Adobe Cuts Perpetual License for Elements from Lifetime down to just three years

Luu Tuyen@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 589 points – Adobe Cuts Perpetual License for Elements Down to Just Three Years
petapixel.com

Among the most significant changes with this year’s Elements releases has little to do with new features but instead concerns the ways users purchase and own the software. While prior versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements have been lifetime licenses — the user buys the software and then owns it indefinitely — this year’s release has moved to a three-year license term.

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Fuck Adobe. They are the epitome of the greedy, toxic software company.

I switched from Photoshop over to Krita last year. I've tried Gimp in the past, but just can't adjust to the UI. Krita is different too, but not to the same degree. I've been enjoying it. It's well-made and very powerful, with very good online support.

Can recommend the Affinity suite for anyone looking for some good alternatives.

Darktable is alright for LightRoom replacement as well.

Swapped to the Affinity suite a few months ago and have been loving it. DaVinci Resolve replaced Premiere. Still having trouble finding a decent After Effects replacement though. I’ve been eyeing Natron but haven’t tried it yet.

Oh yeah resolve is great as well. Love how they all have iPad apps too, moved so much of my workflow to the couch.

What does natron offer that you would use it over fusion (in davinci resolve)?

To be honest, I never considered fusion to be the same thing. But I guess it is. Hmm. Thanks for that insight. I’m going to look into fusions features more.

it's funny that affinity designer can parse PDFs much better than illustrator

Inkscape recently also got decent multipage import and export for multipage pdfs and honestly it works great!

edit: I just realized I've been gushing about affinity for a while. sorry you can just read the next two paragraphs if you just want what's relevant to you and not "hey you know what else is cool about affinity?"

yeah i haven't used inkscape but designer 2.x blew my mind. I had a job recently to change the design of a flyer and my only source was a 2-page PDF. I opened it in illustrator and it just insisted on outlining all text from page 1 and keeping all text for page 2 but in different text objects for every line.

tried it in affinity designer, I noticed there's an option that says "Favor editable text over fidelity". voila. both pages with selectable text in a single text box per column. if I don't select the option it does the line by line separate text object thing but for both pages as well, so it's still better than illustrator. idk why illustrator insists that the first page cannot possibly be interpreted as text.

also corner rounding, offsetting paths and adding transparency gradients being nondestructive tools rather than the tedious and/or destructive methods in illustrator is enough for me to stick to affinity.

the only things I'm missing is the repeat action command and the view bleeds toggle, which is mind blowing that it didn't exist in designer. there are dumb workarounds but I don't like that. also more controls over swatches would be nice, like why don't they have folders...

still, other than these maybe three things which are not deal breakers for me, I prefer affinity pretty close to 100% of the time now. it's faster too, and being able to switch personas for most use cases rather than launching Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator at the same time is a godsend.

they also innovated and came up with the patented new concept called Consistency™. apparently if you're one company that publishes several pieces of software, you can just make it so the same exact tools work the same exact way across all your software. genius!

meanwhile adobe doesn't even have a standard drop shadow effect for all adobe products.

How does the affinity suite work for surface pattern design? My girlfriend does that on the side and is super annoyed at Adobe, but pain/disability limits the time she can decide to it, so hasn't had the energy to try that one yet.

Today I went to cancel the Adobe stock trial, and during this extensive cancellation process, they tried to score me on another package for a year, and when I checked, it didn’t include the product which I was fucking canceling… Which is just insane and ridiculous!

Hey I’m canceling this product.

Oh ok. You want to give us a bunch of money for more unrelated products?

GIMP 3.0 RC1 will come very soon (this month) & offers a lot of missing features users expect like adjustment layers (I’ve been waiting a decade for this).

At this point, I treat Adobe like malware on my personal systems.

Enshittification seems to be accelerating.

they said, linking to an LLM-generated song

Pretty fun dumb thing to play with. Use it to entertain friends and impress Luddites tech-illiterate boomers like my Dad.

