I guess it's to rub it in the faces of Adobe and everyone else who supported this move "because it would help against piracy", when in reality they've just made it worse for normal customers, and also more expensive (which was probably what they really wanted anyway, and the anti-piracy thing was just the public excuse for doing it).
This is it. It's common for design shops to stop on a version of Adobe that is mature and works for them. After a couple of years, you're spending less than $50 per month.
InDesign .indd compatibility has consistently broken with each new CS version; with this new system, you're either going to have to subscribe or not be able to interchange files in their original, (easily) editable format with clients, other designers, etc.
That's always been my theory too. It's best for the industry in general if someone can learn industry-grade tools whilst messing around as a teenager, it means less training is required and it's a form of vendor lock-in for the software makers.
I don't really buy the 'more expensive' line. Previously the suite was a prohibitively expensive for me, whereas now I pay $50 a month. Spread over two years (approx range between CS updates), I still come ahead by about $1000.
I found myself buying for the first time ps and illustrator. the edu subscription is 20$ month, which is finally, reasonable. I'm very happy to pay for what I'd been using for years but had previously been impossible to afford.
And that's exactly what Adobe is looking for. They don't care that you pirate their software. They know that when the time comes for you to choose something to use professionally, you'll have no choice but to buy a license. And if you're not using it professionally, Adobe lost nothing from the pirated version anyway.
They still wouldn't be paying for it though, and when they can afford to, they will.. And yet again, it just grows their market share and continues to make their products the de-facto..
If the 2nd/3rd world started to standardize on non-Adobe tools, then all the 1st world agencies that use that cheap labour could potentially start looking into those other tools, right?
I find this amusing. Adobe's piracy problem is of it's own making. They've cultivated these pirates for years by keeping their products priced so high, and by ignoring widespread piracy from students and amateurs. They've got their work cut out for them if they want to solve this problem.
I agree. Photoshop is something I use a lot on a hobby basis, but as a student I can't justify buying it because of the high price, which leaves me with no other option...
Fun fact: One way to tell the difference between the people who partied their way through college on someone else's dime and the people who were serious students responsible for their own future is that the former will dismiss $20/mo as "not even one night out" and the latter will think of it in terms of the additional scrimping on basic supplies and the like (or sharing textbooks, or...)
ahem okay, sorry, I just get a little resentful at seeing the resources for serious academic endeavor being measured in leisure units. Seriously though, even if everyone else doesn't party their way through school, $240/yr is a fair little chunk of change to a lot of students, and is certainly well within the price range where piracy makes a lot of financial sense.
Sorry to disagree, but even $240/yr is nothing compared to the annual fee of graduate studies. I think this expense fits in the "studying material", therefore is 100% justified.
tldr: master 10k$/yr + 240$/yr ~= 10k$/yr.
also:
Don't go to starbucks everyday and learn to brew your coffee . Gonna save MUCH more.
(2coffee/day*2$) - 200$( coffe machine & 1 year of coffee) - 240AdobeCreativeCloud >0
"also: Don't go to starbucks everyday and learn to brew your coffee" -- HA! As if I could afford Starbucks as a student. I'll give you money-saving: live at home, commute to school on bicycle, pack a bag lunch :P
Right.. so when a student enters the job market, expected to know how to use the software AND when they are suppose to use it in their courses at the top of the list should be "GIMP"?
That's not at all what the comments here are referring to. Adobe not going after students and hobbyists is an economic strategy. If you exclusively use Photoshop from age 18 to 23 and get a job as a graphic designer with a firm that uses something else, you are going to push for Photoshop. For the company to buy it.
Nobody is talking about pirating software for business use, and certainly not forcing coworkers to do it.
Both the people I replied to implied that they have no choice but to pirate (first for a hobby then switcharooed to a career). I don't particularly care about Adobe's machinations and was commenting on the weak attitudes on display.
Campus computer labs have the software installed. Also, student discounts, (still not cheap). I know that's not ideal.
