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The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

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Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#161

Post by [deleted] »

II2II wrote: post #47
CWuestefeld wrote: post #22

We all love to hate on Adobe. But as a photographer my primary software tool is Lightroom. And I continue to use it despite its $120/year price and less-than-stellar cataloging subsystem because its photo editing features (it's primary mission) still exceed the capabilities of its competitors. I don't see anyone else here talking about the huge strides that Adobe has taken in the past few years with their masking too…

If you can afford it, that is wonderful. For those who either cannot afford it or who don't need its features, then be happy that the competition is stepping up. They get the software they need. You get the software you need. I've never really understood why people insist that there can be only one or two products per software category, particularly when the category has a large enough customer base to support multip…

[deleted]

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#162

Post by halJordan »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #22

We all love to hate on Adobe. But as a photographer my primary software tool is Lightroom. And I continue to use it despite its $120/year price and less-than-stellar cataloging subsystem because its photo editing features (it's primary mission) still exceed the capabilities of its competitors. I don't see anyone else here talking about the huge strides that Adobe has taken in the past few years with their masking too…

That's not necessarily true, that they have to out innovate Adobe. There's an old aphorism that you can always displace an incumbent with a product if it's 80% as good, at 20% the cost of the incumbent product (ibm/ms, cable/netflix, etc). As adobe increases the price, that 20% gets easier to hit. I suspect (well hope) that we'll see this happen to a bunch of incumbents.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#163

Post by [deleted] »

Lammy wrote: post #150
Tanoc wrote: post #20

I bought CS6 Suite back in 2012 and used it well into 2021. Before that I had a patchwork of CS3 programs from 2005 I was given the discs for second-hand. Nowadays I use Krita, ffmpeg, Blender, Zim Desktop Wiki, and Inkscape to replace Flash/Animator, Photoshop, Premier, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. CS6 cost me $549 back in 2012 under a pretty generous student discount, but would've been $1,800 otherwise. That's $790…

> You can't even get secondhand instances of the software like I did as a youth with CS3. Were you able to get the DRM-free “offline” CS3 installers during the time they were offered? I will cherish mine forever lol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865636 Still using Photoshop CS3 for my daily image-editing needs in Windows 11 on my Framework Laptop 12. Mostly cleaning up album art for my music library metadata…

[deleted]

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#164

Post by vondur »

wongarsu wrote: post #40
Tanoc wrote: post #20

I bought CS6 Suite back in 2012 and used it well into 2021. Before that I had a patchwork of CS3 programs from 2005 I was given the discs for second-hand. Nowadays I use Krita, ffmpeg, Blender, Zim Desktop Wiki, and Inkscape to replace Flash/Animator, Photoshop, Premier, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. CS6 cost me $549 back in 2012 under a pretty generous student discount, but would've been $1,800 otherwise. That's $790…

For regular, undiscounted prices the subscription prices were somewhat fair. Regular Photoshop CS5 was $700, or $1000 for the extended version. And $200 to upgrade. Now it's a $300/year subscription. But students really got shafted. You used to get 80-90% student discounts, and could keep using the same version for years. Including keeping the software when you were no longer a student

At the CSU we had a deal for students to get the Adobe suite for $20 per semester. At certain CSU’s it’s now free for every student.

CSU is the California State University system.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#165

Post by Tanoc »

Lammy wrote: post #150
Tanoc wrote: post #20

I bought CS6 Suite back in 2012 and used it well into 2021. Before that I had a patchwork of CS3 programs from 2005 I was given the discs for second-hand. Nowadays I use Krita, ffmpeg, Blender, Zim Desktop Wiki, and Inkscape to replace Flash/Animator, Photoshop, Premier, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. CS6 cost me $549 back in 2012 under a pretty generous student discount, but would've been $1,800 otherwise. That's $790…

> You can't even get secondhand instances of the software like I did as a youth with CS3. Were you able to get the DRM-free “offline” CS3 installers during the time they were offered? I will cherish mine forever lol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865636 Still using Photoshop CS3 for my daily image-editing needs in Windows 11 on my Framework Laptop 12. Mostly cleaning up album art for my music library metadata…