Occasionally someone is able to manually finesse it into making it do something actually cool.

Edit : To be clear, I support artists and do NOT support the replacement of genuine and meaningful art created by individual minds.

At the same time, I also would pay to watch a live real human choir + orchestra performance of that “Newton’s Genius” song if someone put that LLM song to sheet music.

luddites weren't anti technology, they were pro workers rights. they would find gpt style ai offensive.

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Literally everyone hates Adobe. At this point I'm shocked there hasn't been a consortium of companies pushing for alternatives.

It's not even just about the money. So many companies rely on a workflow and business model that Adobe can change on a whim at literally any time they like. That's a level of trust I'm surprised that so many companies and governments are completely fine with.

They keep buying up anything that's an alternative. They need Monopoly sanctions.

That's a level of trust I'm surprised that so many companies and governments are completely fine with.

Crowdstrike. 'Nuff said.

The new license comes in this really cute collar! To activate it. Simply lock the collar on the user's neck and bam! You got 3 years of free Adobe Acrobat and Elements!

Do not take the collar off. It is secured by Battle Royale Inc. it will remove the user's neck area separating the top part from the bottom part. It's a very strict but effective license option!

Also, the collar may cause slight discomfort including (but not limited to) itching, rashes, choking, rashes and llergic reactions). For such cases, we have technitians availiable in 20+ of the world's largest cities to help you alleviate the symptoms! (You'll have to get an appointment through a fake AI robocall first)

::: spoiler T&C Any attempt to touch the collar by a person not wearing it will cause the collar to start burning the flesh of both the toucher and wearer. When the wesrer wishes to use Adobe Elements, they have to plug in their collar into the computer. Only the wearer may touch the wire of the collar - any attempt by a 3rd party to touch the collar will cause a 80dB screeching noise to be emitted by the collar. Any complains must be arbitrated. We will not budge like those pussies over at Disney. If you're an EU citizen you have to renounce your citizenship if you wish to use Adobe products. Our products may onle be used in progressive democracies with strong corporate freedom of forced arbitration. :::

::: spoiler Spoiler Tbh I think I sold them way too short since their agreement would be at least 35000 words long :::

I love it!

This just in! The collars are now compatible with the new Samsung USB C battery packs! You know what that means right?

That's right! The employees can now return home without the automatic head separation system going off! The battery packs are available at Walmart and Costco. They are not rechargeable one time use and biodegradable! You're saving the planet! One pack allows the employee full freedom to go shopping, ho home, be with their family, watch someone take a shower and participate in conjugal visitation. You must not wet the collar to prevent accidental loss of GPS communication to the Deadman switch. Also plan your routes accordingly, you must not drive under any bridge or enter buildings with thickness greater than 12 inches of concrete.

YSK: you also don't own games on steam, it’s all licenses and they can all be revoked.

That is why i archive pirated DRM-free copies of some games i know i will come back to for Nostalgia in many years.

Note that a lot of games on steam don't have any DRM, either. It's probable that if you have large library, a lot of your installed games will run without steam, if you go and start them from their exe.

So you can likely archive at least some of your steam games by simply keeping them installed, or even squirreling away the install folder somewhere.

GOG also lets you download the installers for your games so you can play them with or without GOG. A notable part of their service is the games do not have a GOG drm.

Not sure what you mean by with or without GOG, but their whole thing is that none of their games have DRM.

AFAIK, you end up with identical installs even if you use Galaxy to download and install your games, and the installs will continue to work even if you uninstall Galaxy. The actual game files are exactly the same.

I think the installers boil down to convenient self-decompressing archives for getting the game files onto your machine.

If you have the game files for a GOG game installed using any method, those can be moved around, copied, and run with no problem.

The only reason that I still use galaxy to open the games is because it will upload your saves to their cloud.

All Steam games have SteamDRM and you cannot run them without Steam or without the license, otherwise you could just buy a game, backup the installed files, refund the game and still have complete access to it.

