For anyone stuck in this dark pattern here is a trick I've used in the past:
Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee however you can switch to a different plan. As soon as you switch you'll have the ability to cancel your "new" plan within 14 days. If you cancel after 14 days they'll charge you the early termination fee.
I signed up, but their product kept crashing - it never worked.
I called to cancel, they asked for 50%. I said, I don't owe it because the product didn't work - contracts require consideration by both parties. CSR said I would pay. I got his contact info and told him that not only I wouldn't pay, but that Adobe would cancel my contract for free before a year.
Anyways, I blocked the transaction. Within 2 months, they cancelled my subscription. I sent a screenshot to the CSR email. Never heard back.
They didn't "come at me" when I've done this a few times in the past, but thankfully I haven't been in a position to put their akin-to-malware on my system in a few years.
>Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. Better to stay away of those to be on the safe side.
A few years ago I signed up for a "free" Audible trial and later forgot about it. They rolled it over into a paid subscription somehow and charged me money despite never giving them my card details in the signup process. I believe what happened is it got linked to my Amazon account and charged the card connected to that.
They refunded me after I contacted them but I didn't get the entire amount back.
A person meeds to have a cc where transactions are disabled. ( My bank via its online customizer accounts - allows a person to turn this on / off for security )
Or you can threaten to report them to the relevant consumer body in your country. I did this after arguing with one of their sales people about cancelling a subscription for half an hour and they immediately relented.
Just speculating, but i suspect they know what they're doing is dodgy and want to avoid as much scrutiny as possible from any regulatory bodies so their support script says to cancel if the customer mentions reporting them.
Also pirates, be reminded that Adobe indulges in very aggressive practices to target you.
At least in India I've met people on unrelated events working for companies claiming to be contracted by Adobe to target small-business, raid their office and make them pay huge sums of money on the pretext of suing them for piracy of their products.
One such person, told me that they got their previous employer into trouble with Adobe due to bad blood. It's definitely not legal for a private entity to raid a premise in India, But I guess these companies have 'what it takes' to make that happen.
So it's not worth it to pirate adobe products, Especially when there are better tools available[1].
It’s not worth it to pirate Adobe products... in India. I’m not sure how this story translates to countries that don’t have anti-piracy mobs that raid offices.
That's awesome! I'm glad it still works. I stumbled upon this work around 5 years ago when I was in college and Adobe quietly switched my subscription from the student version to the full CC suite. I contacted support because I genuinely couldn't afford to pay $60 a month and support was no help whatsoever.
For Adobe specifically, I threatened a chargeback for any amount I’d be charged after I let them know I wanted to cancel, including the cancellation fee.
But for vendors like these, usually I use debit cards which I only load when I want to pay for the service. Send their payment failed emails right to spam.
This also works for American Express. They won't pro-rate the annual fee after thirty days, but you can drop from Platinum or Gold to a Green card and get back the difference.
No, they are purposefully evil but not competent enough to close all loopholes (or leaving it open on purpose to have an escape hatch for the most litigious customers).
Just yesterday, on a local streaming platform that has a series that I want to watch I was offered "7 days free". Great, I can watch the accumulated episodes and if I still feel like watching the new ones that come weekly I can keep the subscription, right?
Nope, the "7 days free" wasn't a a trail but 7 extra days when you purchase a full year subscription. I was considering to get a monthly subscription to try it out but since they tried to trick me into a yearly one I simply decide to Torrent the crap out of their content. Sorry not sorry.
That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks, it's standart on every app: If there's a trail period you get the trail and if not you directly start paying. Also no tricks in the cancelation process, it's all in one place so you can review and cancel easily. You can also change plans right from the same screen. If somehow you manage to purchase something you don't want, get refunded easily.
I really hope that if Apple is forced into allowing 3rd party payments, we end up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently on Apple's platforms but with an option to choose the alternative payment method(in the same screen but a different card or account kind of thing, like choosing a card in Apple Pay).
There need to be laws that you cannot advertise anything as "free" or "introductory price" if it's amortized into a longer contract. A common tactic in Canada is to say "$4/mo for the first three months" but when you sign a contract for $12/mo over a year commitment. This should be treated as straight-up fraud. The price is clearly $10/mo and they're just deferring some payments.
Quebec has separate civil law from the rest of Canada and our consumer protection act prohibits this kind of behaviour (with very clear case law and precedence siding against companies).
