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Deals: Adobe Offering Up to 71% Off Creative Cloud All Apps for Black Friday

newton4000 said:
Be very carful with Adobe products. Very careful. It’s not like other subscription services. Read the fine print. If you cancel early you will have to pay an early cancellation fee. They are more like your phone company - except they have no legit reason to this - they are not providing you with any hardware in exchange.
Another issue with Adobe is that they are bloatware, and install all kind of installers.
Otherwise - some of their tools are admittedly best in class - but do look if you can find replacements.
The new Darkroom for instance is a good Lightroom replacement and integrates with Apple Photos.
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this! How they charge a cancellation fee on a monthly subscription is how bad they are!
 
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I bailed on Adobe years ago now, the last application to get a quality competitor was InDesign. Once Affinity Publisher came out I ditched the last bit of my Adobe software. I think that everybody who can should get off the Adobe platform. I used Photoshop from v3 onwards and while Affinity Photo certainly has different and sometimes strange opinions about UX. With a bit of adaptation it does almost all of what I want easily. Presently my drop-in replacements for Adobe tools are:

  • Photoshop -> Affinity Photo
  • Illustrator -> Affinity Designer
  • InDesign -> Affinity Publisher
  • Lightroom -> Capture One Pro (C1 is not as good at dealing with ProRAWs)
  • After Effects -> Fusion or Nuke (I've used both, but currently Fusion)
  • Premier -> Final Cut or Resolve
  • Acrobat Pro -> PDF Expert (although I no longer use this as my PDF needs are met by Designer and Preview)

Others have mentioned that Affinity is having a sale on all of its new v2 software at the moment (link here). I bought all of my v1 apps on the Mac App Store four years ago. Didn't mind at all paying for v2 after all this time and all of the usage I've gotten. For new users it seems like an excellent deal. Apple doesn't get a cut so the developer gets more, the buyer gets the applications on all platforms, and it's localized into CAD for us Canadians so we aren't overpaying on exchange rates!
 
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satchmo said:
It’s a long road ahead to challenge Adobe. But it’s doable.
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As far as I’m concerned it’s already here. I don’t need Adobe toppled as king of the hill, I just need something else good I can use on that hill. And that’s Affinity.
 
tharitm said:
this! How they charge a cancellation fee on a monthly subscription is how bad they are!
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It's not a monthly subscription though. It's an annual subscription that you can pay monthly for. So you are basically promising you'll pay for a year, but at a month at a time. When you break the contract, you pay the cost.
 
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dmylrea said:
It's not a monthly subscription though. It's an annual subscription that you can pay monthly for. So you are basically promising you'll pay for a year, but at a month at a time. When you break the contract, you pay the cost.
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Yes - exactly that's how they justify it, and that's why I said 'read the fine print.' People are liable to see only the 14.99/month or whatever the cost is.
Most subscriptions are just what they say - and people are used to that. These are different. And I do feel that they are doing it, maybe not quite intentionally to deceive - but are gaming the purchasing process and counting on people not to fully understand. Overall, in my dealings with them over the years, I do not vouch for Adobe as a customer-friendly customer or a good corporate citizen and could go on here about their tech support as well.
And while there is a lot here about Affinity - for people looking for something less than Photoshop and more along the lines of Lightroom - do look at Darkroom. The new shadow recovery engine is as good as Lightroom IMO and it all hooks into the Apple ecosystem much better. I would say that Lightroom is still ahead in some features but Darkroom is not far behind and maybe better for most people - at quite the lower cost.
 
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The only reason they are doing this hoopla about the discount, because Affinity has just introduced V2, a new updates to their Designer, Photo and Publisher apps, that’s what most graphic designer would need.
Also, Adobe has just introduced another set of 3D apps - 5 of them, and they are not part of their creative cloud.
I use DaVinci Resolve for my video, it includes Fusion for motion graphics.
 
usmaak said:
Or, get this.

affinity.serif.com

Creative Software For Professionals | We Are Affinity

Subscription-free photo editing, page layout, graphic design and illustration apps for professionals. Try for free or buy for one low payment.
affinity.serif.com affinity.serif.com

Of course it is not as robust as Adobe products and I'm sure that pros laugh at it. […]
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At my office one works with Adobe and I use the Affinity suite. Guess which one does crash frequently. Hint: it’s not the Serif solution.

