So... how much money should I spend on Adobe software?

Road deletion is fucking terrifying.

CS4s annoying interface changes - such as tabbed windows? so annoyingly CONVENIENT

Is there away to turn off the little preview inside the rubber stamp cursor in Photoshop? That's the only annoying thing I've discovered so far.

fuck tabbed windows! I hate them and have turned them off immediately and hate that if I'm not careful when moving a window it will still snap into a tab.

Yeah, a client WOULD want this -- now, instead of actually looking for a scenic w/o a road you can just be LAZY and garbage it out

Haha, imagining the photog getting that shot -- "I COULD just turn 45 degrees to my right and leave the road out of this shot, OR . . ."

anyway, I'd like to see this at the 100% pixel level or at least in a high quality jpg - wondering how obvious this action will be if you're zoomed in as opposed to watching a really low-res youtube of it

I was talking to a colleague today who runs a graphic design and advertising firm, and Adobe is one of his accounts. He was at Photoshopworld yesterday with his Adobe contacts when they debuted some of these features, and he says they're the real deal.

pretty amazing demo. I'm imaging "Content-Aware Phil" as a new Adobe mascot.

"why so glum, Solid-Phil? You still serve a purpose."

point: why the hell does there need to be a CS5 already?!?

counterpoint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI

O_o

― I DIED, Thursday, March 25, 2010 1:28 AM (3 weeks ago)

counter-counterpoint:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l0wu8e2nhs1qzz84to1_500.png

lol

ugh, I have an in with a new freelance client, but I'll have to upgrade from CS3 to CS5 to work on their existing files/templates/etc. $800!

But it had to be done eventually.

Anyone else here facing a conundrum with this Adobe Creative Cloud nonsense?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/adobes-creative-suite-is-dead-long-live-the-creative-cloud/

No conundrum. I've been a creative cloud subscriber since the beginner and have no doubt that it's a fantastic deal. I've still got a special subscription from being an early adopter so I pay 32 dollars a month to have every single program Adobe makes in the latest version. That always felt easier than a one time payment of 1200 dollars or whatever. And it's all written off.

I'm happy with it and have the deal that Dan has.

Something about the subscription model grates on me, not really sure what it is. I really only use Photoshop and AfterEffects and don't use any of the cloud services.

Yeah I don't use any of the cloud services. I have dropbox. I hate everything about Adobe, it's attempt to insert it's own operating system on top of and instead of your actual computer, it's application installer/updater, it's many many palettes and especially Bridge, except when it's actually useful. That being said, I spend approximately 10 hours a day using InDesign, with a bit of Photoshop and Illustrator, and without them I wouldn't have any money.

Also add the scourge of AdobeAIR and Flash to that list. I hate Bridge as a browser. But honestly I still stand a bit in awe of the magic that Photoshop hath wrought on the world, the trickery that app brings is very much cutting edge.

It's funny, I haven't used Quark in 5 or so years and recently started a new job, that much to my surprise, was still 20/30% Quark. My first instinct was horror and confusion as I ranted and thought about all the ways that InDesign is so totally superior. But then a few key commands and tricks came back to me like muscle memory and I suddenly remembered that there's a certain speed to using Quark that InDesign totally lacks in all of it's bloat. Just a few simple key commands that get shit done in a surprisingly graceful way which require too much clicking in InDesign. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going back. Just a thought.

I'm actually at Adobe Max right now. They demoed a bunch of the new features this morning. The new Photoshop stuff is p cool - you can open camera raw features from with photoshop. They've also added a lot of "refine edges" option in photoshop and after effects that will vastly improve roto brush operations.

I do a lot of digital publishing for my clients, so the cloud is great for me. I'll use Indesign, illustrator, premiere pro, ae, audition, photoshop and Lightroom all in one day. Anyone interested in multimedia design would be hard pressed to find a better option for $600 per year.

I suppose my conundrum is that my billable hour time in Adobeland just falls short of where I wouldn't have an issue with $50 a month. I stupidly ignored the $32 deal... probably because I was hoping there would be an in-between package of the classic Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign trio which is all I really need.