None of that solves the real problem of lack of competition in the space, and the resultant fact that industry uses Adobe and colleges teach what industry uses. Which makes a nice little positive feedback loop that is hard to overcome.
I just want to point out that adobe's price point is significantly more competitive with their creative cloud offering. $20/Month for students.
I get that a lot of people still won't be able to afford that, but it seems they really listened to feedback on their pricing. Considering upgrades and updates are built into that price, I'd say its a really good deal.
People act like there is some big difference between PS and GIMP. Sure, outclasses the other in quality and features, but the fundamentals of good design are the same. You're talking about differences in workflow. A person with good design skills can adapt their workflow to either software. There is no quantitative difference in the final output of either GIMP or PS. Your portfolio should speak for itself.
People in design agencies have simply no chance to work with GIMP. If they cannot open files from recent versions of PS, they cannot do their job.
I have seen this a lot. People send you files, which you can only open (properly) with a recent version of PS. They just expect that you can work with them. Same with MS Office. Same with Illustrator. Same with expensive 3D software.
I am sure, some designers would love to work with OS, but their social environment makes it too hard for them.
People in design agencies have PS, and can open anything a client sends. Once they have their source material they can work in any environment they like. Adobe makes it convenient to always "color within their lines". One thing that strikes me as ironic, is the notion that you can tell a creative person how to perform some arbitrary creative task. People send all kinds of garbage to design firms (my wife is a creative type at such a firm), including Adobe files but also including every other kind of junk you can imagine.
>Same with MS Office.
Yes, terrible people, we all have worked with them, but we don't want to emulate them.
>Same with expensive 3D software.
Good technique is good technique, skills are skills, a competent person can adapt their workflow to a new method or vehicle. A competent artist can express themselves in more than one medium.
It comes down to this, if you are constrained to a single tool made by a single vendor, you are strictly a technician (in the narrowest sense).
The problem is "experience with GIMP" looks to a potential employer like "knows nothing of value to us." The quality of someone's work tends to be less important than the overhead needed to get you up to spec. An agency can throw a rock out the window and hit a design student with, probably, an adequate portfolio and experience with PS.
YMMV of course, if they're willing to put in that effort. I know GML and Dark Basic but that's not worth much on a resume either.
Yeah, if you're trying for a mediocre job at a mediocre firm (most graduates and entry level folk) it makes it hard. You have to change the conversation away from empty buzzwords and back you your core talents, and you have to have confidence in yourself to do that successfully. There are lots of factors working against the folk in that field, large supply of average/mediocre candidates who are clueless about basic econ and accustomed to being taken advantage of.
+1 on Pixelmator. I rarely purchase software, but Pixelmator was hands down my favorite purchase. It opens Photoshop files, the color picker is great for web development (it copies the color has a HEX value with the numerical hash sign!), intuitive UI and fast!
>I cut the Adobe cord a long time ago and don't even miss it anymore.
You're clearly not a commercial designer, then. Pixelmator (while it has some interesting features) and GIMP don't even cut the mustard on the most basic level. Non-destructive editing, for instance. I wish it wasn't true, but it is.
For non-destructive editing, the new Acorn4 beats the crap out of Adobe products. Pile on layer styles/effects, re-order them and re-parameterize them on the fly with live preview.
Also you can have the same effect multiple times. For example, you could have 3 or more separate non-destructive drop shadows on one layer.
That's not correct. There are options. The alternatives aren't always as capable, or may require more work on your part, or may just not be as convenient, but there are options that would allow you to do most or all of the things that can be done without pirating the Adobe stuff.
Recognition of Adobe's tactic, and the fact that the graphic arts industries have practically made Adobe products a de facto standard certainly increases the incentive for many to simply pirate the stuff. Adobe is counting on that.
Although there's no confirmation it's their strategy, it's often postulated that Adobe know this and do it intentionally. If you have amateurs and students hooked on your software, when they become professionals they'll be proponents of the software and encourage businesses to invest.