As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.
I don't mind too much if the continuing price is obvious. But most of the time the ongoing price is in the fine print or completely missing. I wouldn't mind a law that says the continuing prices needs to be at least as visible as the promotional price.
I agree with you on all points, I would just like to point out that Apple does not follow the same trial rules as they do for everyone else, unless something changed. When I first was trying out Apple Music with the trial period, there was a notice that access to Apple Music would end immediately. I don’t think they do this same thing if you were outside the trial period.
So while I applaud Apple for standardizing the subscription rules for most apps, I would love if they applied it to themselves and their apps the same way.
Yes, Apple Music or Arcade cuts access the moment you end the trial. Apple gives developers API to detect cancellations too but I'm not sure if the developers are allowed to cut access, haven't looked at it. I know some apps that do cut access though.
>That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks
If you don't cancel a three day trial before the end of the second day, you are automatically billed. That's not a three day trial, that's a two day trial. A full 33% less than what you are explicitly promised[0]:
>If you signed up for a free or discounted trial subscription and you don't want to renew it, cancel it at least 24 hours before the trial ends.
>If you cancel during a free trial period, you might lose access to the subscription immediately.
(Note: Although it says you "might" lose access immediately, in my experience you always loose access immediately)
That means it's basically impossible to "trial" software for the period Apple advertises. No matter if the period is 3 days, 7 days or 3 months. It's a dark pattern, a dirty trick that is blatantly consumer hostile.
> That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks, it's standart on every app
And that is exactly what user-hostile companies and devs want to undermine.
Just look up Match.com (parent of Tinder and part of the “coalition” against Apple) and the shit they pull against people, as an example (like charging certain demographics differently for the same service and using artificial matches to bait new subscribers)
If you get screwed by such a scummy actor via Apple’s IAP, Apple will give you a refund without asking any questions, almost immediately. That’s what they want to sidestep, it was never about the users.
Recently subscribed to a free seven day trial. Wrongly assumed that I could cancel up to the seventh day. Unfortunately, the Trial required cancellation to occur before the seventh day.
> I really hope that if Apple is forced into allowing 3rd party payments, we end up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently on Apple's platforms but with an option to choose the alternative payment method(in the same screen but a different card or account kind of thing, like choosing a card in Apple Pay).
If they are forced to unbundle payments, they should be made to unbundle them fully. So not only third-party payment processors in Apple's App Store, but third-party app stores like Cydia (or even Google Play and Microsoft Store) should also be able to use (for a fee) the same payment system as Apple's App Store. If we go by Apple's current 27%-3% split, it could compete against alternatives such as Stripe even on other platforms.
> we en up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently
Of course you won't. Apple will do everything in their power to make third party payments as painful as possible for both the consumer and the merchant. They'll do things like preventing those apps from auto-filling credit card numbers, and denying them camera permission to scan cards. They'll insist credit card data is sent to an in-country server owned by the same company as the app (for privacy reasons obviously, but knowing that for a small app developer hosting certified credit card processing servers in every country their app sells in is very hard).
So, if that's Apple fault on Android it must be really good, right? How is the Android side of things going?
BTW, there's this thing called MasterPass. It's MasterCard's payment system that applications can request you to authorise the use the cards in the MasterPass wallet.
It's quite good experience, they are also very aggressive to collect all your cards in there so if you don't already have a MasterPass there's a option(on by default) in the CC entering screen to add the current card in the MasterPass wallet. There's no explicit account creation step or anything like that, if you tick that option the next time you encounter a payment you will have a MasterPass(At least that's how I remember). I think they must be using some kind of keychain magic to make it possible because it's almost as frictionless as Apple's. You only enter the SMS code if you choose to give access to an app.
The only problem is, there's no easy way to manage your payments and cards in the MasterPass. The payments are credited to your cards so it's good as your bank UI. There's a website that claims to be an UI for MasterPass for managing your cards but it's not on the main mastercard.com domain, therefore I never tried to use it as I can't tell if it's a phishing attempt or a legit one. I guess if I call them they can tell me but I would have expected to see at least a link to that website from my bank website or mastercard website.
If you’re on macOS and just want a good and convenient image editor, I warmly recommend Acorn. The Muellers (owners of Flying Meat Software) have put a lot of effort to make it feel like a really solid Mac application. The price is good and from time to time they offer discounts. The whole experience reminds me of using good old Paintshop Pro back in the late 90s (^_^)
Other options are Affinity Photo from Serif Ltd and Pixelmator. IMHO Acorn has much better GUI though. (FWIW, Affinity works fine on Windows too.)
