Viable alternatives to Photoshop.

[revi]

I fully agree.

This story is about a break-in in Adobe's network. This is not cloud storage, and it's not your computer being attacked. Nothing
in the stolen data gives anyone a link to your computer, let alone access to is.

Indeed, it's not good news, but no worse than a similar attack on say Amazon. In order to attack your data on your computer,
someone will need to get access to it first. And if you have a decently configured router and firewall, incoming connections are
just dropped, unless you have specifically allowed them (the verification of Adobe software is done from your computer, so it's not
an incoming connection).

For various reasons, Adobe has to allow incoming connections on at least some of their computers (web servers, code repositories
and versioning systems, sales handling). At home, in general, you don't have to allow any incoming connections (for most users).
My router only allows incoming ping requests, and I've got a firewall on my computer that only allows http requests and one or two others
(Note that that computer is behind the router...). Unfortunately, not all routers are configured that way...

There are perhaps legitimate reasons not to connect your photo-storing and -editing computer to the internet, but this isn't one of them.

And this whole case has nothing whatsoever to do with Adobe's Creative Cloud system, so we could perhaps stop hammering on the Creative Cloud
every time something goes wrong with any computer at Adobe's, Kelby, or whoever. For me, that is not giving information, that's trolling, and spreading disinformation.
Not saying I agree with the system, but subscription is a common business model for professional software (Matlab, anyone? and I think even Microsoft uses
it for site licenses). Adobe is just one of the first to apply it to 'consumer' software (let's not forget Photoshop etc. is professional software)

And not sure if it's possible, but I'd like to ask the moderators to move the part of this thread dealing with 'threats to CC' to a separate thread? (say from #71 onwards).
Reason: it has nothing to do with alternatives to Photoshop or Creative Cloud.

[Colin Southern]

Very well put Remco.

At this stage I'll leave the thread in it's current form because the OP's reason for it's creation & the current news are connected by a "thin thread", and I suspect it'll die a natural death soon anyway.

Like it or not, things like cloud storage & subscription-based models are here. And they're here to stay. Those resistant to change (for whatever reason) are of course welcome to try to avoid it, but ultimately, I strongly suspect it's a classic case of (the Borg from Star Trek) "Resistance is Futile" (if they don't like the idea of their data being stored in data centers then they'd best close their bank accounts and stop filing tax returns just for starters) (they're probably best to stop posting on public forums too, least they get "hacked").

And as for those who run around spouting the rubbish that you mention, all they're achieving is making themselves look ignorant among those who know better; the digital-age equivalent of shouting "THE SKY IS FALLING THE SKY IS FALLING". We've seen these irrational thoughts many times throughout history; thankfully, sensibility always prevails so that we're not all stuck in the stone age.

[Manfred M]

Nice summary Colin - new technologies or ways of delivering products live and die by being accepted in the marketplace and being successful there. Successful companies will lead the way and will thrive, others will not and fall by the wayside. Is the cloud here to stay; I would have to agree as it has pretty obvious value to most of us. Am I uneasy about the cloud, yes, because there are a lot of providers out there and many will not survive. A cloud provider that shuts down is just about as useful as a failed hard drive and has the same fundamental underlying problem, recovering data (i.e. it may not be possible to do so).

Same issue with a subscription based software. First of all, we don't own software, we licence it; having a hard copy in our hands means we have paid for the disk in our hand, no more, no less.

We have a subscription model in place for these products already and it's been in place for years; Anti-Virus software. Stop paying your subscription and the company no longer provides virus definition updates. Tax preparation software is only good for the tax year it was purchased for. Really, the only thing that Adobe has done is to switch to a monthly payment cycle, from these other examples that were annual in nature.

Most people have some level of resistance to change, but most get over it in time, while others have an irrational fear of change and resist it to the very end. I use Creative Suite CC, because it is the best alternative out there for what I need. If there was something better, I would probably use it.

[Adrian]

Whilst I agree that much of the furore over ACS is irrational or misguided, it has been beneficial in shining the spotlight on the long term accessibility and preservation of digital data.

It has always seemed to me that the "cloud: concept is misleading. All that it really means is remote storage on a hard drive controlled by a third party. This is actually quite useful as one back up among several and it has obvious advantages for data sharing and multi location access.

The interesting point for me is whether I can protect the pictures I really care about from long term software changes. We do not want to have wonderful back ups of our images but no means of accessing them in ten years time.