Piracy will always be a problem for any company that makes commercial software. People who are on a tight budget will always opt for the pirated version, and crackers will always jump on Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, and every other popular software publisher whenever any of them come out with a new piece of software. The only thing any company can really do is offer features that can't be replicated in the locally run software, but for software like photoshop, that's not really practical.
Besides they are pricing for max revenue rather than max sales.
Better to sell to one professional who will pay $1000 than 10 student/hobbyists who will pay $60.
That's short-term thinking. If students don't use your products, they won't when they turn into tomorrow's professionals. Lots of successful companies have been doing this for many years. $60+ per month is way too expensive. Thankfully for them, piracy is widespread enough to ensure that GIMP's ugly interface keeps students from switching to it.
If the CC's brought in one good thing, it's motivation to finally surgically remove Bridge from PS - I eyed it with suspicion when it came and tried to make itself at home; and I'm not terribly mourning the unceremonious slitting of the umbilical cord. (I am - in short - a miserable, tribal consumer.)
I'll echo radicalbyte's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5911792) which is that Adobe doesn't care about the casual user who pirates their software. It's extremely expensive software that they would only expect professionals to pay for, and typically those designers, graphic artists, etc. at companies are not going to be pirating anything. Their companies will pay for the software, and given the choice, those professionals will pick the software they're most comfortable with. By making it pretty darn easy to get your hands on a pirated copy, Adobe is playing the long game but winning in the end as the steep learning curve keeps their users from switching.
It's not easy to pirate though. The last versions have been pretty tricky for "normal" people to successfully crack and run. Just look at the comments on any file sharing site. The majority of them are like, "i cant get this to work". People end up running an older version and not the latest.
If this was really their intended strategy they would just make a free version for students or amateurs. As it is now, they are spending a LOT of effort trying to make it harder to crack their products. And it is harder, but it's still possible.
Look at Autodesk Maya, they have a free version for students so there is absolutely no reason to pirate it.
The prospective of crackers is that all commercial software should be cracked & distributed amongst the community. It doesn't matter if it's a $20 chat client, or a $10K industrial CAD platform. Reverse engineering is a sport to them.
An uncrackable adobe copy protection is what the Gimp (d*mn that name) really needs to finally get usable.
Legions of creative students will improve upon Gimp as soon as they can no longer use Adobe for free.
Professionals already pay for Adobe.
I'm going to be pedantic for a moment to make a point later... The GIMP is essentially an inanimate object and has no needs of its own. It does not want to be used. It does not want to be popular. It does not want. It would be quite happy to be consigned to perdition, except it can't be happy at all. Let's be clear here: you want a program like GIMP that doesn't look like it time warped forward from 1993.
Which is a different matter altogether, but the main thing is that it sounds less impressive, and that you should watch out for any potential sense of entitlement to awesomer software, because you probably didn't actually pay any money or work on said software... :P
Now, some of us are a little less picky about UI and deployability in an actual or hypothetical commercial design-house workflow and the usual complaints, and are possibly a little more picky about spending money (and/or pirating software). We'll continue to happily use the GIMP for our miscellaneous photo-editing needs as such needs arise, and volunteer labor will continue to improve it.
I love how the media keeps portraying CC as an anti-piracy measure. It may be a segue to it, but unless software truly lives in the cloud this would never be the case.
It's changing the revenue stream and in a lot of cases, it's more compelling for users to switch over.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadHappens everyday.....move on.
Creative Cloud is all about forced upgrades, not cutting piracy.
InDesign .indd compatibility has consistently broken with each new CS version; with this new system, you're either going to have to subscribe or not be able to interchange files in their original, (easily) editable format with clients, other designers, etc.
If the 2nd/3rd world started to standardize on non-Adobe tools, then all the 1st world agencies that use that cheap labour could potentially start looking into those other tools, right?
