[Suppafly]

>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.

[mattskr]

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.

[pessimizer]

> 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.

[mattskr]

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.

[-__---____-ZXyw]

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

Yes!