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Adobe Makes Products Harder to Use, More Expensive
An anonymous reader writes "This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package. It seems that Adobe has decided to go they way of Intuit's TurboTax last year and add activation to their products. Legitimate users are up in arms. For Adobe, they follow the steps of other companies, macromedia, quark (who coincidentally shipped their entire engineering offshore) in the graphics biz. Now since in theory they'll be making more money, I hope at least the price goes down (oops, it did not, looks like the upgrade price even increased)."
Perhaps if we don't update there get the hint
The EDU Price for the Suite is $399 (where I am, anyway)....so its a steal over the retail....activation or not.
Rot in Hell with this BS.
Yeah sure. I love the fact that everytime I do a disk format I have to get Microsoft's permission to reinstall my legal copy of Office, while the many people I know who just have a pirated copy can do whatever they want to.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
all the other products requiring "activation", someone will release a hack and there unbeatable, perfect scheme to get people to stop piracy will fail.
There is only 1 way to stop piracy.....
DROP THE HIGH PRICES ON SOFTWARE!
Simple enough.
Shouldn't Adobe wait until they actually steal more of Quark's XPress customers away, before they start doing the same shit Quark did to drive their customers away in the first place?
~Philly
Wow, this sounds like windows version modeling. Make each one more expensive and less convienent...
I have not used it yet, but I hear that they have kind of dummied down the Photoshop interface to make it more consumer-software-like (eg iPhoto, PhotoDeluxe). Anyone with experience with this? 'Cause if it's true, I'm sticking with 7 anyway...
Photoshop is one of the most widely warez'd things around. Plus it retails for a good $100 or more.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
"This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package.
Follow up? What follow up? I don't see any new information, rather, all I see is an editorial ranting about big ol bad Adobe. Also what the anonymous reader who submitted this apparently does not know is that Intuit apologized and removed activation from their products.
Now, for some real questions: Does anyone know if Adobe is going to require activation for large corporations or educational users? I myself am not a big fan of activation, but the thing I want to know is, why do not companies producing high dollar software not simply use hardware interlocks? They are quite effective, do not add significantly to the price of the software and with USB, they are simple as can be.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I'm glad I don't use Adobe software.
...software pirates just shrugged and mentioned that they'll continue to provide you with the Adobe software you know and love, for a price you can afford with none of the annoying activation features.
"Up in arms" must mean "I'm getting the next version on Kazaa", no doubt.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
The problem is, or was at least with TurboTax, was that the activation method they used was a little sketchy. It employed proprietary software that caused lots of headaches and strange problems. There were also concerns of the software containing spyware.
I use quark and various adobe products for DP work and I have to meet deadlines. When it's 8 pm and I have to ship files by 8:45, I can't spend time troubleshooting an installation of a product that just went haywire. I don't have time to spend 2 hours on the phone with customer support figuring out how to RE-activate. (the activiation codes in quark are roughly 40 numbers long. 40 numbers!!!. Try communicating that over the phone line with a guy in india.
My old solution: I have another computer with the same software installed. When one goes down, I drop it like and empty bic lighter and fire up the other one. No problem.
With software activation, I can't set up this failsafe without blowing my department's budget.
softare activation wankers
tcd004
Love Apple. The activation procedure is specific to the Windows version only:
Now, this is why you have got to love Slashdot. In-between all the noise, there are little gems like this that are loaded with concise information that is quite helpful.
Please mod parent up and support consumer choice for activation free software by switching to OS X.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Maybe this neverending stream of corporate BS will push people in the direction of the gimp. As time goes on it might even be cheaper for companies to pitch in and help developers improve something like this rather than deal with activation schemes etc...
> It seems that Adobe has decided to go they way of Intuit's TurboTax last year and add activation to their products.
I read somewhere recently that Intuit had issued an apology to their customers about that.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...there are a million products out there that will create pdfs. XmlPdf is a quite excellent and robust one, IMHO.
Spread the RC luvin'
Yep, it sure looks like the open season for proprietory software products that keep on distancing themselves from their users.
Will the open-source alternative fill the void ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Anyone know of any non-adobe windows pdf viewers? I've looked a bit, but I've yet to see any that don't involve cygwin
I have a problem with product activation because it puts too much control into the software publisher's hands over how I use the software I've paid for. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to need to reactivate. I want to plan my software and hardware upgrades according to *my* schedule, not some vendor's. Fortunately, some companies are already learning hard lessons about product activation. Check out this story on Intuit: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/19/technology/techinv estor/hellweg/
The company I work for bought a program called Stream Anywhere from Sonic Foundry a while back. It's great. We use it on every streaming media production that comes out of our video edit suite. But Sonic Foundry doesn't sell it anymore and they were just bought by Sony. Will Sony issue me a new activation code in the future if/when I move to a new computer? Will they even keep the key-generator around for an end-of-life product? What if I upgrade my computer in two years and I need to reactivate but they can't or won't give me a code?
We also spent $6,000 on a product to let us sync PowerPoint slides to live streaming video. When you install it and run it for the first time, it wants to connect over the internet to register. When we installed it on a different machine that we bought just for this purpose, I had to call them and talk them into letting me activate it again. This isn't an activation code -- it actually talks to their servers to activate.
What do I do if this small vendor goes out of business and I have to reinstall Windows for whatever reason? Am I just SOL? I wouldn't be able to reactivate even on the same machine because of the method they use. This isn't as much an issue with someone big like Microsoft or Adobe, but smaller companies usually follow ideas of the larger companies. I could see in a few years where everything from big commercial apps down to small shareware programs require activation.
Even with a big vendor, what's going to happen when they end-of-life the product? Will I still be able to reactivate PhotoShop CS or Windows XP several years down the road when there's a newer verison out? Or will they refuse to reactivate it and tell me I have to purchase a copy of whatever newer program they are currently selling? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the later. They have everything to gain yet the customer stands only to lose.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm writing to Abode to let them know I don't like it and won't purchase any of their products that use product activation. Most importantly, I'm going to vote with my wallet (and my company's wallet where applicable).
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
With all due respect, if I had to write the software that i use every day, i would be broke. Not all of us have time. I have to make a living. I agree, use open source when possible.
I would gladly use open-source if there were an equivelent to MOTU's MachFive and Digital Performer. While a DP equivelent exists in Audacity and something else, it is not complex enough for my work.
To tangent, every musician should get ahold of the Bosendorfer piano sample set included with MachFive. It's the most amazing thing I have ever heard.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
But even when I buy the software I still hate having to doing the activation crap. I don't even register my software, all this is doing is forcing you to do it. Users should have a freaken choice if they want to or not and I personally don't!
Thankfully I uses my Mac for work 99% of the time and don't have to deal with this yet. Sadly my PC won't be getting upgraded to the Newest version of Photoshop now.
-------- -Cap
~Bommers, Why did it have to be Bommers!?!
Although many of the free programs that compete with the Adobe products aren't 100% comparable, they do an admirable job for us folks at home. I stopped buying Adobe software with Photoshop 4, since I don't have to go to print unless you count my Epson (which is great for the home photos, but little else). Now, they've bought Cool Edit Pro (and Syntrillium software) as well, so I guess it's time to start exploring Ardour. The basic point here is... it's not going to affect me or people like me, so there isn't much of a story here... Especially considering that the best folks on /. are very much like me. Spread that free software goodness mates.
Un-news
While I admire your spirit, tying to code something as complex as Photoshop by yourself is laughable. Vox
I recently felt really good about deploying Acrobat 5.0 with a customer for in-house forms work. Basically, they had 45 people. 2 stations had Acrobat so they could make forms, everyone had the free reader, and the 10 few who needed to save or sign forms had the $50 Acrobat Approval. This worked wonderful, was affordable, and I could feel good about PDF as an "open" format.
So what happened? Acrobat 6.0 came out. Sure enough, they left out Approval. Their customer service tells me to either get Adobe Acrobat Elements (1000 licenses or more only!) or "upgrade" to Acrobat 6.0 (mind you, they have a Standard or Professional version now). So I just went from:
2x$250 + 10x$50 = $1000
to
12x$250 = $3000
That was not cool and makes me look like a dork for recommending Adobe as being somehow "more open" than, say, MS Word. To this day, they won't even say that there will be no Approval version. All I want is for them to say "we don't plan on it" so that I can just tell my customers to abandon it--they won't even do that. They just say "stay tuned to the website for the next exciting release".
This mentality makes me wonder when PDF will become a closed format.
Adobe is plummeting rapidly on my list.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
and non-legitimate users are not at all concerned because a crack for the activation system will become available quite quickly.
Good call Adobe.
from the website:
"Product activation applies only to the individual retail version of Photoshop CS for Windows...". there's no mention of the os x version. hmmm...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
This is funny, because it's making fun of how much apple stuff is talked about on slashdot. It's totally unrelated. A joke guys, get it?
(taps sword to shoulders)
Rise, Sir GIMP Pimp!
Okay, the GIMP is truly great and a credit to the Free Software community. However, the industry standard remains Photoshop. People have a lot invested into it: all their previous work is in PSD format, and they probably have all sorts of custom filters and such. Also, if you want to collaborate with others, it's much more likely that they will have and know how to use Photoshop rather than the GIMP. While it's easy to get the GIMP, it can be confusing at first (just like Photoshop) and people don't want to have to relearn everything just to work with you. In short, the GIMP is a wonderful piece of software and is gaining on Photoshop rapidly, but it just doesn't have the same position as an industry standard.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
so the only people who suffer are legitimate users.
I saw where everything XP was going that direction and decided, "I don't like this", so when it came time to replace my laptop, I bought this iBook.
Now Photoshop is the most pirated software on the face of the earth. When I was in college, EVERYONE had it. Granted my school Drury College had a good architecture school and the archies needed the program, but given the private school cost, could barely afford tution, books, and art supples, let alone even the EDU priced stuff.
Real world: we use Photoshop nearly everyday to help design web images and other artwork along with GoLive. Video editing, well we have one machine with Final Cut Pro 3, but 90% of the time we use iMovie & QT pro for importing client's movies for conversion to web.
We are still debating whether to purchase a couple dual G5's and upgrade to CS, but I don't think we will. Most of out boxes are a little of a year old and dual 1.25Ghz G4's with 1GB or 2GB of ram.
I think honestly we will wait until some more 64-bit apps, like a new version of FCP and some other tools, before we take the plundge. And this really brings it into question because if we upgrade now, then ditch these machine in say 6 months, reinstall, how much of a pain in the ass will it be to reinstall our copies of PS 6 or 7 then apply the upgrades?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Err, no.
Adobe lets you activate on two computers. In fact, most Adobe licenses allow you to use their software on a "primary" and a "secondary" computer, as long as you don't use it at the same time on both machines.
Sheesh, talk about overreacting..
Nathan
I am thinking about buying CS, mostly for the new 16-bit editing features. Even though I am running a Mac (which lacks this activation) I'm not sure I want to buy into the product knowing that activation is not far off in the distance for the Mac either. So, I'm going to check out CinePaint (formerly FilmGimp) to see how well that meets my needs.
Of course, I'll have to run CinePaint in X11 for a while as it seems a long time until an Aqua interface is planned.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Adobe probably has the most widely pirated software in the world. I mean it seems like everyone has a pirated copy of Photoshop at least.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that all those people would convert to paying customers, after all not too many people could justify the $800 price tag required, and would either find a cracked version, or move to the GIMP.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Macromedia's recently released Studio MX also uses product activation.
The RIAA, MPAA, and now software vendors are going crazy! I wouldn't hesitate to plunk down $50 for Studio MX, but $900 (or $500 for the upgrade) is just complete bunk. I don't make money on my personal web hacking. Why don't software companies get real and offer hobbyist pricing? Or even reasonable pricing across the board, there's a thought.
they've got only one master and it's wall street. steady quarter on quarter growth or your stock price gets a cap in the head. and that means senior management bonuses and stock options are in the toilet and under water. what, it's not all about senior management's compensation? you're naive. they'll put the screws to you for an upgrade at a higher price as long as they're not insanely growing their customer base. and since they're not investing in new products and the old ones do everything we need ... looks like you're screwed.
Well, you could use a front-mounted USB port and plug in the key for the app you want to use, just like the old Atari days where the programs came on cartages :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
for now. They say though that if acceptance of activation goes, it will be added to other products and platforms. So even if you buy it now and it has no activation, thats not to say a patch in six months will add it on (though, will you be forced to accept such a "patch")?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Paint Shop Pro has gotten much, much better over the years, and for the price is a passable alternative. Unfortunately last I looked Gimp was still missing features as basic as a k-line selection tool (which is odd as it has both a freehand selection tool and k-line drawing tool).
Mostly I notice Gimp lacks features that most professional photo editors have, but may not be apparent from their menus (like tool variations that only happen when you hold a control or shift key down). The problem may be that programmers often aren't graphic artists, so Gimp maybe hasn't had the same kind of user feedback a program like Photoshop has had.
Shit people, yea that's an excellent strategy. Now that you can't get their product, question its value and quality. It was the ultimate value before, wasn't it?
