Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

Controversial take: I'm happy they went monthly paid subscription. You think a budding graphic designer of one year could afford the $1,500+ up front cost? The seven seas were the only option.

HOWEVER, 60 a month is too high for a product quality that is tanking. I was okay with it the first few years, but PS and Illustrator's performance noticeably have gone straight to shit for absolutely no benefit except for a little stupid gimmicks that offer zero productivity boosts. Indesign, they've mostly left alone, which I'm happy about because it's like Oreos. Stop fucking with the recipe, you made the perfect cookie. There are no more kingdoms to conquer. Simply find performance boosts, that's it. The reliability of my files and getting work done is more important than anything else. Truly. That's what Adobe USED to stand for. Pure raw UI intuitive productivity and getting shit done. Now, it's a fucking clown show that cares about their social media and evangelism.

I hear on the video side they've super dropped the ball, but I'm not much for motion graphics outside of Blender.

Stop with the bullshit "telemetry" garbage that bogs down my computer and AI scrapping of our data. Old files that used to run fine on my older computers run like shit on my new one. I know damn well there's bullshit going on in the background. That's 80% of the issue. The other 20% of problems are running of the mill stuff.

I am perfectly happy paying for functional, productive software. 60 bucks a month for that is fine as a freelance graphic designer and marketer. However creative cloud is quickly becoming dysfunctional and unproductive. That's the problem.

>You think a budding graphic designer of one year could afford the $1,500+ up front cost?

Yes? It's pretty normal to take out a loan or use a credit card to purchase tools to setup your career for years to come. That budding graphic designer probably spent $2000+ on a new Mac. Honestly though subscriptions only make sense for business customers, they really fuck over the home users that would like to buy the software once and use it for several years. Hobby photographers and such are either priced out of the market, or stuck with old computers running older versions from before the subscription push.

Lol, I started my career during the housing market crash. Even though I had decent credit, especially for my age, my credit cards were reduced due to "market volatility" to $20 above what my balance was.

Taking out a loan to start a career? I guess I was born to the wrong parents lol.

Not everyone starts out on great footing in their careers. To this day, I still don't buy "new" computer parts to upgrade my computer. It's a waste of money to me because I grew up only being to afford used or, best case, clearance.

Also, no Mac. Macs are for rich people with zero taste and sense and too much money to burn. Regardless of what anyone says, Macs dollar for dollar compared to a Windows machine, Adobe doesn't perform better on a Mac. I've tested it against computers where ever I would work, my older laptop versus their newer macs. Side by side, it's like 90% functions faster on Windows. Plus there's this weird ass memory issue where every PS file has an extra ~500mb of bloat on a Mac. No clue why.

But yes, subscriptions do make sense for business customers which, a lot of graphic designers do freelance on the side. Again, exactly why Adobe SHOULD be a subscription. Adobe isn't a hobbyist toolset and they need to stop treating it as such. When home users "discovered" Adobe and they started placating to them, that's when it went south. If they bumped up the price to $100 bucks a month and obliterated the "I'm just a quirky creative home user who likes to dabble" pandering, GOOD. I'd keep my subscription. Instead, I'm actively building up my experience in alternative tools so I can get away from Adobe. Not every piece software should be "Karen" easy especially when it's designed for a professional market. I want my software to be brutally efficient and productive. Not "a vibe". My "vibe" is getting away from the computer. Software should help me annihilate my workload as quickly as possible so I can go live a real life more.

> If they bumped up the price to $100 bucks a month and obliterated the "I'm just a quirky creative home user who likes to dabble" pandering, GOOD. I'd keep my subscription. Instead, I'm actively building up my experience in alternative tools so I can get away from Adobe.

You're telling them they'll lose you, but if they did what you recommend, they'd have lost both you and the "quirky creative home user who likes to dabble."

The amateur market creates the professional market 10 years from now. They should make sure quirky home users are using their product, even if they have to pay them to use it. If the quirky instead choose any other tool that is capable enough for professional work, they'll grow into the tool and never leave it. The more that do that, the more the tool will improve to conform to their expectations.

