Adobe is a criminal organization. You HAVE to pirate Adobe software. Otherwise you support criminals.
Adobe made it very hard to cancel a subscription. That goes against EU laws and I am sure it also goes against US laws.
Nah, this is a naive, thinly rationalized criminal attitude, bordering on simple trolling. Adobe's ridiculous, abusive behavior in this regard was crafted specifically to be
legal in the U.S. That does NOT mean it's okay.
Sneaky subscription tactics appear to be subject to civil court litigation, and U.S. regulatory agencies and courts were about to side with our consumers in this issue; however, the incoming U.S. "administration" will soon put an end to attempts at court-enforced fairness. Adobe will drive the money truck up to Mara Lago's servants' entrance, and leave with carte blanche to continue abusing consumers - until their next tithe payment is due.
This. Despite owning and upgrading a pricey Adobe Design Collection for years, when Adobe forced its subscription model that holds one's intellectual property hostage if you fail to continually pay every month I left Adobe forever. Eff Adobe.
Pixelmator and Affinity products suffice very well.
I am very suspicious of subscription models, but getting held hostage is a choice. It might take extra work to extract intellectual property from online services and vaults, in an interchange format. And perhaps protect it from theft by AI crawlers. I simply do not use services that truly lock up content (common among database-oriented apps, like event management, collections management, inventory) or allow only proprietary data formats when downloaded.
But that' part of the game, today. The starting assumption is that all vendors intend to steal to pad their revenue. In Adobe's case, I use only local apps with strictly local storage, and collect copies software everything in TIFF, JPG, PS, PDF (Thanks, adobe, for that at least), RTF, etc., etc. It's not bulletproof, though. Adobe is 100% positively proven to transmit indexes of locally user-created content to servers under their control. It would be naive to assume that they're the only ones.
Affinity is my go-to, now that I'm out of the industry. Photo, Designer and Publisher are... Okay. Adequate. Usable. Tolerable. Forgivable at the price point. However, as a working professional with deadlines, there is NO ***** way I'd trust Affinity with my career and customers' business. Affinity's apps lack features most pros consider essential, and the code is just plain buggy. That's it. End of debate.
It would be nice to see Apple up its game with the recent 'Mator acquisitions. There are some credible competitors to Lightroom in the market, but, again, Lightroom has the pro-time-in-grade advantage in features, fidelity and reliability.
Adobe went subscription-only 11 years ago.
But for all the complaining I hear on forums about people hating subscriptions... apparently not enough people have cancelled their subscriptions to make Adobe to feel the pressure.
In fact... there are more people using Adobe software today than any other time in history.
Fascinating.
What the modern Affinity has accomplished (since their grade-b efforts as Serif, back in the day) is impressive. In a few short years, they have pushed well into "Advanced Hobbyist" territory. The 'Mators, likewise. I'm looking forward to a worthy Lightroom replacement. And Acrobat Pro, too, for that matter. Though I will be dead soon, so, pfft.
Adobe is closing in on effectively FIFTY YEARS in the biz! They are effectively the OG of DTP. It used to be extremely costly to buy Illustrator, Photoshop, PageMaker and Acrobat, plus quality typefaces, for several seats, with only a 50% discount for upgrades
, if you stayed within a couple versions. Do the math today, for keeping current, plus fonts and stock. Adobe is cheaper than it's ever been for professionals. Though still way too expensive (and abusive) for hobbyists.
There's never been a precedent in human history for poor people to have cool ****. Seemingly good, cheap/free stuff is always an illusion; consumers just get screwed some other way. That's what supply and demand means. Software was never an exception (apart from betas, early adopter loss-leaders, and plain dumb marketing or security mistakes). Same with Affinity and the 'Mators; they couldn't get over the next hump at the prices they were charging.
<shug> Pay money. Do work. Don't steal. And also don't complain about deals with the devil.