Not sure that it handles forms and whatnot but for basic viewing of PDF files it works great and starts faster than Acrobat. You can even set up a Postscript printer to print to a file and convert that .ps file to a .pdf yourself.
Bleh!
Product activation in my experience too often gets in the way of non-infringing use. When I buy a new computer, or a just new hard disk, I want to reformat my old hard disk and reinstall all of my software on the new one.
Most pirates won't dare use pirated software for commercial purposes. They can lose it all if caught. And most non-commercial users aren't planning to buy photoshop in the first place. In this rare case, software piracy BENEFITS THE SOFTWARE COMPANY. The result is more people know how to use photoshop when entering a commercial environment, which is when they are most likely to make a purchase. Otherwise, there are many alternative products that amatuer users can get their hands on without a high initial investment, like Paint Shop Pro eval and the Gimp, and they will prefer those alternative products in the workplace.
Existing versions are pretty good. I see no need to upgrade unless they add some great new feature that turns the entire industry upside down.
Given that the GIMP source is open, how long before someone forks a build that replicates Photoshop as closely as possible? (icons, menus, shortcuts, plugin support, etc.)
Pretty much my thoughts...
We had several users that needed Acrobat just to make "read only" forms. When more people ask, we're going with OpenOffice (just push the PDF button and poof, PDF!). Our graghics people are gettting The Gimp for Windows instead of Photoshop. Activation has nothing to do with this, it has to do with costs. Adobe is pricing themselves out of the market, and OSS strikes again.
~corporate tool, but employed~
The GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop.
No it's not. GIMP for Windows (and possibly for all platforms?) can't (won't) save as GIFs. That's a pretty big gap for a product that professes to be an alternative for Photoshop!
It is free.
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price?
The bus is cheaper than my car, but you don't see me on the bus, do you? I could wipe my ass with last week's newspaper, but I'll spring for the toilet paper instead, thanks. "Free" doesn't automatically mean "better." I could eat dirt for free, or chicken for a couple of bucks. Hmm...
With that unbeatable price, you even get the source code !
Do you think the people who buy Photoshop give a shit about the source code? Do you think they even know what "source code" is?
If there's a bug, you can do the debugging yourself.
I've been using Photoshop for several years now, and haven't found a single bug. The few days I spent fighting with the GIMP, on the other hand, it crashed several times. But hey! I've go the source code, and it was free! I can spend days and days fixing it myself, instead of earning the tousands of dollars I would otherwise have earned from the graphics I could have been designing! Surely that's worth the $900 I saved, right? Not!
Plus, if you think you wanna tweak the code to your own liking, you can do it.
Photoshop already has more features than I know how to use. I'd rather use the software as it is to create products I can sell, rather than donating my time improving a sub-standard product for free.
With photoshop, you don't get the source code.
Yah, that's a big deal. I think that's what's hindered Windows from gaining widespread adoption. The lack of source code. That must be it. Windows could've been huge, if they'd only included the source code.
Plus, if you want a legal copy, be prepared to fork over your hard earned money.
Do taxi drivers bitch about spending money on the car they use to earn their living? Do airlines consider stealing the airplanes to use to earn their revenue? Do mechanics bemoan the few hundred bucks they spend on their tools, so they can charge you $80 an hour to change your oil?
Here's a clue: when you use something that costs $n to perform services that can bring you $(n*100) per day, you don't bitch about the $n. Saving the $n isn't even a factor. The only thing that matters is how easily and quickly it allows you to perform theh tasks that earn you the dough.
You definitely don't spend your valuable time fixing bugs and making the "free", sub-standard product functional, while your customers wait patiently for you to take their orders.
Also, if you find a bug, you can't do anything about it, because you are at the mercy of Adobe.
We're up to version 7, pal. All major bugs are fixed. All minor bugs are fixed. We're in the "continuous improvement" phase now.
So why are you using Photoshop ?
Because it's stable, works, is affordable, generates money for me, has a wealth of published materials documenting it, is supported, mature, reliable, and well-known.
Download GIMP now !
Uh, no thanks. You have fun with your buggy little "free" toy. While you're busy implementing features that should already have been there and fixing bugs that never should have made it into the "stable" tree, I'll be taking care of your customers.
You won't regret it.
Spring for the professional software that lets you forget about all the meaningless things like tweaking the hundred-thousand line source code and focus on delivering what your customers want.
You won't regret it.
Stay in school, kid.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Others have mentioned Gimp as a potential alternative to Photoshop. Sodipodi is considered to be a potential alternative to Illustrator. Sodipodi also strives to be the best SVG editor around, free or commercial.
However, anyone who has used either knows that they need more work to get them up to the level of quality artists need. These projects need your help. Instead of forking out more C notes to Adobe or wasting time warezing, do something constructive.
You can make a significant contribution for as little as a few afternoon's of your time. Write a tutorial or a chapter for the GIMP Users Manual (GUM) or the Sodipodi User's Manual (SUM). Publish an article about the apps for a suitable online or print magazine. Or just teach it to some friends. If you can code, pick a bug or feature request and contribute a patch to address it. If you don't code but want to, take it as an opportunity to learn how and to be a part of the Open Source community's successes.
There is no "open source alternative" for Photoshop, After Effects, or most of the other high end Adobe products.
No, we're not talking about replacing MS Paint, Gimp does not count. These are softare packages that have millions of dollars of engineering in them, and just because you don't know about the high end, complex filters, doesn't mean they don't exist.
Go to a forum where web designers frequent, and try to find one to switch to open source anything over Photoshop. You won't find any. They'd rather pay the money and get GOOD software.
Tell me
Why'd you have to go and add product activation?
It's just gonna lead to lots of user frustration.
It's like this it'll
Be hacked 'till it's cracked and then it will be put on p 2 p
Honestly, it's not gonna stop the pirates anyway...
No, no, no.
I'm sure someone else has complained about this ad nauseum, but product activation is going to keep people from learning how to use software. When I was just getting into Web development, I installed copies of Photoshop, Illustrator and Pagemaker on my computer at home in order to learn how to use them, and don't see how I could have done so otherwise. Something tells me I am not the only person for whom this is true.
Macromedia claims you can install a copy of their software at home and at work, which should help the problem, but come on. Do we really want everyone looking to become a programmer or creative professional to have to sign up for $500 courses just to get basic familiarity with software packages?
M
An associate reviewed Adobe Acrobat version 6. She said she did not like it as well as version 5.
Sometimes in a software company, the good, creative, technically knowledgeable people leave. The company that remains is not able to continue in a competent fashion, but they don't want the customers to know that.
I know of two software companies that went out of business by releasing one bad version.
Treating ALL of your customers as though they are criminals to stop the pirates is all war, all the time. The basic thinking seems familiar. Is Adobe learning something from the U.S. government?
Of course, if Adobe REALLY wants to be self-destructive, it will invade Iraq.
If it really was worth $700+, then we'd all be paying for it.
Think about it.
If you can't see why you absolutely need Photoshop as opposed to some other tool, then you're not prepared to pay for it. And thus it's not worth $700 to you. The barrier of entry was low before, and now it is raised. It's intrinsic value is reduced, and thus people now talk smack about it (they never did agree with the price, hence the piracy).
On the flip side, if it really was WORTH $700, nobody would complain about exchanging their money for this wonderful product, because it's WORTH IT.
It's just not worth that much that you would start complaining. I think Adobe should take a hint as to why their sales forecast will not meet expectations.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Activation or not, if the software's license doesn't allow you to install on two machines, you're putting your department at more risk than just their budget. Aside from that, if the activation is properly implemented you should not have any problems at all (see Windows XP; as much as people complained, it's dead simple to reactivate XP, even if you're installing it on a different machine -- if you can't do it directly over the internet, you can do it through an automated phone system that takes less than 5 minutes without any human intervention but yours required).
However, if your applications die so often that this is a major concern, you're doing something wrong. Most likely, you have crap hardware because you skimped on it. Consider fixing the problem, rather than complaining because this might impact your band-aid efforts.
*groans*
I, for one, would welcome new jokes.
To get it off everybody's chest, whether trying to be funny or otherwise:
"All your foreign software are belong to us."
"In Soviet Russia, program activates you!"
"Paying for Photoshop: Priceless.
Paying for an upgrade: More."
"Photoshop? Nice. But does it run the GIMP?"
"<Beowulf - nuff said>"
"1. Sell product for too much.
2. Sell upgrade for more.
3. Profit.
4. ??????
5. Activation!"
And last but not least, one that seems to be gaining popularity:
"Why is this news?"
This is bigger than Adobe. What happens when the smaller vendors start using product activation and aren't so generous? What happens when those small vendors go out of business and you're left with useless software? We need to fight this now before the smaller software companies see the larger software companies doing it and jump on the bandwagon.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Hardware locks cost maybe $32 in quantity. A software company's accountants don't want to lose $32,000,000 on a million copies.
Protected USB ports are no problem. They can be inside the case.
It's true that Panther and Jaguar have no features to help out a product that's trying to add product activation - actually, I don't know that Windows XP even has a framework for that yet.
But just because the OS does not help the app writer do something, does not mean they cannot do what they like within the app. After all, they have the code - if they really want to they can have the product require the use of the internet and talk to the company to allow you to run it every time. Product activation is a less extreme example of this where if the system changes much it demands to get an OK from "Big Daddy" as it were to let you run the thing. Any app could do that, most choose not to.
So buying a mac does not necessarily protect you from product activation - though you could say that as a group, Mac users would probably be far less likely to accept activation and so they may decide it is too risky in that market. Since every user of XP by definition supports product activation (well, ok not the guys running pirated copies) it's a lot easier to just throw it into a product as you know the backlash will not be as significant a percentage of customers.
I don't like product activation from a consumer perspective of course, but to me the bigger crime is the resources it takes to develop by a company, for zero gain. Every time a company tries something like this there are always cracked copies without the protection floating around. So since activation does not really gain you anything in terms of stopping piracy why waste a companies valuable cash reserves and technical expertise on something so pointless? Instead they go to extra expense to hope that they will not drive off more than 10% of the instal base.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess my biggest problem with activation is not the activations process it self but the fact that I can't install the piece of software I bought on all the computers I own. If I buy a piece of software I should be able to use it on as many computers as I want if they are mine. I currently use Photoshop on three machines (laptop, desktop, and in VMware).
You don't see this with movies, books or other forms of media. If I buy a DVD I can watch it in as many DVD players I want with out calling th company and explaining to them how I want to watch it in a different DVD player (I hope the MPAA isn't ideas from this).
Oh-well I liked Adobe and I have in the past payed for Photoshop and it's upgrades. Adobe just put this to an end, I'll be sticking to the version I have right now.
-Mary
So I'm Joe Average user and I get home from work on a Friday to find out I've been hit by this nasty new virus. I spend a while trying to fix it, but can't. I call up my friendly neighbourhood computer shop who tells me he wants 3 figues to fix it and he tells me it may end in a format.
I decide that I can backup my stuff myself and as I have disks for all my software, this isn't too big of an issue. So I format, install windows and with a new sound card find myself on the phone dealing with product activation. That's frustrating as it's past midnight and the phone lines aren't staffed as well as they could be.
This by itself is frustrating......but imagine this is the norm....imagine I have graphical software, tax software, a few games and several apps...all paid for and all requiring activation. How happy do you think I'd be?
As long as activation isn't the norm it's not too big of an issue...more of an inconvenience....but it has the potential of being much more of a problem in the not to distant future.
(the activiation codes in quark are roughly 40 numbers long. 40 numbers!!!
What is up with long activation numbers? There are only 6 billion people in the world. That only needs 10 digits, plus maybe a check digit or two. But 40?
Are they being retarded and making their database keys have "smart" info? Are they making it hard to guess the numbers by making only one out every trillion valid? Are they counting the number of quarks in the universe?
Table-ized A.I.
And here I was, thinking they'd finally got a semblance of a clue. Well, the pricing helps anyway and I'll still end up getting it- but it had better be nothing special in terms of product activation. I've had my share of irritating pain in the ass moments with product activation already...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Subject Line Troll should take lessons from Michael. "Adobe makes products harder to Use, More Expensive," and "RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers." I'm surprised that he missed "Doubleplusgood Europeans Still Fighting Evil Corporate Software Patents." Once again, editors, if you have something to say, do it in the comments section so that it can stand on its merits rather than using your high-and-mighty status to push flamebait on everyone.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Your graphics people are going to revolt. Seriously.
...that Open Source programs like Gimp level the playing field and can give us an option. I finish college in a couple of years and i am a practising Graphic Designer, if this shit isn't sorted out i might as well go open source, there might be more than just GIMP around to let me get my job done.
Jonathanjk.com
1.- Broke student downloads Adobe.
2.- Broke student learns Adobe through college.
3.- Broke student makes a name as an Adobe artist (whink, whink!).
4.- Company hires broke student and PAYS adobe because it can afford it. Otherwise company would have kept that other obscure graphics package that never made it out of a joint venture or out of obscurity.
