eschelar
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eschelar
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‎Jul 30, 2018
05:48 PM
Thanks again Dave. This does match the experience I am seeing. It's just so illogical that I find it counterintuitive and since the behavior is different from CS6 and doesn't appear to be documented, it's rather frustrating. I think in the entire 15+ years of working with PS, I've wanted to use a "select layer by clicking on the picture" function maybe 3 times. I've probably used the "ctrl-click and drag" function several hundred thousand times in that same time. I guess nobody actually asked the question "why" when they decided to make the tool behave so oddly. It would make far more sense to preserve the normal behavior of the tool, but add a new tool called "layer select tool" in the same tile as the move tool, much like they have done for the variety of stamp tools, the dodge and burn tools etc. Then, people could choose which of the variants of the tool they preferred to use. You know, logic... The very idea of working a seldom used function of the move tool into the default function and giving it these odd behaviors without explaining it is one major reason why I am ethically opposed to CC and the unusual set of "improvements" that have occurred which appear to be rooted in functionality decisions designed for people who seldom use the product, designed by people who seldom use the product. I'm just really glad that I am not paying for CC and I have opted to boycott Adobe entirely by my wallet until such a time as they abandon the CC fiasco. It is just disappointing to me that there is a total disconnect between users and developers (and presumably management), although I do appreciate you taking the time to assist with this.
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‎Jul 29, 2018
08:12 PM
And now I'm understanding why it was so confusing. Although it was working fine for a couple of days, I'm working on a batch of images today where I'm dragging across a simple watermark from one image to another again and again. I just noticed that when I hold ctrl, when the move tool is highlighted, even if the tool itself is set to not auto-select, the tool then changes to auto-select is checked. And then a few minutes later, it starts working normally again. I have no idea why sometimes it decides to change itself. I can hold ctrl, uncheck the box, then use the move tool. However, there's no way to do this when I'm using a different tool. The end result is that I'm right back to the beginning with unpredictable behavior of the tool, adding more clicks and actions to do the same work as before. Not sure if this is a bug or if some misguided individual in Adobe thinks it's a genuine bit of progress.
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‎Jul 26, 2018
05:46 PM
Makes sense. I tried this in the program and it changed nothing, however, I didn't turn off the program and re-start. After re-starting, it appears to be working predictably. Like so many other things, it feels like Adobe has just created a sideways "development" in their program, then set a counterintuitive default which has the intent of letting people see how the tool is used and has changed, but also has the unexpected result of ticking users off and wasting a bunch of their time as they pursue frustrating conversations like this. Thanks for sticking with me though Dave. In all the years I have been using Adobe and these forums, I think this is the first time I've ever seen fast, accurate responses.
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‎Jul 25, 2018
06:44 PM
I have done nothing special. It's a fresh install on someone else's computer where I am working as a medium term guest. I have however checked on a few other computers using Adobe CC and they all seem to work the same way. Are you saying that you had the move tool selected and you used ctrl-click and drag to move multiple objects on multiple layers - and you also tried again with the marquee tool selected and you got the same results? The behavior seems to be related to when I don't click on the exact pixel occupied by a layer, so if for example I have 3 text layers above an image layer and I have ONLY the text layers selected in the Layers panel, then I click to drag and move and do not click on the text itself, it looks like it will add the image layer below it to the selected layers, which is of course deeply insane. I select layers in the layers panel, not by clicking stuff in the image. How could anyone possibly work on a complex image like that?
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‎Jul 25, 2018
02:07 AM
Nope, that changes nothing when I have the move tool selected. I turned that off ages ago. Also, I have now completed my 60 layer image for the afternoon and found a few workarounds, including linking layers and fiddling with the marquee tool and move tool. The move tool is somewhat passable, except that it has this odd behavior added on to it, where it decides on its own to add layers to the selection Just awful. I had annoying, unexpected or inexplicable behavior about 40 times during the 1.5 hours I was working on it. It was really really fun. Also, not actually fun.
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‎Jul 24, 2018
11:23 PM
Thanks for responding so quickly Francesco. Not sure what you're talking about though. I'm talking about using Ctrl-Shift with a specific tool. I use ctrl-shift with any tool selected and I can move the layer around. This is something that I use a *LOT*. Especially on complex images with many layers. The image I was working on just now is a simple image with only about 25 layers, 15 of those in groups of various sizes to create some "drawn artwork". I am about to build a series of more complex images, each with probably 50-60 layers with groups and each likely using variations of the drawn artwork, brought from one image to the other and having smart objects changed in size using the transform tool. I have no idea how to do this efficiently, so I might actually have to bring my laptop to work and use my old personal copy of CS6 to work on these images... I'm not sure the wall is strong enough to support this level of head banging... I have never used the direct select tool, nor would I use it? Why would I change the tool I am using just to move the layer when I have never had to do that over the past 15 years? Much of my work is done using layers with the brush tool or with the marquee tool. Ctrl-Shift with either of those tools selected will allow me to move all of the layers I have selected with a ctrl-click and drag, or with a ctrl-shift click and drag. I learned to drag layers across into other images by using ctrl-shift-click and drag, so that's my habit, but I haven't honestly fiddled with functionality for more than a decade, so I'm assuming that both work just fine. However, right now, when I do ctrl-click and drag, it changes the layer selections. This is basically unusable. The only way I can move multiple layers around currently is to use ctrl and the arrow keys for nudging. If I use a mouse-based move, it changes the layer selection. So how exactly do I work on large complex files and bring over groups of layers without having the layer selections randomly changed when I try to do the actual move?? I find this very confusing. How did anyone approve something like this? Heck, how did anyone even suggest making a change like this? And how is it that you can put a link to a post with other people asking the exact same questions, flabbergasted at pointless, unnecessary changes being made that disrupt normal workflow established over many years for no reason... without having the awareness to say "oh yeah, this is a part of a bunch of really annoying changes that Adobe has made that the users didn't ask for and generally loathe and we really should get this fixed instead of just pretending it's an answer"???
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‎Jul 24, 2018
08:55 PM
So I've been a long term Adobe user, but I'm opposed to the CC model, however I have a bit of work on a local office machine using PS CC. I've always used the keyboard shortcut "ctrl-shift" and click to move layers around. Usually, this works with any tool selected, just as the space bar does. However, in CC, it goes absolutely bonkers, changing the selected layers and stuff instead. I don't know what this tool is, but I know what layers are and I know what layers I am working on. Why does the tool want to change the layers selected? How do I get rid of this ridiculously anti-logical "feature"? Also, I never use the "move" tool, never have. Literally not even once in the 15 years I have been using PS have I ever found a cause to use that tool. But when I google this, those are all the results I can find. Is this just Adobe engineers trying to make useless functions relevant again, in the process adding previously unnecessary clicks and slowdowns to everyone's workflow? Anyhow, I'd appreciate a bit of guidance on this. It has been well over a decade since I learned this shortcut and I don't recall the details of whether or not it had a special name, just like the space bar key allows moving around... I don't know if it has a special nomenclature, but it is definitely counter-intuitive as heck now. Do the developers not ever move layers around in projects? Or do they just think it's not something that is done very often?