On the other hand, it's quite easy to bypass that DRM with a crack.

No they don't. The dev has to opt to use Valve CEG (custome executabke generation) for that to be included in the game files, and that is entirely optional.

On these games, you can do exactly what you suggest.

Here's a list.

its not all, but most devs just tick the box to implement the steam DRM so it feels like all because barely anyone checks if it does or not.

I fucking hate Adobe so much. Their software has been in a nose dive for years now. I still have to use it for work at the moment, but I'm slowly seeing signs that alternatives are picking up enough adoption to finally ditch them.

I ditched after CS6… immediately when they said it would go to subscription I installed darktable

I also have to use it for work. I don't know if it's Adobe, or Windows 11, or a toxic combination of both, but not a single day goes by where I can just create without things randomly breaking. Illustrator stops letting me drag with the direct selection tool. Premiere switches to hotkeys as I'm typing text. InDesign...actually InDesign has been behaving.

But literally all the other Adobe apps will break AS I'M USING THEM - like, an action I've literally just done suddenly doesn't work or glitches out. A couple weeks ago Premiere and Photoshop would literally crash on open. The day before they were both fine.

I have Gimp, Inkscape, and KdenLive installed just in case.

Pricing seems to be the same as the previous version. They could have at least charged a little less for the much shorter licenses.

Remember, it's morally correct to pirate every single adobe product. Same goes for every Nintendo product

It's also a major pain in the ass to do now. I forget how I did it last time, some fuck Adobe subreddit had a guide for it but it's so much more than just install and drop lolcrackorvirus.dll into the folder.

Adobe used to house all the licensing mechanisms in a single file named amtlib.dll. The people who cracked it just nulled out the function. And since it was the same for every piece of software, just repeat the null process for each one. Bam, the entire suite for free.

When Adobe switched from CS to CC subscription, it was cracked in 24 hours. Largely because they didn't change much.

Adobe then axed the crippling DLL file and baked the mechanism right into the executable. A patcher tool was released that could crack each one. The upside is you could install and keep them updated from the CC Desktop and just run the patcher each time. Sometimes you had to wait for an update to the patcher. So before you clicked "update" you had to double check to make sure it worked.

To stop the free trial abuse (which is how people installed anyway) Adobe started requiring billing information during setup before you even get to downloads.

Later on, Adobe prevented users from updating apps if there wasn't an active subscription.

The patcher eventually stopped working because it was abandoned (this around 2019 when I gave up using it because Resolve and Affinity were more affordable and met my needs.) Months later someone else picked up the patcher development. There's also pre-cracked versions you can download and install.

I've not touched Adobe since and find Resolve to be significantly more stable and at $300, much more affordable. The Affinity Photo and Designer apps are great and affordable too at $170 for the bundle.

And then once this move has had enough to time to narrow their userbase to only the ones dumb enough to tolerate such bullshit, they'll do it again because number go up lol

There has to be a meaningful number of companies where each individually is spending more on adobe licenses than it would cost them to pay a bunch of developers to get gimp to the point where it is a fully sufficient alternative. But hey, the only thing more important to capitalists than making profit seems to be, to not go for cheaper FLOSS options, rather than spending pointlessly large amounts of money on proprietary software…

A lot of FOSS projects have succeeded in approximately this way. I think it can only be a matter of time until this happens even in this area.

There is still the perception that it's too cheap to be good in many cases. I've run into this fairly recently. It's stupid, but it exists, and sometimes it exists in the people making the decisions.