Did you really think Adobe would be as stupid as you to actually ignore this basic fact?
Ask Microsoft, I got a visit from a local freelance support guy, I noticed he had 1 CD with Windows 3.11, 95 AND 98 in only 1 CD! do you expect me to believe MS had no way to prevent the creation of such a CD? pleassseeeee!! they owe their whole businesses to warez!
I don't care for Adobe at all, but I rather hope this works. Making it impossible to "upgrade" without paying money isn't going to drive all those students and housewives and schoolteachers to shell out hundreds of dollars, but it might convince a few thousand to try out gimp and PSP.
By making their software harder to pirate, they are ultimately diluting their power in the graphics market. That's a good thing for everyone.
The philosophy behind DRM: Spend a dollar to save a nickel. But wait... it's not my dollar! Full speed ahead!
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
the poster danced on this brieflly but one of the issues at fault here is that it seems like adobe brought out a new version of photoshop just so it could implement product activation. the actual amount of new features in photoshop from 6 to now is so incremental its hard to justify its cost. I had people in the graphics department pissed at 7 because it switched some default keyboard layouts and hated the web implementation tools, right now I think adobe is really pushing the envelope here. The new photoshop really offers negligible upgrades and seems like its just a push for is quarterly earnings.
photoshop seems like its more and more bloatware with every release, new features that should've never been implemented in the first place and ridiculous applications to people's needs. i will never understand why people try to make webpages in PHOTOshop.
aside note to this is that the healing tool introduced in v7 is damn cool.
While we're at it let's just toss those letters of objection about European software patents and wait until we actually have software patents that are causing problems. No need to chase non-existant "what if" scenarios.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I could have sworn I posted this before, but is there a vector drawing program (preferably OSS) that comes anywhere near Illustrator?
Sodipodi is usable, but that's about it. Last time I tried figurine and sketch they were less pleasant to draw with then dog turds.
"Neque enim lex est aequior ulla, quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
adobe rectally self inserts 12 gauge shotgun loaded with slug rounds, and pull trigger repeatedly. Between Bullshit (er product) activation and the heinous crime they commited against Sklyarov, I see no reason for anyone to legally give Adobe one cent.
Warez their products or use an alternative.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Well, talking about probabilities. The US is probably ripe for a new look at the advantages of a welfare state as we've apparently moved well into, or perhaps right past, the post-industrial stage at this point.
Trust me, we'll all be better off in the long run by reducing income disparity and de-emphasizing a system in which only those with investment capital can live comfortable lives.
There is no "open source alternative" for Photoshop, After Effects, or most of the other high end Adobe products.
Not yet, but I think many people underestimate the open source movement. As Taco Cowboy pointed out, proprietary software is continually distancing itself from the end users. More and more people are turning to Open Source, and it's not going to stop because it is FREE!
There will eventually be alternatives for the products you mentioned as well as others. Eventually people are going to be sick of shelling out money for things that they can do for free.
Have you tried Linux yet?
Around Photoshop 4, yeah, I thought GIMP could become a contender against Photoshop, but the GIMP I saw 4 years ago and the GIMP I see today look a lot alike, only today's can't save to GIFS (well can now due to patents expiring). There are some high promised about GIMP 2.0, but if it still takes 16 steps with layers to Bevel text & add a drop shadow that takes about 4 mouse click in PS, what's the bloody point?
Again, nice job on that response.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Do you realy think that only "broke students" are pirating software? Grow up, Adobe, Autodesk, etc lose a crap load of money each year from people pirating their software. Please explain why they SHOULDN'T try to protect there stuff.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Just checked on my linux box, it saves them just fine. Don't know about Windows though, don't have one. Can't see why it won't on some platforms and will on others. Perhaps it has been enabled after the GIF patent expired.
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price?
That's true. However there is a large audience to whom $900 matters a lot. eg:
1. Students
2. Companies that want to purchase several licenses
3. Most of the third world
The few days I spent fighting with the GIMP, on the other hand, it crashed several times.
Never crashed on me. Maybe you used a development version? (odd minor version number ==> development version)
I'm trying to use nothing but free software.[1] I've discovered that this is very rapidly getting easier. OpenOffice improved a lot in the last year, for example; Scribus shipped a 1.0 release; Evolution is all I want in an email client; GIMP 1.3 is slick and I can't wait for it to ship as GIMP 2.0.
With free software getting better all the time, it's even worse idiocy than ever to start jacking up commercial software with "product activation" codes!
When people ask me if I have any trouble with my free software, I tell them that all software has problems, and I prefer the problems I have with the free software. I do have problems, for example, editing some documents from proprietary software; but I never have problems that my software decides it isn't authorized and won't run. And I don't have to type in long codes just to reinstall things.
On the other hand, I think there has never been a better time for dongles![2]
In the past, dongles were a pain to deal with. Now, with USB, dongles are about as convenient as a software usage restriction scheme can be. Hot-pluggable, because it's USB. Users who are out of USB ports can buy a USB hub. Someone who wants to make a hot spare system can borrow the dongle, set up the spare system, and then return the dongle to the main system.
Yes, software pirates will hack the software so it doesn't need the dongle anymore, and ship the hacked version. Just like they will hack the "product activation" version so it doesn't need to be "activated" anymore. Any software restriction scheme will only inconvenience the people who actually buy the software; the people willing to steal it will be delayed exactly long enough for one person to crack the protection, which isn't long, and then they will suffer less than the paying customers.
I think the chief attraction of "product activation" for companies like Adobe is that it will end any market in used software. They are probably hoping that companies will buy extra copies of their software, e.g. for hot spare computers. Dongles won't have these effects. (I guess you could require a company to trade in the old dongles when they buy upgrades. I'd ship the new dongles out first, however, to keep the customers happy!)
If companies like Adobe want to lock down their software, they should remember that any scheme they use has to compete with free software that just works. They had better use a scheme that is minimally painful for the users.
[1] This rule doesn't apply to games; I'll cheerfully buy a proprietary game, just as I cheerfully pay to buy a new book. With somewhat less cheer, I'll also run proprietary software to view media clips, such as movie trailers in QuickTime.
[2] "Dongle" is a slang term for a bit of hardware that needs to be plugged in to a system to authorize software to run. Story has it that this word is derived from the name of a pioneer in dongles, Don Gall.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Not only does this just make your customers irritable, it takes the crackers about 3 hours to circumvent the product activation for the warezed version.
Plus, how does this affect tech support? Company I worked for would do win-installs of everything and just let the product install the next time the person logged into their novell account...so if you install photoshop with product activation, do you have it install automatically then you have to get a tech to go set up the activation crap for the user? Kinda borks that whole automation thing.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
I think its time to get rid of M$ Office AND Adobe Abrobat.
Id just like to thank the big companies for cornering more and more clients who pay me for giving them cost effective options from the open source world! O;)
Old:
MS Office $$$$$$$$$$$
Adobe Acrobat $$$$$$$$$$$
Me: $
New:
OpenOffice.ORG (includes PDF export) $$$$$
Me: $$$$$$$$$$$$$
any questions?
I liked the software so much, I paid $70 for it as part of a "RIPkit" package, which included some SDK stuff.
When I registered, I got a serial number, much like any other software package at the time (around 1997). I punched in the number, and RIPtel responded "contacting server, registering serial number". I thought nothing of this -- I just thought I had to verify the number was legit.
A few months later, my computer crashed (stupid Win95) , and I had to reload everything. When I put RIPtel back on, I punched the serial number back in, RIPtel contact the server, and said my serial number was already in use! I contacted the vendor, and I didn't get a reply. I was screwed.
Telegrafix is now long gone, though they still hava a valid DNS record. This doesn't do me any good if I want to use RIPtel again.
Software activation is horrible, and isn't pro-customer. Vendors need to put trust and power in the hands of the customer. Sell service. Sell upgrades. Don't lock out your own customers with product activation! Learn from the past guys.
will never be used in a professional market because it refuses to cater to even the most "basic" features like CMYK. If you're doing professional print work CMYK is an absolute requirement. It is practically a science to get from the monitor to a printer in the quality that is demanded by professionals. GIMP has failed to beckon to the call. Ever. It came out before Photoshop and has failed to be anything that a professional would want to use.
Considering how badly Photoshop is pirated it doesn't shock me at all either that they've gone to product activation. Stop bitching to Adobe and start condeming people who pirate software.
I currently use GIMP and it blows. It's awkward to use for even the most basic things. And whose idea was it to hardcode a maximum brush size? Or maximum anything for that matter? This may come as a shock but 200 pixels is not enough for everyone. You cannot use a slider to define brush attributes. You need more control than that.
As soon as I get the money I'm moving to Photoshop and I don't care what kind of DRM it has. I formated my PC and had to "deal" with Office telling me I had to call MS and get a confirmation code and it wasn't a big deal.
I'm not about to yell at Adobe for protecting their assets. They've put up with rampant piracy for years. I think we can handle a little inconvienence. It's hardly their fault this is what it's come to.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Ok, usually I don't reply to my own post, but I should make a few clarifications:
1. I'm basing my crash problems on Quark 6 which I have little experience using so far. Previous versions of quark are notoriously buggy so I don't expect this one to be much better.
2. Also, I'm basing my knowledge of activation on Quark's current scheme. They only allow installation on one harddrive. (2 if you pay an extra fee for a "mobile") If that harddrive, or anything else on that machine fails, you're fucked. You can make 5 hardware changes to a system over the course of a year, but if you make 6, the software shuts down.
3. I'm also basing this reaction on my experience activating 3 copies of quark 6, not adobe.
The software has a built-in activation application that is supposed to function over the internet, BUT it doesn't function through a firewall. So, all three of my copies had to be activated by phone. This process took about 2 hours.
I was not a happy camper.
I hope Adobe does a better job at managing this process.
I should have been more clear. I only run top-notch hardware and software. I maintain and assemble it myself.
Still hardware fails. Anyone who is serious about keeping systems running builds in redundancies, if the redundancy is a cloned system, ready to boot at a moment's notice.
If a computer fails, I should be able to install the application that I ran on the dead machine onto the new one without delay. With Quark 6, I'm unable to do that without running through a drawn-out reactivation process (Ideally, in this case, they want a freaking hard copy of a form faxed to them verifying the fact you're switching installations!!!)
Based on my experience with the initial installation, quark has much to learn from microsoft in the realm of product activiation. Quark's system is a nightmare.
Again, I haven't used Adobe's system yet. I'm basing all of these comments on my experience with the quark scheme.
tcd004
This sounds like more IT arrogance to me.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
For every advertising a$$hole like you who NEEDs to kiss Adobe's a$$ and suck down Photoshop, there are a thousand or more people who just want to be able to modify some snapshots. GIMP ain't Photoshop by a long ways, but then again, there are about 3 guys who wrote most of the GIMP code, while Adobe has 300 or more supporting Photoshop (when they aren't out abusing the DMCA by suing Russian developers). Adobe is evil, and you contribute to that. Think on that one you professional a$$hole.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Activation will not stop piracy. It's a waste of money for them to develop and administrate it and it makes the product all the more attractive for the pirates to crack it. How many cracked copies of (activation required) Windows XP are running out there? Still, it doesnt bother me. Running Linux and the Gimp works well for me. I never miss a deadline :)
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
I've been scanning, then saving several >150mb (uncompressed) images as JPEGs using v7 of Photoshop. Every 15t or so image gets corrupted. When I try to open it, Photoshop complains about an invalid JPEG header. No other programs are able to open the file.
I'm not best of friends with Adobe at the moment...
The other day I wanted to convert some audio files so I went to download Cool Edit, software which I last used several years ago. Turns out that Adobe bought out Syntrillium Software and have now discontinued Cool Edit and rebranded Cool Edit Pro as Adobe Audition. Fair enough. But now this $30 piece of software costs, wait for it, $300.
I'd guess that Adobe has improved the interface and now ships the product in nice packaging with a good manual. They also include 4,500 royalty-free loops. But a 1000% price hike?!
Too many of these pro-end companies have forgotten about the concept of price correlating to value. Cool Edit Pro was worth $30. Has Adobe really made it 10 times better?
I've frequently defended Adobe over the price of Photoshop. Now I'm not so sure.
Exactly right.
Because if i want to learn lightwave (about 2000) or Maya (about 10,000 with renderfarm support) or Digital Performer (about 700) or perhaps learn them all, I can get a crappy, crippled educationl version sometimes. My alternative as a poor student, for learning these applications is pirating them. Otherwise I would never be able to learn, and later buy them. The software vendors do check to make sure companies producing things with their products have licenses. There is no way for me to learn this software without pirating it or taking a bullshit, slow-paced class at college, which also happens to cost money that I don't have.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Step 3 was Profit!!
Worked on a project where one piece of vital software had a hardware key. Software would only work in vga mode, with the laptop. So when we needed to do processing. Reboot computer into vga mode. Found a bug.
Company said they would send a new version out with a new key. We needed to send back the old key. Sent back old key smashed saying, this key does not work with our computer now. please send new software. got unkeyed software.