I realize that some people need the features from Photoshop and then I guess they have to pay the “Adobe tax”. But if you’re not a photo/graphics professional, you can come a long way with the above options.
AFAIK there are also lots of good alternatives for Illustrator and InDesign.
It's targeted at drawing more than image editing (though Krita handles both raster and vector in one document), but more than any other graphics application, they make relatively advanced features[1] discoverable and usable. And being FOSS, it's extensible and has an apparently active community.
Really a gem of usability among FOSS applications. After I tried it, I was surprised I hadn't heard about it. The best graphics program I've ever used, especially in respect to UI (for context, I never really dug into Photoshop and I now despise other Adobe interfaces I am forced to use). Great documentation too: clear, succinct, detailed, easy to find what you need. I rarely use graphics applications, and I didn't need to post one question, and maybe looked once or twice beyond the documentation.
And being FOSS, no dark patterns to worry about at all! I find FOSS to be a relief these days - I hardly have to worry about tracking or the rest of that nonsense.
[1] Advanced for an IT techie - I don't know what a graphic designer or artist would say, though they are the target audience.
Was Krita always available on macOS? I'm shocked -- I swear I checked before and I'm happy to see it is! It looks like Kdenlive is also available on macOS, for video editing! [0]
Edit: Kdenlive is really only for Intel Macs. Unfortunately, it crashes under Rosetta :(
Thank you! Acorn looks pretty solid, I've got Pixelmator on my iOS devices, so I was wondering if i should go for Pixelmator pro on macOS.
For very lightweight stuff, I've often used https://www.photopea.com/, even when i had photoshop installed. Works pretty well for å browser image editor
I've moved away from Adobe recently, both because of their scummy business practices (but when you know how it works, its predictable at least) but moreso because creative cloud is such a resource hog. Core sync often was listed as a process using significant energy, even though file sync was turned off and the finder extension disabled.
Pixelmator Photo on iOS is also the mutt's nuts; I have been cynical about Pixelmator on the Mac until recently but Photo really makes the point that they intend to compete.
Stay away from the Skylum stuff, IMO; it's usually half-baked and instead of evolving the product they have a habit of abandoning it and launching some new product, which is maddening.
Affinity Photo is very very good too (bit confusing on the iPad).
I resisted moving to Pixelmator Pro for a long time since I was a bit miffed at how they handled the original Pixelmator to Pro transition, but it is genuinely a better product, and I now understand the rationale for getting charged again.
Ultimately, it’s okay as a consumer to get back to the old “pay for healthy updates” model that I’m sure software developers are very hesitant to try anymore. So long as the value’s there, this is a healthy approach for all parties.
I am curious if photoshop is better installed from the App Store instead of through creative cloud so all the extra apps aren’t added. Core sync drives me mad.
I've bought both Acorn and Affinity over the years. W/ Affinity they're license is only good for the platform you purchased it on e.g. you can't use a windows license on your mac - you'd need to purchase 2 separate license. Considering I have a work mac and a work windows this was kind of annoying but whatever.
The thing that I encountered w/ Acorn was their license was tied to a particular version. For example a new Mac OS version came out, the version of Acorn I purchased wouldn't work w/ whatever version that was so continue using Acorn I need to purchase a new version. The part that irked me here was I only got like 1 years use out of the software. Feel like they should support n-2 or something to that effect. Not sure if things have changed.
Yes, either you pay for a subscription or you once pay for a specific version and have to pay again if you want to use a later version. You can’t both, that is, you pay once and get upgrades indefinitely. Even developers have to eat.
> The part that irked me here was I only got like 1 years use out of the software.
Surely it doesn't actually stop working after a year? ie. You can keep using the version you bought after a new version comes out. I presume it still does what you bought it to do?
I can strongly second the recommendation for Acorn. I'm not a graphics professional, but it is very often useful in my job to have access to an editor on par with Photoshop—which, aside from some of the more advanced stuff, Acorn definitely is. It's extremely polished and well-put-together—and can also both read and write Photoshop PSD files.
Same here, on about the same timeline. I miss a few things from Photoshop, but some things are much better in Affinity Photo. Especially love that Affinity isn't a subscription.