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‎Jun 15, 2017
10:07 PM
Dude, my project is complete and rendered and has already picked up a few thousand views. Don't worry yourself about my productivity. Worry about productivity *you pay for* - which is Adobe's productivity. I've done three other projects since then. Adobe on the other hand still hasn't responded to ten year old discussions about this missing feature in Premiere. The irony is that I just found out about Hitfilm's Ignite Express, which is a plugin package which works in Premiere Pro and... contains radial blur. Adobe needs to hang their head in shame. The biggest part of the irony is that all Hitfilm needed to do to embarrass Adobe was to look at the forums for features that Adobe has been ignoring for years... They made a list and built a plugins package. The full package contains 160 functions. The free package contains 90 or so. As to my not knowing what I'm talking about, that's a point that *you* haven't proven. You also haven't contributed any reasoning to my original argument. My evidence is that there are forum posts discussing this exact feature going back to 2007. My point is that Adobe has ignored this. My support for that argument is that this feature was requested many times before and has been discussed publicly at length in Adobe's forums and elsewhere. I gave a 3rd party as my evidence because you don't have to rely on my own word, you can google it yourself and have fully independently verified information. Please feel free to demonstrate why you feel this is insufficient evidence. Further, I suggest that the correct way to administrate a feedback system is to create a list of features and mark down their age, number of responders and the evaluated response by management. This would be an internal system of course, so would not be available to the public. However, the *EVIDENCE* that such a system was in place and was working properly would be that there would not be *numerous* threads throughout Adobe's forums describing problems that have existed for a decade or more. Additionally, for those problems that were being left alone, there would be a simple evaluated response that people with access to the internal records could refer to to say "yes, we know about that problem, but we decided to leave it out of Premiere because we're afraid of the letter R, which is a rational and sensible reason..." or something. This thread is one example, but I gave others too. For example, the use of a literal naming structure for layers rather than a system call type naming structure to insulate actions from language differences is a problem. It has been discussed many times over the past ten years and Adobe's official response to it is that they will not address this problem. There are plenty of others and it's not my job to show you them all while holding your hand. You're taking issue with my statement that this is the case and I have provided two examples, so it's now up to *you* to prove me wrong. If you think this system *does* exist and you think it *is* working, then demonstrate why you think that and provide supporting evidence. Specifically, you can show how Adobe has responsibly responded to problems like the one we have been discussing which is over a decade old... and in a timely fashion... and responded with quality reasons as to why it has been ignored or omitted for such a long time if that is the case. If you want to say something is false, you can't simply say that it's wrong because you can't be bothered to do any research. I've done my bit.
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‎Jun 15, 2017
06:12 PM
No Jim, you're misunderstanding. I'm taking the forums and discussions as evidence alone. I say that the onus on Adobe to prove that they are taking these things seriously, not on me to prove that they aren't. It's plainly evident that they are not since that is the discussion we are having and the thread we are having it in. In this thread, we are talking about a feature request that has been active for near (probably over) a decade. You only need to google this issue to find many other places where this particular feature request has been discussed and has been absent since discussions started in... on my google search page, the earliest discussion of this feature is 2007. That's just the first page. I don't feel a need to search any longer. You are correct that we would need to _know_ those tallies in order to make a judgment as to how Adobe is doing, but we cannot know this. We can only hope that those tallies exist and someone is paying attention to them. If that were the case, then it would make sense that older queries would be addressed with somewhat greater urgency than 10 years... Especially when it's a simple port of a function from AE to Prem. It is not my job to babysit Adobe to take care of long-standing omissions, bugs and feature requests. But when I come on Adobe's own forums week after week and month after month and see ancient discussions like this one that are still untouched even with the very latest version of CC, I am left with only one logical conclusion. So are you, but you're not reaching the same conclusion, so I can only assume that there's a problem with your logic. The evidence is plain. The problem exists and has existed for over a decade. It has been discussed many times. It has been brought to Adobe's attention many times. Yet it has been ignored. I am also aware that many companies have a policy (this is particularly bad for MS products) where problems are only addressed based on how many people have mentioned them, rather than evaluating the problems themselves. This is a course of foolishness. Anyone with half a brain can understand that the more complex an issue is, the less likely people are to find this problem and the less likely you will have a large volume of people reporting it. Doesn't make it a less serious problem, it just means it's more complex, and it gets less attention. Still, I do expect that competent management would be able to deal with this disparity effectively. The only evidence I have is the evidence that I can see. And from that evidence, I see problems like this one all over the forums for issues that have remained unsolved for years and are replied to by Adobe saying "this problem is known and will not be addressed". I have a hard time believing that you spend serious time on this forum and you haven't come across this. Most of the things I have come to this forum to look for have a similar situation. This is because I come to these forums when I have a problem. If you have a different experience, then I would suggest that it's very likely that you come to these forums for different reasons, so you are not spending time looking at problems that currently exist in the software. That also means that you are likely using different software for different purposes. No, you're not going to come across problems with Adobe actions if all you ever do is do brightness and contrast adjustments on family photos. No, you're not going to come across problems with Premiere fumbling around with nested sequences and track mattes if all you ever do is put a title on a couple of GoPro clips from the family.
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‎Jun 14, 2017
06:19 PM
Do your own research Jim. I found this thread because I was trying to figure out where Adobe had hidden radial blur in Prem. I came across several other threads on the first page of Google results. One of them demonstrated that this feature has been requested for ~a decade. In what universe does it make sense to you that Adobe does have someone monitoring Feature Requests, yet a sensible and likely fairly easy request (this feature already exists in AE, so they have the code for it already) is ignored for ten years? As to the idea of having a tally of every feature request Adobe has received over the past XX years etc... I can't understand what the problem is. I am not suggesting that this information needs to be made public (although it would probably quell my frustration a lot), my point is that such a thing *should already exist*. It is how *every ticket system works*. If you've ever worked with any other form of customer satisfaction or complaints or similar department, the manager *does* have a way of monitoring those exact things: we'd need to have a tally of every feature request Adobe has received over the past decade along with how many times each was filed, and compare that to every new feature Adobe has implemented over that same time period. Yes, this exactly. This is specifically the job of the management in those departments, so either those tallies exist or they don't. If they exist, they aren't being used effectively. If they don't exist, their management should be fired wholesale, today. I wouldn't run a 7-11 if there was no checks being used by management to effectively monitor customer complaints. I find it very hard to believe that this is operating effectively at Adobe. The forums are the only way we, the users can observe this information and if you look at the forums, you will find many, many issues with Adobe software that show problems being blatantly ignored for years. I can't recall all the exact points and I don't make a point of hunting issues like this (because it isn't my job), but the last 3 things I encountered here on the forums were like this. Radial blur was 10 years, a problem with PS actions was running at 6 years, (another problem with the way PS handles default names in Premiere has been there since day 1 and is not on the radar for being fixed...) problems with nested sequences and track matte key was also in the decade range. I don't keep track of all the things I look for help in the Adobe forums and fail to find answers, but there's probably 15-20 per year that I do look for. I haven't come across a bug in Adobe yet that hasn't already been discovered and discussed. Because of the nature of my job, I only end up spending serious time with Premiere about every 2-3 months or so, but around half of the problems I encounter fall into this category. I'm a much stronger Photoshop user and most of the problems I encounter there, I can work around via scripting. Premiere doesn't have scripting. If you are a serious Adobe user, I find it difficult to believe that you don't also regularly encounter problems. Most of the time, if the bug existed before CC, it's still ignored even now. There are occasional bug fixes that are fixed in CC but not in CS6, but for the most part, they are just swept under the rug. It is more common for me to find a thread that says "Adobe is aware of the issue and there will be no fix". It's extremely important to remember exactly what we are talking about here. Adobe is premium, industry grade software that comes with a premium price tag (even more-so after CC), so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that there is an effective problem solving strategy or at least some level of feedback. When I am told "there will be no fix", I at least want some level of reason. I do a bit of coding myself as well (web coding and C++) and I cannot comprehend a workflow that doesn't involve some level of analysis/evaluation. If Adobe makes a statement as "bold" as "there will be no fix", I do expect to know exactly why. It is unreasonable for there to be an answer of "there will be no fix" *only* if there is no valid reason for it. "I don't feel like it" is not an acceptable reason for neglecting bugs and omissions in expensive professional grade software packages.
