Is anyone else considering switching from Photoshop?

[inlawbiker]

Doug Sinnott1941 wrote:

Download Google's free Picasa program,it's all I use now!

Lightroom,Photoshop,are just hard work!

--
Best regards,
Doug Sinnott

Sorry, but that's ridiculous. Picasa is good for cataloging and doing basic adjustment, and for automatic upload to Google Drive or Smugmug (using plugin). I like the leveling tool for instance.

But it's a toy compared to Photoshop. GIMP is a viable alternative if you're not a pro. When I was a pro web designer I used a lot of Photoshop, and it was worth every penny. If you're a pro photographer or designer you're probably going to have to pay for Photoshop.

For amateurs, Photoshop Elements or GIMP should be just fine. It's a hassle to learn something new but Adobe isn't giving us a choice. Nobody in their right mind would pay the CS Suite monthly fee unless they had to.

 

[Marvin Doering]

I was afraid there would be no easy answer. Does anyone think Adobe might back down if enough people failed to sign up for the software rental program? They basically had started bringing out a new version every year so every year I ponied up $200 to upgrade. I would think if there are enough folks like me they stand to lose an awful lot of money, but I may not be factoring in the pain involved in learning a new, and usually not intuitive program to replace it. I have a feeling that if too many people switch to Photoshop Elements or Lightroom Adobe will feel the need to do something to make us go back to Photoshop, probably by making both of them rental as well.

 

[Glen Barrington]

Marvin Doering wrote:

I was afraid there would be no easy answer. Does anyone think Adobe might back down if enough people failed to sign up for the software rental program? They basically had started bringing out a new version every year so every year I ponied up $200 to upgrade. I would think if there are enough folks like me they stand to lose an awful lot of money, but I may not be factoring in the pain involved in learning a new, and usually not intuitive program to replace it. I have a feeling that if too many people switch to Photoshop Elements or Lightroom Adobe will feel the need to do something to make us go back to Photoshop, probably by making both of them rental as well.

 

[Bajerunner]

Before I had photoshop, I used GIMP for a while. From what I remember, that it could not accept plugins as easily (NIK and Topaz) is what pushed me to LR and PS.

I have PS6 and will use it till I cannot.

But if I had to choose today, based on price, I would probably go with Corel Paintshop Pro, or Aftershot or Serif, now that all of those can do the plugins.

As these programs develop, Adobe will get more competition. Maybe that is why they are putting their eggs in the pro basket now? Before the competition is just too much? Notice that all of these programs are much cheaper than PS?

I only got photoshop because of a discount deal, I jumped on it.

But the days of PS and the amateur photography market domination are probably over, with these other programs being able to take plugins and probably developing layering and most likely eventually actions as well. That is all that PS has over the regular image processor, isn't it?

That said, using one of the above with GIMP which does layers, is probably all one needs, one gets the layers with GIMP and the plugin capability with the others. A bit of import and export and one has most capability sans the convenience of all in one in PS.



--
Enjoy.....believe in yourself..

 

[Paphios]

JudyN wrote:

Paphios wrote:

There are reports that individuals who are trying to deactivate their CS to install license on a new computer are getting resistance from Adobe. Just because you have activation codes doesn't mean that Adobe will allow reactivation.

Could you point us to some of these reports? I find it hard to believe.. But then again...

Could it be that the people who answer the phone have been "reprogrammed" to speak only cloud -- which has been reported... I know when I had an activation problem (couldn't deactivate) the response was very quick and painless -- but that was a couple of years ago.

 

[Bajerunner]

That is interesting. Something like that could actually drive someone, to get a hacked version, which they may see themselves as having paid for i.e. use of a software to process photos.

Would they be wrong? After all, they have paid for the use of that version of software.

So, we have a situation where the use of hacked versions could actually increase because of the actions of the software company, not decrease.

 

[abepak]

I'm using a PS CS6 and will continue to use it for the next few years and hope that the vacuum will allow other companies to step up and fill the void with a comparable product.

 

[Fazal Majid]

I am certainly not going to sign up for Adobe's price-gouging. CS = Creative Sharecropper?

I purchased Pixelmator and Acorn over a year ago, but never bothered to learn them. Nor can I find my way around PS CS5 (upgrading from CS3). I hardly ever use PS any more, most of my photo editing time is spent in Lightroom, which has a much nicer interface for many common tasks like adjusting white balance or deskewing a slightly tilted image. The only CS app I'd miss is InDesign, but InDesign CS5 does all I can conceivably want to do with it and I will keep using it until a MacOS update breaks it.