Work with many flexlm products.
I do not mind that the software check out licenses, if I have the option to have a license server.
But we really need an escrow service, so that when a company goes out of business, other people who relialed on them can stay in business.
No it's not. GIMP for Windows (and possibly for all platforms?) can't (won't) save as GIFs. That's a pretty big gap for a product that professes to be an alternative for Photoshop!
Gimp by default doesn't (or at least didn't) ship with the ability to save as GIF due to the GIF patent, not any technical problem and at least on Linux it was still possible to get an add on to do that.
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price?
No but I think that's a pretty small fraction of the people using Photoshop and when the rest are gone the sticker price is going to have to go way up to make up the difference.
It's called a free market economy, folks, and it's the best thing we (humans) ever invented. They can charge whatever they want for their software, and with profit being the ultimate goal of the company, whatever increases profit is ultimately justifiable. The question they have to ask themselves is, how far is too far? If they push it too far, then isn't that the best thing for their competitors? Isn't it in the interest of not only the open source alternatives, but also the other proprietary ones, for them to "go too far" in their user abuse?
Just had to point that out... this probably isn't a bad thing for anybody except those users who have already decided to only use their products no matter the cost.
You might not be able to change Adobe, but Macromedia has a web-based product activation feedback form here:
http://infopoll.net/live/surveys/s22559.htm
And the new Studio MX 2004 is also more pricey, buggy, and restrictive than Studio MX was.
-JemAm I the only person that likes the Gimp's interface? Mind you, I'm using the current development version (which, ironically hasn't crashed on me once since I installed it months ago).
It doesn't do everything Photoshop 7 does (I miss effects... how much I love effects) but aside from that it gets the job done and it's free. Given that I'm using heavy CSS and actually code sites to web standards now, I use my painting program A LOT LESS now.
But seriously... About 1 in 10 people that I know that use Photoshop actually use a legit version. Almost no one pays for it which is one of the reaosns it's become a de facto standard.
I think this is a problem with much open source software. It all tends to be written for programmers by programmers.
I'm a programmer. I use Photoshop. But that by no means implies that I fully understand how to use Photoshop. I can get around in it and do some amazing stuff with it because it's so powerful, but one of my graphics friends will use it and suddenly I feel like a 16 year old kid driving Michael Schumaker's F1 Ferrari.
Now, understand that I have no real idea which features I'm not using, much less how to begin using them at all. I know there are dozens of tools in Photoshop I've never touched, dozens that I've played with and never figured out how to use, and dozens more that I've only used in the most basic terms. How in the world would I know how to begin coding these tools into the GIMP? Even if I could figure them out, I probably wouldn't be using them in the 'right' way, and I'd probably get the interface down wrong, or worse, incorrectly duplicate (or improve upon) the tool.
The biggest problem in open source is that rather than listening to the people who would actually be using the tool (graphic artists), we sit back and say really constructive things like "but, the GIMP works just as good as Photoshop, you need to figure out how to use it" or "but you don't really need that particular tool" or "but look at all these other 31137 things you can do" or "I do more things better and quicker with GIMP than Photoshop. It's extremely powerful (to me) and extremely useful (to me)." These all sound great, but when the end user says they tried the tool and these claims don't appear to be true, we ought to be listening to them rather than dismissing the claims outright.
-------------------------------------------------
More Info...
I'm actually having a few problems following this conversation, but still figured I could drop in my two cents.
This is what a free market is about, using the product that best suits your need. RMS of course thinks that all software should be free, however most people feel that proprietary software does have it's place in the world.
So if Photoshop fills this person's needs, he is perfectly sane and reasonable to use the product. There is nothing wrong with that at all. If in the future Adobe is not meeting his goals, he will likely download the gimp to look at it again... There is no "law" in GPL software that says you have to use it.
As for the people insulting him, he states his opinions and why he made his decision. Not being able to save gifs though not a technical problem is still a reason to purchase commercial software merely to license the ability to produce gifs... There is no or was no getting around the license. It's no insult to the gimp that he doesn't choose to use it.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price? The bus is cheaper than my car, but you don't see me on the bus, do you? Spring for the professional software that lets you forget about all the meaningless things like tweaking the hundred-thousand line source code and focus on delivering what your customers want.
Sure, assuming everyone who needs to use a graphics program is up to their eyeballs in these thousand dollar contracts, then yeah, invest in your tools.
But this is like saying "There's no need for bus service since people who need transportation to work can afford a car." Some don't work. Some work but don't make enough to buy a car. Some don't want a car. Some aren't going to work. And a few actually like *being* on a bus.
Today, creating art is not the exclusive realm of professional artists, nor should it be. For many, expensive art software is simply beyond what they can justify for their modest needs. But There simply aren't a lot of alternatives to Adobe.
Without programs like Sodipodi and The GIMP, the choice wouldn't be between a car and a bus but between buying (or stealing) a car or not being able to go anywhere at all.
As to complaints about the community nature of open source development, think about it like this. Community software is like going to a potluck at your friend's house. Instead of having to pay $60 for a dinner at a restaraunt, you get the food for free, but the catch is that you're expected to bring something to share. If you like making stuff, it gives you a chance to show off your skill. A potluck may not be as convenient as a restaraunt but can be a lot more fulfilling and fun.
While I would love to see it be true, I doubt that software like Gimp, Sodipodi, Open Office, Linux, and so forth would ever completely replace proprietary alternatives. If nothing else, professionals will always need to have that edge beyond what 'the masses' can do, and will be more than willing to invest in obtaining that edge. But I think it is critical that we also have the alternatives freely available for those who can't have or don't want the dominant player.
But since Windows and Office both give you 30 days until you need to activate, your "finding yourself on the phone w/ product activation" argument falls apart. Also, in most cases you just activate over the internet which just takes mere seconds so I don't really see where the big problem is. It's not really an inconveience either.
Since so many people use photoshop, but a minuscule proportion of those actally pay for it:
/submitting bug reports on) the GIMP.
After this, there'll be a whole lot more people using (and hopefully developing for
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Two Quark stories:
1)
I work at a magazine. We go to print on fridays at 6 o'clock. One friday, the dongled machines running Quark 6 began shutting down unprovoked every 15 minutes or so, losing everything not saved. Quark was reinstalled, the OS and Quark was re-reinstalled. Same deal.
The deadline at the printers' was pushed well into the night, and eventually the editors struggled through.
The later verdict was, what made Quark think it was unlicenced was a conflict with the windows patch against the SoBig worm. We had to work this one out ourselves, no help from Quark.
2)
My uncle runs a small publishing shop. His Quark started shutting down on him at any and all times, losing whatever was on the screen.
No mystery this time -- the rotten workmanship of the Quark dongle. It was loose in the serial port, and would lose contact with the app, shutting Quark down.
Having paid good money for the pleasure of Quark ownership, he refused to download an illegal 'dongle killer' app... which would probably have been the sensible thing.
---
I'm amazed at how universally hated this application is, it's right up there with clippy and jar jar...
Take note, Adobe...
Now is the winter of our disco tent
I don't see what the big fuss about GIF is about anyway. Who needs it? Don't tell me large advertising firms use GIFs in their production. And if you're a professional Web designer, you should know damn well that PNG is a better alternative anyway (Microsloth not getting off its ass to implement transparency in IE ra ra ra, you shouldn't depend on that anyway).
That said, I agree the Gimp, as it stands, is not a viable alternative. To the extent that you can work with paths at all in the Gimp, it sucks. Brush configurability stinks. No layer effects. Utter blatant lack of shortcut keys.
That later point really makes the Gimp hard to work with, given the depth level of any useful menu items. Arguably, this depth level is needed to accommodate the paradoxical feeping creaturism from which the Gimp suffers so badly (while still lacking some vital functions -- herein lies the paradox)).
The Gimp needs some basic functionality added to it and needs to have some design decisions utterly reversed, but most of all, the UI needs an overhaul. Perhaps things would be better if the Gimp was more of a collection of libraries for which frontends could be easily developed for the different environments. GTK++ isn't bad, but the Gimp's insisting on using old versions of it makes it non-conforming and awkward.
I would love to see a Gimp with KDE-style configurable shortcuts and toolbars with an (Open)Office-style configurable menu interface.
Yes, I know, I know. I don't know a lot about programming in the wild (though I am trying to learn), but I know enough to know that the above would constitute an enormous effort. I don't believe it is unprecedented in the realm of OSS, though. We've got the kernel. We've got the desktop. We're getting there with the sound and the games. Let's get there with graphics as well.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
I sure hope they don't do anything more professional than the internal company newsletter.
I'm all in favor of open source and use it for almost every task. But the fact is that the gimp is simply not up to the job. For twiddling a few web buttons or snapshots, sure. But for correcting and preparing images for quality print work? No sir. Open source has yet to come up with a decent 2-D vector or raster graphics app and I don't see anything on the horizon. Either it's too hard or the open source developers just completely fail to grasp the requirements. Gimp, for instance, doesn't seem to fail for lack of trying. It fails for lack of "getting it."
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
We're up to version 7, pal. All major bugs are fixed. All minor bugs are fixed. We're in the "continuous improvement" phase now.
Really?
It must be cosmic rays then that keep quietly screwing up my multi-layered images then.
And they somehow know not to penetrate my computer when it's running the GIMP.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
When it happens, it's a pain. If you don't have the internet (SHOCK!) to that machine. It's the lamest copy protection since the dongle, especially since these sorts of things are only a bother to paying customers! Pirates crack and solve the issue. It's pathetic.
It does pull more machines on the net though, so there is a Machiavellian appeal to it. And don't get me wrong, companies are perfectly within their rights to use this kind of buttheaded scheme.
-pyrrho
Two words: Education pricing.
Two more words (and a mathematical symbol):
Educational pricing > State funding
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And companies that just want to hack up a couple graphics twice a year... $100 something for Paint Shop Pro is a good deal for a lot of these people...
Adobe licenses, so far, allowed the user to install the software not just on a machine, but also on a notebook (provided the twos are not used at the same time). This has always been a very good thing (and one of the reasons why I hate Macromedia licenses, not allowing this): most of us have a main workstation, plus a notebook to carry the work around.
I am now very worried about this product activation concept being embraced by Adobe. Product activation usually binds the license to a single machine. Does this mean that, basically, for notebook owners the price of Adobe software has effectively doubled? (two activations = two licenses)?
Ofcourse, one has to know what one is doing with windows, but it can be stable.
Anyone disagree??
The problem is that software is becoming an utility like gas or electricity, but the business model of the software companies business model is based in selling you the whole thing over again every 1 or 2 years ( a little more bloated each time; ok, sometimes there might be a nice new functionality... just enough to justify the price tag... Functionality delivery management I call it ;-).
What about a subscription system model for software? You pay as you go, you may but slots of time, you may pay depending on the functionalities you use, you may even buy computing power from their BIG rendering or ray tracing computer farm.
(mmmhhh.. buying processing power from other appliations users while their computers seats idle doing nothing more useful that what a heating system does more cheaply?)
If you are a person that just uses the basic functions you get the cheap price. If you need to use the more complex functionalities you pay more. If you are a student or someone that just want/needs to learn you pay less. If you do not use anything you pay nothing. Even if the software is discontinued, it should be still profitable to maintain the subscripton service running. If the company if bought/devoured by another, why kill a profit stream from those users who do not want to change to or own newer/brighter/bloater software product.
But the prices should go down quite a bit. If the prices is right people will not take the bother to look for a crack. Especially if you provide additional services and a reasonable stream of improvements and updates. If the prices are right anybod will be able to learn to use the program without problem of conscience. Problem is that managers today are trying like crazy to squeeze as much money from their product base to try to please the markets. "Hey, if we make pay all the people who use pirated copies of our software we will have more $$$ for our next quarter results!" They either do not get it that their software is sold because of all the people who were able to learn thanks to a cracked copy, or they think that their product has become such an standard that they can now crack down pirated copies and make everybody pay..., a lot of $$$. I do not think that is going to work, the legal users is in the end the one who get pissed off, the others will find a crack somehow. You risk lousing more of your paying customers in the end, and the good faith of all of them.
mmmhhh... Just an idea, what about a market driven open software development system? Weve got this ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC software but we do really need more developing power. Set up an affordable subscription based system, reward the people who helps to advance the software according to their contribution, proportionally. Software will be open source. If you wan to improve it by yourself alone, be my guest! If you are able to set up a better subscription shop, you are very much welcome!
With all the hungry software developpers on the wide world nowadays, maybe you could get enough of them to make a open software application as refined as a comercial one in a reasonable period of time.
Any takers? Yo do not need to go to India! But watch out for the hindues(indians? ;-), they are good anyway!
"What if the Marlins beat the Yankees?" They did. This time
Look at RedHat, there's nothing that says OpenSource isn't profitable. You make your dough on support/extras/contracts/etc. I think the day will come too.
For the record:
- You don't know anything about Photoshop.
- You know even less about the graphic design industry.
- You smell like shit.
