Among the most significant changes with this year’s Elements releases has little to do with new features but instead concerns the ways users purchase and own the software. While prior versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements have been lifetime licenses — the user buys the software and then owns it indefinitely — this year’s release has moved to a three-year license term.

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Fuck Adobe. They are the epitome of the greedy, toxic software company.

    I switched from Photoshop over to Krita last year. I’ve tried Gimp in the past, but just can’t adjust to the UI. Krita is different too, but not to the same degree. I’ve been enjoying it. It’s well-made and very powerful, with very good online support.

    • bean@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Today I went to cancel the Adobe stock trial, and during this extensive cancellation process, they tried to score me on another package for a year, and when I checked, it didn’t include the product which I was fucking canceling… Which is just insane and ridiculous!

      Hey I’m canceling this product.

      Oh ok. You want to give us a bunch of money for more unrelated products?

    • toastal@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      GIMP 3.0 RC1 will come very soon (this month) & offers a lot of missing features users expect like adjustment layers (I’ve been waiting a decade for this).

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    YSK: you also don’t own games on steam, it’s all licenses and they can all be revoked.

    That is why i archive pirated DRM-free copies of some games i know i will come back to for Nostalgia in many years.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Note that a lot of games on steam don’t have any DRM, either. It’s probable that if you have large library, a lot of your installed games will run without steam, if you go and start them from their exe.

      So you can likely archive at least some of your steam games by simply keeping them installed, or even squirreling away the install folder somewhere.

      • Virkkunen@fedia.io
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        2 months ago

        All Steam games have SteamDRM and you cannot run them without Steam or without the license, otherwise you could just buy a game, backup the installed files, refund the game and still have complete access to it.

        On the other hand, it’s quite easy to bypass that DRM with a crack.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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          2 months ago

          No they don’t. The dev has to opt to use Valve CEG (custome executabke generation) for that to be included in the game files, and that is entirely optional.

          On these games, you can do exactly what you suggest.

          Here’s a list.

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          its not all, but most devs just tick the box to implement the steam DRM so it feels like all because barely anyone checks if it does or not.

  • TheBlue22
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    1 month ago

    Remember, it’s morally correct to pirate every single adobe product. Same goes for every Nintendo product

    • Lennny@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It’s also a major pain in the ass to do now. I forget how I did it last time, some fuck Adobe subreddit had a guide for it but it’s so much more than just install and drop lolcrackorvirus.dll into the folder.

      • icedterminal@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Adobe used to house all the licensing mechanisms in a single file named amtlib.dll. The people who cracked it just nulled out the function. And since it was the same for every piece of software, just repeat the null process for each one. Bam, the entire suite for free.

        When Adobe switched from CS to CC subscription, it was cracked in 24 hours. Largely because they didn’t change much.

        Adobe then axed the crippling DLL file and baked the mechanism right into the executable. A patcher tool was released that could crack each one. The upside is you could install and keep them updated from the CC Desktop and just run the patcher each time. Sometimes you had to wait for an update to the patcher. So before you clicked “update” you had to double check to make sure it worked.

        To stop the free trial abuse (which is how people installed anyway) Adobe started requiring billing information during setup before you even get to downloads.

        Later on, Adobe prevented users from updating apps if there wasn’t an active subscription.

        The patcher eventually stopped working because it was abandoned (this around 2019 when I gave up using it because Resolve and Affinity were more affordable and met my needs.) Months later someone else picked up the patcher development. There’s also pre-cracked versions you can download and install.

        I’ve not touched Adobe since and find Resolve to be significantly more stable and at $300, much more affordable. The Affinity Photo and Designer apps are great and affordable too at $170 for the bundle.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The new license comes in this really cute collar! To activate it. Simply lock the collar on the user’s neck and bam! You got 3 years of free Adobe Acrobat and Elements!

    Do not take the collar off. It is secured by Battle Royale Inc. it will remove the user’s neck area separating the top part from the bottom part. It’s a very strict but effective license option!

    • Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Also, the collar may cause slight discomfort including (but not limited to) itching, rashes, choking, rashes and llergic reactions). For such cases, we have technitians availiable in 20+ of the world’s largest cities to help you alleviate the symptoms! (You’ll have to get an appointment through a fake AI robocall first)

      T&C

      Any attempt to touch the collar by a person not wearing it will cause the collar to start burning the flesh of both the toucher and wearer. When the wesrer wishes to use Adobe Elements, they have to plug in their collar into the computer. Only the wearer may touch the wire of the collar - any attempt by a 3rd party to touch the collar will cause a 80dB screeching noise to be emitted by the collar. Any complains must be arbitrated. We will not budge like those pussies over at Disney. If you’re an EU citizen you have to renounce your citizenship if you wish to use Adobe products. Our products may onle be used in progressive democracies with strong corporate freedom of forced arbitration.