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‎Jun 13, 2017
06:10 PM
Warren, if you paid attention, you would note that I'm not saying anything about the amount of time it takes to do a feature request. I'm pointing out that this feature has been actively requested for upwards of a decade or possibly more. I was also looking for this feature in PPro and found a few threads on this very forum which dated back to 2013 and alluded to feature requests going back a decade - and that was 4 years ago. My point is that I am suggesting a no-confidence stance on Adobe's R&D process. I feel strongly that their R&D team is completely misguided and has almost no direction since interval versions were the primary driving pulse of Adobe's innovation. Outside of the few updates within around 6 months of releasing CC, there has been very, very little int eh way of significant improvements in any "suite" member program. Look at the last "major" update. Look at the video from Adobe talking about it. 95% or more of the comments from working professionals are complaining that none of those will improve their workflow and most of them also described at least one or two bugs that remain ignored. Properties panel... *eyeroll* Oddly, many of the "improvements" in the last "major version" of CC were simply borrowed from one program and ported to another. Look at artboards from AI to PS (something virtually nobody wanted and fewer people actually use). They even had something they borrowed from Word and brought into PS... Yet here we are discussing radial blur, which exists in PS and AE and has been requested for PPro for over a decade, but still nothing at all. There are probably hundreds of threads on the forums of major bugs and omissions from CC programs that have been ignored for 3, 4, 5 or even 10+ years now. Do you genuinely think that Adobe is ignoring those problems because there were not bug reports of feature requests? Bug reports and feature requests are simply a way of quieting down the masses so they feel like they aren't being ignored. If you have ever worked in conflict resolution in retail or other business, you would understand how these things work. Adobe simply has no functional plan whatsoever to organize bug reports and feature requests and implement them. If they did, they would be able to communicate that back to the users. They don't. They obviously *think* they do, but it is also very obvious that it doesn't work. Sadly, it wouldn't even be that difficult for them to implement. There are dozens of strong communities like Creative Cow, DPreview, nofilmschool, etc... which operate forums where they have "staff" and "MVP" type members who could very easily compile user feedback into bite-sized, hierarchical, age-oriented packages for Adobe. Heck, they even have their very own forum, which is almost entirely ignored by Staff, but those few Staff that don't ignore it freely admit that they have absolutely no power beyond the obviously useless "feature request" and "bug report" opiate. And still nothing moves forwards. Indeed, outspoken folk such as myself are often muzzled (you will notice that my posts now require moderator authorization... more work for the moderator staff, at the expense of keeping quiet someone who spent years supporting Adobe both with wallet and with bringing in new users via workshops and community classes). None of this is rocket science. None of this is difficult. However, it would require a paradigm shift for Adobe to take their focus away from simply trying to milk cash from their users back to trying to make great product. It would indeed likely cost a little money to turn their totally non-functional model of feedback into a working and efficient one, but it is not money that Adobe is likely to spend. Currently their business model revolves around "doing less, improving less, charging more". It is working well for them and profits are up by capitalizing on low-hanging fruit and decorations. What on Earth would pry them away from that? Only a strongly ethical leadership decision could change that. And given the history of CC, it's pretty obvious that Adobe has no strongly ethical leadership willing or capable of making decisions like that.
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‎Jun 13, 2017
01:25 AM
1 Upvote
Why do you think that this is a reasonable thing to say Ann? The missing radial blur effect in Premiere has been a glaring and embarrassing omission from Premiere for over a decade. Do you genuinely think that the dozens of articles that have been written about this obvious missing feature don't represent hundreds of feature requests for this over the past 10-15 years that people have been complaining about it? I've been using Premiere for a good number of years myself and I've been using Photoshop for almost 20 years. Photoshop has had radial blur for a very long time. Premiere has not. This is no less than abject laziness on the part of Adobe to not implement. Very little has been genuinely added to any Adobe software since CC came along compared to before, when sales depended on actually developing real features. Now that sales no longer depend on genuine improvements, Adobe no longer has a need to work on real improvements and bug fixes. This is just another proof of how Adobe's focus is not on making good software, but simply focusing on improving revenue. Making a feature request hasn't been a useful way of end users helping to improve Adobe for over a decade. Look at the most recent "major" update from CC. Almost every single change has been panned by most serious users because they have little effect on day-to-day use. Yet, commonly used features like this are ignored. When was the last time radial blur was used in Premiere in a significant way? It's called a "smooth zoom transition". It's currently used extensively in travel vlogging. The current method of doing it involves reflect/mirror and transform effects. The radial blur comes from the transform effect. This method is not suitable for taking advantage of high res footage for a standard 1080p output (still the most common video output workflow), but motion fx and radial blur would be. Of course, this is impossible because there is no radial blur in Premiere Pro. So an omission that is probably 15 years old is still current - indeed, more current than ever because of the increasing availability of high res footage... and still ignored by Adobe. The problem is not that people aren't submitting bug reports and feature requests. The problem is that Adobe doesn't appear to have anyone actually monitoring them. Or anyone at all involved in actually trying to figure out what end users might actually need or want. Stop making excuses for Adobe. They are a big company. If they think we can afford to spend 3 times more for CC, then I think we can reasonably expect them to hire a couple of people to work on prioritizing their development in ways that includes feature requests and bug reports more than a decade old (there are *DOZENS* of them on these forums), but it looks like they don't want to do that.
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‎Jun 07, 2017
07:19 PM
I'm shocked Ciaran, but not surprised. Literally every single thing Adobe has said about supporting perpetual licenses has been dropped. They said that they would look at other options. Nope. They said that they would make sure perpetual licenses would be available. Nope. I no longer have any faith in anything Adobe says and I consider them to be a company with criminal policies. I consider ransomware to be criminal. As I said before, they may have lawyers that have adjusted the wording to cover their butts, but the concept of ransomware is illegal in most countries. At least the WCry guys only ask for your payment once. Adobe continues to ransom your own work back to you every month or every year. And it is totally unfounded. Adobe is the only major company I can think of that has switched to subscription/ransomware in a way that excludes perpetual licenses entirely. This is what takes them into the realm of criminal. Subscriptions services are not inherently criminal or ransomware. Having no choice and losing access to your files *IS* ransomware. Examples above include Corel, but you don't have to look too far to find other companies that have subcription services with perpetual licensing options. When you purchased your license for CS6, you made a contract. If Adobe chooses to discard that, they are in breach of contract. I would suggest to Adobe that if they wish to discontinue that service, they could offer to cancel it *and refund the purchase price*. I don't think it is legal or ethical to simply cancel a perpetual license outright. However, I'd bet cold hard cash that Adobe has defenses in place that make it highly impractical to actually deal with this through legal channels. This kind of behavior strengthens my resolve to encourage no company or individual to ever give a red cent over to Adobe ever again (or until they reverse these inappropriate policies). My own laptop is Win10 and I run Production Premium CS6 on it. I am worried that my licenses might also be cancelled. It was very difficult for me as a student to scrape together the cash to purchase Adobe licenses, so while that's no longer a large amount of money for me, it's still enough that I wouldn't let it go willingly. My recommendation would be to ask to have your request escalated to a higher level of staff. It's likely that the lower level people can't do anything anyways. Get them to do their homework. Do not allow them to pass off their company's poor customer service as a make-work project for you. If they ignore you, call Adobe in other countries. Don't sit down and take it. And above all, not one single penny more! I have helped over 500 Adobe users to avoid getting into CC subscription services and I have failed twice over the past 4-5 years. Yes, they lost out on my license, but they lost a lot more too. They knew it would happen. The memo from Adobe to its shareholders was that when CC was released, they expected enough people to see through its financial drawbacks that they expected to go into loss. They offset that by increasing the cost of the CC service and adding in tricky ways of increasing the cost (my sister pays something ridiculous like 800 CAD/yr for her license, fortunately reimbursed by the company she works for - although since she just gave birth and has dropped down to a very sparse work schedule, I don't know how long that will last). I think it's both amusing and telling that I have a post above that was moderated twice to allow and twice to hide (currently hidden) because I talked through what it would look like if Adobe's policies were applied back to Adobe and their staff. Adobe felt that this was inappropriate content. I guess that proves my point though. If it's inappropriate for people to do to Adobe staff such that it needs to be hidden from discussion, it's inappropriate for Adobe to do to its customers. I doubt I'd have had my comment hidden if I suggested that what people should do is allow <Adobe staff member> to purchase a car, then continue ownership of that car as long as they had the title for that car. I am only censored when I suggest that people should apply Adobe purchasing policies to <Adobe staff member> when they purchase a car. Amazing.
