The problem with Adobe's monopoly

Now I just had to talk about this,

I doubled checked the rules just to make sure I am not violating anything,
luckily I am not.

Adobe has been pretty much been able to get away with anything these days, but I’m just going to focus of what angers me the most, the subscriptions.

Let’s first look at a good subscription service
Substance live
This is what I consider a good subscription model, because once the total amount of money you pay is as much as buying substance designer/painter itself, you own it for life.

I really really don’t know why this isn’t the standard

Compare that to Photoshop where you pay as long as you have the software in your system, doesn’t matter if you paid twice the original price of Photoshop CS6, you will have to pay, as long as you still have the contract.

And it isn’t even for good value either, the “improvements” made from CS6 to CC 2015 are incremental at best.

And who is to say that I want the latest photoshop version all the time, what if the updates are worthless to me?

You see this is the prime example of why monopolies are bad, there’s no real incentive for adobe NOT to do this,
After all what’s the alternative? Gimp? Krita? They’re good enough for some people but not for most people.

Autodesk was about to do the same thing but they couldn’t,

They are aware that if they pulled that off, people would just move to modo or blender

I don’t mind paying $10 a month for Photoshop as I use it as more than any other software I use and it’s paid for in less than an hour of working with it. The thing I don’t like about the CC versions is that if they change a feature or break something you use a lot, there is very little you can do about it. With the old licenses, you could always access the version you bought, but now you always have to have the latest version. Although you can opt not to install updates, as far as I’m aware, you can’t install a specific version.

I was actually talking to a colleague about this today as he asked me where the paint bucket tool was. I had a few issues with updates at home, so had chosen not to install the updates at work, so was running 2015.0.0, whereas my colleague had the latest version. Sure enough, the paint bucket and crop tools were missing. Turns out that they were still available and that the tool palette had been made customiseable in an update. This made me bring up the point that one thing I love about Blender (he uses Blender too actually) is that if a new version has some show stopping bug, you can just download the previous version (or indeed, any version) and get working. Doing this with something like Maya (length install process, piracy protection/installation management makes it more complex, access to older versions hard to track down etc.) or Photoshop is considerably more difficult.

I think you are right about the lack of big changes/improvements since the move to CC. I haven’t noticed more than UI tweaks, although I do remember reading a release log and seeing a fairly long list of new features, so maybe they just keep adding stuff I’m not using? :slight_smile:

That’s easy. It’s not as profitable as less customer friendly methods. Also I wouldn’t discount Krita that fast. Especially with G’Mic it’s quite brilliant of a software package for art and even image manipulation.

Always comes down to profit doesn’t it?

I’m not entirely sure what GMiC does but I’m sure a google search will fix that…

Tons of awesomness :yes:.

Better yet: load up an image into Krita, and start browsing Filter > GMIC. :slight_smile:

@Ambi

looking at it now… it’s cool
and looks useful

Blenders orgin is Ton’s awesomeness :wink:

I will never understand posts like this (no offense). Adobe offers an unbeatable price/performance ratio for business users/indies/freelancers with their CC packs. No other developers offer this kind of amount of apps with this friendly pricing (at the same level).

Adobe PS+LR is about 10-12 USD per month. If a business user cannot afford it, then he should do business at all or should turn to free alternatives/other packs.

We could say that Adobe is a monopoly, but it isn’t entirely true. It develops industrial standard apps.
I also always read - and agree - with the critics that no real development happens there.
The question is that in the last decade where competitors were? Because most of them is far from a 10 years old PS in the most areas (except of PL what should be a success story with a better GUI).

Overall people should understand that technology is driven by profit, IT companies offers their products for profit. Make a comparison between AD and Adobe: AD offers terrible pricing on Max, Adobe offers very good pricing on their stuff.

Of course both should cost less for people (as everyone wants everything for free), but for that there is a need for serious competitors.

@Alma

Gonna have to stop you right after “If a business can’t afford it he or she shouldn’t do business”

You never know if next month you are still going to be able to really afford 12 $
might sound ridiculous but it’s funny you bring up a business as unpredictable as freelancing.

Who knows if you get any clients at all next month? Who knows if the client just decides to not pay you/ changes his mind(which has happened several times to me and other people)

Fact of the matter is,

you are paying the same amount of money(or even more) for the same product.

I will chime in. Everyone has an opinion on the Adobe CC, and everyone has reasons for them. I respect that.

I hated the subscription when they started it. Since I am a techie in my main job, I figured, OK, that’s it, I’m pirating it from now on. The price I paid for the original photoshop I owned, plus all of the updates I’ve paid for over the years – I figured entitled me to some software that I actually owned.

Although I know how I can do that, I became convicted that it is not right. Especially, since in my day job I am creating software that I expect people to pay me for. That makes me the King of hypocrites. So, I bit the bullet and subscribed.

The best money I ever paid. The Creative Cloud is a tremendous bargain. I guess if I ONLY used Photoshop, and I only used its basic features, then it might not be a good deal. But the CC is an incredible value. It’s probably worth it for Encoder alone. I cannot tell you how many times I have been able to re-encode videos to fix them and use them in different venues. Then add Audition that I have become a huge fan of. Of course Photoshop is still the king of graphic editors. And my love/hate relationship with After Effects has become much more love than hate lately. I have designed websites in both Dream Weaver and Muse.

But let me tell you about Premiere.

