Adobe's Strange Software Giveaway: Goof, Or Clever Marketing?

dryriver writes "Yesterday, Adobe put up a mysterious webpage from which its now seven-year-old CS2 line of products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Premiere and others) could be freely downloaded by anyone. The page even included valid serial numbers that will unlock the CS2 apps for anyone who wants to. This strange 'giveaways' page at Adobe.com quickly went viral on the internet after a few tech bloggers reported on it. An Adobe spokesman said initially that the CS2 downloads are for existing owners of Adobe CS2 software only, who may not be able to activate their software anymore, due to the CS2 activation servers having been shut down by Adobe. But the internet at large took this webpage as meaning 'Free Adobe CS2 Software for Everyone,' which was probably not what Adobe had in mind. It seems that at this point, hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded their 'free' CS2 products and installed them, and started using them. So Adobe is in a bit of a PR pinch now because of this — Do you tell all the thousands of people who have downloaded CS2 products in the last 48 hours that 'you cannot use these products without paying us'? Or do you accept that hundreds of thousands of people now have free access to seven year old Adobe CS2 products, and try to encourage some of them to 'upgrade to the new CS6 products'?"

Comments

If they are smart...

[DaemonDan]

They'll try to turn it into a marketing strategy, with constant reminders to update to a newer version every time you open your "free" version.

Re:If they are smart...

[pbhj]

I don't actually find a problem with that; if someone gives me a piece of free-gratis software and it has a simply click-through nag screen then that seems reasonable to me.

Surely that would be the only point to such a promotion for a corporation, give people chance to become accustomed to Adobe products and encourage them to upgrade to a paid install.

Re: If they are smart...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

their key servers are down.. do you think they even have stable code for that one?

Did you suspect that Adobe had stable code for one of their products even when they released it?

Re:If they are smart...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They'll try to turn it into a marketing strategy, with constant reminders to update to a newer version every time you open your "free" version.

I suspect that their problem is that CS2 is more than adequate for most people who haven't already upgraded to CS5 or 6(in particular, it should curb-stomp any version of "Photoshop Elements" which Adobe doesn't exactly give away...

Adobe does add some interesting features with each new revision(their software engineering people are exactly as good as you'd expect, given the sordid histories of things like Flash and Acrobat Reader; but they have some genuinely interesting machine vision/image processing people); but a lot of the core tools don't change too much, both because there isn't too much to change and because the Pro users get touchy.

It probably won't hit existing CS5/6 customers hard; but allowing free CS2 into the wild will murder 'Elements' and make upselling harder.

Re:If they are smart...

[denis-The-menace]

Activation servers only come into play with CS4 and above.

Re:If they are smart...

[cayenne8]

Dang...looks like the mac version are only pre-Intel.

Wondering if the win version would work on a mac running windows on VMWare?

Re:If they are smart...

[omnichad]

And before you say it, CS2 has hit EOL. I have no reason not to disable update checking.

The latter.

[Samantha Wright]

Adobe's creative suite has always had high piracy rates due to their high prices. Like Office, poor version compatibility and deliberately breaking file formats is standard operating procedure; otherwise no one would ever upgrade Illustrator or Photoshop, and the company would be out of business already.

Re:The latter.

[kimgkimg]

It's like what Bill Gates said:

"And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Seemed like a good move considering they're having to deal with market erosion from things like Paint.NET and GIMP.

Re:The latter.

[war4peace]

I'd say the target for Adobe isn't the regular user, and never was. The target is comprised of companies which are involved in graphical design, artists and the like. It's pretty easy to cross-check an artist's name (publicly displayed) with whether they have bought an Adobe license and then engage them to see how can they go legal in case they are using Adobe products.
My gut feeling is that Adobe messed up. It wasn't intentional.

Re:The latter.

[AmiMoJo]

Even if I had the money to burn I wouldn't install it because of the terrible system-invading DRM. Another case of the Pirate Bay version being better quality than the official release.

Re:The latter.

[Samantha Wright]

This is more of a problem with Illustrator than Photoshop, admittedly. There were at least two versions in a row (CS3 and CS4) that would smash object groups into clipping areas simply because the document's version number was newer. Although I've also seen Photoshop do some weedy things with text layers.

Re:The latter.