Have a nice day, kid.Game... blouses.
Yo, lostbrain~ All of Adobe technical and customer service for North America is in Oregon. Also, Photoshop is probably the most pirated application out there. And yes, Product Activation is a pain for everyone except perhaps some Adobe shareholders.
The fact that Adobe is also becoming one of a long list of commercial software vendors, such as Microsoft, Macromedia, the makers of MathCad, AutoCAD, etc opting for product activation is an interesting one.
Why do they do it?
Obviously it's done to combat piracy. Although marketing departments can be extremely stupid and more than capable of ruining a good software company in ties of financial crisis, I don't think that this is an idea that comes from marketing, but one that comes from corporate financial departments as an attempt to improve the company bottom line by forcing the pirates of popular products to buy their products. They DO have a point. I've worked in a number of companies where there've been 2 bought copies of Photoshop being used by 20 or more users.
Does it work?
Yes, obviously. Most companies that were using more than their bought number of licences will pony up the money if they need the software (my last company went through the AutoCAD activation hoops, and although it left a bad taste, they went for it). All those private users who previously used pirated versions will continue to do so, and would not have paid for the software in any case.
Does it drive some users away.
On the other hand, there are definitely some companies and private users that will try to seek alternatives, as the general increase in pricing in products (AutoCAD, Express 6, Adobe CS all cost enormous sums) and users in poorer countries i.e. most of the world will in no way pay for those products (such as paying $800 for Adobe CS in Russia where the average monthly wage is somewhere around $300). Onerous licencing and problems with software quality where more attention is paid to activation than bugs in the software is partly responsible for the move to Linux in some corporations. Almost all software packages will in any case be cracked and private users will continue to use those cracks.
The irony is that the majority of previously legitimate users won't care so much, and will go along with activation IF it doesn't disrupt their workflow. It will NOT really make that much difference to the software companies' bottom line as those that paid before will continue to do so, and those that used cracks will continue to do so. Only those who used more copies than they paid for might add a couple of percentage points to software sales.
In the long run, there will probably be no difference, as the market can only sell so many copies of Adobe CS at $800 a pop. I don't think many graphics pros will consider changing now, but given two or three years there might be enough quality in the GIMP, SodiPodi (printing!!! colour synchronisation!!!) etc to start a move to them, but not now.
That said Photshop 5.5 and Illustrator 8 were IMO the pinacle of features/performance. The later versions suffer from too much feature overflow.
I worked at a game company and we were using 3D studio which used a dongle. Problem was that none of the PCs had a parallel port, well, we had them, but the IRQ was tied up in the network because you printed over the network anyway. As a game company we had a couple hackers who were able to break the protection in a couple days.
-pyrrho
Am I the only one a bit uncomfortable with that term?
Problems with that:
1) Students who actually need Photoshop (i.e., art and design students) are going to use Photoshop. Anything else in place of Photoshop is a career-limiting move.
2) The company I work for has 16 artists. We just bought a 20 seat license of the Adobe CS through our VAR. We'll make-up the entire cost in about 4-5 days. (Note this is a relatively small company). The efficiency gains from one of the new features in Illustrator will actually make us money and save us time
3) The third world is doing one of three things: i) pirating regardless ii) using older versions because of older hardware iii) having better things to worry about than computers, let alone Photoshop.
Can't find the "-1 Too Intelligent, Please Go Away" button !
Thomas Miconi-
The main reason reason that Photoshop ranks #1 is because it is the best out there, end of story. The second reason it is #1 is because of how Adobe has hooked people in the past. They have grown up using Photoshop in schools, and most likely having a pirated copy of it for their personal use. The $600 pricetag is not something the ordinary user will hand over money for.
However, when you enter the business world, the user will gladly plop down that $600 if they are a freelancer, and if its a company, its a drop in the bucket for them to purchase the licenses they need. Adobe shouldn't be worrying about getting money from the regular Joe Enduser because they most likely won't pay for it. Even if they have to use the #2 Photoshop-clone out there, they'll do it if they can get it for free, or a lot cheaper.
Adobe's getting greedy, and they'll learn the hard way that this won't do anything but cost them dollars and annoy the piss out of the legit customers, because there will ALWAYS be a cracked version out there.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
So Quark makes rotten software because it refuses to work when the dongle is not correctly inserted?
Should they come around and check whether you are capable of plugging a dongle?
What's the problem here?
jeez, if anyone out there are using photoshop 5.5 or illustrator 8 and are happy with it, let them - if the tools suffice it's throwing money and computing power out the window overshooting your needs..
Adobe is sinking rapidly with their upgrade features, nowadays the improvements are internalizations of what the best plugins already do. As for the licensing scheme, i think trends like these have a strong gravity that makes you do something just because it is what is done, without examining the consequences, and these are the early heydays of DRM. As for bug free - you can stuff it, try working with hilariously huge files and you'll see what i mean..
-By attempting the impossible we can achieve the absurd..
If you need CMYK so bad, why don't you just hack it in yourself? If the developers won't take your patch, you can fork it and call your program KimmyK draw or something.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What "we" need is to stop using PDF and start using Postscript (.ps) instead!!!!
It would help having a proper Windows based Postscript reader. The Ghost... look's and feel's terrible.
Do you want to start a new cool opensource windows project?!! Do me a Acrobat Reader like app for Postscript on Windows!!!!
The authorization interfaces with this stupid licensing server called "flexlm." I swear to God, I don't ever want to buy another product that uses this activation scheme. I'll do without. If all software vendors do this to us, I'll quit using computers. You have to have this stupid program running in the background on your machine all the time to use the software. I did a little research, and found out that this little bastard program from hell is published by Globetrotter. I little research and found that this is a division of Macrovision, the evil demon-spawn company that forced that copy protection on our TV sets. They bill themselves as "secure and flexible distribution for your product." FLEXIBLE MY ASS!!! As far as I'm concerned, they can go &@*% themselves.
I just checked Maple's web page; it looks like they don't require this anymore for a single user version of the program.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Man, if it was me, and I was in a business situation with a very very close and important deadline, and this junk pops up? I'd have that key piece of software cracked so fast it wouldn't know what hit it. The software is meant to serve ME, not the other way around. If I've got a license sitting RIGHT THERE, and I CAN'T USE IT? Crack it, not worth the time to play their silly games.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
The GIF and TIFF plugin binaries are separate downloads, at least on Windows and Debian. This was because of the LZW patents. I'm not sure how future releases handle them.
Regarding GIMP's crashiness - Linux 1.2.x version is rock solid and not even the mightiest powers known to humankind could shake its foundations, but Windows version is slightly unstable. (Not much - one or two crashes in a week, and it's usually only happening when I'm running out of disk space...)
This may come as a shock to people who do write code, I know. Not everyone who uses a computer is able to actually write or change a program. This even applies to people who might use some sort of OS or applications that would require them to compile the code before they can run it.
I'm not sure about the Linux version, but with the Windows version, you have to install a seperate plugin that allows you to save as GIFs. Not a big deal.
That said, I just decided I'd try out GIMP and see what it's like, since people are recommending it. The first thing I noticed is that it has horrid support for my Wacom tablet. I can't click on menu buttons using my stylus, and the brush looks awful when I draw with it (it draws as dots, rather than a connected line). Perhaps there's a way to fix this, but I didn't get a chance to look for one, because the whole program crashed when I tried changing my brush's blend mode.
I downloaded a so-called "stable" release, so this isn't an issue of me using a development version. I seriously cannot see any kind of professional graphics artist using this program for more than ten minutes before giving up and going back to Photoshop. I'm sorry to say I won't be recommending it to anyone, either, at least not until it's been majorly improved.
I think its great you pay for your software and you like the product you buy. What annoys me is when companies let people get away with using products for free just to increase the user base, cutting out other cheaper alturnatives which would have been tried IF people had to pay for the software. Sorry to everyone else here, but I am PRO product activiation. Irs about time people see the true price of the software they use, rather than getting a free ride. More people that try and use alturnatives the more "acceptable" it will be not to use the "professional" product.
James
Very well said! A bit harsh, mind you but the GIMP is not the replacement for PS that every zealot claims it is.
I'm not professional but my father does prepress for the likes of Pepsi on the east coast. All the shops that I've visited him at have the same set up: The latest Photoshop running on the latest Macs. There's occasionally an SGI station kicking around but he never uses it (except to play cds -- that got modded -1 Troll last time. sigh). I think they use *nix on the fileservers mostly (they were locked in a clean room at GammaOne so I couldn't look).
My rather roundabout point is that the GIMP has no place in a professional graphics house. For amateur use it may be okay to have a limited feature set and bugs (to be fair, I haven't had 1.3 crash on me at all) but not when it's costing you money. I would love for it to be a viable alternative but it isn't yet.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Futurepaint is also free. However, that said, I actually prefer its predecessor, Deskpaint, by ZedCor. But it's no longer published.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
When can you state? We need a new head of MSFT security!
I currently use my old copy of Paint Shop Pro 5, since it does everything I need in a graphics editor.
I tried GIMP for Windows since I am trying to move everything on my machine to free/open source software.
It lasted about 5 minutes before I uninstalled it. Why? Because the GUI sucked, quite frankly.
The problem with lots of these types of projects is that they are full of good intentions, and coders, but along the way they seem to forget about the GUI, the single "feature" that will make or break their product to the average user.
Now don't get me wrong - there are some excellent free/open source GUI products out there. I use OpenOffice.org exclusively and it's great (it could stand to use system fonts by default on installation on a Windows machine though). Mozilla Firebird is another great GUI.
What coders need to recognise is that to have a product that "just works" you need a lot of forethought put into the GUI before you start coding. GUI elements need to replicate default system behaviour expectations. If you code for a Windows version, use right mouse context menus. Use system fonts. Use the window model (unlike GIMP's multi-splat method!!). If you code for Linux, use hooks to allow the program to behave as the rest of the desktop does, KDE or Gnome or whichever other flavour you prefer.
Don't nest tabs. Don't saturate users with a thousand options they need to change. Don't use the registry. Allow the user to provide a custom data directory which can be stored on another drive to facilitate easy backup. Allow user settings to be exported and imported easily. Follow the KISS principle when it comes to designing your program's GUI.
Projects need to take on people who CAN'T code! You need people who are essentially clueless to coding but savvy in GUI design. Pick up a designer or two, but DON'T allow them to design gaudy non-standard buttons (see ANY recent Taiwan based interface like BIOS update programs etc!).
Keep to established standards. Keep it simple. Keep it intuitive. Then you will have programs you can show off. Until that happens you will forever remain a bit player when you could have so much more.
Visceral Psyche Films
I'm tired of these arguments, people keep saying them but it won't make them true.
Unix systems also had millions of dollars of engineering (strange measuring unit for engineering), X Window also...
Adobe doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) use secret algorithms, they have high quality standard and know how to leverage a few technological advantages to get a strong grip on the market.
Also, speaking as if Open Source or Free software was only written by hobbyists or students is a little ignorant, don't you think? Have you checked the eclipse project, for instance?
The GIMP will presumably start supporting GIF once the patent expires in the EU and Japan next year.
Wonderful. And how do you know that they won't require product activation there too? In fact, they say in their web page that they are considering activation for the Mac.
Gimp runs on windows withotu cygwin, friend if you bothered to look with those clear eyes and mind tha tyou claim you have,,
Of course I did not pay $900 to use it either..:)
so who is the wiser one?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Thats a good point. Software companies may not last forever. Even if they do when will they trash the old activation servers and force an upgrade. There are many legitimate reasons to use older software. and possibly use it over a long period of time on different platforms putting activation on adobe products is a bad idea all together. Unlike TurboTax which needs to be upgraded each year, or windows that is designed to run on one computer at a time. Adobe products could last generations and pc upgrades, if their tool has all that they need then there is no reason to upgrade. And forcing people to upgrade could hurt them in the long run. Because it may make them switch to an other companies product and never go back, because at that time they were forced to upgrade they coulnt afford the new product, or the new product doesn't do what they need. Or their new version is Crap, and if they could wait for the next release they would.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have received many emails telling me that I can buy adobe's photoshop 7.0 for just $49.95. Its a real bargain! In fact, one of my coworkers got this email, forwarded it to my boss (both are idiots btw) and got the corporate credit card number to go ahead and purchase the 'email only' photoshop for $49.95. These deals will always be around. They're totally legit, right?
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
Not that I want to defend Quark, but they are hiring programmers at their Denver facility. Also, notice that the linked article was written in April 2002, so this isn't some recent event. Quark opened their India office back in 1998, well before the bubble even started.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
cool.
Wow.....how nice of them to let me use something I purchased the way I want to.....I guess in the EULA it states that they're REALLY nice people too.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
How many of these "Photoshop BadAsses", which you claim can absorb the $n/yr with no problem, do you think there are in the world?
Don't tell me. Cause you'll lie through your f'n teeth.
Come on, get real. It's a couple hundred dollars, not a king's ransom. If a graphics shop can't manage to make more than whatever $n is every year, they obviously aren't doing much business whatsoever.