We have therefore started to experiment with on-line printed photo books. We are now doing this for all of our major trips and projects. It is surprisingly cheap to produce a high quality bound album now. It forces us to select only the best images and process them well. The albums are a good long term record and recommend them as a pretty safe memory store. Maybe photography has begun to come full circle? We used to have images printed by labs. Now we are doing so again.

[Colin Southern]

It has always seemed to me that the "cloud: concept is misleading. All that it really means is remote storage on a hard drive controlled by a third party.

Yep, although I'd personally just tweak that slightly by adding "on a large scale" as in massive data canters that are generally run a darn site more professionally than the average home PC (ie a lot less likely to lose something).

Even this site runs on one!

[nimitzbenedicto]

Even this site runs on one!

Period !

[django]

The best products are not always free , but if are an advanced user i think GimpShop is the best free Photoshop alternative with support from the active and large community provided by Gimp. And if you are looking for a commercial alternative , i think Corel PaintShop Pro X6 is the best product to consider among Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud alternatives.

[rpcrowe]

Another thought...

A combination of Lightroom (about $150 U.S. Price) and OnOne Perfect Photo (about $130 for Lightroom version)...


That would give you Mask and Layer capabilities (as well as a lot of other capabilities) in your Lightroom setup...

[Richard Lundberg]

I also suffer from SAS and have about 75 image editing apps on my Mac. I recently ran through almost all of them. I have about a half dozen more in my Win XP virtual machine on Fusion, including PSP X6, that I haven't gotten to yet. Six of the Mac apps support my camera, and by support I mean they open my raw files with lens distortion correction.
These are: Silky Pix ( comes free from Fuji). ACDSee Pro 3,Big Aperture,Photo Glamor, Great Photo, and Xee. The first two are more or less full featured raw converters and the others are specialized effects or viewers. ACR does not correct for lens even though my camera is "supported" This is the case for all the other major editors including PhotoLine and Perfect Photo Suite 8. Raw Therapee can't even find my raw files. I converted raw to DNG in Adobe's converter and was startled to find that both Photoshop and PhotoLine opened the dng with interpretation of contrast, saturation, and white balance. I didn't bother testing all 75 apps for that.
For my camera and workflow, I have set my Mac to open raw in Silky Pix, where I will do preliminary adjustments, then take out perspective in DxO Perspective (great little app), then do other fixes in whatever seems appropriate among PS, PL, AfterShot( Noise Ninja is included), or some effects s/w such as Lightzone or Intensify
Capture One has a horrible UI and forced cataloging, DxO doesn't support dng, I mentioned PPS 8 above, RAW Therapee couldn't find the files and had to be force quit, there are lots of picky things about all editors even those that are supposedly easy to use , such as Live Quartz.
I don't want to be forced to catalog, I want to be able to read the UI and find the tools, I want the raw uninterpreted and free of lens effects. and I want sliders and other gradual adjustments to also operated by arrow keys and have a numerical readout.
PhotoLine is very layer oriented and its terminology is affected by its German origin. The developers are very helpful in explaining and suggesting, and are constantly improving it. It is not a Linux kluge, thank god.

[Richard Lundberg]

I just received this message from onOne regarding their support of camera raw.
"
Thanks for using onOne Software. It appears this raw format has been dropped by Apple and we use the Operating System to handle raw processing. Our new list of supported types are available here:
http://www.ononesoftware.com/support/3592/ "
So you're paying a hundred and some bucks for them to use OS X. Right. A lot of others use dcraw, including PhotoLine. I tried to download draw but whatever I got wouldn't open.

[Colin Southern]

Heck, I only have 1 photo processing package on my PC -- it's called Photoshop, and it does everything -- very very well.

Do I have to pay for it? Yep, but lets put that in perspective:

Today I've spent ...

$5.48 on Rates
$8.46 on car repayments
$9.73 on various insurances
$11.67 on Phone & internet charges
$13.17 on my mortgage
$14.50 on lunch
$28.57 on Groceries
$36.59 on office / workshop / studio rental

Oh - and

$1.15 in total for access to every software product Adobe makes.

[Richard Lundberg]

Well, yeah, but software is supposed to be free.

[Colin Southern]

Well, yeah, but software is supposed to be free.

How did you come to that conclusion?

[rayallen]

Well, yeah, but software is supposed to be free.

