You Have No Alternative!

Do what you like, I think it's bull****. It's nothing more than Adobe shareholders charging rent on your and everyone else's activities.

"Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by 'clipping coupons' [in the sense of collecting interest payments on bonds], who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism

"The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is helping nobody in any way, directly or indirectly, except himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
 
Ranchu said:
Do what you like, I think it's bull****. It's nothing more than Adobe shareholders charging rent on your and everyone else's activities.

"Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of

"The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is helping nobody in any way, directly or indirectly, except himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Click to expand...


Yes this just about encapsulates with pinpoint accuracy what Adobe are doing to their customers without any exaggeration or pish talking. Well found cool headed man.
 
This continuous upgrading of Computers, Equipment and Accessories such as photoshop have reached insane concepts.
Last year both PC and outside drive crashed and I lost 18 months of data, images and documents..
Thankfully I use SD cards as film, not re-formatting and thus able to recover about 80%..of images.
I don't use Raw nor will ever.
Picasa is sufficient for my posting on media sites, Tumblr.
All my images are done low rez. and watermarked.
A few are on "Flickr" but I no longer use it..
I scan with a Canonscan that needs XP.
I keep an older XP pc for this..
One has to re-think about why so many need these fancy photoshops..
I unwillingly went to digital imaging for Pro work.:bang:
I started with a Pentax Optio as minimum i could/would spend in 2005. I love the use of digital but kept everything very basic.
My life style is "Minimalist".
Hence I do not have a cell phone!
I refuse to have monthly rental for my camera..
I am sure before end of year, my wet darkroom, Printing, will be soon fully running.
 
Golden opportunity for some company to steal the amateur market from Adobe. I think back at the days when Blockbuster ruled the world and acted like a big bully charging insane late fee and fines for not rewinding. Then Netflix came along and ate their lunch.

Adobe is acting as a monopoly, because there are few alternatives of its caliber and because it is so entrenched. I have not used PaintShop or the Gimp (which I understand is open source, not retail), but companies with the technical capabilities to produce that type of software could potentially charge the same as PSE and use the money to strengthen their products to a level that would be satisfactory for most amateurs.
 
You can still buy Lightroom on a one-off basis. Though Adobe try hard to hide it. Photoshop on the other hand is a problem. I'm currently on CS4 at home but I don't know what I'll do if I'm forced to upgrade in the future.

If you wish to avoid Adobe then what about Capture One?
http://www.phaseone.com/Online-Store/PurchaseDetailsPage.aspx?captureone=buy

I have a fully working copy which I downloaded as part of a promo phase one were doing a year or two ago. Though I must admit I've not really tried it.

Bob.
 
I feel your pain.

Since it hasn't been mentioned here yet, I wanted to mention two quite capable alternatives to Photoshop:

Affinity Photo https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/
Photoline http://photoline.de/

I am myself a Linux and Mac user, and recently looked for an alternative due to the fact that my educational license for PS expired, and I am apparently not allowed to download/install/use it anymore now. The educational copy wasn't free by the way...

Anyway, Affinity Photo and Photoline were in my opinion the best alternatives to PS that I have found.

Affinity Photo is currently a free download. It's in "Beta", but I have been using it for a couple of weeks and it was very stable. It has everything I need for photo editing (I shoot film, and occasionally edit some raws), and what I like the most is that it is quite fast, probably even faster then PS, depending on the operation it's performing.

Photoline on the other hand has been around for quite some time. It's very stable, runs on Mac as well as Windows. It's layout is very similar to Photoshop, yet here and there they have some other concepts. I think the biggest drawback might be that they do not necessarily use the same shortcuts as PS, but this can be reconfigured. You can also download Photoline for free and test it for 30 days, after which a license ($99) is required.

Personally I am also a big Open Source fan, but it is a bit hard to find a good all-round image editor for Linux. Gimp has the problem that it does not support 16bit and does also not have adjustment layers. There are quite a few RAW editors out there, but they are often missing brush tools and the like.