Another point of view I’d like to offer is that very few people actually _need_ Photoshop/Illustator. I thought I did, until I discovered Canva and PlaceIt. Sure, they’re not super flexible but you can usually find some template that works and just use that and be done with it before Photoshop has even finished loading.
I fell for this. When I called adobe to complain the service rep said, in a manner not much polite than this, that "I don't believe you that you didn't know you were signing up for a year".
Looking back, I now see where I agreed, but the manner in which they attempt to deceive you is criminal.
For future reference, just tell the vendor "I did not authorize this charge. Please refund me". Don't engage them further.
When that call fails (or, if they don't pick up the phone in a reasonable amount of time), call your credit card company and say "I want to issue a charge back".
They'll ask if you tried to work with the vendor. Answer "yes", full stop.
There should be a phone number associated with the charge on your credit card bill. Start (and end your interaction with the vendor) by calling that number.
Edit: You can also say "this service wasn't rendered", or "I never received the product I ordered", as applicable. Those are specifically listed as valid reasons to issue a chargeback. The person at the credit card company has to enter a numeric reason code for the charge back, and by using those phrases (or similar), you're making their lives easier.
> You can also say "this service wasn't rendered", or "I never received the product I ordered", as applicable. Those are specifically listed as valid reasons to issue a chargeback. The person at the credit card company has to enter a numeric reason code for the charge back, and by using those phrases (or similar), you're making their lives easier.
This is, unfortunately, not a panacea. I paid for tickets pre-covid for a concert that was indefinitely postponed - Ticketmaster refused to refund, and PayPal and my bank also both refused to issue chargebacks. My view was that I paid for tickets for a concert on a specific date, and a postponement to an indefinite future date was a failure to render the service I paid for, but none of the payment processors I went through agreed.
I did eventually get the refund from Ticketmaster, and the concert still hasn’t happened. I didn’t like Ticketmaster before, and I like them even less now.
This happened to my wife and I. We both have advanced degrees and write software for a living. The fact that it had these cancellation terms was not at all obvious to either of us, and only realized it when she went to cancel. It’s one of the few trials that I absolutely remember and I’m so glad it was just the photography bundle and not the whole creative suite. It’s absolutely designed to trick you and it works. Fuck them for doing this. At least it wasn’t a lot of money to us, but what about struggling artists/photographers who sign up for creative suite trial but plan to only buy one or two apps, and are now on the hook for a year of everything? It’s pretty dang close to a scam if you ask me.
I personally like Affinity Designer and have designed quite a few things with it. They are behind illustrator on features, I can't deny that, but I've been able to find answers to everything I needed.
Also they have solid developers working on the app. Check out this technical explanation of performance improvements to their rendering pipleline:
For a photoshop replacement, however, I would say Krita hands down. Again, its not as polished as photoshop, but I prefer it over Photoshop at this point even with all its rough edges. I really need to make a video or something about how to set it up and use it correctly but I think its got a lot more going for it.
Krita is closer to a Photoshop competitor than Illustrator. Inkscape is like Illustrator but honestly it is not very good, mostly due to seriously poor performance.
I don't know if Atril is a good Acrobat Reader replacement either. Does it support PDF forms and annotation? That's what most PDF readers are missing.
Apple's preview is pretty great from that point of view. I've also used Xournal++ for that in the past.
Yep -- Inkscape might have some advantages in exporting SVG to FreeCAD, too -- I've seen some differences with Affinity Designer that I don't quite understand.
Lately I've just been using Microsoft Edge for viewing and filling out PDFs. It has the handy ability to draw on and sign documents. That's about all I used Edge for.
Graphic designer here: I got hired at an agency recently, signed up using my company's account so I could save $50/m doing away with my subscription and ran into this issue. Very fun.
Anyways, the future isn't going to be kind to Adobe. Figma has replaced a lot of my Adobe workflow, it's just infinitely a more pleasant experience. Canva has replaced things that require 3 different Adobe products to do. For serious video editing I'm using DaVinci Resolve. InDesign kind of remains a necessity but I can see Figma filling that gap too. That really just leaves Lightroom and Photoshop that get a lot of use, and the things they're necessary for are decreasing by the day.
Some things are missing -- a JavaScript or AppleScript interface for example. And small stuff like you can't reseed the perlin noise generator in Photo.
But some things are surprisingly better.