How old are you? Thirteen? Perhaps a few hundred dollars seems like a lot to you because it took you two months of mowing lawns to save up $50.
The answer is NOT NEARLY ENOUGH to put Adobe in the position it's in now.
Huh? Obviously there are "enough" people willing to pay whatever $n is to put Adobe "in the position it's in now" because how else would Adobe have earned as much money as they have?
This really has to be the most disturbing bit of information I've heard in a long time, if it happens to be true. http://www.rescueamericanjobs.org/info/amazing.htm l
Who else thinks its time the intelligent people take control of our country? I've got no problem with LEGAL immigrants, or even them working here. I do have a problem when they're only coming to replace native workers, even more so when we're bleeding from the jugular our higher level workforce. Why not replace cashiers first?
With companies offshoring all their engineering work AND screwing their customers at the same time, we are at war. The non free word, composed of MBA bean counters, "intelectual property" lawyers and other users are out to screw us all. The only answer for everyone is free software and direct service. This is a battle for survival, no mistake about it. The makers and creators of the things our former companies are selling must unite to recapture the value of their labor.
Adobe, Quark, Ituit are only small pieces of the puzzle. The larger picture includes software service to everyone. Lawyers, doctors, restaurants, manufacturers, God bless the survivors, and anyone who uses any kind of computer program. Each is a nitch waiting to be effectively served. Windoze costs $100, while a free operating system can be installed in an hour that can be billed to a home user at $50. The Gimp has been used by Hollywood to make movies such as Scooby-Doo, surely it's good enough for 90% of graphic designers. You can bill these people for set up and administration time and they too will be winners. The other 10% you can sell GPL'd modifications. Medical managment software available is the pits, expensive, insecure and clumsy. For doctors, there is GNUmed. Lawyers only need text editing. KOffice should be good enough for them, but there is also Star Office, Open Office and Correl's Word Perfect to tide them over if they need it. Of all the people in the world, they should know best about free formats. For every concievable group of computer user, there is superior and less expensive free software!
Get out there and take your money back! Fuck the people who have thrown you out onto the street. Simply sell your time and free software to people directly. When your customer needs something, make it happen. It's not as hard as it looks and it beats the hell out of some kind of second rate, no benefit shit work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The Word processor went about as far as it was going to go a few versions back. Every new version is just adding features that MOST users don't even use.
Of course if you're M$ and have a monopoly you can just say we're not supporting this anymore and you have to buy the new OS.When things fuck up as bad as M$ this is an issue because of all the time you need tech support. I have found PS to be pretty stable.
As far as the graphic editor going about as far as most users need, Photoshop is pretty much already there. Feathering graphic selections over multiple layers (now I'm just making shit up) is something that 99% of your users will never use.
The people this affects REALLY are the dedicated Adobe people who live and breathe this stuff and maybe they make enough money to justify Adobe's price.
The rest if us will just have to use Paint Shop Pro, GIMP or wait for a crack.
Agrred!
I like free software and stuff, but sometimes it's plain ridiculous...
GIMP is NOT a replacement for Photoshop.
how long until
I've personally installed Quark 6 on several (5 or 6, I guess) Macs at my place of employment. Following the initial startup of the installed program, a little window comes up asking if I want to activate over the internet or some other way. I pick "internet", and click OK. Then, a few seconds later, the product is activated and running.
:)
Those machines are all behind a firewall (Linux iptables nat, in this case). Your firewall sucks.
Adobe's online registration has been pretty good for me so far (on the same macs), except for the period where their web server was down. I expect similar performance from their registration system (if we ever upgrade, which isn't likely to happen soon).
The people in the printing industry I've met tend to believe that copying Photoshop for personal use is okay, but it should be purchased the moment it becomes one's livelihood. The reasoning is that Photoshop is a complicated software package and it takes time to master, and the only way to do that is to spend hundreds of hours in front of your computer learning it. But once it is used to make money, the software will pay for itself very quickly so at that point it is considered an investment.
Having said that, it would be interesting to know how many professionals who now own ligitimate copies of Photoshop for their business once cut their teeth on "pirated" versions. If Adobe stomps out this attitude among the printing industry, then what will happen to the number and quality of new professionals?
Maybe they figured that Windows users will be more willing to put up with the activation procedue, as demonstrated by Windows and Office XP.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
"Also, in most cases you just activate over the internet which just takes mere seconds so I don't really see where the big problem is."
Connecting to the internet without updates?
You are either very brave, or very stupid.
Putting the romance back into necromancer.
The gimp.org website no longer has this reference, though it does have an unexplained link to Pulp Fiction. Sadly, they're not in the Internet Archive, either.
Ah, just found a link on Google:
http://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/
-- My Weblog.
...and product activation is amoral. Some people will undoubtedly feel justified downloading a cracked version instead- because if they think activation prevents that, they are very stupid.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I use the GIMP on a regular basis for digital photograph manipulation. It's extremely stable. The only times I've seen the GIMP crash, it was running on Windows XP, which itself is buggy, and crashes. I also sometimes use Photoshop 6 on a Mac for a publication that I work on. When we were running OS 9, PS would frequently lock up the computers for no reason. Now that we're running OS X, it only locks up when we try to import scanned images.
While it is apparent that Apple is attempting to make a better platform for graphics editing (though at the same time taking the backwards step of sticking LCD monitors on everything), for the time being, Linux running GIMP is the most stable platform I've found for graphics work.
Badass Resumes
It probably works quite well. Its the amoralty of tying you, like a slave, to this monolith for ever. It really drives how you haven't bought any property for yourself, you have rented your soul to the greed bastards.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I am a graphics designer and had been looking into Photoshop CS. A few magazines highlighted some of the features and they seemed rather interesting. Last week I secured approval to have it purchased.
I am so completely sick of product activation in appliations that as of about 5 minutes ago, I withdrew my purchase request. Photoshop 7 is more than adequate. There is no quantity of features that would make me willing to be treated "guilty until proven innocent" by product activation (auditing).
At home I have a rule: if a product requires activation, I avoid it and find alternatives. If I must buy it, I crack my legitimate copy and run it cracked. I know it's technically in violation of the EULA, but I figure once I've paid for it, a software company has no right to peer deeper into my life. Too bad the laws aren't written that way, huh?
...get cracked programs...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I have a copy of Photoshop at school, but I don't know how to use it because I mainly do PHP/MySQL work. If someone could post a link to a site teaching how to do cool stuff with Photoshop, I would greatly appreciate it.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I understand that these companies want to prevent casual piracy but any of these activation schemes never deter piracy. The only people who end up dealing with activation problems are legitimate licensed users. What happens is legitimate users end up having to download cracked versions for convience. Look at windows XP, most people I know that use windows XP actually own legitimate copies but choose to download OEM XP ISO's so they don't have to deal with WPA.
the gimp sucks so bad... and the name, luck so much on linux, sounds totally stupid. Its kids developing for kids (at least "film gimp" changed name to "CinePaint" and suddenly got commercial donations because it didn't sound like something kids play with)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Though now you are likely to face a ton of people deriding your opinion.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If you're good with Photoshop it's difficult to not make more money than you spent on it in a year. Even a beginning designer could make enough to buy the whole suite in under a week. Plus it's deductible.
Now there's a lot of people recommending thg Gimp in this thread and if you use it and enjoy it that's fine. But feature and usability-wise there is absolutely no comparison. Yes, OSS is wonderful but the fact remains that for someone who is trying to make money using a bitmap-editing program Photoshop offers a better value propisition than the Gimp does, even though you have to pay for it. Adobe doesn't take the money they make from Photoshop and use it to pay for a factory that converts orphans and kittens and orphaed kittens into fuel oil, they improve their products continuously. There's a reason that a real alternative to Photoshop doesn't exist and it's not because Adobe is anticompetitve or anything, it's because it's really hard and really expensive to make software as good Photoshop unless you're just ripping off thier feature list as quickly as you can. One of the reasons that I don't like The Gimp is that except for Script-fu and a mess of a user interface the developers brought nothing original to the bitmap editing table and are instead content to just poorly ape the work of others. Now that's innovation, eh?
As far as activation goes, it's not that big of a deal either. Adobe is only using it on Photoshop for Windows. It's pretty obvious that it'll get cracked. They're probably just doing it to please their dumb shareholders who think that all those copies of Photoshop being used to ham-fistedly combine Domo-kun, Admiral Akbar and the Eiffel Tower at Fark will somehow magically become sales.
We're up to version 7, pal. All major bugs are fixed. All minor bugs are fixed. We're in the "continuous improvement" phase now.
Not the least of which is a new mechanism that means you'll be a slave to Adobe for as long as they stay in business. How cool.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
>It is free.
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price?
Probably not, since they are also amoral people trying to milk the moral copyright system. However if they paid a fair price, they could reduce the price of those multi million dollar adds to a more decent price.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Adobe's Creative Suite is clearly a response to Macromedia's MX Studio suite. This is further evidenced by Adobe's new pricing structure, in which indivudal products cost more than previous releases, but one gets a slightly better deal by buying the suite.
The step up in copy protection is unwelcome, although no doubt overdue from Adobe's vantage point. This is not appear to be a time for creating new (unlicensed) users, but for leveraging all-or-nothing site licenses for most of their most popular products.
For years, Adobe's copy protection scheme has been failry minimal, even in high ticket products like the UNIX version of FrameMaker+SGML. This made it easier to believe that they turned a blind eye to piracy of their (comparitively lower-priced) flagship products, especially given the prevailing theory that Adobe creates brand loyalty by tolerating college-age pirates. If one plays the devil's advocate and assumes that this theory is sound, perhaps we can interpret the new activation scheme as a sign that Adobe feels sufficiently entrenched in enough markets (or feels enough pressure from Macromedia), that it's time for a more aggressive strategy, however unpopular the change may be among users and budget planners.
Suffice it to say that Adobe's protection methods were weak compared to certain other product lines with similar price points and consumer markets.
However, what I find inexcusable is the steep upward trend of its pricing structure, especially in regards to educational licenses. My former university's art department was underfunded enough that they were almost always using development software that was one or two generations behind. This move will surely stifle upgrade possibilities even further.
I don't doubt that Adobe is in a position to make certain demands. But, speculation aside, they've long struck me as a company that doesn't seem to fully grasp the impact their products can have on the desktop. I wish they'd use their powers more wisely.
Two years ago, my company cohosted an Adobe convention of sorts. At this time, Adobe was strongly pushing Acrobat; unless I missed the point, Acrobat is supposed to universalize platform-independent shared documents. And who can create these "platform-independent" documents? Users of Windows and Mac OS!
After the last presentation, I approached an Adobe marketing rep and frankly asked why they had dropped Linux support (they'd recently dropped plans to port one or more key products to Linux). The marketing person looked very annoyed, and refused to make eye contact. Her dismissive reply was, "You have to go where the market is." To me, this answer is nothing more than short-sighted bollocks, and I'm still flabbergasted by it. My response to Adobe now is this: 'You're Adobe. You fucking MAKE the market.' They have the power, but not the foresight. Just think how much more money shops would have to spend on Adobe products if they could run them on Linux.
OK, here's the endorsement from someone who has worked with Photoshop since v 2.5 and has a MFA in Graphic Design. While I don't agree necessarily with his overall tone, his points are rather accurate. Also, I'd like to point out that while Photoshop does not come with the source code, it does come with an excellent SDK and scripting plug-in that will allow you to extend the features of Photoshop quite nicely. Putting this stuff into the source code is not the answer, adding it on through plug-ins and scripts is.
I see other posts in this thread talking about how the educational discount of $299 is a "steal." Perhaps this is true, relative to other Adobe products. But don't forget that vector drawing still necessitates Illustrator, which also costs a small fortune.
If you want a "steal," you want Paint Shop Pro. We're talking about $100 for the complete package, but a paltry $40 for upgrading users (and I found my copy of PSP7 with upgrade discount for measly $15 at Best Buy). Though the "professionals" will argue what they will (and believe me, they argue on why you should cough up hundreds more), Paint Shop has always worked for me and I can produce Photoshop-level work in it. I'd be willing to gamble that Jasc suffers less from piracy as well.
But rather than being a fanboy of Jasc products, my point is this. Adobe has to be ten times larger than Jasc is. Adobe's products are industry standards. In art circles, Adobe is a household name. So why is it, then, that Adobe charges five times as much for nearly the same program when the much smaller Jasc can get away selling it for a fraction? An economist would say supply and demand. I would say greed.
Often you hear people whine about all of the "starving artists" in the world. Ever walk into an art supply store and be dumbfounded at how much things cost? It's no wonder artists are starving. I see Photoshop in that same light. Yes it's a great program. Yes you can make awesome stuff with it. But thriftiness is also a virtue, and in that respect Photoshop is not worth the price when there are far comparable, cheaper alternatives.
What's "professional" does not immediately equate what's "best." It is merely what the majority is used to using.
"He is against COPYRIGHT on code."
