if you're reading this Adobe!
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#53This is why I refuse to buy software-as-a-service. If I run software on my own hardware, I want to own it. When Adobe introduced recurrent billing, I decided to switch. Fortunately a bunch of affordable, non-subscription competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator have sprung up in the recent years. For example, Affinity Designer is a great replacement for Illustrator, and its cheaper than the academic Illustrator licen…
What are the alternatives to photoshop? Gimp? Luckily I still have photoshop cs5.5
like affinity designer, affinity photo is pretty nice
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#54This is why I refuse to buy software-as-a-service. If I run software on my own hardware, I want to own it. When Adobe introduced recurrent billing, I decided to switch. Fortunately a bunch of affordable, non-subscription competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator have sprung up in the recent years. For example, Affinity Designer is a great replacement for Illustrator, and its cheaper than the academic Illustrator licen…
I wonder if there's any (paid or unpaid) alternatives to Lightroom (and Apple Photos).
You can try out Polarr at http://polarr.co/
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am an Adobe Creative Cloud customer and even I am aware of how their billing works. To my knowledge, this is exactly the same as to how any subscription works. They always auto-renew, although some let you opt out. Heck, it's part of the definition of the word "subscribe". Without timestamps there's no way to be certain, but this entire conversation could have taken place over less than 10 minutes and it's highly…
High pressure sales techniques are awful, and they exist because they work. I don't think having to say "no" 50 times is reasonable, and it makes you feel like an asshole just for not being an easy mark that can be pressured into buying something s/he doesn't want. I've learned to close the door in the face of over-aggressive solicitors, but I know people who have trouble with it, because it's objectively rude to do…
I agree that the early termination fee is a dishonest ripoff. That said, it's a poor culture if people feel like assholes for having to refuse a few counter-offers (and no, I don't think it's a core human trait, as haggling is common around the world). Negotiation is an important skill to have as an adult, and this is the 101 level.
One thing I do find disagreeable (though not to the point of considering it strong-arming) is the use of the client's first name. "Hi Devon"? Since when has "Mr. Campbell" stopped being the norm?
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#56This is why I refuse to buy software-as-a-service. If I run software on my own hardware, I want to own it. When Adobe introduced recurrent billing, I decided to switch. Fortunately a bunch of affordable, non-subscription competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator have sprung up in the recent years. For example, Affinity Designer is a great replacement for Illustrator, and its cheaper than the academic Illustrator licen…
I wonder if there's any (paid or unpaid) alternatives to Lightroom (and Apple Photos).
There are numerous, with upsides and downsides:
- Capture One Pro (Paid): This is the most complete alternative in my opinion. It can handle ingestion, taxonomy and editing. Ingestion and taxonomy are adequate but not fantastic. Editing is superior to Lightroom in my opinion. It's a little more complicated than Lightroom but I usually produce better results in a shorter amount of time. Also the processing quality in Capture One Pro is pretty consistently better than Lightroom in my experience.
- Photo Mechanic (Paid): This is solely for ingestion and to a limited degree, taxonomy. It has zero functionality for editing but plenty for moving photos around, copying them from places and to places etc. I often see it recommended by professionals as the fastest way to pull in and pick photos from a shoot.
- DxO Optics Pro (Paid): Zero taxonomy or ingestion capability. This is solely an editing tool. Its main target is superior optical correction and processing quality. I find it delivers on both of these but I also find its "magic" features like "smart lighting" to get in the way. Capture One Pro usually produces better results for me. One thing DxO does to fantastically though is noise reduction. Whatever PRIME is, it does a damn good job. On the other hand, DxO seems to have issues with my Sony A7II where the colour is consistently wrong (colours always have a red offset). I haven't noticed this with other cameras though.
- Polarr (Paid, with a free online version): Solely for editing. It's very much like Snapseed (an Android/iOS app) on the desktop. Interestingly, their desktop app appears to be a repackaged version of their web app (https://www.polarr.co/). I find it to be very high quality and very easy to use but I really prefer having my editor integrated with my library and keep coming back to Capture One Pro. If you're editing things separately, I think Polarr is a fantastic choice. I'd actually rate it higher than DxO Optics Pro (based on the output I've had from it).
- Darktable (FOSS): Does ingestion, taxonomy and editing but doesn't really any of them well. The UI is confusing and (at least to me) unappealing, the editing tools are limited and the taxonomy, while more present, is too complicated to figure out. I've tried to like Darktable but I just can't.
- RawTherapee (FOSS): Zero taxonomy but all the knobs and sliders you'd want when it comes to editing. They've put _a lot_ of effort into their image processing and it's high quality and extremely customisable. You can fiddle with demosaicing algorithms and the like all you want. Hell, you can even implement one yourself with little effort (I wrote one that's currently sitting in a PR somewhere). Same issue with this that I had with Polarr though, I like having my library and my photos integrated.
- Nik Collection (Paid): A product that was acquired by Google and still appears to be developed. They have a bunch of individual tools tailored to particular kinds of output that seem to produce high quality results but should really be integrated into a single package. No taxonomy or ingestion, pure editing.
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#57This is why I refuse to buy software-as-a-service. If I run software on my own hardware, I want to own it. When Adobe introduced recurrent billing, I decided to switch. Fortunately a bunch of affordable, non-subscription competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator have sprung up in the recent years. For example, Affinity Designer is a great replacement for Illustrator, and its cheaper than the academic Illustrator licen…
What are the alternatives to photoshop? Gimp? Luckily I still have photoshop cs5.5
On the Mac there's Acorn, which is enough for my needs, even though I run into bugs every time I use it. But it is very reasonably priced, and it does all I need.
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#58How is this "strong-arming"? If we keep devaluing the meaning of words, we won't have any left when something serious actually happens. The rep ran through a couple of retention scripts, and then got mixed up because OP called on the last billing day. Then he promptly canceled the service without any charges, which is exactly what OP was looking for. (And no, it's probably not because of the threat to contact his sup…
I agree. It does feel like a fair attempt to keep the client with the genuine decent offers and in the end respecting their wishes.
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#59My wife had a similar issue last week. She just notice the 600 CAD charge on her credit card. She is on maternity leave and, therefore, she is not using the software. She had no warning prior to the automatic renewing date and no invoice after the charge. She called to cancel as soon as she noticed and they decline saying that the 14-day grace period had passed. They "can" only reimburse 50% of the yearly subscription. I know some will say that it is her fault for not having marked the calendar or something, but I disagree. I think that this unfair practices. Furthermore, I'm 95% sure that this kind of behavior is illegal in Quebec. We are still waiting for an email from the "supervisor" on that issue. To be continued..
Re: Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud
#60My wife had a similar issue last week. She just notice the 600 CAD charge on her credit card. She is on maternity leave and, therefore, she is not using the software. She had no warning prior to the automatic renewing date and no invoice after the charge. She called to cancel as soon as she noticed and they decline saying that the 14-day grace period had passed. They "can" only reimburse 50% of the yearly subscriptio…
Interesting. I thought you could reverse with the credit card company, then deal with the supplier. Do credit cards work differently in Canada?