Affinity Photo has live filter layers that work much better than smart objects, it has a frequency separation tool that is genuinely easier to use, it has proper blend curves that are enormously powerful (sharpening just the highlights? noise reduction just in the shadows?), and you can do things like use Lab curves on an RGB image.
Affinity Designer I know less well, but the symbol and artboard support is astounding (bordering on what Sketch can do), and small things like the rounded corners support is amazing. Its one omission -- it doesn't have an autotrace.
I am sure there are several things InDesign does that Publisher can't, but Publisher's integration with Photo and Designer is absolutely remarkable.
This mix of missing features and improvements is exactly what you should hope for in a competing app; they don't have quite the same objectives in mind and they have started afresh rather than chasing a feature set.
I lack familiarity with Adobe, though sometimes I'll follow a guide for Illustrator and translate it to Designer.
Designer doesn't have:
- Autotracing
- Blob brush
- The color theme picker switcher thing.
Which I could see as being potentially important features for someone in a rush. Other than that, what's really missing? Is it just "you can do it but it takes more setup" kinds of things?
I've been working at detangling myself from the Adobe lineup of products. I really like (or liked) Adobe AfterEffects, it's been very helpful for me in compositing trailers for my computer game business, but it's totally been replaced by the free version of Davinci Resolve. Which I've also found is an excellent replacement for Adobe Audition, which I was using for editing the Voice Over and raw Sound Effects for, again, my video games.
But I can't see myself escaping from Photoshop anytime in the next couple of years. I have a lot of special export scripts in 'Adobescript' (yuck) that carve up my high res art assets, slice them this way and that, crop, hide/display different groups and export in particular ways. Nothing unusual, it's just a lot of grunt work, but I have it set up so that clicking a button in Photoshop will just Do It All and have it work. It'll take some time to set that all up again in a Photoshop alternative.
The nasty payments stuff detailed in the twitter thread is just the usual Adobe nastiness, some product manager somewhere is trying to juice the numbers.
My own billing experience with Adobe recently was needing to change my account's country from UK to Canada, as I've moved, and the VAT number and sales tax stuff is of course all different. The poor support person I spoke to couldn't fix it for me, they had to have a backend engineer manually change alter a field in a database somewhere - it all sounds like a terrible mess.
That's the problem. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects have almost no competition and they know it.
Even if there were, companies can't just jump to different tools because they would lose ability to open all their past work files. The migration will be slow.
Only After Effects doesn't have an all-in-one competitor, really.
Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign, as a linked suite, has a very, very able competitor in Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher. Given the complexity of these products, expecting more than one fully-integrated competing suite might be too much.
You might find this video useful, to see the extent to which it is a competitor:
AutoDesk (CAD/BIM/etc) is also getting like this. Maybe not totally Adobe yet, but they too also basically have a lock on their industry. Just like with Adobe, some alternatives exist and a few might be good enough, but AutoDesk bought so many competitors and/or companies that most of the time they are the only game in town.
Bentley (not cars) is another company I loathe, but I've already gotten off topic.
The professional software industry is a cesspool across all industries.
Readit News
Adobe won't let you cancel without paying the remainder of your subscription fee however you can switch to a different plan. As soon as you switch you'll have the ability to cancel your "new" plan within 14 days. If you cancel after 14 days they'll charge you the early termination fee.
Anyway a "free" trial that asks for your cc number is obviously not free. Better to stay away of those to be on the safe side.
I signed up, but their product kept crashing - it never worked.
I called to cancel, they asked for 50%. I said, I don't owe it because the product didn't work - contracts require consideration by both parties. CSR said I would pay. I got his contact info and told him that not only I wouldn't pay, but that Adobe would cancel my contract for free before a year.
Anyways, I blocked the transaction. Within 2 months, they cancelled my subscription. I sent a screenshot to the CSR email. Never heard back.
There is a legitimate reason to do that: to keep people from making a bunch of accounts and getting free trials with them forever.
A few years ago I signed up for a "free" Audible trial and later forgot about it. They rolled it over into a paid subscription somehow and charged me money despite never giving them my card details in the signup process. I believe what happened is it got linked to my Amazon account and charged the card connected to that.
They refunded me after I contacted them but I didn't get the entire amount back.
Dead Comment
Just speculating, but i suspect they know what they're doing is dodgy and want to avoid as much scrutiny as possible from any regulatory bodies so their support script says to cancel if the customer mentions reporting them.
