Photoshop Terms of Service grants Adobe access to user projects for ‘content moderation’ and other purposes

urska@lemmy.ca to Linux@lemmy.ml – 355 points –
Photoshop Terms of Service grants Adobe access to user projects for ‘content moderation’
nichegamer.com
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Imagine you are in an environment using Windows (with Recall enabled and all other spyware and advertisements on OS level), use Photoshop enabling Adobe to spy on you and play Valorant with an Anticheat system that runs all the time at highest Kernel level access to everything on your system, and use Chrome spying on you too.

I almost vomit...

Wouldn't it be nice to set 'em all up to want something (perhaps the glowing suitcase (soul?) from Pulp Fiction) and watch the greedy bastards fight, fight, fight...?

Wait, is this just projects stored in your online Adobe cloud account, or are they even stealing your content if you're just using their desktop software? Because one of these is way, way worse than the other, even if neither is exactly good...

The new AI features require internet, and they are running on their servers, so it should affect those as well. They have a "generative fill" "neural filters" which adds features to your image, so they definitely needs your full image to generate something.

In cracked photoshop these tools are not working, obviously. So i guess if you use these cloud tools than you send your images directly to adobe hq.

I have a cracked PS install, and the generative fill works just fine for me, and its got all inbound/outbound connections blocked on my firewall.

The generative fill has been around for way longer than the AI craze.

Are you thinking of "content-aware fill"? Generative fill is, as far as I'm aware, much, much newer and uses newer generative AI. Content-aware fill is basically clever automatic clone stamping.

Yeah I don't use PS just help others install it, neural filters is the new one

Now that can be an issue for some people (I mean secret contracts and stuff like that). I don't use an image editor but if I did, I'd use Krita btw

Krita, Inkspace, Gimp. I understand those who use it professionally but not the zealots who dont/barely use it yet demand for it like their life depended on it.

If you're using it professionally, you need your Photoshop to be properly licensed.

If you're not using it professionally, there's no need for proper licenses. And thus you can...acquire Photoshop in a way that doesn't involve it calling back to Adobe's systems.

I mean, sure... But a whole lot of people use Photoshop professionally without a license.

Krita is great, though. Their Android version is even fully featured, so you can use a tablet with a digitizer if you don't have a drawing pad for your desktop.

I've finally started learning to use krita, I'm enjoying it a lot (begrudgingly)

Why begrudgingly, may I ask?

Photoshop does a lot of things in really stupid, convoluted ways. Krita also does a lot of the same things in equally stupid, convoluted ways, but different than PS so you get no benefit from knowing how its done in other software. Text editing comes to mind. Both PS and Krita feel like they were designed by drunk people when it comes to doing anything beyond writing text and picking a font/color/size.

IIRC the Krita people were working on redoing the text tool. Not sure if/when it's going to be finished, though.

Thankfully I don't do anything that requires me to have Photoshop, but if I did, I'd be explicitly blocking all outbound connections in the firewall.

Pretty sure the way Adobe’s licensing works you need to be always online to use it

Then you would violate the agreement, which could terminate the access to your stuff and the app.

I doubt that for two reasons:

  • There's no non-admin way for an app to discern if it's a firewall block, or a legitimate no-internet situation (i.e. didn't purchase in-flight WiFi). It would also look really bad PR-wise if a company banned customers just because their internet went down or was otherwise spotty.

  • How would they even know? Their software can't tattle on me if it's been blocked from establishing a connection.

They could require the app to connect once every 30 days or similar in order to keep functioning.

Well, the software knows if it has access. Like you would know if you don't have access to their files, when trying to access. I didn't say they could detect this reliably, just that it would violate the agreement, in which case they have the right to terminate the access.

Maybe this is only about access to files saved on their server and not locally on your drive. In that case, this doesn't matter to our discussion. But if they access your drive, as the previous comment suggested it silently by blocking access with a firewall, then one should be ready to get banned doing so. Maybe there is even a software installed on your machine that checks this... You wouldn't know, because its all closed source.

Nobody does anything that requires them to use Photoshop. Use GIMP.

There are plenty of people who need a better editor than GIMP considering how long it's gone without a major refresh (this isn't a whinge it's been over a decade). For anyone that actually cares about their sanity there's Krita, that actually tries to build a program for professionals.

Edit: Let alone Krita can actually be used by schools, while GIMP isn't because of the name.

Holy shit, will people ever shut up about the name? The truth is that barely anyone actually gives a shit except FOSS zealots trying to come up with excuses for why GIMP wasn't successful (or those belonging to the anti-GIMP circlejerk that's surfaced as of late trying to come up with new nonsensical reasons to hate a random piece of FOSS). Outside of the English-speaking world, the amount of people who give a shit about GIMP's name is precisely zero and the word gimp is almost exclusively associated with the program. Even inside of the English-speaking world, I see GIMP used to refer to the program more often than for anything else. The amount of people actually who actually care about the name is negligible and the amount of brand recognition that would be lost from a rename would significantly outweigh the benefits of possibly having a couple more schools think about maybe starting to use GIMP.

And the truth is that as far as FOSS GUI programs are concerned, GIMP has been tremendously successful. It's easily among the most popular, alongside Blender, Firefox and LibreOffice. It is and always has been far more popular than Krita in both professional and non-professional contexts. I've seen it installed on the computers of both my secondary school and college, because it turns out school computer labs need image editors and they're not going to pay for Photoshop licenses.