I've had this for a few months and love it (I work for a charity and pay £12/mo for the first year, which just seems insanely cheap), although the air-based installer thing is awful.

It seems to have gone under the radar amidst all the nashing of teeth, but I'm most excited by the fact that typekit is going to cover desktop too.

That's actually rather cool... *furiously checks budget again*

i wonder if they will ever do a consumer-grade version of this for home users? cuz no home user will cough up $600/year.

Probably figure they're using Photoshop Elements or whatever?

forgot about that one!

Would be really nice if they tiered their pricing a bit more though a la master collection vs print etc. Like ET I only need PS, Illustrator and Indesign- would be nice if not everyone had to pay for everything. (NB I do think it's a really good deal as is, but it's very clearly aimed at high end people who can justify the cost)

I also got a free Behance "prosite" from it.

http://danselzer.prosite.com/

Nice stuff Dan! (I have that Metro Area album!)

thanks

all the environ stuff was in collab. w/ morgan from environ fwiw.

I'm hoping that this idea will crash and burn and in the meantime I can hang onto CS6 for a few years. Probably not going to happen though I guess. This just seems like such a shitty transparent way to prevent people from skipping versions, because really who needs to update this stuff more than once every few years at this point? It's also odd how the people who only use one or two apps are going to be subsidizing companies that use them all. I wish they would offer lower priced bundles similar to the current web/production/design packages.

also they really need to streamline their installation process. maybe forcing everyone onto creative cloud will do that. as of now it seems like you install some apps through the creative cloud, some through the application manager, then there's also the download assistant that you need for some reason. last time I installed something I had to download the application manager but then I had to update download assistant to do that. it was ridiculous. I felt like I had to download and install 3 or 4 different components just to "help" me download the piece of software I actually wanted.

I don't agree with the first post. It's SUCH a deal. If you only use photoshop, you're paying 600$ a year. That's not a lot of money for serious software. Beyond just getting people to update, it's a way to get people to actually pay for it.

yr second post, I second.

I'm pretty sure when I upgraded to production premium cs6 it cost me $600, and I only upgrade every couple of years at the most. and I think the upgrade before that was only 3 or 400. So $600 a year is a pretty big increase for me. And I prefer not to upgrade to the latest version as soon as it's released so I'm going to be paying for stuff that I'm not even using.

Yesterday i thought about Paint Shop Pro for the first time in YEARS. Probably 10 years.

This is all kind of funny cos recently Final Cut Pro X has been pushing certain people to may trying out Premiere....and now we have this!

Yeah initially I hate this but I don't know how it'll pan out. This isn't my bread and butter but I'm always going have PS, InDesign, and Illustrator around and I use them fairly frequently, but not daily or even weekly. I was happy skipping versions, and actually was still using CS2 not that long ago. But paying monthly feels like wasting money to me, always paying for something I only use every couple of weeks.

Thankfully I'm pretty entrenched in the academic realm for the foreseeable future and can probably swing educational pricing, but still.

I was wrong, I just checked and my cs5 upgrade was $600 too. but still the change from a 2 year release schedule to an annual subscription is doubling my software expenses. not that the extra $300 is a big deal, but I definitely don't see how a price increase is a deal.

This is all kind of funny cos recently Final Cut Pro X has been pushing certain people to may trying out Premiere....and now we have this!

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, May 7, 2013 12:08 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is exactly what i was thinking. i think i'm gonna be on fcp 7 and cs5 for life haha

So maybe I'm a schmuck for defending Adobe, but my skill set has tripled since subscribing to the cloud (along with Lynda.com). Eighteen months ago, print jobs made up about 90% of my work. Since then I've published 4 apps, 2 websites and worked on a dozen video & motion design projects. I see this as an investment in my career and it's paid off in terms of job satisfaction and a promotion at work.

That said, this big max event is sort of lame.

I forgot how great max is. a nice vacation away from the annoying devs at work.