No. I have a copy of Flash CS3 for helping with archival efforts or digging into Skyrim and Fallout 4 when friends ask though. As far as I know it's the last version that accepts all three versions of Actionscript.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#166

Post by rolymath »

nradov wrote: post #51
wongarsu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For regular, undiscounted prices the subscription prices were somewhat fair. Regular Photoshop CS5 was $700, or $1000 for the extended version. And $200 to upgrade. Now it's a $300/year subscription. But students really got shafted. You used to get 80-90% student discounts, and could keep using the same version for years. Including keeping the software when you were no longer a student

You're not wrong, but students often have to spend more than $300 per semester (not year) just on textbooks.

Only in America.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#167

Post by boltzmann64 »

nehal3m wrote: post #6

http://archive.today/WCDgq It’s so insidious to sell yearly subscriptions that you pay for monthly. I want to pay by the month precisely because I decide on a monthly basis whether I need a service. If you want out early with Adobe you have to cough up half of the remaining subscription time. For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler. I’ll pour one out for the pro’s.

how is this a dark pattern? say that you bought a subscription of new york times for a year and put it on monthly installment. can you bail out of paying the credit card company after six months? only here, both the product and credit card company is adobe. in fact adobe is being generous by letting you "cough up" only a half the fee where your credit card company wouldn't. at this rate all credit companies are "dark pattern peddlers" according to you? adobe is pretty clear on the name of the subscription, "yearly subsciption, payed monthly" in big letters at the top of their pricing page.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#168

Post by port11 »

chromacity wrote: post #24

Every time I see one of these HN threads, I am actually amazed with what Adobe was able to pull off. I'm not surprised that they could do this to pros who were used to a particular workflow. In fact, for some businesses, a subscription may have some benefits. You were probably upgrading regularly anyway, and the only downside is that it's an expense you can't cut back on in a lean year. But there are so many hobbyist…

I’ve used their software during my Multimedia studies and continued paying for some of it because it was just very, very good.

I despise Adobe’s pricing and the many things they are known for. But let’s not pretend that “competitor gives their product away for free” is a positive for the industry. Media work was already being stolen, copied, trained upon; all the companies making free creativity tools gotta profit off this somehow. It’s bait-and-switch as well.

If anything, it seems that the buy-once-and-keep-it model is what people liked. Adobe’s subscriptions and the competitors’ “you and your data are the product” are both a shitty replacement for software ownership.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#169

Post by oliwarner »

LocalH wrote: post #140
oliwarner wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand not wanting to pay Adobe every month, but the commercial reality would require a month-long contract would have to be extraordinarily expensive, to offset the people who do only need it occasionally who'd otherwise be on an annual contract. Is that predatory? Maybe, but is it worse for those users than only offering the $1k package they used to? Of course they're trying to get you hooked, pricing at…

"commercial reality" is just executives deciding they don't like how the world really works, so they're going to change it out from under us they'd monetize the open air of the earth if they could figure out the logistics

Yes, but it's theirs to monetize.

What post-scarcity utopia do you think you're living in?

The commercial reality is them finding the way to get the most from the market. This isn't a bizarre twist of software licensing, every company is doing this to you.

Re: The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe

#170

Post by croes »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #77
croes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly people stick to what they know even if better alternatives exist

I've tried the alternative for Photoshop and came out unimpressed. It's even worse for Illustrator, and I hate this software. They're not perfect. I don't like the pricing either or their attitude. Still, After Effect, Illustrator, Indesign are very good. I'm not ripped off with the suite at the end... I have the same issue with Maxon and Zbrush: nothing is close, but it's still the best at what it does. We have an e…

> So let's not insult user here: people tries the alternative. They're not good enough. They're worse.

You mean you tried and thesy didn't suit your usecase. That's ok. But there are many others where alternatives would be suitable. Best example: MS Word

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