One program I discovered and really like for editing scanned images is LightZone. It is now also open source and free. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that other editors have, but I find that it has just exactly all the tools I like to use, and those are very easy to use and much quicker than in other programs. It's worth checking out. It is Java based, and thus cross platform: http://www.lightzoneproject.org/

Well, I could go on for another hour, but the OP didn't ask for an essay about all image editors ever created, so I better shut up now 🙂
 
I was aghast at the first notice of the Photoshop cloud solution. Now I am the happy user of Photoshop on two computers, regularly updated, all for the price of two cups of coffee per month. And if I didn't have Lightroom by other means, for the moment, then I'd have that running on two computers under the same deal. Now what if they increase the price to $25 per month....? I think volume will be better for them than a high unit price. And Hamrick's Vuescan site seemed to recognize my permanent upgrade status from the 2009 download. Wow. Up and running with all I need pretty cheaply. I have a lot of sympathy for those wanting to stick to Mavericks or Snow Leopard. But so far Yosemite has been no problem for me on a new MBP.
 
I know we're talking PS here, but I'm pretty sure that Adobe allows you to use LR, except for the Develop module, even after your trial or subscription lapses.
 
Ranchu said:
Well, plus. If you don't keep paying, you lose access to files you've edited with it. You're renting your own files, and what happens when you stop paying and they're left on the cloud? Will Adobe assume ownership like flickr does?
Click to expand...

This is misleading at best. One can export all CC rendered images as JPEG, TIFF or DNG files. One is not renting files. One is leasing the resources to render and organize the images.

Layers are just a feature of the technology. But rendered exports of flattened images preserve the layers' creative value. All that is lost is flexibility for future renderings. This circumstance has numerous parallels in throughout the vast taxonomy of software applications. It is universal and not unique to Adobe.

If one decides to store rendered images using Adobe's Cloud server, then this images would become unavailable. The remedy is trivial, download the images to your own media. Your intellectual property remains yours and you have total control over it's fate if you decide to stop paying.

While it's in my best financial and creative interest to use Adobe's CC photography package, the real horror is Adobe's pathetic, useless customer service. Adobe Sr. management should be ashamed.
 
For every photographer who only requires a static solution and technologies, there is a photographer who gains benefit from faster hardware and more sophisticated software.

There are two sides to the issue. I pay less per year with CC than I would with paying for upgrades to PS and LR. The upgrades have value to me. I understand the upgrades are useless to others... and have no value.

If Adobe, Apple or any of the other numerous IT vendors in the photography market did not update their products those vendors would eventually disappear. None of these companies can survive serving a small segment of customers who, for whatever the reason, are not interested in improvements.
 
... well some of us have clearly assimilated ... and some of us not

I'll stick to the idea if I buy something it's a capital item, not a cost. If I buy software I expect to assign it as cap-ex, not as an ongoing cost ... not that it matters now I'm retired, and clearly out of date
 
One thing to keep in mind about the cloud and working up there.

At least here in Iowa, you are limited as to the volume of data brought down per month and the volume of data moving UP per month.

SOOOOO if you shoot a lot of big raw files moving a session up for editing can add up to an overage.

Bringing say a month of originals and adjusted images down can add up.

I don't know enough about how the applications work, but the data that moves to the cloud and then back down to your PC costs. The higher resolution you display the more it costs.

The cloud is great for business, enables way cool stuff. For those who do not have cash coming in, customers to share with, etc., it can be a costly space to be in.

Open Source is not perfect either, but at the end of the day, an informed consumer is everyone's best customer.

Buyer Beware.

B2
 
Sparrow said:
......not that it matters now I'm retired, and clearly out of date
Click to expand...

Not true. You do matter. Not everyone has the cash flow to support a service month to month.

Congrats on being able to retire. I'm hoping I can retire in 15 years (recession soaked up all retirement funds). Right now it looks like it may be 20 years at best.

IMHO the price point for software services is way too high for long term sustainability and deep penetration into the consumer market world wide.

B2
 
BillBingham2 said:
Not true. You do matter. Not everyone has the cash flow to support a service month to month.

Congrats on being able to retire. I'm hoping I can retire in 15 years (recession soaked up all retirement funds). Right now it looks like it may be 20 years at best.

IMHO the price point for software services is way too high for long term sustainability and deep penetration into the consumer market world wide.

B2
Click to expand...

... 58 was the plan, but I rethought my priorities when I became ill and went six months early ... luckily I did better than I'd planned overall ... so it's the principle really, not the cash

I just bought that free standing copy of CS6, the one I use at the moment is possibly illegal anyway.

I bought it but it was owned by my company and I just carried on using it without thinking when I retired, whoops a daisy
 
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