At least in India I've met people on unrelated events working for companies claiming to be contracted by Adobe to target small-business, raid their office and make them pay huge sums of money on the pretext of suing them for piracy of their products.
One such person, told me that they got their previous employer into trouble with Adobe due to bad blood. It's definitely not legal for a private entity to raid a premise in India, But I guess these companies have 'what it takes' to make that happen.
So it's not worth it to pirate adobe products, Especially when there are better tools available[1].
[1] https://startuptoolchain.com/#design (I maintain this).
But for vendors like these, usually I use debit cards which I only load when I want to pay for the service. Send their payment failed emails right to spam.
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Nope, the "7 days free" wasn't a a trail but 7 extra days when you purchase a full year subscription. I was considering to get a monthly subscription to try it out but since they tried to trick me into a yearly one I simply decide to Torrent the crap out of their content. Sorry not sorry.
That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks, it's standart on every app: If there's a trail period you get the trail and if not you directly start paying. Also no tricks in the cancelation process, it's all in one place so you can review and cancel easily. You can also change plans right from the same screen. If somehow you manage to purchase something you don't want, get refunded easily.
I really hope that if Apple is forced into allowing 3rd party payments, we end up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently on Apple's platforms but with an option to choose the alternative payment method(in the same screen but a different card or account kind of thing, like choosing a card in Apple Pay).
As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.
So while I applaud Apple for standardizing the subscription rules for most apps, I would love if they applied it to themselves and their apps the same way.
If you don't cancel a three day trial before the end of the second day, you are automatically billed. That's not a three day trial, that's a two day trial. A full 33% less than what you are explicitly promised[0]:
>If you signed up for a free or discounted trial subscription and you don't want to renew it, cancel it at least 24 hours before the trial ends.
>If you cancel during a free trial period, you might lose access to the subscription immediately.
(Note: Although it says you "might" lose access immediately, in my experience you always loose access immediately)
That means it's basically impossible to "trial" software for the period Apple advertises. No matter if the period is 3 days, 7 days or 3 months. It's a dark pattern, a dirty trick that is blatantly consumer hostile.
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202039
And that is exactly what user-hostile companies and devs want to undermine.
Just look up Match.com (parent of Tinder and part of the “coalition” against Apple) and the shit they pull against people, as an example (like charging certain demographics differently for the same service and using artificial matches to bait new subscribers)
If you get screwed by such a scummy actor via Apple’s IAP, Apple will give you a refund without asking any questions, almost immediately. That’s what they want to sidestep, it was never about the users.
You should name and shame, so that others don't fall into the same trap.
I also torrent their shows, so...
If they are forced to unbundle payments, they should be made to unbundle them fully. So not only third-party payment processors in Apple's App Store, but third-party app stores like Cydia (or even Google Play and Microsoft Store) should also be able to use (for a fee) the same payment system as Apple's App Store. If we go by Apple's current 27%-3% split, it could compete against alternatives such as Stripe even on other platforms.
Of course you won't. Apple will do everything in their power to make third party payments as painful as possible for both the consumer and the merchant. They'll do things like preventing those apps from auto-filling credit card numbers, and denying them camera permission to scan cards. They'll insist credit card data is sent to an in-country server owned by the same company as the app (for privacy reasons obviously, but knowing that for a small app developer hosting certified credit card processing servers in every country their app sells in is very hard).
BTW, there's this thing called MasterPass. It's MasterCard's payment system that applications can request you to authorise the use the cards in the MasterPass wallet.
It's quite good experience, they are also very aggressive to collect all your cards in there so if you don't already have a MasterPass there's a option(on by default) in the CC entering screen to add the current card in the MasterPass wallet. There's no explicit account creation step or anything like that, if you tick that option the next time you encounter a payment you will have a MasterPass(At least that's how I remember). I think they must be using some kind of keychain magic to make it possible because it's almost as frictionless as Apple's. You only enter the SMS code if you choose to give access to an app.
The only problem is, there's no easy way to manage your payments and cards in the MasterPass. The payments are credited to your cards so it's good as your bank UI. There's a website that claims to be an UI for MasterPass for managing your cards but it's not on the main mastercard.com domain, therefore I never tried to use it as I can't tell if it's a phishing attempt or a legit one. I guess if I call them they can tell me but I would have expected to see at least a link to that website from my bank website or mastercard website.
