Apparently the whole Adobe TOS change is real, and totally ridiculous.
Adobe has just changed the terms for subscription applications like Photoshop. Nothing big, just a demand of unlimited use of everything you ever create, forever. Oh, and you’re locked out of your existing work until you agree.
From the Battleswarm blog, HERE.
I guess Adobe thinks since they have the market cornered, they can do whatever they want…
But I’m betting now that the ‘pros’ are getting involved with Adobe trying to access their product, things are going to get interesting and the lawsuits will start coming! Especially from the aspect of NDA type work, and/or classified work done at various locations.
I could never afford to pay for photoshop, so I never went that way, thankfully! I do play with photography, but not that much. Years ago, one of my coworkers found a little freeware program called GIMP that he liked, because he could use it overseas and while at sea to put together AARs and briefs.
HERE is their wiki page.
None of the photo manipulation ‘tools’ are simple (IMHO), but GIMP is free and you can do quite a bit of manipulation with it.
YMMV, IANAL, etc…
They do not have the market cornered. I have been using the Affinity Suite for years now, and it is a superior product. You own your license at an affordable price, and the tools are every bit as powerful. I highly recommend them. Affinity Photo is the equivalent of Photoshop, Publisher is like InDesign, only easier to use. Affinity Design is the vector program, equivalent to Illustrator, and is the one I use least. There are a ton of tutorials and other teaching materials out there for Affinity.
For anyone interested, the Manufacturer of this software is “Serif” out of Europe, and their main page for North America is here:
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
And they’re running a 50% off sale right now too, for individual products on Windows or MAC, or … you can pay for the universal license and get all the products on BOTH operating systems. No subscription pricing nonsense either.
Entire suite:
USA: $82.99 (normally $164.99)
Canada: $109.99 (normally $224.99)
That’s VERY fair, the way it should be. No wonder you like these people, Cedar.
I think Adobe does pretty much have the professional market cornered. People who do photo editing for a living use that more than anything else.
That’s not me. I do some photo editing for personal purposes and occasionally I need to do a little for work as well, but not regularly. I’ve been using GIMP for those purposes for years. It does everything I need it to do and it doesn’t cost a fortune like Photoshop.
Especially since Adobe’s gone to the subscription model. Not interested in paying month after month (or year after year) for something that I only need once in a blue moon. Maybe for a pro who needs it to make a living, it’s worth it, but not for amateur like me.
I’m not averse to paying a reasonable price for something I find useful; I’ve donated to help keep open source software going several times (including to the GIMP project). But I don’t use software like Photoshop enough to make it worth the price they want to charge.
If I were a graphics professional I’d be looking for tools to take Adobe files and convert then edit them in some other form. I believe there are a few alternatives. They may not be quite as good as the current latest photoshop etc. but they are probably similar to photoshop from a few years ago. Unless you really NEED some feature that has been recently introduced the incentive is high to move because this shows a company that thinks it has a monopoly and can therefore rip off its customers.
The fact that you cannot apparently even export your existing data without agreeing to the new terms is going to get them sued and the they lose unless they were really, really good at lawyering the previous ToS. The previous ToS almost certainly included some kind of availability clause which this one breaks
Fool that I am, I had an Adobe account and a subscription to Photoshop. I don’t think I’ve used it in a year or two. It was one of those parasitic accounts that hang in the background of life.
Well, after reading you post, Jim, I jumped the byzantine hoops to cancel the account and subscription. My thanks for bringing it up!
I’ve used this a lot on my Win7 desktop for years. Love it.
https://www.getpaint.net/index.html
That’s my go to on Windows, but I mostly use it for simple stuff like icon editing at work or some minor photo editing at home.
Linux alternatives to Adobe’s products:
(And some of these may have Windows or Mac installers as well.)
https://itsfoss.com/adobe-alternatives-linux/
And if I may expound a bit here and get a bit wordy:
In other parts of the IT world, we’re seeing companies try for “the big squeeze” on existing customer bases. Get them locked in, then switch them to a subscriber model, then jack the pricing.