I hated it at first. Sony Vegas was always much more intuitive for me. But then my daughter – who was getting a communications degree at a Digital Film school – had to shoot a wedding. I helped her set up, and because the DJ had lousy equipment, we ended up piping the mics into a mac book and recording the video on two separate video cameras. So, three audio sources, two video sources: a recipe for an editing nightmare.

We get back home and I decide, before she just dives in and attempts to synch everything, lets see what the CC can do. I find a video showing this amazing feature whereby Premiere can automatically synch audio from disparate sources and put them into one composition. I tell my daughter about it and she is looking for it in her school issued laptop. No dice.

I check in CC, and find out that this feature was recently released. She had a cut of Premiere the school had received from Adobe at the start of the semester – not in there. My CC subscription: Yep, there it is. Press a button and all vido synchs to the macbook’s audio. Genius!

And that is not the only time a thing like that has happened. The additions seem incremental and small until you need them. Then it’s OMG! This is awesome.

The fact that I always have the upgraded software and – this is the important part – they keep improving, makes this a great investment for me personally. And I’m not even a professional artist!

Yes, Adobe is a for profit company. Was there ever any confusion about this?

Autodesk did go subscription-only didn’t they? I thought I saw some people huffing and puffing about it on Reddit or Polycount not too long ago.

Software as a service seems to be the way some of the commercial guys are wanting to go. We’ll see if it works out, but I find Photoshop to be easy to replace with alternatives myself.

Adobe CC is cheap. Even if you’re not a professional. Don’t smoke for ten days and it’s payed. Or don’t buy a stupid things for 50€ a month.

Adobe CC is a great creative toolkit. I have the complete suit and it’s fun to explore and create. Like Adobe Audition CC, I could edit the audio visually and remove noise and stuff. It was magical.

Buying separate apps like before was freaking expensive. I bet you can’t even buy an app for $1000. Or the suite for $5000. Like it was before Adobe CC.

Look at these prices. http://www.autodesk.com/store

I rather pay $14 a month for 3ds max.

The problem most have isn’t the pricetag so much as the forced into that payment model.

Is Photoshop better than Krita? Is Audition better than Audacity? Is Illustrator better than Inkscape? Who knows. In my opinion the lines are getting blurred.

For texture work at least Photoshop isn’t really needed though, Substance, Mari or Quixel stuff (well I guess you need photoshop with Quixel) are more suited for textures for 3d models. Painting on the models’ UV maps feels a bit oldschool nowadays.

No one is forcing you. You can pay a month if you like. Just for job you got.

Or if you’re on a sick leave. Don’t pay at all. And start again when you are able to work.

You pay per month. You don’t have to pay all the time.

@fdfxd

‘Gonna have to stop you right after "If a business can’t afford it he or she shouldn’t do business’

I disagree. Business is about profit; if anyone wants to start a business, have to calculate the costs.Also people could pick up PS alternatives for the most of their tasks without problem. Even for free they could do that.
I respect when someone choose a free or OSS app as it fits to his/her thinking about freedome, I respect when they do some research which app is the right for them. But the Adobe CC is really-really user friendly in prices. As someone mentioned before;: I would be happy to pay 15 USD per month for 3ds Max Subscription and something like 40 USD for all AD products.

Change the point of view: for CC pricing you get the latest version from everything and you could use the best tools for a bargain price, no workarounds needed to compete with your competitors as they probably use the the same tools (only talent matters).

Also feel free to comment my other notes in my former comment.

'Is Photoshop better than Krita? Is Audition better than Audacity? Is Illustrator better than Inkscape? Who knows. In my opinion the lines are getting blurred.

For texture work at least Photoshop isn’t really needed though, Substance, Mari or Quixel stuff (well I guess you need photoshop with Quixel) are more suited for textures for 3d models. Painting on the models’ UV maps feels a bit oldschool nowadays.’

It all depends on the tools and tasks you need.
I’m pretty sure we could find areas where this or that app performs better. But: there is no question that you compare industry standard apps with others and there is reason why people use these apps instead of Krita or Inkscape (behind the ‘others use that, too’ argument).

As someone who works with graphic design and motion graphics for a living I have to say the Adobe suite has no replacement at all, and the prices are quite comfortable.

Maybe if you are going to use Photoshop just for texture work then yes, there are better alternatives and there’s no need to pay for the subscription. Even for photographers, there are now very good alternatives.

BUT! If you need more than one program and use them everyday for a lot of different things, then Adobe is as good as you can get when it comes to pay for software. The Dynamic Link feature is great, having the ability to change a character’s face in Illustrator (or Photoshop) and see it updated automatically on After Effects and Premiere is something you cannot easily achieve with the alternatives.
If you pay the monthly subscription for the suite you have access not only to the whole list of programs, but also to the Adobe Stock (images, fonts, vectors, footage), which is a very nice touch.
Also when dealing with clients, they almost always have their original editable files in .ai, .psd, .ae, etc… So for commercial work you pretty much need to have them installed anyway.

And then there’s this: https://www.adobe.com/products/fuse.html
This character creator, combined with Blender is also a very powerful combination.

For me the Adobe + Blender combo is unbeatable, and not expensive compared to the AD or Corel prices… Again, that is if you really are going to use the programs on a daily basis. If you need only one program then there are better alternatives.

Is it a monopoly? Maybe, but right now there aren’t many choices…