update photoshop without CC fees

[wparsonsgisnet]

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It was actually feedback from an admin that solved my problem.  Many Many thanks to the admin.  What a great forum.

 

[Anbaric]

4 hours ago, plasticman said:

I think it's a more nuanced problem than you're allowing for: it's not the actual price, it's a feeling that the ability to own software has been taken away from the user.

This is now becoming true even for the so-called 'perpetual' licence products. Adobe will no longer activate a new installation of CS, CS2 or CS3. They actually have versions of the CS2 and CS3 installers that don't require online activation (these used to be available until the end of last year) but they now refuse to supply them to licensed users, even if they spent $2500 on the CS3 Master Collection. That box of installation CDs is now just landfill. Expect the same thing to happen to CS4-6 before very long.

While users of both Photoshop and Lightroom who used to buy every update of both packages may regard the rental scheme as a reasonable deal, it's a much less attractive proposition if you are only interested in Lightroom (1 year of CC costs more than the perpetual Lightroom 6 licence) or just used to buy every third version of Photoshop. Mac users in some cases had to upgrade PS to work with newer hardware or OS versions, but this hasn't really been true in the Windows world. My XP era copy of PS7 works fine under Windows 10, nearly two decades later.

People who use several of the Adobe applications are also seeing a price hike. The price of the old CS6 Design Standard collection (PS, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro) will only buy you 20 months of a full CC subscription. It's no wonder that companies like Affinity are carving out a niche here - the Black Friday pricing for their suite looks pretty attractive right now: (https://affinity.serif.com). It's a shame they don't have a replacement for Lightroom.

 

[Guest Nowhereman]

It is amazing how many background Adobe apps (called LaunchAgents and Daemons) call home and take up a lot of memory, enough to slow things down when you run Photoshop or Lightroom. A friend uses a $15 app called LaunchControl to stop these from loading and running. Although I don't like the idea of a software publisher taking charge of my computer in this way, I haven't been annoyed enough to learn what to do with LaunchAgent. But it's available for anyone who is concerned about this.

Incidentally, on the Mac, you can run ActivityMonitor and see how many of these Adobe background apps are running and how much memory they use.
________________________
Frog Leaping photobook

Edited November 24, 2020 by Nowhereman

[SrMi]

9 hours ago, pgk said:

But I pay out a minimum of £120/year to achieve nothing other that being able to use a newer OS. To me this is iniquitous regardless of the cost.

Adobe has been adding new features and support for new cameras quicker than anyone else, IMO.

[pgk]

18 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Adobe has been adding new features and support for new cameras quicker than anyone else, IMO.

And I'd pay for this IF I needed it. Like many people I don't like having to pay for things I neither need nor will use.

[Jeff S]

1 hour ago, SrMi said:

Adobe has been adding new features and support for new cameras quicker than anyone else, IMO.

Leica camera support is indeed quickest because the company partners with Adobe.

Jeff

[jaapv]

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1 hour ago, pgk said:

And I'd pay for this IF I needed it. Like many people I don't like having to pay for things I neither need nor will use.

Oh  - but there are always things that I do use, quite  a lot, mostly based on content aware technology -Not to mention the improved algorithms.

[Jeff S]

Funny how many will spend thousands on the latest and greatest camera or lens, often for modest incremental improvement, but won’t spend a relative pittance on software that continually (in my experience) offers regular improvements in image quality and operational ease.

Jeff

[jaapv]

If I compare to what I used to spend on films and prints...🙄

[Jeff S]

I still spend on print supplies, but film and darkroom supplies far exceeded my digital processing expenses, not to mention the cost to build 4 separate darkrooms over the years as I relocated. Plus I can accomplish far more creatively without all the time, effort, cleanup and chemical exposure.  Easy days now, with much lower costs. I would have bought my computer even without the photography.

Jeff

[pgk]

9 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Funny how many will spend thousands on the latest and greatest camera or lens, often for modest incremental improvement, but won’t spend a relative pittance on software that continually (in my experience) offers regular improvements in image quality and operational ease.

Its the principle of how Adobe want to charge for their software that is frustrating. I don't use 'content aware' features or a lot of others (and never have). I prefer simple processing steps and photography to digital art. CS6 does not limit me.

[wattsy]

2 hours ago, pgk said:

Its the principle of how Adobe want to charge for their software that is frustrating. I don't use 'content aware' features or a lot of others (and never have).

What is it that you actually want, Paul? I'm not being judgemental, I'm just not sure what the problem is. If Adobe went back to the old non-subscription software, a 'boxed' upgrade to the current edition of Photoshop would be about £200 and full compatibility would likely be maintained for a couple of OS upgrades, depending upon the frequency of those upgrades and where we are in the Mac OS cycle. I guess that probably works out cheaper than £10 a month but, frankly, I've been swayed by the convenience of just paying the fee and having the updates on tap. I've no idea what version of Photoshop I'm actually using or what new features it offers. I just use it in the same way I've used it since, I think, version 2, albeit with some useful new capabilities over the years (e.g. layers and the spot healing brush).

