This is part of the reason why I've never used the Cloud for anything and save all my files locally. There has been a real negative shift in IT and technology in general over the past few years. I had a ten year old laptop which I dropped and replaced, on the new one Microsoft and other allied companies wanted to know far too much information just for the pleasure of actually using it whereas with the previous one I just turned it on and away you go.

And its only getting worse, I miss the wild west days of the internet.

Windows absolutely fell off a cliff with 8, and it's never recovered. Windows 10 was so full of telemetry and other bullshit I never upgraded, and switched to Linux when I needed to upgrade. It amazes me the amount of people who should know better that think that windows has been anything but abysmal the past 10 years.

I know little about computers but it really has, Windows 11 is on my new laptop and it's basically unusable.

^THIS!^

;)

Everybody should move to free and open-sources alternatives, and those should be taught in schools.

It will require an act of congress to get academia to move. All books and instruction will need to be updated and all new instructors will need to be found or the existing ones will need to learn the new software. This is why we are still stuck with antiquated Ti-84 calculators when something like NUMWORKS is superior in nearly every way. If schools would teach the top three softwares or a generality of the software, then we might be able to move forward. Unfortunately, profits are holding progress back in this case.

This is why I use Procreate and Affinity products.

I spent the past 33 years in IT, mostly in electronic publishing/print systems. For the past 15 or 20 years, the output has been in one of two hideously incompatible product: Adobe Acrobat or Adobe PostScript. These tow systems barely talk to each other, and their character tables are different and impossible to reconcile. I've had internal clients scream and throw things at me because of the output of one printed the wrong characters when using the other.

Adobe told me "Tough, go pound sand."

This is why I use CS 6 Extended, an older version that pre-dates all these cloud / subscription models. If I don't own my own perpetual license AND functioning, perpetual, software instance to accompany it, then I'm probably not going to pay for it. Adobe locking users out of their own files is effectively theft. CS6 E works with substance painter and the usual industry standard programs.

The software does get more buggy as you move up in versions and I simply refused photoshop CC because it stuttered too much and crashed too much. Unfortunately, games are trying to go the software as subscription route as well, however, unless they require a monthly fee for the game, it's legally fraud. It's all a scam to kill old games off so people have little choice but to buy whatever new revision is out. It's NOT cheaper for the customer to use a sub model and I refuse to buy any subscription software that isn't an MMO.

Academia needs to be required by law to grant outside competitors, else we will be using Adobe and TI84s till the end of time.

Speaking of old stuff; I also like having access to saving images in an outdated .PNG format that is incapable of carrying EXIF information. TMK, newer .PNG formats allow for some EXIF and metadata.

I'm sticking with my CS5. If I need a newer version for some fecking reason, yo ho yo ho.

GIMP and OpenOffice for me. Adobe can go pound sand.

A colleague of mine describes GIMP as "like painting in boxing gloves" compared to Photoshop. While I'm only a basic user myself, I feel I can see where he's coming from. I'm happy to use GIMP on both idealistic and pecuniary grounds, but find it entirely plausible that the productivity gains with Photoshop are worth it for a daily professional user whose main interest is just to get stuff done. I presume things are this way because Adobe can afford to pay an army of office workers to do the exacting, unrewarding labour of endless hours of user-interface refinement which GIMP lacks. I doubt we'll ever be rid of the Adobes of this world unless we find a way to incentivise that labour for GIMP and friends too.

I've been pretty happy with Krita.

Good points, all. Back when I was doing graphics for a living 20 years ago, ClarisCAD and Superpaint were sufficient for my professional needs. :)

That's why I like their variety of bootleg products.

I think my job should thank me for demanding a perpetual CS6 license I've used professionally ever since CC was created. Fuck knows how much cash I saved the business and there so far hasn't been a compatability issue I haven't managed to work around.

At home, I threw out everything in favor of Affinity Photo and Designer. Heck I even bought Affinity Publisher just to throw Serif some extra cash even as I have no use for it at home.

Makes me dread microsoft garbage 11 even more. 10 was bad enough. Office? I dumped that in favor of Libreoffice long ago.

But Adobe is used as a fantastic building material for literally centuries!! Especially in the southwest. Plus thick enough walls keeps heat in winter and cool in summer.

:: snirks ::
I see what you did thar!

A Dobie is a marvellous companion and a splendid example of canine magnificence!