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‎May 11, 2017
06:18 PM
They are a large corporation. Who will lead the attack? Nobody. Who is even in a position to? Every industry has a company that operates like this, creating its own little loopholes and hurting their own consumers, but because they are taking advantage of customers, they can thrive in ways that more legitimate and benevolent companies cannot, eventually taking strong dominance. Either way, they go against the spirit of consumer protection and operate under extremely poor ethic. With the inception of CC, that got markedly worse as many customers (especially specialist freelance professionals and small businesses using the intermediate suites) are now having to pay significantly more for significantly less product, which Adobe is putting less effort to improve and less effort to ensure they work properly in the first place. Regardless of whether you can see it or not, that is what is happening. Fortunately, a massive chunk of Adobe's customers have seen this coming and have left, preferring to dump cash into their competitors' pockets. That might be adequate for some in some industries, but for other avenues, Adobe's dominance is too strong to break. In our company, I have to use Adobe because everyone else uses Adobe. So I use Premiere Pro instead of whatever else because someone else is going to use InDesign and while there are strong video editing packages now to compete with Premiere/AE, there is nothing yet available for ID (this is not as simple as I am saying it, but for brevity's sake). I just lost an SSD type HDD on my office computer so I'm rebuilding a bunch of stuff from scratch these past two weeks. I find it remarkable to see the dramatic difference between how MS handles long-term hotfixes and how Adobe handles them. MS has so many hotfixes available for Office 2007 that they often obscure the path to the hotfixes for Office 2010. Yeah, in the year 2017. MS is no shining star here of course, but compared to the attitudes displayed by Adobe, they are light years ahead. And like I said before, these two companies work under the same basic set of rules. I find it very hard to believe that MS supports their products for 7 years+ just because they want to be nice. But I find it quite believable that they do it because they feel they are obligated to (probably legally obligated to), but they haven't put their effort into trying to shirk their responsibilities as software developers and find loopholes that allow them to screw over their customers like Adobe has. Adobe might have the letter of the law on their side because they found some tricks, but the consumer is clearly getting screwed here on many levels. As I said before, simply stating that software might not work as described does not absolve them of legal responsibility to ensure it works as described, it probably is just enough to make it too difficult for any interested parties to actually enforce their legal responsibilities as a software creator. I work in manufacturing and we cannot simply say "this product will function as this type of product, but we make no guarantee that it will function as described" because if our product fails in this way, someone will fall off the side of a mountain or have a massive accident on the roads at high speed, being slowed down by the friction of their face against tarmac. Pretty likely that we would face some lawsuits pretty quick. However, if the worst thing that could happen was quite minor, but still impaired the function of the product in some way, perhaps something like created a bad ankle position which encouraged tendonitis in some individuals, it's pretty likely that nobody would ever take us to court for that. As a manufacturer, it is our choice then if we will modify our design to prevent that bad ankle position or if we just say "nyeh" and play the odds at the customer's expense. You obviously care enough to speak out in defense of Adobe, but the matter is moot until either there is widespread, low level resistance (unlikely) or someone gets a bee in their bonnet enough to actually take them to court (also unlikely). I do appreciate that you're putting time and effort into making it work and I do appreciate the information out there regarding scripting. But maybe realize that CC is a strongly destructive force in this industry. For whatever reason, that doesn't impact you personally, but it does indeed impact many, many people. The correct path chosen by many since CC was introduced is to simply refuse to pay. Adobe's prices went up significantly for the people most strongly affected, so they are insulated from that. For the intermediate suite user doing an every 1.5-2 year upgrade path (very common), the cost of CC is almost 3 times as much. They can therefore afford to comfortably lose 60% of those customers without impacting their bottom line. Press releases at that time showed that they expected a mass exodus at that time, but were rolling the dice on their dominance. It paid off for them financially and they lost less than they expected, but still probably very large numbers (greater than 50% in many segments) who were paying customers are no longer paying customers. Further, you have already acknowledged that support is bad and getting worse, but also those of us who were paying attention for the past 15 years have seen a significant decline in *useful* improvements. Without a strongly iteration-based development cycle, there is less emphasis on large product improvements and most of their improvements, even on "major" cycle releases (ie the recent one a couple of months back) are very weak and offer few genuine benefits to their users. Don't be under the illusion that CC has done anyone any favors. I can't make them behave well, nor can you. But both of us who put time and effort into helping people with their Adobe software have a responsibility to be truthful and clear about the harm CC continues to do to the industry where we get they money to eat and feed our families. Is it criminal? Probably on some level. Are there loopholes so they can say "not specifically illegal"? I would assume so. Will anyone enforce it or try to clarify or protect the consumers? Doubtful.
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‎May 10, 2017
10:18 PM
Canada has consumer protection laws. If you sell something and it says it does something, but it doesn't do that, it is illegal under that law. This problem is an example of Photoshop describing that it does something, but behavior is different from that. Bugs are bugs and bugs are a fact of life. However, ignoring bugs is unacceptable on the short term. 18 months is a very short term to try to leave product unsupported. The automotive industry in Canada is required by law to have support for their product for up to 7 years. If the product cannot be repaired after 3 attempts, the customer is entitled to a refund or a replacement product of the same value. In this case, Adobe would then be required to provide Adobe CC Production Premium products to me under a perpetual license (not for this issue, but there are other issues I have experienced that are explicitly not going to be solved). I don't think I could say with confidence that Adobe is restricted by those laws on paper - I would assume that they have all kinds of loopholes engaged here. Doesn't make it right, but it might allow them to find ways to make it "not-specifically-illegal". Who is to stop them? Who would challenge them in court? Nobody. Of course, this is nonsense and apples to oranges, but it shows the radical departure of how Adobe operates from any other industry. Even Microsoft can't get away with dropping 100% of their product support 18 months after the product was released. I still get updates for Office 2010, which is two versions out of date, fixing this and that, little tiny bugs all over the place... I find it hard to believe that Microsoft does all this, 7 years after the product was released, for no good reason other than "it's just the right thing to do". So I'm surprised when I see Adobe with totally different policies. This isn't something I would pretend to have the inclination to take up as a legal argument, but is a demonstration of what is wrong with Adobe's current policies. I have had a dozen or so significant problems with PS and their only answer is "buy the new product". This is the policy known in trade as "bait and switch" and it is in contravention of most country's consumer protection laws. They are a large corporation though and they control the industry, so nobody stands up to them. And don't forget, just because it is your company policy to do something, doesn't make it legal. A company down the road from here was just caught paying some of their employees 8% less than the minimum wage because they were hired before min wage went up. Company policy. It was also company policy when they fired the employee who discovered it. Company policies, but now the department of labour is going to take a little trip to their office. The end result is that the industries they controlled are slipping out of their grasp, but products that used to be heading towards excellence are now getting a vote of no-confidence by working professionals like me, while other working professionals just fork over the cash gleefully in support of this rather poor move that primarily affects "the little guy", ie small businesses, freelancers and guys who use their own personal licenses for work. As long as there are people who put money in Adobe's pocket and promote Adobe for behaving inappropriately and harming this segment of their customer base, Adobe has no incentive to stop being evil.
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‎May 10, 2017
08:16 PM
Yep. I believe there is something wrong with it too, however it's not CC, so Adobe is refusing to honor their obligation. Which is of course one of the major reasons they have switched to CC. With a single purchase, they are obligated to provide after-sales support and fix things that don't work (doesn't mean that they will, just means that they have an obligation specified by law... which they prefer to ignore). With CC, they can just say "wait for an update that fixes that problem" even though most of the problems are not getting addressed actively. I cannot support a company with such a policy and I find it very disappointing that other professionals also lack the backbone to stand up to Adobe and object in a meaningful way being taken advantage of. I also have never encountered this problem before with these actions, forms of which I have been using since 2011. In my experience, I have also seen that Alt+whatever always targets only visible layers. I already have sections of my actions to handle hidden layers that are left over from other workers. You are also correct that selecting layers by layer names is fraught with problems. Another problem there is the fact that there are no "system names" for layers with language strings used as skins (as with many other programs and situations), the layer names assigned by system functions are literals and using different language versions of PS will cause actions based on layer names to fail. I have also had the experience that if I want to do something much more complex, scripting is necessary, however, for this particular job, it really isn't. Or at least it shouldn't be. In this case, it's a conditioner that can be applied to images inside the file share, which can be in any of several states, which pumps out a cleaned up file to a local file store for working on with other more elaborate actions.
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‎May 10, 2017
07:46 PM
What are you saying JJ? I've already described in pretty good detail the steps I have gone through in creating my action. The tool used is Alt+, It explicitly called it "select back layer" and "Without make visible". However, the behavior is inconsistent. If there is another layer, it works as described. If there is no layer above it, Photoshop incorrectly selects the back layer which is hidden and makes it visible. How is this fixed by using scripting instead? While I do like the idea of educating myself and learning scripting, it's vastly vastly overkill for the amount of time I have for this job. The actions work fine until they come across this single odd situation.