[Samantha Wright]

I think it was CS4 (or maybe CS5?) when Adobe added progress bars for every possible operation. That was pretty welcome from my perspective when it comes to working with really large or complex documents, although CS4 also stamped out any semblance of a standard UI and replaced everything with its weird hybrid iTunes-menu-titlebar/Vista nonsense. CS6 has finally made this new UI at least usable (you can adjust its brightness), although bizarrely Illustrator CS5 supported that, too, revealing how fractured the Adobe development teams really are when you get under the hood.

Re:The latter.

[Samantha Wright]

Valid point. I've seen evidence that some new versions of SecuROM in EA games will actually block access to the Pirate Bay when installed. That kind of reasoning makes it incredibly difficult to trust and support game makers who accept such malicious publishers.

Re:The latter.

[tverbeek]

"It's pretty easy to cross-check an artist's name (publicly displayed) with whether they have bought an Adobe license and then engage them to see how can they go legal in case they are using Adobe products."

You're assuming that licenses are registered using the same name the artist uses professionally. A freelancer might use the name of the LLC that they formed for tax/liability purposes. The non-creative tech guy for a large firm might put his own name in. For that matter, you're assuming that artists consistently have their name legibly attached to all of their published work; if it's freelance work-for-hire (a huge portion of Adobe's user base), that's actually pretty unlikely.

Re:The latter.

[X0563511]

I'd prefer the DRM over the trojan(s).

Re:The latter.

[tibit]

It's "horrible" only because you're not used to it. That's all, IMHO.

Re:The latter.

[History's Coming To]

Much of GIMP is a GUI for ImageMagick anyway.

Got to love ImageMagick, there's nothing funnier than confusing a "creative" with their MacbookAir by batch editing a folder full of images via SSH on a mobile phone, they just can't grasp what's going on.

Re:The latter.

[gamanimatron]

I did. Immediately. My professional use of paint and page layout programs is now limited enough that CS2 does everything I need and most of what I want, and there's no way I could justify the outlay for CS6 or their cloud service. Heck, I used PS CS2 for pro photography work for a couple of years. It might be seven-year-old software, but it's still miles better than anything else you can get for less than a few hundred bucks even today.

Re:The latter.

[Brett Buck]

the only good thing about GIMP is that it's free. Otherwise it's torturous to use. No way is it a real competition to photoshop (which is slightly less torturous) Yes, I know I could go in and help fix it but my first step would be to delete all the code.

        Brett

Re:The latter.

[nyctopterus]

Yeah, take that people with a different skill set!

Re:The latter.

[Billly Gates]

You have $400 left at the end of the month? Spread some of that wealth around...

I wish as of recent. Some of us simply do not make $70k a year who can buy such things. I have seen posters on slashdot where they laugh at those offering just 60k a year and wonder how are they going to survive?!

Apparently, they got in during 1999 and not in 2009 where most computer science graduates make $12/hr out of school and feel lucky to ahve a job and still live at home. The disconnect is huge right now between these groups. Traditionally it was the college vs non college educated adults ... but this is offtopic.

$700 is too expensive for anyone unless they own a business and make good cash. That was the point.

Goof.

[Bieeanda]

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4974662#4974662

It's 'free' for people with currently active subscriptions to the product, not every Tom, Dale, and Hates the Gimp, alas.

Re:Goof.

[omnichad]

From the EULA:
"2. Software License. If you obtained the Software from Adobe or one of its authorized licensees and as long as you comply with the terms of this agreement, Adobe grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in the manner and for the purposes described in the Documentation, as further set forth below."

There was an official Adobe download page that also lists all the serial numbers, and makes no mention of any other terms on that page. I'd say that satisfies the above term.

And now, you don't even need an Adobe ID to download - they've since removed even that restriction.

Re:Goof.

[LordLimecat]

Except that they have official statements on the forum stating that you are NOT legally entitled to use the software unless you had previously purchased it from them.

"found a download on their site" isnt "obtained a license".

Re:Goof.

[TheTerseOne]

"found a download on their site" isnt "obtained a license".

But "Found a download on their site with a valid license displayed right next to it" is.

Re:Goof.

[jonnythan]

It clearly says "Adobe grants you a license" "if you obtained the software from Adobe."

You are literally granted a license by virtue of the fact that you got the software from Adobe and plan to use it in accordance to the EULA.

Reality check

[mwvdlee]

Millions of people are already illegally using more recent versions of the CS suite.