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Other options are Affinity Photo from Serif Ltd and Pixelmator. IMHO Acorn has much better GUI though. (FWIW, Affinity works fine on Windows too.)
I realize that some people need the features from Photoshop and then I guess they have to pay the “Adobe tax”. But if you’re not a photo/graphics professional, you can come a long way with the above options.
AFAIK there are also lots of good alternatives for Illustrator and InDesign.
https://krita.org/
It's targeted at drawing more than image editing (though Krita handles both raster and vector in one document), but more than any other graphics application, they make relatively advanced features[1] discoverable and usable. And being FOSS, it's extensible and has an apparently active community.
Really a gem of usability among FOSS applications. After I tried it, I was surprised I hadn't heard about it. The best graphics program I've ever used, especially in respect to UI (for context, I never really dug into Photoshop and I now despise other Adobe interfaces I am forced to use). Great documentation too: clear, succinct, detailed, easy to find what you need. I rarely use graphics applications, and I didn't need to post one question, and maybe looked once or twice beyond the documentation.
And being FOSS, no dark patterns to worry about at all! I find FOSS to be a relief these days - I hardly have to worry about tracking or the rest of that nonsense.
[1] Advanced for an IT techie - I don't know what a graphic designer or artist would say, though they are the target audience.
Edit: Kdenlive is really only for Intel Macs. Unfortunately, it crashes under Rosetta :(
[0]: https://kdenlive.org/en/download/
I also loved this bit from their FAQ:
I have no affiliation with them (not even a user yet).For very lightweight stuff, I've often used https://www.photopea.com/, even when i had photoshop installed. Works pretty well for å browser image editor
I've moved away from Adobe recently, both because of their scummy business practices (but when you know how it works, its predictable at least) but moreso because creative cloud is such a resource hog. Core sync often was listed as a process using significant energy, even though file sync was turned off and the finder extension disabled.
Stay away from the Skylum stuff, IMO; it's usually half-baked and instead of evolving the product they have a habit of abandoning it and launching some new product, which is maddening.
Affinity Photo is very very good too (bit confusing on the iPad).
Ultimately, it’s okay as a consumer to get back to the old “pay for healthy updates” model that I’m sure software developers are very hesitant to try anymore. So long as the value’s there, this is a healthy approach for all parties.
I’ve tried both Pixelmator and Acorn on macOS and IMHO Acorn’s GUI is cleaner and more Mac-like. YMMV.
The thing that I encountered w/ Acorn was their license was tied to a particular version. For example a new Mac OS version came out, the version of Acorn I purchased wouldn't work w/ whatever version that was so continue using Acorn I need to purchase a new version. The part that irked me here was I only got like 1 years use out of the software. Feel like they should support n-2 or something to that effect. Not sure if things have changed.
Surely it doesn't actually stop working after a year? ie. You can keep using the version you bought after a new version comes out. I presume it still does what you bought it to do?
I threw my Affinity Designer macOS key into a Windows trial and it worked just fine, you just have to download the trial for the other platform.
(No affiliation, just a pleased user)
Now that's the name I haven't heard in a long time :)
I still have PSP7 on one of my machines and even use it occassionally!
Looking back, I now see where I agreed, but the manner in which they attempt to deceive you is criminal.
When that call fails (or, if they don't pick up the phone in a reasonable amount of time), call your credit card company and say "I want to issue a charge back". They'll ask if you tried to work with the vendor. Answer "yes", full stop.
There should be a phone number associated with the charge on your credit card bill. Start (and end your interaction with the vendor) by calling that number.
Edit: You can also say "this service wasn't rendered", or "I never received the product I ordered", as applicable. Those are specifically listed as valid reasons to issue a chargeback. The person at the credit card company has to enter a numeric reason code for the charge back, and by using those phrases (or similar), you're making their lives easier.
This is, unfortunately, not a panacea. I paid for tickets pre-covid for a concert that was indefinitely postponed - Ticketmaster refused to refund, and PayPal and my bank also both refused to issue chargebacks. My view was that I paid for tickets for a concert on a specific date, and a postponement to an indefinite future date was a failure to render the service I paid for, but none of the payment processors I went through agreed.
I did eventually get the refund from Ticketmaster, and the concert still hasn’t happened. I didn’t like Ticketmaster before, and I like them even less now.
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At least for amateur/hobby work, I've used the following for years and love them. I also try to regularly donate to them.