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‎May 10, 2017
12:10 AM
Simple as it says. This works 80% of the time, but sometimes, it gets it in its head that it really wants to select the hidden bottom layer and make it visible. I've got a large number of images spanning quite a few years, from different cameras and worked on by different people, using different languages... it has been a headache to get it all working right so I can run a single action or two and create matched images that play nicely with each other on websites, but it is working right... sort of. Many (but not all) of the images have background layers that haven't been cleaned up properly. One of the background layers that shows up often are the extraction mask contrast layers (usually green or blue and sometimes a white one) that we use to check the quality of edges on background extractions. These layers can be labeled in English, Chinese or Spanish. So I use the "Alt+," command to select back layer. Recently, the behavior of "Alt+," has changed. When I was making the actions yesterday, it always selected the back VISIBLE layer, ignoring the hidden layers. That is as it should be and with the twirldown, it says: Select back layer Without Make Visible But today, it is actually making it visible. Also, when I hit "Alt+," it goes to the bottom (hidden) layer and makes it visible. It is explicitly not supposed to do this. This only happens when there are no layers above the layer, so Layer 1 (Content layer with mask) and Layer 2 (utility color layer which has been moved to the bottom, but is hidden). If the layer in the PSD file is opened up with another layer above it, it works normally. My workaround is currently to add a step of creating a blank layer above the starting layer. So far, this appears to allow normal behavior. Any ideas? This is PS CS6 and I am not planning to upgrade to CC ever. "Change to CC" is not an acceptable solution unless Adobe wants to give it to me for free. I paid for software and it should work as advertised.
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‎May 08, 2017
10:22 PM
1 Upvote
lol, i've never used the button mode before. Looks dangerous. Clicking on anything accidentally runs an action. I can't think of any reason to ever use button mode - not as a guy who makes actions, nor as a guy who makes actions for other people to use. I would never want to use that mode for myself and I would never recommend it for someone who doesn't know how to use actions well. I don't understand why the colors are turned off in regular mode though. Seems like someone had to actually make extra effort to make the code work in a less useful way. What a strange thing to do.
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‎May 08, 2017
08:28 PM
So I noticed that the Photoshop Actions creation panel allows me to assign a color to the action. However, when I have added a color to it, the color doesn't show up anywhere in the actions panel. I made it orange. Nothing is orange... I thought this would be like the coloring for the layers, where I could add a color to the actions and help visually distinguish them - especially since there is no way to create subfolders for action sets... I have a series of around 22 fairly complicated actions and I would like to distinguish first-tier actions from second tier actions and third-tier actions. So what are the colors for???
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‎Feb 22, 2017
11:08 PM
I resolved this issue. The problem was that the title objects above the blur were moved using the Motion. Each title object was a duplicate of the previous and I used Motion to set its position down 100 pixels. So the title object itself has edges even though they are technically transparent. What was happening was a glitch involving the top edge of transparent pixels against no pixels - some kind of "carry the 0" type error. The solution was to edit the title object and move it up 100 pixels, then set the motion back to static. The bizarre thing is that I've also got left-right movement in the Motion effect and it doesn't cause a glitch. Some sketchy math going on here. While Adobe doesn't feel they need to fix bugs in software they sold before, I'd be very surprised if this bug has been detected and fixed in current versions, so I'll leave this post here for whatever good it might do. EDIT: CORRECTION - after closing and re-opening the project file, THE PROBLEM HAS RETURNED. Dangit. I resolved this by rendering out the nested sequence by itself with all the warp stabilizer applied and replacing the nested sequence. Yeah, there's some loss of quality, but it's covered by blur, so it's alright. Annoying though.
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‎Feb 22, 2017
06:40 PM
I have a "dream sequence". It lasts around 30 seconds. It consists of 4 clips slowed down 80%, color corrected and nested. The nested sequence has a fast blur. This dream sequence is a bookend, shown first in heavy blur, shown later without blur. I'm using a color wash (color matte with color burn mode, opacity 6%) to create a visual theme. On top of that, I'm also applying a white color matte in screen mode at opacity 23%. Above this, I have text. I am using a gentle drift left via Motion, as well as a track matte above this to do a left-to-right reveal. I use a white track matte and use the track matte effect. I have used a dissolve transition to fade out the text. I have another bit of text that comes on just as the first is fading out. At various points in the sequence, the brightness of the final render flickers dark and light. It does not coincide directly with any of the cuts or fades. It appears to be applying to the clips within the sequence below. When the clip is pre-rendered in the project, it shows this flicker, although oddly if it is not pre-rendered and I just play (playback meter showing red), it does not. If I remove the text, there is no flicker. I often have problems with Premiere getting confused when using layer modes. Is it worth trying to continue working with Adobe on this software?
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‎Nov 16, 2016
05:57 PM
I manage dozens of computers in 4 offices around the world. I personally use Adobe software regularly on 2 laptops and 2 PC's. I am occasionally called in to help other local businesses that we partner with as well. I have led workshops in local photo/video clubs for over a decade. Perhaps what you think you know about my personal usage patterns doesn't match my usage patterns. I personally *own* Production Premium CS6 as a personal license. The vast majority of my Adobe use is not under that license. I have set up CC on a fairly hefty number of computers. I've set up and built actions in CC. I've stayed abreast of many of the differences between the versions in most (but certainly not all) of the avenues of the Adobe suite. I have 3 "spare" pc's set up with CC (trial mode, not putting cash into that) for conversion of files from the few customers we have that use CC (so far, there are about 4 customers that use CC out of 220 or so - most of our customers are small-medium businesses and only a few in the US/UK are using CC). As to your high horse preaching about 'stealing', get over it. The *vast* majority of students anywhere/everywhere pirate Adobe. Many of them move on to becoming Adobe professionals. Outside of the most prosperous places (UK/EU/US/Canada), piracy of Adobe vastly outstrips legitimate use. These are well-known phenomena. That's not a self-justification as much as "duhhhhh". Adobe uses a "paywall" to establish an elitist group of brand loyalists. It is integral to their market position and their business plan. Piracy is *crucial* to making Adobe as strong as it is. If they genuinely didn't want piracy, they wouldn't leave the keys in the door overnight, every night, for decades. They want it. They need it. They encourage it. So quityerwhining about it. In the end, I put money in their pocket and became a strong advocate for it when people can afford business software prices. Adobe is not worried about some minor software piracy that happened nearly two decades ago. Neither should you be. If you would like to bring up real instances of usage, feel free. I already brought up examples above of specific usage patterns in CS6 and CC. I've discussed them in many other parts of this forum. As to my usage of free software, my argument was not that it's better and free. My argument was that development costs cannot possibly be as high as you think they are - and are more likely far closer to what I think they are. If dev costs were genuinely so high, then nobody else would have product on the market. Then the argument comes up "Adobe was first, the other guys are just copying - invention trumps innovation". Which would be a great argument if it weren't also true that Adobe was certainly not first and that most of their great inventions came from purchasing other companies that developed the tech (ie warp stabilizer, content aware fill....) and if most of the "new updates" didn't contain almost exclusively sideways movements and features borrowed from other software (ie artboards in PS from AI and text wrapping from Word...). Again, as a working professional in a multi-national collaborative environment, I can't just switch my software for whatever reason. Hence, I refer to other companies that I interact with and the experiences of others, as well as their comments. I do agree that there is a negative bias for comments. However, your argument is somewhat self-defeating. I am arguing that there is little notable improvement that would cause people to speak up. You say that of course people don't speak up because people generally don't unless there's something genuinely notable. However, look at some of the vids that Adobe has released of older versions where people were excited about major new features, not just a new name. You will actually see lots of positive comments. Adobe did actually used to have a *lot* of positive buzz surrounding their updates. They have successfully reduced that to a trickle. People used to talk excitedly to each other about things like "did you hear about content aware fill? it's amazing! I can't wait for CS_". Adobe's reception to their software releases since CS2 have generally been very positive. CS3 was a major step forward from CS2 in that it no longer performed like a rusted WW2 tank in the mud with no tracks and water in the fuel line. CS4 was a minor refinement with little fanfare. CS5 was a good jump (again many users tend to go with "every second update" for good reason) and CS5.5 was really big too. CS6 polished a lot of the stuff that came with CS5.5 but wasn't quite ready. CC brought a lot of excitement too. There were a lot of changes that were overdue and people were looking for CS6.5 or CS7. I've mentioned some of these above. And with CC came the added subscription model and the death of the intermediate suites. There's no longer anything for people with specific jobs (ie Web Design Premium or Production Premium), there's just "PLEASE PAY ALL FOR ALL". That started a negative spiral and Adobe has probably lost a good third of their paid licenses (ignoring natural market growth), many of them being established professional users. I didn't say there was anything wrong with having a backup plan. I also have a backup-oriented workflow which involves archiving original files. But I don't create non-Adobe backups of work files or project files. For example, when I get a batch of 600 pics from a photographer, I archive the originals. I then build folder structures and set up access for those people that will work on it. I use Bridge heavily for collaborating, with a combination of ratings, color coding for work assignment and/or completion stages and ACR. I use batches to finalize most things to PSD (working files) or proof/finals (JPG, PNG, TIFF and the occasional animated GIF or external project (AI, Prem, ID...). Take Bridge out of the picture and that causes a lot of problems. Take PS out of the picture and the work files get broken. I use similar processes for home projects. Now you're suggesting that you also have an archival step for your working files that is non-Adobe specific? So you're keeping TIFF files with layers? What about the adjustment layers? What about your smart objects and smart filters? I know that files certainly