Adobe knows damn well what it's doing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe has been used practically as a case study of the side-effects of piracy to ensure their lock-in. Students pirate Photoshop/CS because they can't afford it, and when they get into the workforce employers suddenly have legions of employees who know how to use Photoshop/CS, making it an attractive choice for licensing because nobody has to be trained. Thus Photoshop/CS continues its reign as the de facto standard, and Adobe gets to set their rates to target the businesses with money without having to worry about the hobbyist market (which is notoriously fickle on legal purchasing of software anyway).

The higher-ups (or the middle-ups) probably saw that the time was right to spike that userbase a bit, that's all.

Re:Adobe knows damn well what it's doing.

[kelemvor4]

Adobe has been used practically as a case study of the side-effects of piracy to ensure their lock-in. Students pirate Photoshop/CS because they can't afford it, and when they get into the workforce employers suddenly have legions of employees who know how to use Photoshop/CS, making it an attractive choice for licensing because nobody has to be trained. Thus Photoshop/CS continues its reign as the de facto standard, and Adobe gets to set their rates to target the businesses with money without having to worry about the hobbyist market (which is notoriously fickle on legal purchasing of software anyway).

The higher-ups (or the middle-ups) probably saw that the time was right to spike that userbase a bit, that's all.

The fact that adobe's products are usually superior to their competition (such as GIMP or paint.net vs photoshop) has nothing to do with it, right?

If your theory were correct, then Pro Tools would not rule the audio world - Adobe Audition or some other free or less expensive software would. Pro Tools has much greater copy protection mechanisms and is not frequently pirated while (as you have pointed out) CS is. Yet somehow Pro Tools is still the de facto standard. If you search for comparisons of the two you will find many comments from professionals even indicating that protools is inferior yet is the one to use. Just as photoshop is a de facto standard for image editing despite high prices, so is Pro Tools for audio. In both cases I would submit that it is because each was vastly superior to their competition for a very long time. In both cases, as time has gone on the competing software has come close to matching the capabilities of the leader.

My point is that your assertion that Adobe leads image editing due to high rates of piracy is not accurate. There are other far more obvious reasons for things to be the way they are.

Cheers to adobe for supporting customers who previously paid for a product and still want to use it rather than forcing those customers to upgrade. Other software firms could take a lesson in this regard.

Not on modern Macs

[jtseng]

It's made for PowerPC Macs, so the rest of us using Intel Macs are out of luck. :(

Re:Uhhhh....

[thirdender]

+1 VMs. Also, Wine has pretty decent support for Photoshop CS2.

Windows 7 64bit

[ciderbrew]

Preempting my install fun when I get home I looked this up. I post here to help the lazy. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/windows-7-is-not-compatible-with-adobe-photoshop/6f1b4955-7166-4b8f-ad9b-5d19150f803f

Re:Windows 7 64bit

[omnichad]

Ignore that - it only takes a little effort to get it working.

Re:So do they work or not?

[omnichad]

They turned off the activation servers, and had to release an activation-free copy of the software to continue supporting original purchasers of CS2. The proper thing to do. It's just that they accidentally made the download links available to everyone.

Simple Marketing gimmick

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was a real problem, they would have at least pulled the download links. However, a day later, you can still download everything. Obviously, not a mistake.

How will this affect the industry?

[dhalsim2]

I've been following the events closely and was trying to figure out how this will affect the industry. What has gone down is clearly a goof, not a marketing plan. Some say that it will help sales of CS5/6; others say it will hurt them. My best estimate is that the net effect on CS5/6 sales will be close to zero. However, as parent stated, if Adobe doesn't walk back their "permission" to use CS2, they have effectively killed off Elements. PS has the much higher price tag, but I'm sure that Adobe makes much more money off of Elements due to volume.

Elements: dead
Paint.net: dead
GIMP: dead on Windows
any other photo-editing software already struggling to survive: dead

Aside from PS, the other big release was Acrobat 8 Pro. This is really bad for Adobe, too, as there are no free, _usable_ tools for creating PDFs. Acrobat 8 Pro has everything most people would need to create PDFs, so this particular goof will definitely hurts sales of the modern version.

Adobe is between a rock and a hard spot: kill major sources of revenue or take on a PR nightmare. If I were them, I think I'd take on the PR nightmare instead of losing Elements and Acrobat. Let's see how this plays out.