Instead of Illustrator for drawing, use Inkscape https://inkscape.org/ and/or Krita https://krita.org/en/.
Instead of Lightroom for developing digital photos, use Darktable https://www.darktable.org/
Instead of Photoshop for touchups, use GIMP https://www.gimp.org/.
Instead of Acrobat Reader, use MuPDF (mobile) or Atril https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/mate-desktop/applications/atri... (Linux)
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
I personally like Affinity Designer and have designed quite a few things with it. They are behind illustrator on features, I can't deny that, but I've been able to find answers to everything I needed.
Also they have solid developers working on the app. Check out this technical explanation of performance improvements to their rendering pipleline:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfxzknVK_0
For a photoshop replacement, however, I would say Krita hands down. Again, its not as polished as photoshop, but I prefer it over Photoshop at this point even with all its rough edges. I really need to make a video or something about how to set it up and use it correctly but I think its got a lot more going for it.
I don't know if Atril is a good Acrobat Reader replacement either. Does it support PDF forms and annotation? That's what most PDF readers are missing.
Apple's preview is pretty great from that point of view. I've also used Xournal++ for that in the past.
I will say that if I really need the end result to be an SVG that I can modify in a text editor later, Inkscape is better for that.
Or more likely I just don't understand FreeCAD.
Anyways, the future isn't going to be kind to Adobe. Figma has replaced a lot of my Adobe workflow, it's just infinitely a more pleasant experience. Canva has replaced things that require 3 different Adobe products to do. For serious video editing I'm using DaVinci Resolve. InDesign kind of remains a necessity but I can see Figma filling that gap too. That really just leaves Lightroom and Photoshop that get a lot of use, and the things they're necessary for are decreasing by the day.
Some things are missing -- a JavaScript or AppleScript interface for example. And small stuff like you can't reseed the perlin noise generator in Photo.
But some things are surprisingly better.
Affinity Photo has live filter layers that work much better than smart objects, it has a frequency separation tool that is genuinely easier to use, it has proper blend curves that are enormously powerful (sharpening just the highlights? noise reduction just in the shadows?), and you can do things like use Lab curves on an RGB image.
Affinity Designer I know less well, but the symbol and artboard support is astounding (bordering on what Sketch can do), and small things like the rounded corners support is amazing. Its one omission -- it doesn't have an autotrace.
I am sure there are several things InDesign does that Publisher can't, but Publisher's integration with Photo and Designer is absolutely remarkable.
This mix of missing features and improvements is exactly what you should hope for in a competing app; they don't have quite the same objectives in mind and they have started afresh rather than chasing a feature set.
Frequent updates for a single charge of 50 usd is just amazing.
Designer doesn't have:
- Autotracing
- Blob brush
- The color theme picker switcher thing.
Which I could see as being potentially important features for someone in a rush. Other than that, what's really missing? Is it just "you can do it but it takes more setup" kinds of things?
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But I can't see myself escaping from Photoshop anytime in the next couple of years. I have a lot of special export scripts in 'Adobescript' (yuck) that carve up my high res art assets, slice them this way and that, crop, hide/display different groups and export in particular ways. Nothing unusual, it's just a lot of grunt work, but I have it set up so that clicking a button in Photoshop will just Do It All and have it work. It'll take some time to set that all up again in a Photoshop alternative.
The nasty payments stuff detailed in the twitter thread is just the usual Adobe nastiness, some product manager somewhere is trying to juice the numbers.
My own billing experience with Adobe recently was needing to change my account's country from UK to Canada, as I've moved, and the VAT number and sales tax stuff is of course all different. The poor support person I spoke to couldn't fix it for me, they had to have a backend engineer manually change alter a field in a database somewhere - it all sounds like a terrible mess.
Even if there were, companies can't just jump to different tools because they would lose ability to open all their past work files. The migration will be slow.
Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign, as a linked suite, has a very, very able competitor in Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher. Given the complexity of these products, expecting more than one fully-integrated competing suite might be too much.
You might find this video useful, to see the extent to which it is a competitor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVqJIaMlB6E
Not a 100% drop-in replacement, mind you, but almost nothing ever is. Very close, though, and capable of some remarkable things.
(I still don't have Publisher but I love Photo and Designer.)
Bentley (not cars) is another company I loathe, but I've already gotten off topic.
The professional software industry is a cesspool across all industries.