can be imported. But it pretty much mangles whatever it was that you were doing. Most of my work files have between 80 and 300 layers, with extensive use of smart objects and adjustment layers. That's not something you can just drag and drop into MS Paint. and as I said, I don't think it's abnormal. I think it's saying something that you are planning for the time when you lose access to your work, but you're arguing that the idea of "ransomware" is ludicrous. You either think it's something that could happen or you don't. As to the Ferrari argument, that's nonsense too. NO car maker sells cars exclusively on a subscription basis where they reserve the right to jack up the price and take away the car you *already purchased* if you stop paying. There is leasing, and lots of people use it. But most people don't. Most people would be insulted if you stopped selling cars outright. Car enthusiasts most of all. But also you can't compare cars with software because the value of the car is in the hardware. The value of software is not in the hardware. I don't think anyone is trying to say that Adobe will try to ask for the DVD and plastic case back if you decide to stop paying for CC. Nobody is even complaining that you might not be able to use the software to create *new* work if you stop paying. The thing that people are upset about is that you have a professional working tool that has been in a dominant position in multiple industries with *existing bodies of work* that these people will lose access to if they stop paying. It's not ransoming the software. It's blocking access to our *our own work* that causes the anger and indignation. From the point of view of a business, that's frustrating, but not a big deal... as you say, if I can't afford the licensing, my business is dead and I have no need to access that work. But from the point of view of a freelancer, casual user or a *personal license*, it becomes a very, very big deal. If I lose access to my own personal use work, I lose access to work files of personal projects like watching my friend's children grow up, video projects from my sister's wedding, video projects I worked on with my cousin's children whose father is now in jail for murder and who have lost a part of their youthful innocence that will never come back. I might not re-visit those things for 10-20 years. Under a perpetual license, as is common to *every other software company*, that's not a problem. But Adobe wants to hold that as a license to coerce me to pay a lot of money for this. I consider that inappropriate. Of course, there's some very subjective viewpoints in there and most of my objections are regarding the personal license holders, but I can also see the viewpoint of hundreds of businesses - small businesses and freelancers. I live in a country where small business is much more prevalent than in North America/UK. And the Production Premium suite is a perfect fit for many of these people. Just as many would use a 2-3 program license (PS+AI or PS+AI+Prem). Removing that is harmful to those businesses and freelancers. CC represents a significant increase in price, so it's understandable when Jimmy over there decides that $600/yr isn't worth it when he was able to keep a relatively recent copy of Prod Premium for around $220/yr for the 5-6 projects per year that he does with it for his little shop. I can see his point of view. I'm surprised that you/Adobe cannot. Or that you think his/her point of view is invalid. It was valid enough to create the intermediate suites in the first place. They were a good idea, a good example of paying attention to actual needs of actual customers. Taking that away is the opposite of that.
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‎Nov 15, 2016
10:30 PM
Not quite sure why you felt the need to take a dig at my intelligence at the end there, but based on your assessment of what "acceptable" business practices are and your justification for stealing what you can't afford...I'll leave that alone for now. Your intelligence is shown by your words. If you think ransomware is acceptable, that says something about you. If you think it's OK simply because it has been around for a few years now, that says something about you. If you think that $50 isn't much money, therefore ignore annual costs and the plight of people who operate in differently scaled economies, that says something about your intelligence. If you think that access to your own work in the next few years is the only consideration to your license, then that says something about your point of view. Plenty of people pay for Adobe software for a license not attached to a business. For myself, my license is for personal use and is not the license I use for work. If I was on a subscription model, I would have paid 2400-3000 USD for that license at this point. Or I would lose access to things like my sister's wedding video project, the PSD and Bridge XML/ACR work for 3500 pics I took during that 2-week holiday, and a whoooole lot more. Not to mention what happens after I retire... As to "justification for stealing what I can't afford", I have a valid license for Adobe Production Premium CS6 via upgrade paths from software legally purchased. *Adobe* has been validating piracy for years by choosing not to change their methods to crack their software. 0-day cracks are available because it's the same basic crack, with just a few value changed in the algorithms. Adobe supports this because *it feeds their business model*. Adobe would be just another company if they didn't have market dominance in so many avenues. They achieved this market dominance by making their software easy to crack. They are well aware of this. They are also well aware that they have served as a model for many other companies who are using similar methods. Windows has been easy to crack, instead of making it harder to crack, MS has opened their doors to the "legitimate" software side of things with their "no questions asked" policy on W10 upgrades. As long as MS remains market dominant, they remain powerful. These are known strategies. Mentioning "greedy shareholders" in the same breath as admitting you (for a time) and the majority of your colleagues are software pirates is indeed rich. That you can actually sit there and justify that with an air of indignation is telling to say the least, and highlights the disconnect that a lot of people seem to be having, so let me clear it up for you as simply as I can: Businesses aren't obligated to price their products or services within your price range. Businesses aren't obligated to concede to their customers' every whim and demand. Businesses exist to sell/market/develop a product or service and make money while doing it. You have the right to change who you do business with. You do not have the right to change how someone else conducts business. As to this nonsense, I made a genuine effort to purchase Adobe software when I was in Uni. But they decided that the normal options available in Canada and the US were not available everywhere. Therefore I used my own methods to accomplish the goal. If I had not, I would not have learned their software. They would not be ahead of the game, they would be a couple grand poorer. While that's not a huge amount of cash, it illustrates my point above. They are well aware that the price of their software puts it beyond the reach of the average person. They are well aware of the prevalence of piracy. They make no effort to change either the cause or the method of piracy, so they are quite OK with it. I've spoken with Adobe staff before and they are indeed aware of this pattern. Seems like most of their management has no clue though. Sounds like you match that pretty well. CC has driven piracy upwards dramatically because of increased costs and resistance to ransomware. Either way, I ended up saving up my pennies (yeah, I lived on around 200-300 USD per month while I was studying abroad) and eventually had enough to purchase. That's how that worked out. Incidentally, Adobe has made various CS2 products available for free. I personally used PS 7.0, CS3 and CS4 before I was able to afford buying in. I have told Adobe directly. They don't have a problem with it. My indignation now is *not* that people are forced to piracy. That's been happening since day 1 for Adobe. I *used to* try to combat that. Not anymore. My indignation now is that Adobe's method to try to get people to pay is by blocking access to their own body of work. That is unacceptable in every case and a far greater problem than University students pirating Photoshop for a few years to learn it. As to development costs, this is also futile discussion. How much it costs them to develop software is not related to how good it is. Look at CC2017. It is being released as a "major update". Everywhere I have seen, the vast majority of response to it has been that it is a paltry offering with very small levels of improvements, things like adding "tight" text alignment in AI (borrowed from MS Office)... Compare that with something like Content Aware Fill. That was indeed a major function. That would have cost quite a lot to implement. Look at artboards in PS. A function nobody asked for - yes, it's kind of handy, but it's a borrowed function from AI and it's not critical for 99% of the people 99% of the time. Look at the increased functionality of the Properties panel. The functionality added actually doesn't add full functionality and literally just borrows functions from other panels, but only some of them... Now you are trying to suggest that I'm somehow dumb for suggesting that none of these functions offer either increased value for working professionals (when the vast majority of working professionals are actually saying that they aren't impressed) or that none these borrowed functions represent significant amount of work by the developers compared to major functions like Warp Stabilizer. Even the tools that I think were worth adding - ACR filter in PS and Premiere, along with the new color grading tool in Premiere... Those are refinements of existing technology and aren't really treading new ground. Why would you think that they represent the same amount of R&D investment of earlier technologies that were much bigger steps? Why would you try to argue that common sense on these issues is foolish? Support for 4K by the way does not require a subscription service. Every major NLE on the market has offered 4K support for years (and 3D). Even programs like Vegas Pro offered it before Adobe did, while costing half the price and not needing a subscription. What does that tell you about your imagined "development costs"? Davinci Resolve has offered 4K support for ages. Hitfilm too. Oh yeah, Hitfilm has a fully featured NLE with 4K support... for free.... What was that about not understanding development costs? I've worked wedding photography too. I know what you mean about the lowballers. And certainly I have a limit for my own value. But I wouldn't suddenly triple my rates and say "yep, that's just what I'm worth now, but I'm going to slow down my work too". Because that would be rude. I most certainly wouldn't tell previously existing customers that they couldn't have access to their previously shot photographs unless they paid my new rates. I most certainly wouldn't tell my customers that they have to pay $10 a month to display their photographs on their wall or I would come take them away. As to ransomware, this is a real thing. If your license expires, you do not have access to those programs, and you lose access to your work files, ie prproj, .psd, .ai etc... That's ransomware. It's not unique to Adobe and it's not a new concept. It's not a word I made up. Educate yourself please. You think that backing up your work in non-Adobe formats is normal. But I ask you... if you didn't stand to lose access to your work if you were no longer in a position to pay the monthly/yearly ransom, why would that be normal? Backup is backup, but for my work, since I started using Adobe software something like 17 years ago, I've never had to backup specifically in non-Adobe formats. Granted, I keep RAW files and original video files, but I don't export my .prproj files to generic format or Bridge sidecar files... Why do you think that's normal behavior if you have purchased software, that you would need to have a way to access it with other software??? And you think I'm weird.