But it hasn't been more successful than Photoshop. And Firefox hasn't been more successful than Chrome. And LibreOffice hasn't been more successful than MS Office. And Blender hasn't been more successful than Maya. And Godot hasn't been more successful than Unity. And I could go on. Because no single FOSS GUI program has achieved industry standard status. Though Blender has a pretty good shot at making it.

The only one that seems like a FOSS zealot here is you my friend...hope you learn how to be kinder to folks during conversations.

I actually think that it wouldn't take too many more people using GIMP for the name of the program to be considered the primary meaning of the word in English.

GIMP 3.0 should be out this year. If you're interested, you can already use some of the new features (like true non-destructive editing) by running the development version.

https://www.gimp.org/news/2024/02/21/gimp-2-99-18-released/

Oh thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware! I'll have to check it out when it drops :)

No worries :) It's a big release and is gonna really bring GIMP up to date. I'm super excited about it!

Well shit

It was only a matter of time given current trends

u vfill own nothing and be happy.

I like owning my shit and want to keep owning my shit

I see GIMP and Krita in my near future

In the upcoming weeks or months (they are late as fuck) GIMP will release its long awaited version 3.0. This has some huge improvements, so a good opportunity to try out if when it comes. If you are coming from Photoshop, know that some of the important features will still be missing in GIMP, such as non destructive editing (it will only have a few features regarding that). Krita is more full featured in regard non destructive editing, but is focused on drawings, still capable of generic image editing.

How's rawtherapee for photo work and darktable

I never used Rawtherapee, seems to be a good tool too. I used Darktable years ago for couple of years when I was into photography. It's fantastic and got better since. While the main focus is on raw editing and developing, it is also good enough for other image related editing. Darktable obviously is similar to Lightroom, for some even the better tool; I can't compare them, never used Lightroom.

It has fantastic masking features for every effect, meaning it would only affect what is not masked. You can draw a mask with mouse, set by complex parameters, and other ways to set this up. This extended feature landed after I stopped using Darktable daily (as I stopped photography). It's worth wile checking out.

I can't bring myself to feel sorry for Adobe users, which unfortunately include my wife. Same goes for any of the other shit services out there. It takes determination and self-control to move away from all that crap, but as a person that sees himself with less self-determination than most, I was able to pull it off, so those that don't can enjoy their hostage position.

This is a silly take. Who would sacrifice half -or more- their work efficiency to make a point?

I would, and do. I have had to sacrifice some convenience to stand my ground and my values, but that's up to each individual how far they are willing to go.

I moved away from Windows as much as I can and now I maintain a dualboot just for Photoshop and Lightroom. I think compared to average people I'm doing quite well conviction wise.

I also use Gimp as much as I can. Unfortunately for processing hundreds of photos Rawrherapee + Gimp is not a viable option for me. There are problems both with quality and speed. (Gimp is the problem for speed and RT or DT for the lack of quality due to weak highlight reconstruction)

I understand. I consider myself blessed that anything I need is actually much more performant and easier to use the foss optiins than any of their proprietary counterparts, but I'm also aware that is not the case for some people.

I hope those irreplaceable pieces of software you need at least start getting ported over to be supported on Linux.

I mean I disagree about not sympathizing with folks somewhat trapped in a hostile software ecosystem, but surely "stand by your beliefs" is not unheard of.

krita is pretty good. Not as good as photoshop, but it's 85% there and doesn't do bullshit adobe things. There's an addon for it that brings photoshop like ai tools using stable diffusion, and runs entirely locally.

I think they've already been doing this for awhile? They must be about to get caught or something. They want to use, and probably already are, your new ideas for training AI.

I know historically if you scanned a bank note into Photoshop it'd give you a popup window telling you off lol

This has been a legal requirement by the government for a while, in order to combat counterfeit money. Many tools that work with images will complain about banknotes, even printers.

Also it’s not AI based and isn’t sending your image to a server. It’s checking for certain specific anti-counterfeit details of banknotes.

now it says its new

I think they're having you agree to what they've already been doing.

Photoshop’s newest terms of service has users agree to allow Adobe access to their active projects for the purposes of “content moderation” and other various reasons.

They want you to give up the goods to train AI, old art is bad art to them. Also, this:

This has caused concern among professionals, as it means Adobe would have access to projects under NDA such as logos for unannounced games or other media projects. Sam Santala, the founder of Songhorn Studios noted the language of the terms on Twitter, calling out the company’s overreach.

This is why I don't use Adobe.

I'm so glad I saw the red flags from earlier and decided to stay far away from anything Adobe.

Anyways, this is the new business tactic. Start stealing confidential information by somehow forcing a new ToS change or update.

Like... do they just not want money from the main group of digital artists who generate money? It's literally a meme that the best way to make money as an artist is furry porn

they probably dont care, they make more money selling or lending the users data.

Its ok Adobe, you can admit you want to look at peoples furry porn, we won't judge you here!

Hell, you can just ask half of lemmy for some, I'm sure they'd be happy to share.

Back to try learning darktable again then...

Will this apply to CS6 users as well?

Why would Adobe do literally anything about CS6 in the year 2024 when they discontinued in 2013?