Yep. Beats being in the office for sure.

haha yeah, I meant it the other way though.

Ha! In my case it is a break from some awful marketing people.

yeah, I guarantee that's how they feel about me

max on fire

so much for 32/mo. I think my special intro rates that I've had for ages has worn off because it just jumped to 50/mo

http://www.gimp.org

Noticed that CC is available now. I reckon this is where I get off the train (at least for now)

I think CS5 will probably do me just fine for a few years mire, but it would be good to get Retina support at some point so maybe I'll look into a second hand licence for 6.5 at some point.

Installed all the new software last night. Some cool new features in After Effects, Premiere Pro & Muse, but you're not missing much w/InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop.

Really eyeing that student-rate $450 CS6 PS/ID/Illustrator bundle. The whole cloud thing seems like the biggest most obvious scam ever, and that right there is all I need! (Plus Lightroom, and I'm still doing fine with the $70 3.6 I bought a couple years ago.) Should I plunk down and grab this? Is there a good chance they'll outright delete these soon?

Normally I'd say I'm a fan of the cloud. See above. I still say that despite my issues. That bundle looks good. Until it's out of date. Then you're screwed and will have to go CC anyway. So why not start just paying the 30/mo (for the first year) now and get the recent stuff?

How screwed are you when things go out of date though? For the time being, all I need ID for is access to projects I worked on from 07 to 12, and a collaborative joint with a guy who'll also be using CS6 or lower. Are there any game-changing new features in the CC versions?

Also, wouldn't the programs stop working if I stopped paying the monthly fee? So after x months, it'd definitely be more expensive.

No, CS6 is pretty good. CC probably adds some great features I'm not thinking of right now, but it also made things uglier and is mostly pretty annoying. But sometimes, esp with Photoshop, new features quickly become essential/killer features. And w/ InDesign having to juggle versions, saving files as XML or IDML etc can be such a hassle.

Just depends on your priorities. I never felt like I had the almost 1k it would've cost me to get CS, and new I'd always want to be up to date.

http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2014/04/lightroom-goes-mobile-with-new-ipad-solution.html

Outage of Adobe Creative Cloud, more than a day old, locked out app users

I was wondering about that

can't believe these fucks *still* haven't bothered to fix the spaces issue on osx

lol CC update erasing data on osx. these fucking people

https://twitter.com/backblaze

wow. just talked to our IT guy about this. he's going to put an automated somethingerother on everyone's machine that will automatically add an empty folder with a name like " .AAAAA" to make sure that gets deleted and not a folder that might be important.

i haven't used them but just learned about Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Really going for the gold as far as Adobe replacements. 50 bucks each.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/

Thank you, dan selzer, for the tip.

They ain't Adobe, but they're getting there. I tried the Photo first. It was all right, definitely as advertised as somewhere between PicMe and Photoshop. Would very likely buy it if I didn't already have Elements at home and Photoshop at work.

The Designer app though... it is sweet. I've been using Adobe products for years, and trying to use Illustrator in earnest for the past couple. I just couldn't ever get my head around how Illustrator wants to behave. You can't preview anything. You have to jump through hoops to get something as simple as numbers to show automatically on a bar chart. It's an amazing tool when used correctly, but nothing intuitive about it.

So maybe with that blank slate and open mind, Affinity Design has worked pretty well for me. I'll likely get it for the $50, a very fair price, especially without all that cloud crap. There's a lot of stuff that's going to take getting used to, but unlike Illustrator where you were feeling along a marble wall in the darkness, Designer offers you a velvet rope to hang on to.

Here's a few things I messed around with, just playing with the tools. The 10-year-old original on the left, the Affinity Design panel on the right.

http://i.imgur.com/qwRStw5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Kb66UkD.jpg

(Feel free to comment on the strip itself in What's the worst online comic strip? )

AEM is pretty sick

Converted the last of my InDesign documents last week. For the first time in 30 years, I no longer have Adobe software on my computer (well, maybe some fonts are left).