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‎Nov 14, 2016
05:23 PM
People have been suggesting to Adobe to add a perpetual license option of some sort since CC was first unveiled. The most popular and sensible of these was seen in many threads, including this one - specifically to have a "lock in" if the person pays for 2 years, if they stop paying for some reason, they are able to lock in. This would provide people the option to pay on alternating years (as many, MANY freelancers and personal users did since the early years, even well before CS). Having it cost more than it used to for a perpetual license would be unacceptable. If anything, CC has brought *less* features, less often to the Adobe suite. If Adobe had held their pattern, they would be on CS8 or CS9 by now, with major updates in each of those packages. The price of the Adobe suite has always been high, which has been an attempt to position themselves as professional software, *NOT* indicative of the cost to make it. There are many other programs that do a similar thing that are priced significantly lower. Increasing the price would help the greed of Adobe's shareholders, but the price is based on things like average global incomes and what working professionals could afford. Last I checked, wages for tech workers were going down in most countries, not up. The result of this is that in countries where they make significantly less than what Adobe views to be "average", piracy of Adobe is near 100%. I know hundreds of local photographers, photo printing companies, video professionals in this country. I know two that have paid for it. I am one of them. Another shop I know is running Photoshop CS3 that they paid for. Adobe knows all about this. They continue to keep the piracy methods static (it's basically the same method to crack Adobe today as it was for PS 7.0). I spent years trying to encourage people to "go legit" with their Adobe software. I no longer do. Increasing the price of the software simply because their main license method has become more expensive is unacceptable business behavior. It is easier now than ever to accept rampant piracy of Adobe's software. This ultimately means that the price burden must be shared by a larger number of people. And the evidence suggests that this has indeed happened. Adobe's revenue went up a tiny bit, but compared to the average cost increase of nearly 2x to everyone *except* the vertical markets, it indicates that a *LARGE* number of CS users did not convert to paying for CC. As my old manager always used to say to me, you can't look at overall increase, you have to compare your overall increase to the overall market increase. If your company makes 3.2% more over last year, that's good, but it's not so good if the size of the market increased by 2.5%... or 5%... Adobe doesn't take that into account and the reason is that if you take a serious look at their revenue, it shows a massive drop in paying customers. Did they switch to another software suite? Which one? Unlikely. Pirate Bay is far, far more likely. Adobe used to use piracy to drive their conversions to real sales (I also switched to paying after pirating for years through my 'starving student' days). Now they use CC to drive piracy. I'm pretty familiar with much of the Adobe suite. There are a handful of major functionality improvements at best. There are a ton of bugs that haven't been addressed for many years. Many of the updates that have been introduced in the recent "2017" are sideways, minor updates to things that have introduced no new functionality, just moved some of it from one place to another (ie the perfunctory increased capabilities of the properties panel), or gimmick BS stuff like the emojis... They did introduce a few major updates early on that were presumably earmarked for CS7 (ie adobe camera raw filter and improved roundtripping with the video editing suites), but if you think you've got better value with "constant updates", you're just enjoying having your ears tickled by the spin-masters. On every video I have seen about "new features" in CC 2017 (which is being presented as a "major" update to CC), the vast majority of comments are basically that people are unsatisfied with the quantity and quality of the updates. On the other hand, the biggest problem introduced by CC is the ransomware. A current trend in black hat software design is "cryptolocker/ransomware". Adobe CC's subcription plan is essentially the same. You pay, or you lose access to your files. This is a dealbreaker for many people. Myself included. I can understand that you might not want to support software after a certain point (ie the countless bugs in CS6 which continue to be ignored even though the license *was* perpetual and bug repair *is* the responsibility of the manufacturer - look at Microsoft and XP/7). But you cannot validate the idea that adding in a subscription requirement *for access to your own work* is acceptable in any way. Again, there are very simple solutions for this that would see me convert instantly to a CC customer. They have been suggested since CC was instigated. Adobe has no interest in doing any such thing. Back when they introduced it, they promised that they would consider alternatives with perpetual licensing. Nothing ever came of it and they expect us to just forget it and start paying them to support a ransomware business model because of cognitive anchoring (ie because it has become familiar to us, so the impropriety is diluted). Apparently that works pretty well on some people, yourself included. But for intelligent people, the answer is: Nope. Not ever.
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‎Jun 03, 2016
06:21 PM
3 Upvotes
It is verifiable by a google search that Adobe has stated that they intended to address this even as early as 2013. Aaaaaaand they have absolutely not done so. Of course they would not. A kidnapper would not ask for a ransom for a child, then say that the child would be allowed out on weekends and could visit the family's home. It is contrary to the policy of ransomware. Which is why intelligent people everywhere recognize that CC is ransomware. Professionals who enter into this contract lose control over their own work. This is unacceptable on every level. I consider this to be illegal, although I'm sure there are some Adobe paid lawyers that have made sure it sort of technically isn't. But it means that I no longer have any qualms about people who have turned instead to pirating. Adobe used rampant piracy to establish their brand at the top of the ladder and become an industry standard, but creating easy, predictable cracking methods that were not closed from early versions right until today. This worked because as students and young people grew older and matured, both emotionally and professionally, they grew into a desire to purchase software legitimately and give back to the company that enabled their livelihood. It was a very good grand plan for the long term taking advantage of the unavoidable nature of software piracy and turning it into a scheme that put butter on their bread and food on their plates. Now they are trying to screw those people over and enforce draconian, improper and possibly flat out illegal policies such as ransomware (which is not really any different from Cryptolocker or some other big bad in our real world) and for some reason, they think that will not drive a mass exodus straight back to pirating their software. Their soft-peddle is that they "will address this issue in the future", but in the past 3 years have made no visible attempt to do so. How do they expect a working professional/freelancer to find new work if they cannot access their work files? Why do they even think that it's acceptable to limit *anyone*'s access to their own work in the first place? These are not answers that they want their shareholders to think about. I have voted with my wallet, but my vote is insignificant. But I will remain voting that way until they wise up. I am still willing to continue to pay for upgrades on my own license, but I will never pay a red cent under terms of ransomware. If someone kidnapped my child, they could expect some serious resistance from me and I would not behave at all nicely, especially if my child were to be secured, I would react with extreme prejudice. True, this is only trying to kidnap my work, so I wouldn't need to kill anyone as I would probably do if my child were at stake. But the insult is definitely the same flavor. Adobe doesn't treat my work with respect. Why should I (or anyone else) treat theirs?
