Creative Cloud or Creative Control

[Eigil Skovgaard]

Am I the only user of Photoshop that finds the Cloud principle a bit intrusive?

Earlier I bought Photoshop to be my property, and my business was in principle independent of future policies from - or the existence of Adobe - or the Internet. What would happen, if Adobe's policy changed once more, and only conform, registered club members could be users of the creative suite - or, if Adobe just ceased to exist? What would happen to your business with a number of cut off licenses? (the support of earlier versions was arbitrarily cut off, it can happen any time again).

I am the lucky owner of CS5, which provides the necessary basic Photoshop editing features. Furthermore, I am not professionally dependent of this software any more.

I have tried the Creative Cloud principle for a while, and the presence of the Adobe Cloud logo tells me, that Big Brother is watching. The monthly "tax" to Adobe is not that big - it seems!, but it will never stop, as long as you want Photoshop plus a few other systems to be within reach.
A more sporadic use will naturally lead to the thinking: "This month I paid x money for Photoshop CC, and I used it one time - is there a cheaper alternative?" - Indeed there is. The Internet is willing to deliver Photoshop CC 2015 and other well known Adobe products for free. Do I pity Adobe? Not for a second.
I think the Creative Cloud is made to gain control, to induce further dependency and to further optimize the profit of the Adobe money machine. If others are satisfied with this development I hope they find the gains versus the loss of freedom with a traditional ownership sufficient.

I have tried to buy Photoshop "CC" as an independent system for my computer. Without any success. Within two years with CC the system would be paid for with the existing prices. But no, I have to keep paying tax to a very rich and monopolized company, the creatively user controlling company, Adobe.

[Schewe]

What would happen to your business with a number of cut off licenses? (the support of earlier versions was arbitrarily cut off, it can happen any time again).

Actually, I don't think that has happened...with Photoshop CS and CS2, Adobe shut down the activation servers due to concerns about security. However, they allowed used to download and install a version pf CS2 with activation disabled so users could continue to use your licensed software.

When you "buy" Photoshop, you don't "own" Photoshop, you own a license to use Photoshop. What you own is the license, not the actual product. The subscription model is also a license to use the software but on a subscription bases.

In any event, this is all way old news hotly debated ad nausioum years ago. I don't think it's useful to continue beating a dead horse. Those people who hate subscriptions are welcome to their opinions. Those people who have subscribed to the product are also entitled to their opinion. I for one have zero interest in a re-hashing of old news.

[digitaldog]

Earlier I bought Photoshop to be my property....

Stop right there; that's simply untrue. Jeff already set the record straight. You've never owned Photoshop.
So you're not subscribing to anything (cell, cable, LuLa?).

[BernardLanguillier]

Stop right there; that's simply untrue. Jeff already set the record straight. You've never owned Photoshop.

Com'on, not that argument again please.

It has been demonstrated time and again that perpetual right of usage and owernship are the exact same thing.

cheers,
Bernard

[Richowens]

Com'on, not that argument again please.

It has been demonstrated time and again that perpetual right of usage and owernship are the exact same thing.

cheers,
Bernard

   That's like the fleas claiming they own the dog

 Rich

[Schewe]

Com'on, not that argument again please.
It has been demonstrated time and again that perpetual right of usage and owernship are the exact same thing.

Similar, but not exactly the same...it's the inherent difference between tangible personal property and intangible intellectual property. You may indeed own the right to use a product based on a license to use it, but you own no other rights beyond the right to use. You can't alter or otherwise change the property. Whether the license is in perpetuity or monthly, the result is the same. You own a license to use but you don't actually own the property.

[torger]

Simply put, Adobe still owns the copyright. Anyway, whether we like it or not subscription or pay per use is the future. It's not popular with the users, but this is the way it will go. Microsoft and Adobe has started because due to their strong market positions they can without risking too much churn. Some complain but very very few will actually make a switch.

If you don't like Adobe's way to license their products don't use them. I don't use them, not really because I don't like them but because I just prefer using something different than everyone else, and indeed because I think everyone gains from at least some people supporting competition. Photoline http://www.pl32.com/ is one solid but nerdy alternative, another new one is Affinity Photo https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

When it comes to Lightroom there's many well-known alternatives, Capture One is perhaps the primary.

And finally when it comes to the "control" aspect, I'm considerably more worried about the social media accounts, google accounts etc than an Adobe account, although of course it's not exactly with happiness I open yet another account...