If the quirky start buying Affinity instead of learning Photoshop, Photoshop will be gone. In a hypothetical universe where the choices that were available when you first became professional were either an (even more, by your suggestion) expensive Adobe subscription and buying Affinity, you may never have used Photoshop at all.

> Macs are for rich people with zero taste and sense and too much money to burn.

Yes!

Adobe is losing more market share to Canva than anyone else. The amount of companies who send me "canva files" makes me want to summon the great solar flare that'll emp us back to the stone age, tomorrow. Most in house graphic design dabblers, typically admins or secretaries who have a slight creative flair, don't have Adobe subs anymore. They used to and would have the jankiest files ever... but they were psds, ai, and ind files. Now, it's all canva cloud with extra layers of vomit and headache.

Hobbyists can and should use pro tools, of course. There should always be a good opening as many next gen professionals come from that route, and bring outside, lateral knowledge to grow that tool in novel ways.

When you focus on lobotomizing a pro tool, that's when you actively lose market share. Affinity or someone else, just needs one or two banger spotlights and then Adobe will start seeing real problems. Right now, the lose is minor, but it's a crack in the wall. Remember Skype? I sure as fuck don't. They played the same fucky fuck game. One situation is all it took.

I don't really agree with the cost argument when the subscription is more expensive in the long run. Nobody needs to upgrade Photoshop every year, they're going to go 2-3 years (if not more) between upgrades. And when you do that, it's much cheaper to buy up front.

Renting software is just plain a raw deal for the users. It's more expensive, plus you don't get to keep it after you stop paying. The only one who wins is the vendor.

I don't fully disagree with you. The subscription business practice has become incredibly predatory and that's why it has a foul taste in everyone's mouth.

However, something to understand, most professional graphic design does not happen in Photoshop. It happens more in InDesign and Illustrator. Once you go design firm, print house or corporate, like PS is... there... but not like... "gee I need this every single day". One of the key features to InDesign is the fact that printing to literally any commercial or industrial printer works perfectly. I used to work in a medium sized print shop (digital and offset presses). You used InDesign to send to the RIPs (software that converts the color data properly) and get your intended result the first time about 95% of the time (ICC color management is a whole different topic). If you try Photoshop, ha ha. No. Most normies need to stop subscribing to CC and just get the PS sub. Seriously, you're wasting your money.

That's what I pay for in InDesign. Pure fucking consistency and less me screaming with difficulties. Quark and MS Publisher are great example competitors that thought it's all about design and not about output. Pure fucking trash because nothing ever printed or exported to PDF consistently. You know how MS Word formatting is a nightmare? Yeah, you don't get that in InDesign, ever. InDesign does nearly pure raw output to a rip with lots of controls. Now, if you have zero idea what you're doing, it's a nightmare. Kind of like the Manual setting to a pro-consumer DSLR camera. Once you learn how to use F-stop, shutter, ISO, etc, you refuse to use a camera without manual control. If you don't understand, you think it's stupid to not have the camera (or in this case software) think for you.

Plus, InDesign has variable data and other features that make booklet layouts a breeze. Hard to wrap your head around at first, but once you understand how the tools work, making print and digital PDFs, and then maintaining those files, reusing those layouts effectively and a whole mess of other timing saving features, you'll very, very, very quickly understand why someone would be okay with paying 60 or 100 bucks a month for it... as long as there are regular improvements. Blender has more regular, substantial improvements and it's free. Part of me thinks if they did a $600 one time buy license, then like a $10 a month "update subscription" that might be a better compromise. Not sure on the exact figures, but you get the point.

Also, from a pro graphic designer/print designer's perspective that's been doing this since 2006: Adobe is a fuckton more than Photoshop and these anti-Adobe conversations treat it as if it's important. PS is more like the jingling keys for the normie/public to be distracted by. Like PS is important... like how backseats are important to a car (unless you're more a photographer... and you don't like Lightroom...). If I lost access to PS, I'd shrug and be slightly bummed out. But not by much. Illustrator and InDesign? Might as well change careers at that point. Effectively nerfed and nuked as a designer.