But yes, Affinity does have some limitations, but also some advantages (not just the price).

I actually was quite happy with Adobe until they switched to the subscription model. It seems to me the incentive for Adobe to really improve and perfectionize is lacking as licensees will just continue paying as (in their opinion) there’s no real alternative. Wondering how long that will last.
 
newton4000 said:
Be very carful with Adobe products. Very careful. It’s not like other subscription services. Read the fine print. If you cancel early you will have to pay an early cancellation fee. They are more like your phone company - except they have no legit reason to this - they are not providing you with any hardware in exchange.
Another issue with Adobe is that they are bloatware, and install all kind of installers.
Otherwise - some of their tools are admittedly best in class - but do look if you can find replacements.
The new Darkroom for instance is a good Lightroom replacement and integrates with Apple Photos.
Click to expand...
It’s interesting you mentioned the bloatware. A user at work needed Adobe CC on his computer. I went to software center to install it and the entire thing was 44 GBs in size! I reached out and clarified if they needed the entire thing. Just Photoshop and Premier, thank goodness.

Adobe should be selling this thing on a USB thumb drive. Nothing in this product line is optimized for the cloud.
 
“Omg what amdeal it is” if you know you are gonna be dead by next month.
 
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Another +1 for Affinity Suite of Apps. I paid less than £80 for Version 1 (Mac and iPad versions).
The current offer of £89 for for ALL platforms (Mac/Windows/iPad) is a no brainer.

The only Adobe app I miss is After Effects but having played around with the free version of DaVinci Resolve I'm starting to see the power of the Node based workflow in the Fusion Tab...
 
tharitm said:
this! How they charge a cancellation fee on a monthly subscription is how bad they are!
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its the not a monthly subscription. its a yearlong subscription that they allow you to divide into 12 payments because you cannot afford paying all of it at one time. that's actually nice of them.
 
4743913 said:
its the not a monthly subscription. its a yearlong subscription that they allow you to divide into 12 payments because you cannot afford paying all of it at one time. that's actually nice of them.
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See my responses to this above.
Yes, the lack of clarity in this is because they are so 'nice'!!!?
 
satchmo said:
But if you only need two apps, that brings your total to $40+ already. So $39.99/month for all the apps is a better deal.

That said, it's still too expensive for non-professionals. They are better off using free apps or Affinity suite.
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But weren't Adobe products always for professionals? 🤔

In the old days... no average consumer would pay $700 for Photoshop or $2,600 for Adobe Master Collection. You'd be crazy to pay all that money if you were just a hobbyist.

It was simply too expensive for normal people. There were other cheaper products from other vendors.

In my case... I am a professional. I make money with Adobe software. I have no problem paying the monthly fee because I like Adobe's software. And I can cover the monthly fee with just a couple hours of work.

But a normal consumer? It's not for them. It was never for them.

So yeah... Adobe might be too expensive for non-professionals now... but Adobe was too expensive for non-professionals back then, too.

:p
 
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4743913 said:
Its quite clear.

Annual, paid monthly

A 12-month commitment is required.
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I won't argue with you. l
It's not current standard practice so it does trick people. This is just a fact.
I would also encourage people to look at Reddit to see haven't read the fine print and are shocked in the end.
Of course, it's their right to do this - but I'm just telling people to watch out.
 
4743913 said:
so you are admitting that neither one does the job that Premiere can do. You have to use both. :D
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Preeeeetty sure they were just saying that depending on your preference you can use either Resolve or Final Cut to replace Premiere.
 
It’s just nuts that they want people to pay almost $500 every single year and consider that a deal

This is what happens when competition is allowed to be stifled. They never should’ve been allowed to buy their only competitor (Macromedia)

And now they’re trying to buy another competitor - Figma. We should be making a big deal about that to stop it
 
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