[PeterAit]

Similar, but not exactly the same...it's the inherent difference between tangible personal property and intangible intellectual property. You may indeed own the right to use a product based on a license to use it, but you own no other rights beyond the right to use. You can't alter or otherwise change the property. Whether the license is in perpetuity or monthly, the result is the same. You own a license to use but you don't actually own the property.

Talk about trivial pedantry! Who gives a bat's bunion? Everyone knows - or should know - that when someone says they "own" Photoshop, what they mean is simply that they will be able to use it for as long as they want regardless of what Adobe does or does not do.

FWIW I see that Microsoft is now using the subscription model with Office 365.

[Robert Roaldi]

It's marketing positioning, nothing good or bad about it, I figure. If I were a pro, then I can see where subscription model could make sense. Although one of the purported benefits of that, more frequent updates, could be annoying to me. I don't really want to spend too much of my time learning new features every 2-3 months. Be nice if a platform stayed stable over some longer period of time. But others may feel differently.

For amateurs who only use software occasionally, maybe only changing cameras every 2-3 years so they don't need to worry about the software supporting new RAW formats, then paying once and forgetting about it may be more appealing.

Whether one "owns" the software or the license to use it is not relevant in day to day life to a lot of people, I suspect.

One poster asked whether or not we subscribe to other services. Sometimes you have to because there's no other option, doesn't mean you have to like it. I prefer renting a movie from iTunes than subscribing to Netflix. Others prefer Netflix.

Luckily, there is other software out there that's getting better all the time and may be perfectly usable already for a lot of users already. Transitioning is a pain of course. We bought into the model of cheaper and cheaper software because no one likes to pay $600 for a computer program. The downside of that is that each individual customer is then less important since they don't represent as much money. We want everything to be cheap, but there may be a downside to that, unstable betas, too-early releases, etc.

[kers]

....
FWIW I see that Microsoft is now using the subscription model with Office 365....

Because Microsoft thinks it is the only way to let people pay for it since they see no way to make it better anymore in a sense that people would buy an upgrade...
The same might happen to Adobe... At the moment they are still improving the CC software, but for me personally the only reason i see for upgrading will be the support  for my future camera.
At the moment i am doing fine and because of CC i have invested less in Adobe software. I am afraid to step into CC for i will be stuck to it forever... even when i am retired i still need to have CC to open my files.
Also the prices might go up and you still need to have your CC subscription.
LR started for free to compete with Aperture... after a while they asked money...after a while it ended up into a CC subcription...

[digitaldog]

Com'on, not that argument again please.
It has been demonstrated time and again that perpetual right of usage and owernship are the exact same thing.

OK Perry Mason  , take the Adobe software you think you own, install it on 3+ machines and try running Photoshop concurrently. Can't? But you OWN the software don't you? You own a license which is specific in it's usage.

[john beardsworth]

Talk about trivial pedantry! Who gives a bat's bunion? Everyone knows - or should know - that when someone says they "own" Photoshop, what they mean is simply that they will be able to use it for as long as they want regardless of what Adobe does or does not do.

I agree. Regardless of the licence's language, for all practical purposes you owned the software. It's possible to defend the subscription without resorting to what you rightly label pedantry.

FWIW I see that Microsoft is now using the subscription model with Office 365.

You can choose to rent or buy, but rental provides a range of benefits.

[Zorki5]

Do a forum search on "creative cloud" and you'll find many exhaustive discussions of this topic, for example -- Adobe - Creative Cloud Update.

Extensive -- yes, exhaustive -- hardly.

I just browsed/searched through all 27 pages of the topic that you suggested, but there's no post that covered my case.

I had two copies of LR5; bought one for myself, another for my daughter. Then LR6 came out, and I tried to upgrade... And guess what, upgrade was not available in Russia. It also wasn't available about a month or so ago, the last time I checked (out of curiosity). Here, "not available" means that, when I go to LR page and select that tiny "desktop version", I was taken to the "Dealer selector" (or something similarly named, can't remember), and an attempt to use it would cause infinite page re-loading loop. In any browser except Firefox (again, IIRC), but there it would just lead to some other Adobe product selection page, so yeah, another infinite loop of sorts.

Calling their support in Russia would get me to Softkey.ru (or whoever was their "official distributor" at the time), who would happily inform me that there was no such thing as an upgrade for LR5. I could only get a discount if I was a student, or a rep of a government institution or something... And I could not even get to adobe.com to call their support (as a last resort), as going there always redirects to http://www.adobe.com/ru/, immediately. BTW, softkey.ru () only sold Adobe products for rubles at an insane exchange rate that was about 20% higher than current at the time. To add insult to injury, they (read == Adobe) would only deliver electronic copy of LR6 in about 10 days! WOW!!! Electrons must be real slow at Adobe.