And what will protect software once copyright is removed? Licenses? Good faith? Fairy and pixie dust? Yeah, contract law is going to improve the system for the better. RMS is the most short-sighted, ignorant person I know if he thinks eliminating copyright is a good idea.
My wife's a company web developer. She says The GIMP isn't there yet, so I have to take her word for it. For my use, it is more graphics software than I need. But she has two points:
1. Features. T'ain't Illustrator.
2. Standard. It's hard to justify learning another program when it isn't the industry standard. Especially when it doesn't offer superior features yet.
To her credit, I've seen her looking through the PeachPit GIMP manual, but if it wasn't for Win4Lin for Illustrator, Flash, and, to some extent, Dreamweaver, she wouldn't be running linux at home.
Parent makes a good point. Don't believe it? Well...
I once came dangerously close to losing a job over suggesting the use of GIMP.
I worked for an NPO that provides essential living services (as well as group home services) for persons suffering from Cerebral Palsy. Like many NPO's, budgetary cutbacks were always sources of stress. So, during a roundtable where we were discussing switching as many departments as possible to open source alternatives, GIMP came up. This never went beyond the meeting table, but I was summarily written up for insentivity.
And I am one of the very last "Thalidomide Children" (early 70's). For those that don't know, thalidomide caused birth defects (usually related to extremeties). Missing a hand, since birth, over here and I was severely reprimanded and nearly canned over suggesting a software title.
It may seem silly, but people put alot into a name.
----
#SickNotWeak
If you're a desktop-publishing kind of guy, you might want to try Pagestream.
http://www.grasshopperllc.com
This started life as an Amiga and Atari ST desktop publishing program, but it has since expanded to Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It is managed by a VERY small software house that has always been on the verge of bankruptcy (that's what happens when your customer base is on Amigas, and Chicken Lips goes under) but they are survivors, and over the years the core engine has gotten very good.
I just bought the Linux version. The UI stuff is still pretty buggy, but the developers are very responsive to bug reports, and they "release early, release often" so it should get very much better on a reasonably short timeframe.
The same thing happened back in the Amiga days. They released a major new version (3.0) and it was as buggy as hell, but with a lot of internet-based customer feedback, development was brisk.
BTW, if there EVER was a program to get bought out by an angel like Red Hat, and then open-sourced while keeping the main programmers on staff (OpenOffice, Mozilla) this is one of them. It really is very good. I did quite a lot of production work with it back in the day.
Give it a try!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I have Debian Woody, and can confirm that Gimp is slightly unstable, plus way too slow, for me. I don't like it at all.
Plus, there is a ton of stuff which it can't do, AFAIK. Anyone have a Mac, try out the free(beer) Futurepaint. That's a ton more powerful than GIMP, in my book, and a ton faster, too. At that, it's slower and less powerful than its $20 predecessor, DeskPaint. But you can't get Deskpaint any more.
But anyhow, my version, as it turns out, is 1.2.3. If I understand correctly, that means that Debian used a development version of GIMP in their Woody (stable) distribution.
That's asking for trouble, IMO. I'm surprised that they did that. Just my 2 cents' worth.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
chill winston...
"Teachers leave us kids alone
These stupid priced software products will never sell to a home user - never. $600 for a package that makes PDF's? Please - home users typically don't pay more than $100 for any piece of software - that's why XP Home is $100.
This will only just screw them up. Activation is a pain in the ass for one user, but downright impossible for an IT department with 1200 users. This is labor intensive, slows down roll outs and inconviences users.
Also, screwing with your home user's ability to use the software diminishes the software's acceptability in the enterprise. Users want to use the software they are comfortable with.
Again, big software misses the big picture: Most users of their producitivity/design/graphics/editing packages have jobs and home computers. They are both corporate users and home users. THEY'RE THE SAME PEOPLE!
I personally believe that if your company paid for a package at work for your PC, you should use it royalty free at home - and if your company didn't pay for it at work, you should still use it at home either for free or less than $100, as a marketing tool.
Well - screw them. Adobe isn't the only game in town. Every product they make - Ulead makes one.
You, sir, have just been bookmarked for future reading thanks to your comment ;) (especially for the game theory page)
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
When you don't have an internet connection or you're already past your "one" alotted internet activation you have to click the "use phone" button which brings you to an "enter activation code" window. There it gives you the phone number to call and I would guess they'll read you a new 40 character code to type in.
I'm sure someone already has their security scheme cracked and codes are out on the net so all you have to do is force that "enter code" window to appear and enter the cracked code and away ya go until the next time it breaks.
This is the first time "I've" encountered DRM where, as some others have said, it's actually easier to use the "crack" than it is to use the software legitimately.
Sheesh... you must be new here!
yeah gimp can't handle raster graphics !
lol.
Do you know what your saying ?
Product activation is amoral, any company doing that deserves a boycot.
Why does a company deserve a boycot for doing something amoral, "being neither moral nor immoral"?
Or their new version is Crap, and if they could wait for the next release they would.
And this does indeed happen- even with Adobe products. A long time ago, our department bought Acrobat 3, and it was good enough. Last year, we bought Acrobat 5- and it was decidedly not good. Some things were fine or about the same level, but other things, namely OCR, is complete and utter shit. So, I installed Acrobat 3 on another account on the machine and was able to go back to making OCR'd PDFs with relative ease.
There's a good chance, Adobe does not support Acrobat 3 anymore, and therefore a chance that if that product required activation, we'd be SOL if we wanted to go back on a machine.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
You're lucky. Even in this day and age, many DTP machines aren't on the internet, or they're on an internet-enabled network wihout any ports open. Newspapers, magazines, etc. Many still function this way.
I just hope quark beefs up the phone support.
So when adobe's webserver was down, what did you do? Could you use the software?
tcd004
Do they know how many art students and new graphic artists take a copy home to learn how to properly use this application that will now be limited to what they can learn in the shop? How do they think they got ahead of Quark and their like in the first place? They are not going to buy a new version, they cannot afford it. Hence the term struggling artists. I hope they enjoy a year or two without people upgrading and super low new features use. What scumbags. Casual copying was their greatest selling point. Why do they think they get recommended so often by employees? It's because they have a pirated copy at home and they liked it. Let see if GIMP gets a kick in the pants now, we need a good option.
There are alternatives, actually. Photopaint for one.
I know exactly what I'm saying. Of course it can handle raster graphics, that's what it's for. However it is not "a decent 2-D vector or raster graphics app," to the standard set by the commercial alternatives. It is a toy and a proof-of-concept and the basis for a lot of embarrassing arguments by zealots who do not do serious professional graphics work.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Adobe is only adding activation to the Windows version of Photoshop CS.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
A careful reading of some of the other messages reveals that when Quark shuts itself down, it doesn't give you the opportunity to save your work. So if you have a bad hardware dongle, you'll lose your work done from your last save on.
This appears to be unusual. I have Final Cut Pro installed on my spanking new G5 and my PowerBook G4. When I put them both on the same network, it will not allow me to use one of them. But it lets me save my work first - I'm just not allowed to use the two applications concurrently. That's fair.
I'd call Quark's approach a serious problem.
D
So adobe has to come round to check if your dongle is correctly inserted. They should also come around to save your work for you.
Advice: save your document every 5 minutes. When you do this you will never loose more than 5 minutes of work, even when adobe did not check if the dongle is inserted correctly...
Photoshop has been a farking mess since the release of version six. They changed a lot of basic things that has made it impossible for me to use Photoshop in a timely manner. I even can't do half of the things I used to do with Photoshop! Sure, I could read the ten ton manual from cover to cover again like I did eons ago. Why should I have to relearn the entire program though? Do they really think experienced users upgrade for the privelige of being total newbs again?
I feel sorry for those who depend on this bloated application's useability to make a living. Adobe did a great job of modernizing Photoshop right up to version 5.5. Then something happened. Somebody on the Adobe team said "Hey, why don't we switch around 95% of the features and put them in a place where our users can't easily find them?" The only thing saving them from disaster is Jasc's own awful GUI methodology and a lack of two or three features.
As for me, I've given up using Photoshop for much of anything but resizing and saving photos for the web. What a great tool for $500+ dollars, eh?
A machine shop owner could just find spamming the forums of their favorite magazine :-)
Excellent arguement and well put, but there is the exception that the dongle-protection-creator is exceptionally dumb and implements the same software interface in all products. Then, someone could write a rouitine that searches the executables for a function called Check_Dongle_Attached and patch it so that it always returns 1.
EDA tools us flexlm extensively - they've virtually got a lock on the market because phb's won't allow more than one kind of licensing scheme to keep up with (and run servers for). Flexlm is also priced attactively enough for software producers so that it's just under the cost for any one company to roll-their-own (~$30k). It offers good features, but security-wise, it still sucks and is regularily broken for all products that use a particular version number of flexlm.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
As things like that go, FlexLM is not all that bad. It's not so much an activation system as it is just a place to put serial numbers. You can make it support phone activation, but I haven't really ever seen it phone home or anything like that. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it does not appear to be as much of a goon as you might think.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
How is it amoral? Not too smart, sure... but amoral?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I'm not funny, you insensitive clod!
Form a group that helps develop an alternative to Photoshop, just like what happened with Film Gimp, now known as Cinepaint.
The FSF view, as I understand it, is that nothing will protect software if copyright is removed. That is, after all, the ultimate purpose of copyleft - to create an environment in which free (libre, not gratis) software flourishes.
Free software developers already operate in an environment in which copyright does not have any adverse impact on them while operating entirely within that environment (i.e the free software community). The abolition of copyright for software would just be an extension of this environment to cover all software.
You may disagree with RMS's aims, but to call him short sighted is an unfair criticism. Even those who disagree with what he is trying to do must surely agree that the GPL is a stroke of genius - the use of copyright to undermine the copyright system itself in the long term (and entirely legally too!).
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Whatever else you think about the company, or its products (XPress is not the only one... but only one with much significance), there are huge differences in bugginess between versions. 5.0 was reasonably bug-free, esp. compared to 4.x series (albeit years late), 6.0 is (from what I've heard) also fairly bug-free, due to its internals being rewritten so dev. team now had full understanding of the code. 4.0 was horrible, in comparison, and took months to get patch releases that made it usable.
As to installation and activation; yeah, that sucks. It's stupid form Q's part to make it that complicated... they are just being paranoid and greedy there. :-/
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
That's true. However there is a large audience to whom $900 matters a lot. eg:
1. Students
2. Companies that want to purchase several licenses
3. Most of the third world
A) Adobe has educational licenses (as an example you can get the entire cs suite for 300$ as a student - thats well over 5000$ worth of apps normally)
B) Adobe has volume lincensing programs
C) Yeah you got me there. But then again - where do most pirated apps come from?
Asstroll.
* GIMP, for every platform, saves GIFs.
* GIMP has several features that I've been searching for in Photoshop for years, and haven't been able to find.
* GIMP is incredibly stable.
* I've only run into one worth-mentioning GIMP bug. Ever.
* I use GIMP daily, and have never seen the source code
* Photoshop is not "Continuously Improving" -- it's just continuously getting larger and slower. I find Photoshop 6 a good deal easier to actually get work done with than 7, and I can't find any worthwhile new features anywhere.
1) This is the problem with printing biz these days (I work at a newspaper publisher). Young people don't learn what they need to do to print something well, they learn "Photoshop", or whatever the new cool program is. If someone knows how to have color reproduce correctly on a press, they will know how to do it with Photoshop/gimp/corel etc... I work with a guy that is an old hat at color printing, no computer training at all. And he can take his knowledge and apply that with photoshop or any other raster image manipulating software. 2). You are right about larger companies not caring about the initial cost. But, having to work around bugs, having ads/art print like shit far out weighs that. And, Adobe being Adobe, we always have some shitty bug to deal with on EACH upgrade. This has gone on since we starting using a mac based ad layout/art design based system. So, the initial cost isn't the barrier, its knowing Adobe produces shitty software.This is where gimp, or anyother alternative will come in. 3)who cares
... Adobe's failing to innovate. It can't come up with anything fresh and new - and it's loosing customers over it. 7.0 is my last upgrade unless something life-changing happens to the Adobe Photoshop programming team. I've pretty much switched over to the GIMP as much as I can.
Peter M. Dodge,
Chief Executive Officer,
LiquidFire Studios
Platinum Linux - www.
CMYK basic support
> Will the open-source alternative fill the void ?
./update_notes and type the news and it would be on the page. Easy.
:)
I don't think so. I do think that the open-source alternatives are almost always better for experienced computer users.
Let me give an example. Yesterday, I saw an ad for some Macromedia product that allows people to update the content on a webpage without messing with the design. Good idea. I applied the same idea to update one of my pages years ago with a simple perl script. Run
But the problem is it isn't easy for other people. They need a shiny UI that matches their point-and-drool web design tools. So I think there will always be a market for software with a solid, shiny UI and good technical support. The open-source movement doesn't seem to fufil the needs of idiots by providing this. They seem to cater to smart people that want to read to learn how to use something. Word is easier to learn than Emacs+LaTeX, but the flexibility and end-results of LaTeX are far better than the alternatives. But you have to type commands instead of clicking pretty widgets.