People are more than happy to pay if the price/convenience is right.
ahem okay, sorry, I just get a little resentful at seeing the resources for serious academic endeavor being measured in leisure units. Seriously though, even if everyone else doesn't party their way through school, $240/yr is a fair little chunk of change to a lot of students, and is certainly well within the price range where piracy makes a lot of financial sense.
tldr: master 10k$/yr + 240$/yr ~= 10k$/yr.
also: Don't go to starbucks everyday and learn to brew your coffee . Gonna save MUCH more. (2coffee/day*2$) - 200$( coffe machine & 1 year of coffee) - 240AdobeCreativeCloud >0
Delusional excuse. You have options to do without or use an alternative.
Nobody is talking about pirating software for business use, and certainly not forcing coworkers to do it.
None of that solves the real problem of lack of competition in the space, and the resultant fact that industry uses Adobe and colleges teach what industry uses. Which makes a nice little positive feedback loop that is hard to overcome.
Why do graphic designers need to only be employees?
I get that a lot of people still won't be able to afford that, but it seems they really listened to feedback on their pricing. Considering upgrades and updates are built into that price, I'd say its a really good deal.
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/buying-guide.htm...
I cut the Adobe cord a long time ago and don't even miss it anymore.
I am sure, some designers would love to work with OS, but their social environment makes it too hard for them.
>Same with MS Office.
Yes, terrible people, we all have worked with them, but we don't want to emulate them.
>Same with expensive 3D software.
Good technique is good technique, skills are skills, a competent person can adapt their workflow to a new method or vehicle. A competent artist can express themselves in more than one medium.
It comes down to this, if you are constrained to a single tool made by a single vendor, you are strictly a technician (in the narrowest sense).
YMMV of course, if they're willing to put in that effort. I know GML and Dark Basic but that's not worth much on a resume either.
Worth the money for me.
You're clearly not a commercial designer, then. Pixelmator (while it has some interesting features) and GIMP don't even cut the mustard on the most basic level. Non-destructive editing, for instance. I wish it wasn't true, but it is.
Grandparent was specifically talking about hobby use, not commercial/professional designing:
> Photoshop is something I use a lot on a hobby basis
Also you can have the same effect multiple times. For example, you could have 3 or more separate non-destructive drop shadows on one layer.
That's not correct. There are options. The alternatives aren't always as capable, or may require more work on your part, or may just not be as convenient, but there are options that would allow you to do most or all of the things that can be done without pirating the Adobe stuff.
Recognition of Adobe's tactic, and the fact that the graphic arts industries have practically made Adobe products a de facto standard certainly increases the incentive for many to simply pirate the stuff. Adobe is counting on that.
Yeah, though I am not quite sure what MS can do about piracy in China.
Besides they are pricing for max revenue rather than max sales. Better to sell to one professional who will pay $1000 than 10 student/hobbyists who will pay $60.
Does software like Adobe's typically show increasing returns to scale though?
Exactly, they only have to support a small group of professional users.
>who will pay $1000 than 10 student/hobbyists who will pay $60
I see what you did there...
If this was really their intended strategy they would just make a free version for students or amateurs. As it is now, they are spending a LOT of effort trying to make it harder to crack their products. And it is harder, but it's still possible.
Look at Autodesk Maya, they have a free version for students so there is absolutely no reason to pirate it.
Which is a different matter altogether, but the main thing is that it sounds less impressive, and that you should watch out for any potential sense of entitlement to awesomer software, because you probably didn't actually pay any money or work on said software... :P
Now, some of us are a little less picky about UI and deployability in an actual or hypothetical commercial design-house workflow and the usual complaints, and are possibly a little more picky about spending money (and/or pirating software). We'll continue to happily use the GIMP for our miscellaneous photo-editing needs as such needs arise, and volunteer labor will continue to improve it.
It's changing the revenue stream and in a lot of cases, it's more compelling for users to switch over.