So what were my options? Stay at LR5, or buy two new copies of LR6? I chose option #3: no more commercial Adobe products for me, ever. I just went on and bought ACDSee 8 Ultimate, and since then already upgraded to ACDSee 9 Ultimate. To compare LR to ACDSee would take another post, but let me say I'm very, very happy... Of huge importance is the fact that, unlike LR (or pretty much any other program supporting "non-destructive editing"), ACDSee does not lock you into their catalog, in any way. And you do not have to "export" anything -- all edited images are instantly accessible by any other program.

Now... Creative Cloud was being pushed by Adobe into my throat with such energy that I now consider them the kind of company that would run "7 viruses discovered on you phone, click to clear!!!" blinking ads. And that's not an exaggeration; if I wanted to exaggerate, I'd say they the the kind of people who'd loot abandoned homes during a war, search corpses for loot, and/or take a candy from a kid. Bottom line, I can no longer trust them, at all.

[Isaac]

Extensive -- yes, exhaustive -- hardly.

I just browsed/searched through all 27 pages of the topic that you suggested, but there's no post that covered my case.

I'll accept that correction; and simply note that 27 pages hardly exhausts what's listed in those search results.

To compare LR to ACDSee would take another post, but let me say I'm very, very happy... Of huge importance is the fact that, unlike LR (or pretty much any other program supporting "non-destructive editing"), ACDSee does not lock you into their catalog, in any way. And you do not have to "export" anything -- all edited images are instantly accessible by any other program.

As you suggest - we can "export" images from LR; so contrary to your implication LR "does not lock you into their catalog". (This kind-of partisan back-and-forth is what you'll find repeated and repeated in those search results.)

As repeated and repeated before: I tried several versions of LR, and I tried ACDSee, and I tried …, so I kept images as tif and had no difficulty accessing them with various free-trial programs. (As-it-happens RawTherapee meets my needs, when combined with a basic layer/blend tool.)

[Zorki5]

As you suggest - we can "export" images from LR; so contrary to your implication LR "does not lock you into their catalog". (This kind-of partisan back-and-forth is what you'll find repeated and repeated in those search results.)

To the best of my knowledge, the only available bulk export option is to export into another LR catalog. In other words, it's not really an "export".

So how do I export 13 years worth of digital images, retaining carefully built folder structure (<year>/<month>/<event>)?

[john beardsworth]

To the best of my knowledge, the only available bulk export option is to export into another LR catalog. In other words, it's not really an "export".

So how do I export 13 years worth of digital images, retaining carefully built folder structure (<year>/<month>/<event>)?

No. Bulk export is really bulk export. There are other options to export catalogues. You can also save all your adjustments and all standard metadata back to the individual files/folders.

The folder structure question seems like you're trying to add a subjective definition of "export" to "prove" your case. You can still export all 13 years in a single menu command - export. But if you do want to mirror some arbitrary folder structure, there's an export setting to save to the same folder as the originals, and the plugin Jeffrey's Tree Publisher allows all sorts of variations.

Export is export, and fully functional even if someone no longer subscribes.

[razrblck]

What would happen [...] if Adobe just ceased to exist?

First of all, if Adobe keeps making money this will not happen anytime soon unless there's some major event in which case we will probably have other things to worry about. But if it ever happens, has any of it ever stopped people? As far as I know, you can still get a pirated copy of the latest CC version for free, and I'm sure that crackers and hackers will find ways to not only unlock everything, but also fix bugs. Or hell, some ex Adobe employee would just release the complete source code on the internet once the company shuts down forever.

I have tried the Creative Cloud principle for a while, and the presence of the Adobe Cloud logo tells me, that Big Brother is watching.

You can close the CC app and disable it's automatic startup without hindering your CC experience. You will lose automatic sync, update reminders and various notifications, but Adobe products will keep functioning just as well.

Talk about trivial pedantry! Who gives a bat's bunion? Everyone knows - or should know - that when someone says they "own" Photoshop, what they mean is simply that they will be able to use it for as long as they want regardless of what Adobe does or does not do.

As long as the activation servers are not shut down. Since Adobe implemented activation in their products, the only legitimate way to use that perpetual license key was to activate the application once installed, hence why they had to release a version of CS2 without activation requirements for older clients. If adobe does something to that, sure you could still use your installed applications, but as soon as you need to reinstall them you are out of luck and will need to crack them just like any other software pirate.