Feels like there's a very simple solution to that. "We can't use free software, you get what you pay for. We're not switching to GIMP." "Okay, what about Rasteditor? It costs $99/year." "Sounds good, get a license for everyone on the team." And Rasteditor is just a fork of GIMP with a different logo and the subscription model just donates to the GIMP project.

why cant people just give up adobe and switch to davinci and affinity

Ecosystems and collaboration. If you're already using Adobe for X and Y in your teams, it's cheaper to get a CC license; and as for collaboration Adobe files are proprietary (and tbh so are Affinity files) so it's harder to transition off of them. You can open .psd files in affinity, but wanting to export one will rasterize your text. And you can't even export a .ai file, sure you can do pdfs and that preserves vector information and layers, but that's just friction that businesses wouldn't want to deal with.

oh that makes sense, VENDOR LOCK IN.

That's why I'm a little skeptical when buying lifetime licenses.

I love my Plex server and even pay for Plex pass, would love to buy lifetime. But what if two weeks after I buy they just decide this isn't their business model anymore?

They cannot change the terms of a license without reserving themselves the right to do so which would be a red flag, this is in reference to future sales of the license for this software.

Isn't Plex FOSS and you only need to pay for the extras? You don't need PlexPass.

I did buy the lifetime almost 15 years ago. I'm pretty happy with my purchase.

Plex is not FOSS. But I am with you. I bought Plex pass about 10 years ago and still use it daily

It looks like the media player is open source, but the media server is not.

I also bought the lifetime license a while ago, and am also happy with that purchase.

Good to know! Everyone says so many good things about it, I might just buy it myself

I recently moved to Affinity Photo, so far so good.

I use Krita for photo editing, it's open source and it's free!

One of the best KDE apps.

In case you didn't know, many other KDE apps are available for Windows and MacOS too. KDE Connect, Kate, kdenlive, Neochat, MarkNote, and a bunch of others.

Affinity got bought up by Canva. It’s only a matter of time that it will get enshittified. They are already giving non-profit and education subscribers free access to Affinity. Bet they will phase out perpetual licensing in the future.

Next time just pirate it. The Affinity people already got their fat cheque.

There's another free video editor called shotcut. Give it a try, works great.

There's also free and open source alternatives.

Genuine question: Why are Adobe clients not holding pitchforks and standing outside their offices every day for the past 2 years?

I think, because most people who are actually relying on Adobe products (e.g. making money with them) are making way more than it costs (by several orders of magnitude) so they let themselves get slowly boiled because they still make money hand over fist.

Everytime there is a price increase, the discussion becomes: do we retrain x people, costing us y per person and reducing productivity for z months, or do we just take the L and pay a flat percent increase per seat and maintain productivity. The choice is almost always the second one because it's hard to predict how prices will increase in the future and the costs of retraining your staff.

The people not making money have no resources to stand up to Adobe, so they make noise because it's all they can do. Adobe ignores them because they don't generate a significant portion of their revenue.

If you are an employee for a company using Adobe products, it's likely you don't even care and you may not even be aware of the pricing scheme your company is following.

Who uses their shitty programs anyway? There are better alternatives for them all.

Pretty much the vast majority of the professionals and amateurs in the creative area and hobbyists all around too

the reason people use it is because theyre educated in the skillset, and likely use it for work because their workplace mandates it.

not everyone is a freelance artist/video editor. Those have much more freedom on their tool choices.

People use them because they're industry standard, and the value you get out of them is greater than the price of the products.

Perpetual licenses are just scams. It's always startup type trick to get new clients during on-boarding phase for startups. It should be forbidden. It was similar for uber when they were undercutting opponents with their under the cost prices

"Perpetual licenses" are what used to be called "normal sales." Every "licensing" scheme except perpetual ones are scams!

No, they are just impossible to offer. Imagine such a license given to company which can "live" for centuries. Impossible. Perpetual licenses are almost impossible to offer. If they are possible it's calculated that 99.999% of them will last than the expected timefrime np 3 years

A perpetual license doesn't mean the company supports it forever; you know that, right? I have a copy of Quickbooks 2015 that I got the license key for from a closing company for about $25. I will never have to pay another dime for it, it's a perpetual license and will run indefinitely. I just don't get any updates at all, and I can't run anything that requires updates or subscriptions like payroll or advanced features. But that's absolutely fine for my purposes and works the same for many, many people. This is how things should be - if I'm fine with using an outdated version, there is zero reason I need a subscription license.