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[filthpickle]

I think that the niche that Paint.net fills is still there...even if PS cs2 is free (still up in the air). I could have warez'd photoshop whenever I wanted before this...it just wasn't worth it. Paint.net does everything I need a photo editor to do. I am sure there are plenty of people that it doesn't work for...I am also sure that there are plenty that are the same as I am.

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[tibit]

Paint.net and GIMP dead? HUH?

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most recent GIMP release lacks important high-end photography features that even ancient CS2 has: native high bit depths, layer groups, and proper blending modes. Full GEGL support will bring these features to GIMP 2.10, but GIMP developers have a habit of rarely communicating their release schedules to the public, and also a habit of missing release dates. I'd be very surprised if 2.10 is released this year.

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[UnknownSoldier]

> The most recent GIMP release lacks important high-end photography features that even ancient CS2 has:

I concur 100%! I have a .PSD file I created back in ~2006 and sadly GIMP 2.8 _still_ can't open it properly. Every year it gets a little closer though!

GIMP 2.8 is still incomplete / broken WRT:

* nested layer groups is partially broken - doesn't show Layer Effects as sub-groups
* no native Layer Styles (FX Blend Modes) - they still don't properly work when loading a .PSD file that uses them
    see: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-789ba.html
* no native option to set the default hotkeys to Photoshop
* stupid English name

Note: While GIMP has a layer blend modes that PS lacks, namely: Subtraction, Grain Merge, Grain Extract, Value) that is not the same as the Layer Styles.

Basically this page lists all the ways that GIMP functionality is lacking compared to PS.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/03/8-handy-tweaks-to-make-gimp-replace-photoshop/

The fact that you GIMP doesn't work out-of-the-box the same way PS does and you need half a dozen plugins to get the equivalent functionality already built into PS CS2 tells me that GIMP is still immature.

Hoping one day GIMP will become a viable PS replacement.

References:
Blending Modes supported in PS and GIMP
* http://emptyeasel.com/2008/10/31/explaining-blending-modes-in-photoshop-and-gimp-multiply-divide-overlay-screen/

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[Dins]

I just downloaded and installed Photoshop from the link with TFA and it works fine on win 7 x64.

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for fuck's sake. How many times will this need to be explained to the slow of thinking? The problem with GIMP is that it lacks features that are absolutely vital to professional graphic designers and professional photographers. It's not about the the GUI. It's not about keyboard commands. It's not about the host OS. It's about the basic goddamned feature set and how it works under the hood .

I'm an open source fanboy. I grew up on Linux. I run Slackware as my main desktop OS and compile my own packages, for preference. But when it comes to my photography, GIMP is not an acceptable substitute for Photoshop. Until GIMP has those vital and basic features, I'm going to stick with Windows and my education-licensed copy of Photoshop.

Re:How will this affect the industry?

[Cederic]

The problem with GIMP is that it lacks features that are absolutely vital to professional graphic designers and professional photographers.

Which is why many professional photographers use Adobe Lightroom. It's better than Photoshop for most photo post-processing activities, including the stuff you do to 90% of your photos as a matter of course.

I have GIMP and Paint.NET and I've used Photoshop and there's only a couple of things that I can't do in Lightroom that I'd want to do. Contrast masking was one, but Lightroom v4.x removed the need for that (with its excellent highlight/shadow sliders) and the other is HDR - which you can acquire far cheaper software than Photoshop to do for you, or use the layers and transparency masks within any of the three products to achieve manually.

I almost never need HDR though, and even when I do I rarely have a tripod available so it's just not worth paying money for.

A lot of professional photographers do have and use Photoshop, but a wedding photographer just wont have the time to go through 2000 images in Photoshop. It's not designed for that sort of workload.

Photoshop basically adds some very nice tools to do photo patching (which is a more manual and less seamless task in Lightroom) and proper image manipulation - rather than merely post-processing.

A professional will benefit from the ability to do things like take out power lines, remove acne, maybe even recompose a shot, but cropping, correcting lens aberration, adjusting the colour balance, saturation and brightness, changing the effective exposure (and the contrast curve), applying colour filters as part of converting to black and white.. these are things I do in Lightroom.

Kills the competition

[jeti]

If you need some legal photo editing software at your company, but it's not justifiable to buy Photoshop, you can now use this old version for free. That kills the competition with cheaper products. And if at some point you need something more powerful than this old version, you're probably going to buy a new version of PhotoShop instead of learning to use a new software.

When did you last use Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender has had its UI completely redesigned. I think it's one of the best designed in any kind of 3D software now.