Posted on 07/09/2013 10:32:26 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
I’ve found Serif offers 85% of the functionality at 15% of the price.
That other 15% (of the program’s functionality) can be acquired elsewhere on the cheap.
Someone above mentioned GIMP, which is a fine piece of software. There’s Photo Instrument (which I bought and like) that has some very nice features that make it worthwhile. And, as mentioned previously, the venerable Paint Shop Pro is always an option.
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And there’s lots more stuff out there that can be had for a song, or free.
To hell with Adobe. It looks like they’ve passed the peak on software development and deployment. If they don’t smarten up fast, they’ll learn about the “dustbins of history” up close and personal.
Much to their chagrin...
CA....
Another win for open source: I foresee large scale defection from Photoshop to the GIMP
Non-professionals, on the other hand, now have incentive to look at FOSS alternatives.
When I was forced into using digital photography, due to shoddy workmanship in the developing of camera film locally, I looked around, read all the photog mags, and all of them was screaming “YA GOTS TO GET PHOTOSHOP!”
Naturally, when any industry consumer magazines, all line up behind a product, makes me wonder about the validity of such a program. (I was in favor of PC-DOS, instead of MS-DOS).
I saw the inital cost of such a program, and decided ‘Nope!’.
I have been using IRFANVIEW, since I purchased my Kodak ‘Z’ series camera. Great program, does what I want, and costs just right for this ‘c.o.b.’ - zero!
Photoshop had become a megabyte monstrosity a while back, and now, with a bad economy, Adobe is passing all of their losses, onto you, not me.
Good luck, if you really need this product. My now officially dinosaur camera will do just fine.
Most major software companies are going this route.
Microsoft is pushing everyone “to the cloud” with their Office 365 project and remote hosting options.
It allows them to reign in piracy by restricting clients to the number of paid licenses they have. Otherwise, system administrators like me could install Windows or Office or any software on any computer without a way for them to validate the licensing. Note: this is specific to volume licensing and enterprise agreements. Home users are required to “phone home” to validate ongoing use of an OS, at least with MS.
Solution: Linux. OR you could always just look around on SourceForge for free stuff that does the same thing.
This won’t hurt the large corporations. They’ll adjust their costs to ensure no profit loss. This will hurt the home users however. I agree with another poster: why upgrade if the “outdated” version works just fine?
I think you are right, for now. Ultimately, software rentals for unique, difficult to replicate (or steal) software that needs a lot of support, may catch on. I think they are charging too much, and doing it too early, myself.
(I am an award winning amateur photog. If I can't do on my computer what I used to do in a dark room, I don't need to do it to create a very solid image).
Switch. I switched years ago. Gimp >>> Adobe.
These as@ hats have been stupid for a long time. There are now a few sites that offer alternate software that is almost as equal to Photoshop. Just a few quirks but hope that a real viable software will make Photoshop useless and be a reasonable purchase price and unlimited usage.
I certainly wouldn’t rent software, if I could help,it. For a casual user, like myself, no software would be worth renting.
I’ve lived without Photoshop this long, I can live without it for a good long while later.
Switch to Open office. Then piracy of your MS product vanishes. Piracy assumes there is demand for your product. No demand = no piracy.
Perfectly happy with CS4. They can take a hike with this stupid scheme.
What I did not make clear when I listed that feature set is that some of these things that have kept me on PS are advanced features that I'm pretty sure aren't available in the GIMP.
Can the GIMP finally do all that?
Give it a try - I haven’t had a need for anything other than Gimp since I switched.
I said the same about Open Office. Tried it about 8 years ago - haven’t looked back.
If there’s one or two features - see what you can do to find a free alternative to those advanced features. There’s a few things I can’t do (Natively), with open office that I can do with a MS product. They crop up once in a blue moon, and I have to figure out a workaround. It’s usually not too difficult.
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program
I use Open Office at home. I’m a Linux shop at home for the most part. I use a (legit) copy of Windows for my gaming rig. Otherwise, all of my servers and test workstations are Fedora and Ubuntu, respectively.
How have you found it? It’s not perfect but for 99 percent of the stuff you do, it works.
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