I don't really want to spend too much of my time learning new features every 2-3 months. Be nice if a platform stayed stable over some longer period of time. But others may feel differently.

Updates are not mandatory nor are they automatic. Yes, the CC app looks for updates constantly, but installing them is up to you. If you like the version you have, you can keep it for as long as you want.

Of huge importance is the fact that, unlike LR (or pretty much any other program supporting "non-destructive editing"), ACDSee does not lock you into their catalog, in any way. And you do not have to "export" anything -- all edited images are instantly accessible by any other program.

ACDSee is a very nice application indeed and I'm sorry that Adobe customer care in Russia is such bullshit.
As for non destructive editing and getting tied to Lightroom, you could save everything in DNG files or check the option to save edits in XMP "sidecar" files in the Catalog Settings window. This way all edits will be external to the catalog. You'll still be able to see them applied only by Lightroom, just as edits made in CaptureOne are specific to that app (and I guess edits in ACDSee are the same as well). There is no standard for that, so every application handles edits in a different way that is not compatible with others. But you will be untied by the catalog and in case of failure you won't lose all your edits.

So how do I export 13 years worth of digital images, retaining carefully built folder structure (<year>/<month>/<event>)?

The files are somewhere on your hard drive(s), not in the catalog. There's no need for that kind of export because you can just go to the folder containing the photos and copy them somewhere else. I use a real folder structure, not the automatic sorting Lightroom might generate at my request, because I like to be able to navigate the folders even outside the application.
For example when dealing with backups it greatly helps to have files already sorted on disk, so I don't have to spend hours looking for something specific in old backup archives.If you keep 13 years of pictures into one big folder that's fine as well, but you can't blame the application for the consequence of your choices.

I hope everyone in here has a solid backup strategy, by the way.

[Zorki5]

The folder structure question seems like you're trying to add a subjective definition of "export" to "prove" your case.

John, no offence, but you have spent too much time on the internet.

Believe it or not, there are still people who do not want to "prove" (as you put it, using quotes) anything, but who are simply asking questions. Like me. And they are asking questions to get answers, real answers.

I'll try once again.

My case is indeed very simple. By the time I understood I had to let LR go, I had about 13 years worth of images (mostly JPEGs) stored using a particular catalog structure, <year>/<month>/<day>. A LOT of images; about 10% of them (on average) retouched in LR. So, when I say "export", I mean what LR normally calls "export"; that is, with all edits applied. I do not want to lose my edits, I want to get images with edits applied; this is what being able to export means. And this is what export of individual files does. But not bulk export -- if one wants to retain folder structure.

Now, with LR I only saw two ways to do bulk export:

1) To export into a catalog. When you do this, Lightroom just copies sources files with no edits applied, and copies metadata for the edits into new .lrcat database. So we're back to square 1 -- no luck.

2) To export selected files. If you select multiple folders, all of them will be exported. BUT whatever options you choose in the export dialog, all your folder structure will be flattened.

When I figured that I could only retain either folder structure or edits, I chose the former. And now when browse images in ACDSee and stumble upon a decent (for me) formerly edited in LR image and am in the mood, I just edit it again in ACDSee. I'm not a pro, I could afford losing those edits... And I did. Otherwise, I'd have to go folder by folder, and I do not want to do this cr@p. Do you really think I lost my edits so that to be able to cry foul? Seriously?

So, what am I missing? What magical way of doing bulk export retaining folder structure exist in LR that I do not know about?

[RSL]

Wow! I've seen some trivialities on LuLa, but this thread probably takes the cake. As long as PS works as well as it does, who cares whether you own it or not.

[Zorki5]

Believe it or not, there are still people who do not want to "prove" (as you put it, using quotes) anything, but who are simply asking questions. Like me. And they are asking questions to get answers, real answers.

Just to be 100% clear:

I still have LR 5.7 installed, so I can still use some form of bulk export to retrieve edited images.

I did try to export "to the same folder" with "ask me on duplicates" (or similarly named), but the only viable choice available on actually finding duplicates (and they were all "duplicates"!) was "use unique names" (or whatever it was called...) option, but the naming turned out to be a mess. So I dropped this idea.

I never tried to export "to the same folder" with "overwrite w/o warning" (IIRC) option, as I thought writing over source files would cause havoc. Maybe that's not so, but never checked it.