[Edit:] Ah yes, here it is. :) https://www.furaffinity.net/view/21698630/

You stranger are a lifesaver...Thank you for helping me reach my final decision on Adobe with this knowledge. I'm closing all ties to this greedy company because they are NOT the IRS but they sure are trying to be...like a digital monopoly / cartel .

Soon as they went to subscription I was like "Nope". And I only used a free version before that anyway.

And I just bought Substance Painter. Dang.

Autocad is even worse, they should always be rememvered as the company who killed the best 3D software on the market. They are the reason why I started to learn Blender and never looked back since then.

Moved to Affinity years ago. I didn't use enough of the features in Photoshop to justify bothering with a subscription price. I also found it to be wildly inferior in illustration as well for my personal workflow (Of course, it varies with person to person, most are happy with it's features for illustration).

Luckily there are alternatives. I'm worried for what might be coming up with Clip Studio because of their disastrous announcement - and then subsequent walkback - of a subscription model, but often a corporation will try and find some other way to sneak things like that in while looking like they are capitulating. Money is gonna money after all.

This is what I absolutely loathe about technology. After literally years and taking an actual in-person class to get decent at a program (Photoshop) now everyone starts screaming about how horrible it is and I should learn fabulous programs X, Y and Z. But undoubtedly something will happen with those fabulous programs at some point and if I don't switch immediately to programs E, F and G I'm an idiot and a colossal douche. I can't learn all these new programs like I'm 15 any more. If Adobe wants to pirate my furry porn or crappy comics, whatever. Knock yerself out.

There are entirely decent free and open source alternatives.

Krita is a fantastic alternative.

Definitely. That's what I use.

I was previously using a commonly available version of Photoshop CS4, but I think that more recent versions of Krita are a step up.

My objections have nothing to do with the cost or quality of other programs, it has has to do with this expectation that everyone needs to constantly go to the hassle of switching programs every few years as they go out of vogue. Some people love doing that, but I don't.

No, I understand that, but at some point a move is often the best thing to do, pain in the ass though it may be, instead of continuing to rely on something that becomes less and less useful. It certainly doesn't have to be constant. I've never felt compelled to do that. I make maximum use of any tech I use, but move on when it's outgrown it's use.

this is one of my biggest fears with Clip Studio, since they keep trying to push towards Adobe's format and continue to retract because of user pushback.

the only Adobe software I really use is Photoshop CS2, which for a long time has been "freeware" and had public keys posted online- it's still easy to find but I am also willing to share the download file so people don't have to worry about shifty sites and then the activation key.

it really, really fucking sucks that tools are going for a subscription basis when it cuts so, so many people out of it's usability.

like. anyone who is interested, DM me with your e-mail and I will send you the English exe file and this is the activation key: 1045-1412-5685-1654-6343-1431

to add onto this; I still use CS2 a lot for editing and post-production in Windows 10; it used to be my go-to for digital painting before I was gifted a copy of ClipStudio. it is still a pretty stable program, but from what I understand, Adobe has stopped allowing direct downloads of it.

There are merits to the subscription model, but what is annoying is that it's the only option. I don't trust the cloud either. Maybe it's useful if you have several people working on a shared project, but I'm not going to trust the security and reliability of someone else's server for the important stuff. Hard drive space is cheap, and it's all yours.

I still have my paid for copy of CS2, and if Adobe has a problem this, they can kindly get bent. Even though I do subscribe to the latest Photoshop for a number of useful bells and whistles, I still have CS2 installed because it still handles scanners better. If Adobe decides to be really objectionable at some point, I suppose I can go back to using it for everything. I do have Clip Studio, and I love its inking tools. The main reason I don't use it more is I simply haven't taken the time to learn all its ins and outs. Like Roz, I've spent a lifetime learning how to make Photoshop sing and dance, and I don't particularly want to have to relearn everything.

Everyone I know of in the artistic community have been preaching to the choir about this exact type of issue for 15 years. It's mind-boggling that despite it all we've (collectively, as a community) still managed to create a situation where we'd rather just bitch about a negative outcome than be proactive and explore alternatives. That only really started happening to any meaningful degree in the last five years. Photoshop was way too expensive even in 2008, so I used Paint.NET until I got my hands on a cracked Photoshop CC. I have no idea if it's stealing my work or letting AI 'learn' from it all or if Adobe is compiling a dossier for some impending lawsuit, but honestly I don't care. Adobe as a company can piss off, and it can have Autodesk as a companion in the fiery pits of corporate hell