Broadcom just bought out VMWare (VM = virtual machine) and is trying for a massive rise in subscription fees, assuming their customer base is effectively locked in. This apparently is their business model: Acquire a popular product, raise prices massively hoping the large customers (whales) will just pay having no choice, and Broadcom seems quite willing to lose the small customers, classifying them as merely an annoyance. (The price increases on small customers have been truly astronomical, lending credence to this theory.) According to tech news articles I’ve read on this acquisition, even a good percentage of the whales are preparing to, or are actively switching to other virtualization software either this fiscal year, or next if they can’t manage to do so that quickly. This was a VERY bad time for Broadcom to try this, as there are multiple good virtualization alternatives out there now, like ProxMox.
Oracle’s been trying to squeeze every dollar out of customers on a per-processor basis as well as trying for blanket licensing based on how many employees (or contractors) you have, whatever their status. Their latest nonsense is trying to squeeze money out of people simply for using the JRE (Java Runtime Engine.) I remember when they placed their timezone-alteration program behind a support contract paywall. (That’s the utility that lets you update timezones inside older versions of the JRE.) That was beyond the pale for me.
Then of course there’s Microsoft and Office 365 subscriptions. It won’t be long and they’ll try to switch their base Operating System to subscription mode as well. The latest debacle playing out poorly for Microsoft has been their announcing the “Replay” feature in Windows 11, which takes screenshots every few seconds, OCR-scans them to text, and stores that text in a local SQL database. The purpose is to remind you what you were doing at any moment so you can easily jog your memory. The data isn’t encrypted, and other machine users on the same machine can access it. Given Microsoft’s desire to slurp up as much data on you as it can (and then use it to advertise to you through more and more in-OS advertising windows), do you think they’re going to leave that “local only”? Passwords, company confidential information, personal information, medical information… Can you say “Massive privacy violation”? I knew you could. That’s one with potential serious legal ramifications too. HIPAA anyone?
Yeah, I’m about done with this “Lock them in, and milk them dry” attitude companies are exhibiting. They’ve run out of actual features that could sell new versions of their products on their own merits, so now these companies are rent-seeking. Well here’s a clue for all those companies: I don’t agree to guarantee you profit in perpetuity, and I’m not about to rent my software.
Produce things the market wants/needs, and provide them at a fair price, or perish. It’s that simple.
Me, I’m using Linux Mint more and more, and I’m quite fond of LibreOffice to go along with it. LibreOffice installs on Windows as well, and I’m now creating ALL of my spreadsheets and new documents in it.
Okay, I’m done. Got that off my chest. (And thank you in advance for the forbearance, OldNFO.)
I use a program called ‘Paint.net’ That’s the name of it. It’s free and works quite well.
All- Thanks for the comments. And thanks too for the options!
Been using GIMP, Libre Office and Linux Miny for many years. Gimp does anything that I need to do with photos. I like Libre Office better than any version of Microsoft Office released since 2000.
Yeah, current management of many software companies is a bit interesting.
Replay is for the Copilot versions of Windows 11. It may be possible to use Windows 10 through October of 2025. Business world /may/ be able to force MS to provide a reliably non-copilot Windows 11.
Businesses are under stress, and also when folks see others seemingly getting away with lawlessness, some of them are encouraged to try lawlessness of thier own.
Then there is the hypothesis that Satya Nudella is simply outright collecting proprietary info, and siphoning to India.
Anyway, Recall probably will be encrypted, eventually. THat is not the issue, the issue is being able to steal it when hacking computers. Phishing, etc.
The ‘feature’ is of limited use to many users, and also an unnecessary security risk. MS has been taking a lot more security risks. Any given risk may not be bad, if they stay on top of things every time. More risks, and if they screw up, a lot of people may be unhappy.
Linux is a good idea, but not necessarily a perfect remedy forever with each distribution. Systemd is an automated update scheme that many distributions use, and is a potential central poitn of failure for many of them. In particular, Microsoft hired one of the key persons associated with systemd.
There is FOSS software available for many applications, and also for purchase from vendors that are not the biggest brand or market share, but may be enough, and with more desireable terms. I am quite happy with Affinity, for example.
Heinlein wrote about ‘crazy years’, those may be now. We definitely seem to have some major worldview splits. If we do not have a common understanding of sanity, then we would not expect a broad consensus on sanity when it comes to practical business cases.
You have a lot of factions inside a large company to get buy in from for any particular scheme of making a promise to customers, and delivering on it.
GIMP is great! I use Linux at home, so no Photoshop for me. Been using it since it came out in 1998, and it’s been fun to watch it (and Linux in general) evolve.
And it’s free…..