Not sure I trust Reckon to work indefinitely. I think it still has to phone home every five years or so, but not sure.

Once again if you bought a product ( like boxed software version ) yes ( with no support ). If you bought a service it's impossible. People still believe that something may be free

A perpetual licence for a service isn't possible, yes, but software is a product, and something you can absolutely buy once. You typically only get support for a limited time though.

I can easily imagine it. I've still got boxes full of software on floppy disks and CD-ROMs that I "perpetually licensed" (a.k.a. bought), so don't try to bullshit me that it isn't possible!

Because it's a product ( CD ROM ) not service ( gog or steam ) so don't bulshit me

The same software purchased digitally doesn't magically become a "service". Coincidentally, you can absolutely download and backup all your GOG games and then "own" them the same way you own your old CD ROMs.

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog see point 2.1 You get personal right to use gog services. As I said you rent it

gog services

That's for their services. Any software you buy from them can be used forever after you download it. Even if GoG goes out of business.

Edit: wording

Show me then the eula

Show me where anything I download from them won't work if they go out of business.

It's not my fault you don't understand the difference between a service and a product.

Burden of proof lies on the person claiming so. Yes, indeed you don't understand that difference

I have games I've downloaded from them and they can be played fully disconnected from the Internet.

You're the one claiming a downloaded executable is a service. Prove it.

"In the very unlikely situation that we have to stop running GOG we'll do our best to give you advance notice, so that you can download and safely store all your DRM-free content." - GOG user agreement.

The same thing is in the terms and conditions for each of your old CD ROM games. The point is that they can't physically keep you from using the DRM free software that you backed up locally.

The perceived difference has nothing to do with the game being a "service" or that perpetual licenses are not economically possible for "services" but with the fact that by the power of the Internet companies now have a way to brick your stuff remotely. And you accepted it when they put it in instead of voting with your wallet. Because you wanted Half Life 2 just so so so badly.

They're doing it because they can, not because they have to.

The games I bought (not licensed) on Steam are also products (not services). Anybody who claims otherwise is either a self-serving liar or a fucking moron.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3062995463267283250/ show me then terms of service or example product eula

EULAs don't have to say "you own this forever" because it's implicit. Just like when you buy bananas at the grocer you aren't forced to sign a EULA that says you can eat the banana or make a smoothie with it but can't use it to make nuclear weapons or commit war crimes.

Let's break this down: a product is an object that is delivered to a buyer. A service is an action or group of actions that is performed for the buyer. If I have to keep running my servers for your game client to connect to, push updates or offer tech support, I am providing a service because it requires me to keep doing something for the thing to work. If, on the other hand, all I do is give you some code you can run entirely on your machine - and it doesn't matter if I give it to you on a CD, a floppy, via digital download or if I print it out as a big book for you to type yourself into a hex editor - then our transaction is finished when I deliver it to you and you pay me. There isn't anything to license because now you own that copy of the code. My participation in what you do with it is finished, just like the grocer's is finished when you leave his store with the bananas.

Do you understand now?

Perpetual licences are usually given for a certain version of a program though, with updates for a limited amount of time. You don't get the new version of the software.

You can, however, continue to use that old piece of software in perpetuity.

I'm not so sure about all perpetual licenses being scams. I've personally used Jetbrain's perpetual fallback license for the 2018 version of their IDEs for 4+ years until I decided to renew. I never once felt scammed there, so I would say there IS a right way to do perpetual licenses.

"It should be forbidden to pay once and own a thing forever"

Nice try, subscription salesman.

It should be

Strawman argument. I didn't write it you sneaky b...rd. I wrote marketing perpetual licenses which in most cases do include "perpetual updates". Still nobody has proved me othetwise by showing EULAs

Multiple people have explained it to you. No one ever made any claims about updates.