      Spoiler

      Tbh I think I sold them way too short since their agreement would be at least 35000 words long

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I love it!

        This just in! The collars are now compatible with the new Samsung USB C battery packs! You know what that means right?

        That’s right! The employees can now return home without the automatic head separation system going off! The battery packs are available at Walmart and Costco. They are not rechargeable one time use and biodegradable! You’re saving the planet! One pack allows the employee full freedom to go shopping, ho home, be with their family, watch someone take a shower and participate in conjugal visitation. You must not wet the collar to prevent accidental loss of GPS communication to the Deadman switch. Also plan your routes accordingly, you must not drive under any bridge or enter buildings with thickness greater than 12 inches of concrete.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I fucking hate Adobe so much. Their software has been in a nose dive for years now. I still have to use it for work at the moment, but I’m slowly seeing signs that alternatives are picking up enough adoption to finally ditch them.

    • toastal@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      I ditched after CS6… immediately when they said it would go to subscription I installed darktable

    • Jackie's Fridge@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I also have to use it for work. I don’t know if it’s Adobe, or Windows 11, or a toxic combination of both, but not a single day goes by where I can just create without things randomly breaking. Illustrator stops letting me drag with the direct selection tool. Premiere switches to hotkeys as I’m typing text. InDesign…actually InDesign has been behaving.

      But literally all the other Adobe apps will break AS I’M USING THEM - like, an action I’ve literally just done suddenly doesn’t work or glitches out. A couple weeks ago Premiere and Photoshop would literally crash on open. The day before they were both fine.

      I have Gimp, Inkscape, and KdenLive installed just in case.

  • ryper@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Pricing seems to be the same as the previous version. They could have at least charged a little less for the much shorter licenses.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    And then once this move has had enough to time to narrow their userbase to only the ones dumb enough to tolerate such bullshit, they’ll do it again because number go up lol

  • Mwa@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    why cant people just give up adobe and switch to davinci and affinity

    • JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Ecosystems and collaboration. If you’re already using Adobe for X and Y in your teams, it’s cheaper to get a CC license; and as for collaboration Adobe files are proprietary (and tbh so are Affinity files) so it’s harder to transition off of them. You can open .psd files in affinity, but wanting to export one will rasterize your text. And you can’t even export a .ai file, sure you can do pdfs and that preserves vector information and layers, but that’s just friction that businesses wouldn’t want to deal with.

  • Fiona@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    There has to be a meaningful number of companies where each individually is spending more on adobe licenses than it would cost them to pay a bunch of developers to get gimp to the point where it is a fully sufficient alternative. But hey, the only thing more important to capitalists than making profit seems to be, to not go for cheaper FLOSS options, rather than spending pointlessly large amounts of money on proprietary software…

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      There is still the perception that it’s too cheap to be good in many cases. I’ve run into this fairly recently. It’s stupid, but it exists, and sometimes it exists in the people making the decisions.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Feels like there’s a very simple solution to that. “We can’t use free software, you get what you pay for. We’re not switching to GIMP.” “Okay, what about Rasteditor? It costs $99/year.” “Sounds good, get a license for everyone on the team.” And Rasteditor is just a fork of GIMP with a different logo and the subscription model just donates to the GIMP project.

  • Capitao_Duarte@lemmy.eco.br
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    1 month ago

    That’s why I’m a little skeptical when buying lifetime licenses.

    I love my Plex server and even pay for Plex pass, would love to buy lifetime. But what if two weeks after I buy they just decide this isn’t their business model anymore?

    • JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      They cannot change the terms of a license without reserving themselves the right to do so which would be a red flag, this is in reference to future sales of the license for this software.

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Isn’t Plex FOSS and you only need to pay for the extras? You don’t need PlexPass.

      I did buy the lifetime almost 15 years ago. I’m pretty happy with my purchase.

      • d3lta19@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Plex is not FOSS. But I am with you. I bought Plex pass about 10 years ago and still use it daily

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        1 month ago

        It looks like the media player is open source, but the media server is not.

        I also bought the lifetime license a while ago, and am also happy with that purchase.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        2 months ago

        One of the best KDE apps.

        In case you didn’t know, many other KDE apps are available for Windows and MacOS too. KDE Connect, Kate, kdenlive, Neochat, MarkNote, and a bunch of others.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Affinity got bought up by Canva. It’s only a matter of time that it will get enshittified. They are already giving non-profit and education subscribers free access to Affinity. Bet they will phase out perpetual licensing in the future.

      Next time just pirate it. The Affinity people already got their fat cheque.