Now if Adobe pulls the same trick with Lightroom, I am in serious trouble, but they claim not to plan to, and it's no use worrying about something like that until it happens.

 

[brianric]

Jim Hess wrote:

Even if you decide to just stick with Photoshop you could always download the latest DNG converter to get support for new cameras. That, of course, is assuming that Adobe will still offer the converter.

It really isn't going to do a lot of good to turn this into another bash on Adobe tirade. It has been said every possible way that it can be said. I have Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CS6, and if Adobe makes it impossible for me to upgrade in the future I can live with what I have. I might have to find another companion product. But I can sit still go out and take pictures. I have software than I can process my images with, and Adobe's decisions aren't going to affect that ability at all. A lot of people don't like the idea of the cloud. I'm not going to it. But that has been Adobe's choice. That's fine. When I can't use my software anymore I'll look for something else. There are plenty of options, and all the Adobe haters say that those options are much better. Maybe they are. Right now I have no reason to find out.

There is another alternative if you run Photoshop in Windows by using MetaRaw for Windows from the Plugin Site.

 

[k-aus]

If you need to reinstall CS6 there's no downloads available in Adobe site other than if you got a disk.

I just went into their website and there's nowhere you can download CS6 so I'm not sure if you try registering it again online, it will work. Which means if U need to format your hard drive and loose everything, there goes CS6 too.

This is to force us who bought CS6 to buy into Cloud.

I wonder if Capture 0ne Pro will develop their software further so as we can make the leap...

 

[BG454]

Marvin Doering wrote:

I was afraid there would be no easy answer. Does anyone think Adobe might back down if enough people failed to sign up for the software rental program? They basically had started bringing out a new version every year so every year I ponied up $200 to upgrade.

Firstly, I'd like to say I do not use, and never have used, any version of Photoshop.
I would have thought (and others have said) the current version (CS6?) of PS is probably about as fully developed as it needs to be, and there is not much scope for further enhancement. It is this that must be driving Adobe towards the "Cloud" licensing system - they simply cannot keep selling "upgrades" every year or so since there is very little to upgrade. Did you ever stop and consider what your $200 a year upgrade was actually buying? It seems that many people only upgraded every alternate version or even less.

I would think if there are enough folks like me they stand to lose an awful lot of money, but I may not be factoring in the pain involved in learning a new, and usually not intuitive program to replace it. I have a feeling that if too many people switch to Photoshop Elements or Lightroom Adobe will feel the need to do something to make us go back to Photoshop, probably by making both of them rental as well.

Are you implying that you think PS is an "intuitive" program to learn? If so, I'm ROFL!
If it was so intuitive then there wouldn't be the huge number of "Learn Photoshop" books and videos that there are. The complexity of PS is one of the things that puts me off getting it, plus, more importantly, it does far more than I actually need.

For many people (myself included) Lightroom is the alternative to Photoshop and Adobe say this will remain a retail product "indefinitely" (although it has been pointed out that "indefinitely" is open to interpretation). Similarly for PS Elements.
It appears that Adobes intention is for Lightroom and Elements to be the "Amateur Photographer" products and make them available on an individual payment basis, and leave Photoshop and its associated programs as the professional product, as it was at its introduction.

Once you start comparing Elements with the alternatives, the comparison becomes much easier, since most of the other editing programs that are available reveal what a horrid, user unfriendly program Elements is. Elements is a real example of "upgrade every year", since it seems that as soon as one edition is released another one is being planned.
I suspect all the people who have used and upgraded Elements every year have spent more than if they had bought a full version of Photoshop in the first place (and still cannot do everything that PS does).

 

[jezsik]

Although many of its tools are becoming more geared toward casual users, PaintShop is a very powerful editor and can do almost as much as Photoshop ... at a fraction of the cost.

 

[miketuthill]

k-aus wrote:

If you need to reinstall CS6 there's no downloads available in Adobe site other than if you got a disk.

I just went into their website and there's nowhere you can download CS6 so I'm not sure if you try registering it again online, it will work. Which means if U need to format your hard drive and loose everything, there goes CS6 too.

This is to force us who bought CS6 to buy into Cloud.

I wonder if Capture 0ne Pro will develop their software further so as we can make the leap...

 

[BG454]

jezsik wrote:

Although many of its tools are becoming more geared toward casual users, PaintShop is a very powerful editor and can do almost as much as Photoshop ... at a fraction of the cost.