So my point is that people are too stupid to use open source software. And that's not a bad thing
My other car is first.
Something must be up. They are contracting with auditing firms to check up on licenses which seems rather expensive in my opinion.
They have recently decided to audit my University (the formerly largest single campus in the country) and the IT folks have required everyone to report every version of Adobe products (even the fonts!) that happen to be installed in any machine on the network..(even personal boxen) (and yes, that includes the campus-wide wireless network and laptops from home) Which I don't really get cause I believe there are university-wide agreements, edu only uses, and many students and mostly just the 'free' reader is installed.
Why does it have to be an either-or choice anyway?
Buy Photoshop *AND* use Gimp for free.
Just because I have some high-quality ketchup in my fridge at home doesn't mean I don't accept the little packet I get with my fries at McDonalds, you know.
I'm a big fan of Photoshop, and also a big fan of Gimp. I don't see this as strange, any more than I see it as strange that a person might have a car AND a bicycle. Or that I might have a $800 bike and still have a freebie beach cruiser too,
or that I keep my late model Volvo but I also keep my aircooled VW. Just because the Volvo is a better, more reliable, more expensive, etc. car, doesn't mean I shouldn't keep the VW, does it?
I get tired of people making these pointless arguments. You can either have Gimp for free, and not buy Photoshop, or you can have Gimp for free AND buy Photoshop.
For whom is this a problem, and why?
By the way,
the few graphics folks I've worked closely with, have indeed used every feature of the Photoshop software, and have expressed that they did reach it's limitations. I don't mean anything personal by that, but the way you said that you don't use every feature of PS makes it sound as if it's got everything everybody could want, ever, which is not the case.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Thanks to Adobe's jackbooted treatment of Sklyarov, I've spoken at conferences to people who would have bought Distiller and taught them how to create PDFs with Ghostscript and Ghostview.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
This story (and others in this thread) makes me think. It makes buying software ever more risky than I thought.
It might be very beneficial for free software.
I think your attitude is wrong. "the professional" explained that Gimp is not good enouph to replace Photoshop because time and convenience is money and he is right. One may wish for this to not be true but it is. You should be berating the "average joe" who pirates Photoshop instead of using the Gimp ("average joe" certainly don't need Photoshop and could do quite well with the Gimp). The user who needs to do things fast and efficiently with graphics to earn a living should not be concerned about Photshop like price tags for thier tools.
I miss the Karma Whores.
While reading an adobe PDF document, a very long one, and paging through it,page after page, after page, I suddenly noticed just how much it was like reading MICROFICH! Can you say 'OBSOLETE'? Of course you can. Adobe might be great for creating a document, but it really sucks when you have to read it. I refer you to the online 1000+ pages for MySQL in pdf. Ah, printing it all out on paper wouldn't help much would it?
Economic theory says you agree with their policy if you buy their products in sizable numbers(under capitalism: if they make money, they're right).
Hopefully, they'll realize they're wrong before they fade away fast enough to take away from the public domain whatever innovations they promised by filing their patents.
Of course, the "intent" of the law was to provide monetary incentive for people to innovate and give back to the commons. Yet intent is never protected by the laws...
However I'm sure a case would be made that the limited monopoly granted by the patent expires at some date defined by law, and "the people" owns everything at that point... Pity "the people" can't be recognized as a debtor of companies that file patents and bankrupt less than (I believe in Canada it's 17 years, except for pharmaceuticals) 17 years after filing the patent. Of course, "the people" would take money away from "the employees of the late firm" and be bad guys.
--Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of your bed of ignorance in the morning.
[adobe acrobat 6.0] ...J.Neilsen"
*slow load time
*poor searching capability
-CTRL-F
-enter value to search
-press *search*
-get results
-to find again press *new search*
-last search results disappear??
*very slow scrolling
-1 page per screen
-up/down scrolling is painful
-forcing you to use bookmarks which are not fine grained enough.
*poor use of screen real estate
-sidebar
-statusbar
-searchbar
-but difficult to turn off
*overwhelming options
-View has 16 sub options for instance
*pdf metaphor broken
-PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption
"... Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Adobe also recently bought Cool Edit, the best inexpensive audio editor out there. It's now called "Adobe Audition". They've discontinued the basic verison (Cool Edit 2000) and are now charging $300 for what use to be Cool Edit Pro.
:(
Sucks to see a big company kill a great product like that. I guess they don't want the buinss of those of us who want a good basic editor but don't want to, or can't spent the money for their overpriceds version.
Bye-bye, Cool Edit. You had a good run.
I've tried reinstalling Windows, saving to a different type of filesystem, even saving to a network share. I haven't had any other unexplained system problems. Also, the problem doesn't happen when saving in a different format.
So, no. It isn't an OS or controller problem.
Remember Corel's PhotoPaint and CorelDraw? Those two bundled together sell for half of the price of Photoshop alone.
Unfortunately, they've never really caught on. Why? Because, as this product activiation scheme shows, Adobe now has virtual control over the graphics software market, and MS did with Office, are free to pull these inconviencing tricks on their users. Perhaps it's time the users (== us) considered the price of Adobe's continued dominance, and tried out some alternatives.
And maybe we can finally stop using "photoshop" as a verb... :)
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
i'm sorry, but the main reason i know of that prevents web designers switch to The GIMP is both a reliance on win32 and the way P$ does things.
of course, the other is that attitude that you only get GOOD software if you pay money for it, i'm sorry, this simply isn't the case.
unfortunately these people get stuck in their ways...
Software Freedom Day!.
Why would they need to be "on the internet" with ports open? No one can connect to our machines, our machines connect to the registration server which then replies, over the same connection, with an activation - just like getting a web page.
:) and yeah, phone support should really be an option. I was mostly speaking to the idea that a firewall woudl prevent registration, and that, while I think the people at Quark are idiots, I don't think they would make their registration system any more difficult than "connect to web site and download activation code after uploading serial number"...
;)
That could fail, potentially, if the registration system was written with bad assuptions. It could also fail if some over-zealous network admin blocked internal access to external ports other than 80 and maybe 443, but there's almost no reason to do that, and nearly no *good* reasons to do so.
I do agree that not every machine is even capable of getting to the internet, which may have been the point,
As far as Adobe's downtime, I waited until the next day. The programs work for several days without registration. The same's true of Macromedia's stuff - they're fully-functioning demos for 30 days (identical to the download version, AFAICT), at which point the activation needs to happen. 30-day downtime is pretty unlikely in any event that won't render the ability to create flash movies moot.
$99 each for Photoshop, Macromedia MX series, Visual Studio, MacOS X, Windows XP Home, and Codewarrior is quite reasonable. This is how much they cost at my institution. Office is the most pricey of all at $199.
As time passes, the more I think warez is free promo, no matter how much they whine about loosing sales.
/. too long. That word ("loosing") is misspelled so much here that it is beginning to look correct.
I've been reading
Can anyone recommend alternative software that runs under windows, can create pdf's from scanner input, and can create pdf documents through a 'pdf printer' style interface? Easy enough on linux, but there's quite a few alternatives on the Windows side, with no real clues as to which if any are any good.
If anyone's used one of these and is happy with it, this is probably a good place to post such information.
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
Adobe should do something like Alias|Wavefront does with Maya - release a free, 90% functionality version
I don't know about free, but Adobe does sell a 90% functionality version of Photoshop for $100 for one seat. Photoshop Elements includes just about everything in Photoshop except for high-end prepress features, without watermarks. It's more than enough for photoshopping your face onto somebody elses body or photoshopping "All your base are belong to us" onto a Chick-fil-A ad. In overall capability, it's a bit above GIMP but below the full version of Photoshop.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The very fact that 80% of the people DO use IE and it doesn't render PNG's correctly is the very reason WHY I don't use them for web stuff.
I code to standards and use whatever is the most compatiable. Everything reads GIF's without a problem and Jpeg's too for Photo's. PNG's have their place in, but until MSIE renders them correctly and no major browser has issues with Gif's, I'm sticking with them.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Gimp was still missing features as basic as a k-line selection tool
What's a "k-line selection tool"? That sounds like something that would fit in a graphical program for configuring an IRC server. A quick Google query pulls up nothing relevant to the discussion of image editors.
Did you mean "polygon selection tool"? GIMP has that; it looks like a calligraphic pen with a short curve coming out of it, and the curve has a small box that vector drawing program users may recognize as a "control point." Its tooltip is "Select regions using Bezier curves", and its default hotkey is 'b'. Draw your polygon by clicking (or draw your Bezier shape by dragging from each on-curve control point to an off-curve control point), and then click inside the polygon to select its contents.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Have you ever used it? People use Photoshop because it is such an amazing program. It can do everything conceivable to a photo, and then 100 things you didn't even think of. I think you're trying to compare Photoshop to windows. Windows is being threatened by Linux, but there is nothing in the open source bin that will even come close to Photoshop. I'm an avid Photoshop user because I use it for my work and everything else I've used pales in comparison. This is not windows, this is not preinstalled on every computer where people have little choice. This is a professional graphics program that is used by people who will pay for it because they feel that it is a fair price because it is their livelihood. They will not put their neck on the line supporting an open source clone of Photoshop while it's in development.
All Adobe is trying to do is prevent the rampant piracy of their software. Photoshop is very common among warez groups because it is easy to distribute. This is not evil Microsoft DRM; this is a company that makes one of the best graphics programs protecting their investment. And users will only upgrade if this program has many new features. I've used Photoshop 5 through 7 and I haven't found too many new features, but that's because they did such a good job in earlier versions. Another reason that this is not like windows is because people aren't forced to upgrade to get rid of all the bugs, they do it solely for the new features and better designed interface. I have said this in the past and I believe it more now, if Adobe would make Photoshop for Linux, you'd see hordes of people switching overnight.
And for god sakes!! This is not FUD! People can use Photoshop on Macs too, as it was originally developed for I believe. These people are not scared that embracing an open source alternative will send a lightning bolt from the heavens. They simply look at their job, how they make their living, what is currently available, and make the decision based on that. They could care less if hobbyists want to tinker around with something like GIMP; they care about what is the best product that is currently available.
If GIMP or some other clone of Photoshop exceeds the capabilities of Photoshop, then they'd probably switch. But don't expect them to switch to GIMP now and risk their livelihood based on political correctness.
This guy is 100% correct.
I think not.
-pyrrho
I bet the crack will be out in less than a month.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
As far as I know, the only thing about PNGs that IE doesn't do properly is the transparency, and GIFs are pretty inferior in that aspect anyway. Since GIF doesn't support alpha transparency, GIFs can't be layered and still provide proper anti-aliasing.
As far as animation goes, GIFs are unfortunately the most widely supported format, but I haven't seen animated GIFs on a respectable Web site in years anyway... so I fail to see the use for GIF. JPEG, certainly, but not GIF.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
If you're a student (or teacher), you ought to be buying your software academically anyway. Photoshop 7 is around $270 academically -- still not pocket change, but much better than $900. (Macromedia offers even more of an academic discount; you can get their whole Studio MX suite for $190, versus $900.)
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Perhaps you missed this, but I need PDF forms.
PDF has an extension that appeared in 4.0 to allow you to draw forms on the PDF and automate them with JavaScript.
OpenOffice doesn't yet give me that. My other alternatives are OmniForm (had trouble there) or Ms Word.
Lesser of three evils, no?
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Another of the unusual business decisions that Adobe made was to
- acquire Framemaker
- not release it for Linux, despite Linux desktops edging out all the other Unix desktop platforms that Frame runs on.
They had a beta program which they discontinued.With their other products and with MS Word out there for Windows and Mac, giving up the Linux market when they had a reasonable product for it seems particularly screwy to me. I think the mantra of "focus, consolidate" has acquired a life of its own in Adobe's management ranks.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
We tried PNG first, and well it looked like shit in IE. When some 80%+ of the world uses IE, you can't have that.
Now I have had professional photographers that we manage sites for give me pictures for the web in PNG's, and everytime I have to go into Photoshop and convert to Jpegs in order for the file size to be managable for dial up users.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I sincerely have to wonder what said transparency looks like given GIF's said inability to do any form of anti-aliasing, but perhaps you can enlighten me with a link so I can see for myself? (Reportedly, IE's implementation does actually support most GIF-style single-transparency indexed PNGs.)
If you're worried about download size for dialup users (and good on you for that), please tell me you at least use PNGs rather than GIFs for graphics with continuous areas of single colours!
Finally and admittedly, for photos, JPEG still is king most of the time, but you can achieve good results if you know what you are doing and don't use Photoshop. For optimising PNGs, use ImageReady and/or pngcrush (regardless of the type of image you are saving/converting). Really, though, other than filesize (at least in some cases) and the appeal of having one image format to rule them all (almost, as it only covers static pixel graphics), there is much less reason to phase out JPEGs than there is to phase out GIFs.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
Why not just put a user name and password into it then?
Table-ized A.I.