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Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

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Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#151
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad GIMP is such a crappy alternative.

Ehh...depends what you're doing. 99% of the time, I just need to crop an image to a certain size. GIMP is actually much better than photoshop for this particular exact task. Nice UI for resizing the selection box in place. Other simple tweaks - brightness/contrast etc - are handled perfectly competently. It certainly isn't a drop-in replacement for the sort of magic 'proper' photoshoppers do. But for a semi-competent…

Lightroom is far better for the tasks you mentioned than GIMP. IrfanView or XnView would be also perfectly adequate for your simple tasks.

Forget about easy skin retouching in GIMP, no 16-bit/channel in official release yet, forget about high-end fashion photography with GIMP. It's still not there :-(

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelmator is a much better solution if you're on a Mac. Not free though...

I would actually pay 50€ or so for Pixelmator if it'd be available for Linux – but sadly it's not. I'd think, though, that the Pixelmator devs could port it to Linux quite easily, as most of the code already works with OpenGL/OpenCL/etc. so they'd only have to port the Cocoa-based UI to QT.

And they would also need to port the whole Core Graphics subsystem.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#153
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're one of those, I highly recommend Pixelmator - download at pixelmator.com. My choice for a really simple, easy image editor is Acorn from Flying Meat Software - http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/ . It's like Apple's Numbers compared to Microsoft's Excel - there are things that the most sophisticated couple of percent of users will miss, but for most people it's a great alternative. Adobe can't die quick enough to…

I second this: Pixelmator is great. But most heavy Photoshop users won't leave Photoshop unless dragged away. It's all they know. Sure they'll kick, scream, bitch. But suggest something like Pixelmator you get excuses like "But Pixelmator doesn't have [insert obscure filter that they've only used once in their life]". In the end, they'll still stay on Adobe's CC.

You could not be more wrong with your assesment why Photoshop users stay with Photoshop. I bought Pixelmator, and I also got CC licencse. I don't even remember when was the last time I had Pixelmator open. Pixelmator is a great and cheap alternative if you indeed only need pretty basic things, but many need a lot more. And if you are in print business there is no discussion at all.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#154
post #77
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think git's distributed nature would make this a lesser issue. You would just have to set up another remote target and push/pull from that (say on AWS or some other provider).

Sure. But not having access to the tickets database might cripple a team pretty badly. One reason I'm still toying with the idea of trying fossil[1] "for real" and/or find/make a tool that distributes issues within mercurial/git like http://www.bugseverywhere.org/ Note-to-self: looks like hattawiki might be a nice companion on the path to "distributed everything": http://hatta-wiki.org/Install [1] https://www.fossil-…

For a distributed wiki try gollum. It's the wiki engine behind the github wikis and it's basically a wiki where the database is a git repo. I love it for family use. I can put up a nice web interface for everyone else to edit and yet I use git push/pull and my normal text editor. Works great.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#155
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called 'planning for the unexpected' and encompasses a wide range of scenarios, only one of which can be blamed on Adobe.

Well, to play devil's advocate, 'planning for the unexpected' should also cover 'a client calls at the last minute with a rush job', shouldn't it? In that case, how is an Adobe outage the consultant's fault?

Yes, a professional should be prepared for unexpected customer requests with tight deadlines. And the response to such a request is to just get the work done. That, of course, involves being prepared for any service outages that might interfere with such work.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#156
post #137

Complete non-hacked photoshop CS2 is freely available with serial - http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.h... It works pretty well in Wine as well, if you fiddle with the settings.

If you're happy using software you don't have a license for, why not grab CS6 off of the your favorite torrent site. People bitch and bitch about DRM (and god knows I do as well), but as soon as a company tries to release software without any licensing hoops or other checks, people jump all over it and shout "Hey everybody, this company isn't going out of their way stop me from using their software, it must be free!!…

I am recommending this on a thread for people who can't use their paid for software from Adobe. Sure, some other people might use it as well, but seeing as Adobe have already calculated that they can afford the risk before they started offering CS2 plus serials for download, I don't think I need to worry too much. As far as downloading a cracked version, well there is no way I am going to recommend to people to try out random cracked stuff off torrent sites.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#157
post #86
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what Google Maps needs? Offline downloadable map functionality. They had that feature, then removed it, then put it back... now I honestly don't know where it's at. Browsing offline maps is a breath of fresh air, it's so much quicker. Obviously you wouldn't download the whole world, only your home city or whatever. But it's lightning fast to zoom and pan around an offline map compared with connecting over mo…

It does, "ok maps"

Not anymore. They became reasonable again and both the search and any selected location description has a "save for offline use" button at the bottom.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#158
post #59
post #55

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I sure hope not. It's rare for me to encounter SaaS that provides a better service than something I can install and run natively.

Surely there is something? E.g. Google Maps was a breath of fresh air after MapPoint.

My self-hosted apps work on my laptop when I have no network connectivity. That's a big win for me.

Funny you mention Mappoint. It's exactly what I use when I'm navigating for my wife on trips. It works fine in areas with poor wireless data coverage. (We supplement with Waze to get traffic reports, but "self-hosted" Mappoint guarantees we won't lose map coverage because of radio issues.)

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#159
One of the issues with the move to the cloud with formerly desktop software is exactly this. I used to use the analogy of an army using guns, except instead of a magazine holding bullets they had a long hose feeding them rounds. It sounded great to the generals, because instead of carrying around 20lbs of munitions, the soldiers just needed to carry around their guns. Of course all it took is for somebody to put a kink in the hose to put them out of the fight completely.

Re: Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work

#160
post #123
post #37

My recipe for dealing with "cranky" proprietary software like this: Step 1. Buy CC subscription and install what you need. Step 2. Look for a good patch/crack that makes everything work ofline, and that still allows you to update. Step 3. Make peace with the risk of having installed some possible malware on your machine with the patch/crack (ie. do the sensible thing of doing you shopping and ebanking on the other de…

And this is why "cloud" software will always be worse then regular software. What happens when these "cloud" companies go out of business? You're pretty much SOL if you can't find a replacement quick. Don't ever rely on "cloud" software for critical infrastructure unless you own that cloud. Everybody get CS6 and delay upgrading as long as you can.

> You're pretty much SOL if you can't find a replacement quick.

Everyone who seriously considers moving mission-critical software or infrastructure to the cloud should (if they don't already) have a contingency plan at the forefront of their evaluation of any platform/service. Evaluations of solutions like that take away much of the risk that you're proposing. It's also just smart business.

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