[LocalHero1953]

3 hours ago, pgk said:

Its the principle of how Adobe want to charge for their software that is frustrating. I don't use 'content aware' features or a lot of others (and never have). I prefer simple processing steps and photography to digital art. CS6 does not limit me.

Does that apply to everything else in our lives? Why are cars designed to let us drive faster than 70mph when that is illegal? Think how much of the cost of manufacture could be saved, and fuel consumption reduced if they were designed for usable performance. 

[pgk]

1 hour ago, wattsy said:

What is it that you actually want, Paul?

When I buy something I want to know that I can use it and not have to constantly pay out to ensure that I can do so. I am perfectly happy to pay for adjustments so that it will work under newer OSs (when I actually have to upgrade my computer) but CS6 really does as much as I could want it to do. I do not like having to pay out for 'enhancements' which I don't want. Imagine that I sold a photograph for hanging on the wall and when the buyer wanted to reframe it to suit new decor then a fee was payable as I insisted it needed remounting and new, better support boards. Why do we apply different criteria to software which we have bought and own.

31 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Does that apply to everything else in our lives? Why are cars designed to let us drive faster than 70mph when that is illegal? Think how much of the cost of manufacture could be saved, and fuel consumption reduced if they were designed for usable performance. 

Yes. I have no idea and in a resource hungry world it seems equally iniquitous to waste them  because we 'want' too.

[zeitz]

Paul, you don't buy software; you pay for a license to use a particular piece of software.  The vendor is under no obligation to keep the software that you licensed current or even usable; so a perpetual license is a myth because computer hardware and OSs evolve quickly even into the 3rd decade of the 21st century.  We now have the Apple Silicon M1 chip set with remarkable performance improvements;  M1 will lead to all a plethora of application upgrades, including all the Adobe products.  Consider scanner and printer drivers; how we wish Nikon would update the drivers for Coolscan scanners for even recent OSs.  Won't happen because of the perpetual license business model Nikon used.  At least you are not an Aperture user; Apple is the largest capitalized company in the world based on stock price, but Apple abandoned its Aperture users completely because they couldn't continue to make 35% profit on new Aperture licenses.  There are a lot of photo processing software vendors at this time.  I expect many of these vendors will fall by the wayside precisely because none of their first-adopter customers will buy an upgrade, or potential new customers will buy a license on e-bay, or folks will just hack into it.

Those of use who use Adobe products everyday can be confident in the long term viability of our tools because Adobe investors (stock holders) see an acceptably profitable revenue stream far into the future.

Your best option may be free open source software - Darktable and GIMP.  You can also modify the code to your own liking because you even can get source code free.  I stopped using Microsoft Office years ago, moving to Open Office.

[Luke_Miller]

I keep a perpetual license version of Photoshop 6 on my wife's PC.  It is fine for her use.  Installed when Windows XP was the OS and still runs fine under Windows 10 and all its upgrades.  I can't used it for my raw processing since its ACR version does not support any of the  cameras I now use.  If I had never upgraded cameras it would be fine. 

If I had no other choice but Photoshop 6, I would use Adobe's DNG converter to convert my camera files to Adobe DNG, which Photoshop 6 should handle fine.  Adobe DNG Converter is free and kept current with latest camera models.  So for those inclined to be thrifty there is a way to avoid the subscription costs.  Personally I use a lot of the new features in the current version.  They make much of the labor intensive tasks in Photoshop 6 easier, quicker, and with better results.  

Edited November 25, 2020 by Luke_Miller

[andybarton]

23 hours ago, plasticman said:

And one thing that I particularly hate is the constant surveillance (Adobe have several different applications that run in the background and 'phone home' at regular intervals - some of these are even memory hogs that can slow down your whole machine).

I don't even have any Adobe Apps open at the moment.

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[plasticman]

15 hours ago, jaapv said:

Oh  - but there are always things that I do use, quite  a lot, mostly based on content aware technology 

Now I'm wondering who Jaap is cloning-out of his pictures... 🤔

[Bewithabob]

I had a legacy copy of PS5. It worked just fine until Sierra OS for my MacBook Pro. 

I thought I had everything I needed to edit my digital images. Until I learned about some new color grading techniques, film emulations from DXO, impressions. From Topaz, and then, i learned the value of shooting tethered in studio. At that point I went to CaptureOne. For this, compatibility with my Mac OS is essential for fast transfers of raw images (with other camera systems)

Capture One opened my eyes.  

For the most part, I thought 90% of Photography was shooting, and while I generally feel great with my images SOOC, post production with a variety of programs has become an essential part of my workflow with a Wacom tablet. When using PS or C1 with the larger Leica, Nikon or Hasselblad digital files, editing with multiple layers requires speed in the editing program. Thus latest newer technology is only as good as the weakest link, and so I’m happily subscribed to the PS model.

I’m looking forward to enjoying all the benefits of the M1 silicon. And I hope Leica’s interface will quickly adapt.

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[jaapv]

Maybe I am professionally impaired - most of my professional software (administrative, X-Ray, etc.)  is on a subscription basis...