Affinity vs Lightroom? Black Friday temptation!

[Jeff S]

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Different strokes for different folks.  I probably have about $60k worth of camera gear, not including cost of computers and such, printing and framing supplies, etc etc. Ten bucks a month to edit and store my pics, get new camera/lens profiles, and continued ability to improve my prints over time?  A pittance.

 

Jeff

[hepcat]

1 hour ago, Jeff S said:

Different strokes for different folks.  I probably have about $60k worth of camera gear, not including cost of computers and such, printing and framing supplies, etc etc. Ten bucks a month to edit and store my pics, get new camera/lens profiles, and continued ability to improve my prints over time?  A pittance.

 

Jeff

A story, if you'll permit me.   I had an acquaintance who lives in a castle on the California coast near Pebble Beach.  I visited him in 1992, and found a seven-stall carriage house housing a Ferrari 308, a Lincoln Town Car, and five other high end luxury and performance cars.  In the drive of the castle was an olive-drab painted, Army surplus 1965 Chevy Malibu wagon with a large dent in one of the back doors.  I asked him what the story is on the Malibu.  His reply: "Oh it's mine.  It's the only car I have I can drive for $0.17/mile."  

That statement revolutionized the way I think about finances.   It had never occurred to me that someone who has that kind of money would be concerned about wealth preservation.   And frankly, wealth preservation is prehaps even more important than wealth acquisition for most of us.   I just did my scheduled equipment for my business insurance policy and I have about $56k in photo equipment in total also.   I have a Lumix S1 and 24-105 I bought used a couple of years ago for $1400 for the set when the body was still $2500 and the lens $1300 new.  I bought my S5 new in a set with the S 85mm f/1.8 for $1400 ($1800 for the body new and the lens alone was $599 new) when Panasonic was clearing them out for the S5II introduction.    My one luxury camera is my M10-P which I bought earlier this year for $4700, lightly used.

 My perspective, however, is that every dollar I spend on equipment or in support of my business is a dollar that is not "income."   All of my gear is in "new" condition and I maintain it that way, but I haven't spent "new" prices for any of it.    

To the issue at hand, I used LR 5.7 until the RAW converter wouldn't read the files from my Lumix S1, about five or six years.   And at subscription rates, for five years that amounts to $600 in expense.  I bought C1 three years ago for $175 on sale and I'll continue to use it until it has aged out as well.   Add another three years of subscription rates at $120 year to that since I bought C1, and that puts me ahead $785 so far...  and the $10/mo clock is still running.  And I don't consider $800 to be "a pittance."   And C1 continues to give me the performance I need to post process my files.  

Just a different perspective, I guess. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by hepcat

[Anbaric]

1 hour ago, Jeff S said:

Different strokes for different folks.

Absolutely. People should use whatever product or service they are happy with. In the case of Adobe, I am much more concerned by their refusal to activate earlier 'perpetually' licensed products (some purchased at considerable cost, like the CS Master Collections) than by their current rental scheme, which users are joining with their eyes open. The cost of keeping the activation servers going, or providing activation-free versions of the installers on request like they once did, really would be a 'pittance' for a company the size of Adobe. Online activation, a mechanism that was supposed to protect Adobe from having their software 'stolen', is now being used to take the same software away from the customers who purchased it.

[Jeff S]

Good to have choices that satisfy.

The results come down to the user anyway, just as camera gear.

Jeff

[jaapv]

11 hours ago, Anbaric said:

Absolutely. People should use whatever product or service they are happy with. In the case of Adobe, I am much more concerned by their refusal to activate earlier 'perpetually' licensed products (some purchased at considerable cost, like the CS Master Collections) than by their current rental scheme, which users are joining with their eyes open. The cost of keeping the activation servers going, or providing activation-free versions of the installers on request like they once did, really would be a 'pittance' for a company the size of Adobe. Online activation, a mechanism that was supposed to protect Adobe from having their software 'stolen', is now being used to take the same software away from the customers who purchased it.

There are still CS6 cracks around. If you bought a perpetual license, I doubt whether the use of a crack (with due care for malware and viruses) would be illegal.

[Anbaric]

4 hours ago, jaapv said:

There are still CS6 cracks around. If you bought a perpetual license, I doubt whether the use of a crack (with due care for malware and viruses) would be illegal.

I would hope it isn't illegal, but I guess it depends on the local law. In the EU, there was a recent ECJ judgement that could be interpreted as making this explictly legal:

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/eu-court-of-justice-rules-right-to-repair-includes-right-to-decompile-software.1479866/

For now, I don't think the axe has got quite as far as CS6 yet, though it's only a matter of time before it will no longer be possible to activate it via the official route.

What I really wish Adobe would do is make available activation-free installers like they did when they took the CS2 and CS3 activation servers down (they no longer provide these, and never did for later versions - there is no way to install CS4 etc. without some sort of crack). The CS2 installers are quite easy to find, including on the Wayback Machine's cache of the Adobe site, but there are significant compatibility problems with current Windows systems (Mac compatibility is long gone, of course). CS3 (or at least Photoshop / Illustrator) installs and runs well even on Windows 11, but unless you were lucky enough to get hold of the activation-free installers in the brief period when they were available by Adobe if you jumped through certain hoops, they are hard to find. Someone has put up a copy of the CS3 Design Standard activation-free installer up on the Internet Archive (I won't link to it here for obvious reasons), and this appears to match the installer I got directly from Adobe. It may be that a legitimate licence holder could legally use this copy or another from a third party to install CS3 today, but I Am Not A Lawyer.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Anbaric

[P1505]

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I just ditched Adobe in favour of DXO. Perpetual license, best RAW conversion by a mile, I can port over my LR presets, it’s way faster so I don’t need the Mac upgrade so that saves me £2100, and it uses the OS file system plus keyword system so no Library faff. It’s a lovely feeling.