I really can't figure why you would suppose that. Yes, there is a lot of good software which is available free and I don't understand why authors would give it away.
I spent most of my working life as a computer programmer and I would not have done it for nothing.

I don't know what you do for a living but would you be prepared to keep doing it if your boss or your clients stopped paying you? I suppose you would not.

So, NO, software is not supposed to be free.

[ajohnw]

Some people who work on free software are paid. In the case of Linux most of the money comes from server installations but many of the various distributions also offer enterprise wide solutions. I understand 100% of the super computer market uses Linux.

Some others work on software for free in the hope of becoming one of the paid or being paid by some other company. The author of Lightzone for instance went to work for Apple. he did charge a little though. Now he seems to be settled Lightzone is open source.

Some people work on it for fun or as part of training - Google Summer Coding Schools for instance. Many do work on particular packages and or create them because of what they want the package to do.

One thing is for sure OS software can lead to a secure well paid career and if capable people can progress very very quickly in that area. That's one of it's problems there is an awful amount of duplication of effort.

More and more things will become cloud based over time. Rented too in all probability. That way companies get a steady predictable income rather than depending on monthly sales and piracy can be zero - in theory. Currently I feel there is a big problem. My situation in the UK isn't unusual. There has been a fibre optic high bandwidth cable running along the road next to my house for at least 15 years. Even higher bandwidth trunk lines have been running round the UK for even longer than that. I was on the local fibre at one time. They connected to my house with telephone cable - cheaper but actually network cable wouldn't have cost any more really. If they had done that there would be another problem - the current size of ISP server farms. That is likely to be a big stumbling block for ordinary users. Bigger businesses is another matter. They for instance currently may have IPV6 capability. Many don't even offer "us" IPV4 tunnelling and have no interest in offering it either even though all of the IPV4 addresses are used up according to some, masses by company owned blocks for tracking etc. It's interesting to find out if your ISP supports IPV6. If it doesn't there are already a large number of sites that can't be reached. There are companies offering software and services to get round this. Rooting is via one of there more local services which are generally in major cities all over the world. Some do it for free - wonder why?

http://ipv6-test.com/

Access can be checked with this link

http://ipv6.google.com/

John
-

[chauncey]

$1.15 in total for access to every software product Adobe makes.

I've toyed with going that route, currently just use the LR/PS CC...what parts of the total package do you use in your work and for what? In spite of always buying the full suite in times past, I never used anything besides PS. What may I have been missing out on?

[davidjfthomas]

Photo Ninja is in my mind the best RAW editor out there. Way better than ACR.

[ajohnw]

Not that I would mention it again but Rawtherapee and exporting to the GIMP forms a very capable package. GIMPS mostly relegated to local retouching.

There is a GIMP plugin to run PS plugins - never used it so pass.

If some one needs good CMYK output, publishing, Scribus is needed as well but there are also GIMP plugins.

For complete raw development control there is UFraw. If in it's default state it will produce dark images for professionals and can be set up so that it doesn't always remember the last settings used or to save settings with particular files. When used by packages such as Rawtherapee and others the "undarkening" tends to be automated. It can also do lens based corrections.

On Linux Fotoxx is very capable on it's own. Other applications can be used from it as plugins.

There are 2 GIMP spin offs as well. Personally I would steer clear of them. Search the names in the wiki but I would add that in real terms they just use settings that are already available in the GIMP to make it look PS like. There is a video on YouTube on making the GIMP PS like. There are also one or two attempts at easy money ,making in the plugin area.

Complete applications - I would wonder where the easy money comes from now.

There used to be a GIMP for photographers as well.

John
-

[Manfred M]

I've toyed with going that route, currently just use the LR/PS CC...what parts of the total package do you use in your work and for what? In spite of always buying the full suite in times past, I never used anything besides PS. What may I have been missing out on?

Like Colin; I've subscribed to the entire CC suite.

That being said is because I do a fair bit of video work, so Premiere Pro, Audition and After Effects get fairly regular use. I also use Illustrator for vector graphics work and occasionally use parts of Acrobat, InDesign, InCopy (Desktop publishing stuff) as well. I've spent some time with Muse and need to sit down and learn it (Website design).

If you are only working on image editing, the basic package withi Photoshop, Bridge and Lightroom is really all that one needs.

[bambleweeney]

Photo Ninja is in my mind the best RAW editor out there. Way better than ACR.

I'd have to agree with that