I agree. It's my editor of choice, along with Topaz plug-ins.
Anything I cannot do in Lightroom is transferred to PaintShop Pro. It's biggest weaknes (like that of Photoshop Elements) is lack of support for 16-bit images, which is important to me. Some of the other Photoshop alternatives do offer better 16-bit support.

As I said in my post above, I don't use Photoshop and I've never owned a copy, although I did try a version of Elements (I think it was v6) a while ago, and thought that PaintShop Pro was better in just about every respect. I simply cannot get used to the quaint, Mac originated, User Interface of Elements and Photoshop.

 

[Glen Barrington]

I'm pretty sure that PSP X5 supports 16 bit color depth editing. I export all my photos from ACDSee Pro 16 to PSP X5 as 16 bit tif files and I don't recall any mandatory 8 bit conversions. (But I admit to using, at best, a small subset of the available tools that PSP offers)

Apparently the help file won't let you cut and paste text completely but do a help file search on the topic called, "Understanding Color Depth", and you will see that X5 claims both 16 bit gray and 16 bit RGB support without restriction.

Now that being said, if you use a file format that is inherently 8 bit such as GIF, or if your monitor isn't capable of supporting 16 bit display, then you will be limited to 8 bit color depth. But that is a restriction of your system infrastructure and not the software.

Now ALL THAT being said, I fully support the theme of your post that PSP is an excellent photo editor and should be considered when looking for a new photo editor!

--
I still like soup. . .
Now that you've judged the quality of my typing, take a look at my photos. . .
http://www.jpgmag.com/people/glenbarrington/photos

 

[k-aus]

I'm like you, not a professional so I'm not going to pay a monthly fee for a program that I don't use on a daily basis. I took the plunge and bought Capture One Pro. They have a sale that ends today for 20% discount. Thought that was a good deal to switch over but now have to start learning how to use a new program. Sooner or later someone will come up with a program that will rival LR and some features of PS for Photographers and Retouchers. Personally there too many features in PS that I don't use because it's more for Graphics.

I found out last night that if you install Ps from Adobe site and if you need to reinstall it, they have taken down the download page and u get directed to Cloud.

--
k-aus
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78539872@N00/

 

[Antioch]

I found out last night that if you install Ps from Adobe site and if you need to reinstall it, they have taken down the download page and u get directed to Cloud.

I contacted Adobe a few days ago, regarding the above.

After downloading the program, make sure you copy it to a dvd (the downloaded part, before running the install), that solves one problem.

They further told me, that you could always go to your Adobe Account, and always be able to download your purchased programs from there. I have never tried this, as I have all disks for their programs.

 

[k-aus]

it is registered but the page give you to cloud, nothing else that u can download again.

 

[BG454]

Glen Barrington wrote:

I'm pretty sure that PSP X5 supports 16 bit color depth editing. I export all my photos from ACDSee Pro 16 to PSP X5 as 16 bit tif files and I don't recall any mandatory 8 bit conversions. (But I admit to using, at best, a small subset of the available tools that PSP offers)

Apparently the help file won't let you cut and paste text completely but do a help file search on the topic called, "Understanding Color Depth", and you will see that X5 claims both 16 bit gray and 16 bit RGB support without restriction.

Now that being said, if you use a file format that is inherently 8 bit such as GIF, or if your monitor isn't capable of supporting 16 bit display, then you will be limited to 8 bit color depth. But that is a restriction of your system infrastructure and not the software.

Now ALL THAT being said, I fully support the theme of your post that PSP is an excellent photo editor and should be considered when looking for a new photo editor!

I must admit that my comments were based on an older version of PSP (X2) and I only upgraded this week to X5, and haven't yet had a chance to explore it's extra features.
I did trial X5 a while ago, and I thought I found there was something that I used in the editing tools that prompted a message that required me to reduce the image to a single layer 8 bit file. Of course I could be getting confused with PS Elements 11, which I also trialled and which also has limited 16-bit support.

I'm working with 16-bit tif scans of some old 35mm slides, some of which are seriously damaged/degraded and require extensive retouching and restoration (cloning, scratch removal etc. and colour correction). I'm trying to keep them 16-bit to give me as much latitude as possible whilst making adjustments. They will eventually finish up as jpg for printing.

For general photo retouching I use PSP as a carrier for Topaz Plug-ins, which I find very useful.
All my raw development is done with Lightroom 4.4 at present, and I find this handles the vast majority of my adjustments, with just the occasional image being passed to PSP for some fine tuning with Topaz.

 

[aodi]

I am using PS for years. Some days ago I downloaded trial version of Paint Shop X5 and it looks like it is easy to use if you have PS experience. It is also coming with NIK plug-ins.