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‎Dec 07, 2015
01:00 AM
InDesign also has the most version compatibility problems as well. I still remember trying to work with another company in the US and we had 4 different people involved, including the print shop (this was before CC). Versions we were running included CS3 (print shop), CS6 (myself and others in the art department), CS5.5 (my home computer and laptop prior to upgrading) and CS4 (US customer). He sent the original document, we prepared his document, sent it to him and he was unable to open it. I was also unable to open it at home to figure out what the problem was, so we lost a day due to time zone conflicts, the next day, I opened in CS6 and found no problems... wasn't until the next day that we figured out that he was using CS4. Even trying to save the document for CS4, it was still impossible to open it. I had to download a pirated version to test it on a test machine to figure it out too. Then to top it off, when it was finished, we got to the print shop (small mom&pop deal as is common here in Asia) and they had CS3. Fortunately, that wasn't a problem because we presented PDF for print rather than ID files... but just goes to show what a PITA ID can be for version mismatches. It boggles my mind that Adobe still hasn't even been able to get their mailouts working properly. I still get authentication red flags on my notification emails about activity on this thread. And when I'm typing in this very box, every time I create a line break, about halfway into the next sentence, it puts me up a line for no reason. And the line breaks get doubled too. I've got 15 empty lines under this paragraph. What a ridiculous mess. Vegas Pro 13 was my go-to non-Adobe program, but DaVinci Resolve is looking more attractive every single day.
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‎Oct 07, 2015
09:58 PM
1 Upvote
Whoever it is that is making the decisions at Adobe these days is entirely out of touch with a good half of their customer base. I stopped recommending Adobe for video editing over a year ago, with a policy of "only if you have no other options available". In my case, I am Adobe-heavy on my workflow, so I still use it, but every day I use Premiere, my desire to switch back or maybe even try out some other new NLE's grows. Honestly, CC marked a major downturn for Adobe obviously in pricing, but the bigger concern here is that without those iterative releases, many problems are just not getting dealt with or even looked at. It's all just one big endless stream of moving sideways, then moving back. I don't use CC, but 99% of the problems I have had with CC are exactly the same for CS6 as they are with current CC versions. This means that problems that existed 3 years ago are still there. It also means that quality decisions to make sensible improvements to things are becoming rare. Look at what they did to the forums. Sometimes it works OK, other times, it throws in unexpected extra lines and moves your cursor up a line or two... The decision to set this up cannot be motivated by a desire to make it work better - especially if the result is that it works worse and then leaves the "fix" queue because not enough people are complaining. And once these decisions start happening more regularly, the type of person who reports these things starts to care less because they are less emotionally invested in the product. If I care less about Adobe and have less faith that they will behave responsibly with the information I provide, I'm very unlikely to put the time into creating a quality bug report. Or any bug report at all for that matter. This means that the quantity *and the quality* of bug reports will start to decrease. People who care and understand how things work will be less motivated to share their thoughts. This shows that the system of "how many people are asking for it" as opposed to "is this a sensible/beneficial feature" is not well balanced. If Adobe isn't trying to make upgrades to make the product better, it's just trying to satisfy their most vocal customers and/or maximize profits. While that's a decent strategy for the short term, it just pisses off long term users (I've been an Adobe user for around 13 years and my satisfaction has dropped to an all-time low. 5 years ago, I started pushing everyone I know to stop pirating and "go legit", because this supports the company and keeps the give-take between the company and the customers happy. I no longer recommend this and since CC, I actively encourage people to not pay for Adobe software, preferably to just use CS6 - although most of them don't understand why they should have to pay full price for software that already hit its upgrade cycle 3 years ago. I have taught workshops at Universities at beginner and intermediate levels and I'd guess there's probably a good couple hundred students that I've recommended to not move to CC. For those students, the most sensible option for them is to pirate. And my general impression is that 4-5 years ago, most discussions revolved around individual bugs and quirks of behavior (my product is broken). A far higher number of threads on the Adobe communities are now discussing problems that are systemic (my product doesn't work right/logically and still hasn't been fixed after years), resulting from a change in the way Adobe behaves towards their customers. This topic being a perfect example of that. Products like Photoshop Touch - which had a good start, but was almost immediately dropped with several serious flaws and deficiencies and never "touched" again for 2 years until it was killed off - becoming the rather lackluster (and CC subscription requiring) LR Touch, which offers no significant benefit over previous iterations or any other software out there. It's a step sideways rather than a step forward and at the cost of good quality software with strong potential. This is a disturbing pattern and it's happening for all Adobe software. FWIW, I now use Mercalli for stabilization. There's even a decent workflow for doing in-place replace of footage if you have a timeline already built by holding alt (or is it ctrl?) when dragging footage in from the Source monitor.
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‎Aug 21, 2015
09:10 PM
That very thing has been suggested. Indeed, this is how most or all subscription based antivirus software has been operating for many years, a more "business friendly" option has been suggested by many, including myself... that once you have paid for a full year or so, the product gets locked in at that level. Adobe even has a thing where if you are on an annual subscription, but stop partway through, you still have to pay half the remaining payments!!!! If this allowed you to continue using the product but be unable to get updates, people would be a lot less angry. Of course, adobe would make less per customer, but they wouldn't have lost 30 to 50% of their (potential) customer base as they did by this anti-progress, anti-consumer pricing model. We still have nothing on the horizon for intermediate package users too. Anyone who uses PS and AI is basically getting screwed. As are those who are using PS and premiere and speedgrade and or after effects. Production premium suite users are universally getting the shaft. Paying 320% more for no added value isn't my cup of tea...
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‎Aug 06, 2015
05:12 PM
Yeah, I know, Adobe CC is really good for companies who buy seats of Master Collection and have a policy of keeping their software up to date. And it's good for literally *nobody* else. If a company like that goes under, it has no need of project files. If you're an individual, not a company and your circumstances change so you can no longer budget for $600/yr for software that contains a bunch of stuff you don't actually need, you lose access to your project files. I would lose access to my XML work in ACR for 2500 pictures plus an hour or so of edited video for my sister's week long island wedding retreat. I would lose access to 75,000 pictures taken over the past 8 years that I've been using PSD format. I would lose access to my portfolio of work-related content, including 9TB of video footage and video projects. That's especially useful if I, as an individual, were to have to change jobs and start handing out resumes and couldn't access my own portfolio. But it's not about me, I know *hundreds* of other freelancers, even small businesses that simply cannot afford the jump to CC. Especially small video production companies and AI users and specialists. In fact, of all the professionals I know (I'm picky who I add to my networks and it's currently 324 people in places like Taiwan, Japan, HK, China, Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Toronto, the UK, Johannesberg, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Seattle, California and Texas), I'd say that less than 5% of them are in a position to use the subscription model that makes sense over a span of a 25 year career. Many of them, like you, don't realize it yet, largely because you are probably thinking about the next 1-2 years, but believe me, the vast majority of those people are going to be hating life because of Adobe's subscription model at some point over the next 25 years. The only people that CC is good for are people who are unable to plan beyond 5 years or expect to be dead around the same time that they stop using Adobe (ie a business). I've been using Adobe for 11 years or so. Planning beyond 5 years is not difficult for me. And even for companies... Loads of printing companies around this part the world (Asia) that typically upgrade every 3 versions or so. The printing world right now is much more competitive here than it is in the West. Plus there's all those Suite users (ie me), who were paying $375/yr or $250/yr if doing every other upgrade (ie me), plus the fact that if you're a freelancer or if you get sick or you have to ratify a budget with a boss for software costs for a year, you're basically screwed. Or if your career takes a slightly different path and you no longer use Adobe at work and keep a personal copy to work on personal projects. In my case, I work for a company and I use Master Collection at work. And I have a personal copy of Production Premium too. No way in hell I'm going to start paying 2-3x more for software for my personal use and freelance work just because Adobe thinks they want more money for less relevant updates and think they can get away with holding my project files ransom. Granted, I can open .prproj files with Vegas, which isn't a subscription model...
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