Live data from Hacker News

Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

petapixel.com

151–160 of 442 posts

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#151

In another story, I needed Lightroom for about a week to do some photo work. I started with their subscription for the month and I wanted to let go if I'm done in the first month. While trying to cancel my subscription, I realize I can only do that after paying for the remaining 11 months (rough calculation). With no other option, I paid my penalty and left Adobe for good. I have deleted my 15+ year old Adobe account…

Couldn't you have changed your CC number and email to disposable ones, and then written off the account?

Not if they used the lock-$2 verification trick.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#152
It was amazing that Lightroom came with free upgrades, year after year. I would probably have happily paid $99 each time there was a major version number increase, even if that meant paying effectively $99 a year.

That’s not far off the subscription price. Something about the subscription model feels so arrogant though, on Adobe’s part, that I just can’t stomach it. Is it because it feels like rent?

May Lightroom 6, and the hours and hours of face and location tagging I’ve sunk into it, last forever.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify why that was so? I started using privacy.com for basically any trial of subscription nowadays, am curious if this would Avert their dirty tactics.

Adobe subscriptions are sold as annual plans only. You have the option of whether to prepay the full year, or to pay it off in monthly instalments. https://www.adobe.com/au/creativecloud/plans.html (I'd definitely recommend going with Affinity Photo instead if it suits your needs.)

The bundles are yearly plans only, but subscriptions to individual apps can be done on a month-to-month basis (try clicking on Photoshop, not "Photography")

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#154

When things like this happen, is it any wonder an increasing number of users are viewing any sort of "updates" with extreme apprehension? "It was working fine just before, and now I've lost everything. Why should I have even updated!?!?" I still remember when the general advice was "do not upgrade/change what works, unless you need something in a later version", which then changed to "updates are recommended", follow…

Backups are a necessity, and I don't blame the users but it would definitely help mitigate risks when it comes to updating software. I am an update fanatic running Arch and constantly keep all my software up-to-date. Fortunately, I've never had any issues, but if I do I have both Google Drive synced via rclone and Crashplan to help me recover.

While I agree with you and do myself keep several backups, I get the feeling that this is actually more and more difficult to implement for "regular people".

Related to TFA's subject, I'm a user of Lightroom and Photoshop, but the computer-based, "classic" ones. I still manage my photos "the old way", with folders on my drive that I back up regularly to two locations.

However, I also tried Lightroom on my iPhone. Right now, if I were asked, I would not know how to go about backing up those pictures, aside from doing a full phone backup. Also, the marketing speak for adobe's cloud (and indeed, for every similar offering out there) is "keep your data secure / safe". So as a regular user, how would I know that's actually "not secure enough" and that "synced to the cloud" is not actually backed up?

The actual language on the latest Lightroom iPhone app is "Synced and backed up". But given Canon lost their customer's photos the other day, how much can you actually count on those backups being actual backups? My point is that we should indeed try to educate users and not blame them for this kind of problem happening, but maybe we should actively blame companies for the deceiving language they use while at the same time rendering user's data harder and harder to manage.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#155
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if OP could have changed his CC number to a disposable CC instead of paying out 11 months to cancel? You can also buy prepaid debit cards at supermarkets, post offices, etc (at least in Australia) which allow you to do the same thing.

The rub with all of these services is that your account is burned in addition to your credit card. You can walk away from the remaining 11 months of Lightroom as long as you don't need to continue using Premiere for a project or rely on them for any other ongoing service like downloading stock photos you purchased through them (I think I remember seeing that service?) Similarly, doing this to a Steam account or iTune…

A reminder that you never have to worry about ANY of this bullshit if you pirate the software

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#156
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if OP could have changed his CC number to a disposable CC instead of paying out 11 months to cancel? You can also buy prepaid debit cards at supermarkets, post offices, etc (at least in Australia) which allow you to do the same thing.

The rub with all of these services is that your account is burned in addition to your credit card. You can walk away from the remaining 11 months of Lightroom as long as you don't need to continue using Premiere for a project or rely on them for any other ongoing service like downloading stock photos you purchased through them (I think I remember seeing that service?) Similarly, doing this to a Steam account or iTune…

Are there any subscriptions on Steam to do this to? I thought temp credit cards were meant to solve passing your real cc details to a merchant for 1 off transactions or when things like adobe do sketchy stuff. If you're buying games on steam it shouldn't matter if you use a temp credit card or not.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#157
post #61

Affinity Photo or Pixelmator Pro are great replacements for Photoshop. Resolve and Final Cut are much better than Premiere. I'm still looking for a replacement for After Effects and Illustrator though. I've heard Affinity Publisher is a great InDesign replacement although I've never used it.

On what platform? Nuke is an amazing replacement for AE.

I really think they're very different applications. I think in nodes and much prefer Nuke, but AE being timeline based gives it very different strengths. Nuke also doesn't manage video and synced audio and is better optimized around frame sequences.

In school I'd often see people edit their projects in AE (because they were too lazy to learn Premere or another proper editor). It's not a great idea to use AE for editing, but its possible. If you tried to do that in Nuke you'd throw your computer out the window.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't work so well with SSDs :( https://www.howtogeek.com/125521/htg-explains-why-deleted-fi...

A real computer can run automatic backups to a second local disk or over your home network. Even if you do feel like paying Apple for adequate iCloud backup storage you're consuming bandwidth and using large amounts of data.

You can do that with an iPhone too. You can do a full backup of the phone to the mac, encrypted, which also contains "sensitive" data, etc. Can be run over wifi if you don't want to bother with cables or via usb if the local wifi is shoddy. No need to pay Apple anything for any storage.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#159

In another story, I needed Lightroom for about a week to do some photo work. I started with their subscription for the month and I wanted to let go if I'm done in the first month. While trying to cancel my subscription, I realize I can only do that after paying for the remaining 11 months (rough calculation). With no other option, I paid my penalty and left Adobe for good. I have deleted my 15+ year old Adobe account…

It's exactly this why the end users (even me as a developer) prefer Apple and it's mandated control over payments. I can safely use apps and spend money on apps secure with the knowledge that Apple will enforce this on my behalf to protect me from such money grabbing.

Yeah it really sucks that Apple takes 30% of all revenue, but the developers have painted themselves into a corner with behavior like this.

Re: Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you have changed your CC number and email to disposable ones, and then written off the account?

Not if they used the lock-$2 verification trick.

What does that mean?
Post reply on HN