[nehal3m]

http://archive.today/WCDgq

It’s so insidious to sell yearly subscriptions that you pay for monthly. I want to pay by the month precisely because I decide on a monthly basis whether I need a service. If you want out early with Adobe you have to cough up half of the remaining subscription time.

For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler. I’ll pour one out for the pro’s.

[boltzmann64]

how is this a dark pattern? say that you bought a subscription of new york times for a year and put it on monthly installment. can you bail out of paying the credit card company after six months? only here, both the product and credit card company is adobe. in fact adobe is being generous by letting you "cough up" only a half the fee where your credit card company wouldn't. at this rate all credit companies are "dark pattern peddlers" according to you? adobe is pretty clear on the name of the subscription, "yearly subsciption, payed monthly" in big letters at the top of their pricing page.

[remus]

The dark pattern is how it was presented. It wasn't "your total is X, split it in 12 monthly payments" it was a yearly contract disguised as a monthly contract.

[vladvasiliu]

> For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler.

Meh. It depends on how you view your photography.

I'm a Sunday photographer. Never made a dime from my work, and I don't look to. I just do it because I enjoy it. I particularly enjoy that I can use it as an excuse to move my ass away from my computer, walk around town to grab shots, etc.

I like editing my photos, but the editing is not why I take photos. I don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of time to learn a new tool. It's a hobby, and the software is only an accessory to it. If I have to spend hours to learn a new tool in front of my computer, it defeats the purpose.

I tried Darktable, and got okish results with it, but it's a pain to use. It doesn't have any serious noise reduction, and since I can't be bothered to lug around anything heavier than a m4/3 body with an f/4 lense, it's something I need, because I mainly shoot at night half the year.

I've looked at alternatives like capture one, but unless you intend to not upgrade your software for at least 3-4 years, they're not cheaper, even though they're not subscription based. You also have to cough up all the money upfront. And you get no Photoshop, either, which I use in addition to LR.

Now, I don't love lightroom. I have no idea wtf it lags when I open and close panels on a pretty hefty desktop. But boy, do I love the time I gain with "ai" masking, noise reduction and object removal.

All in all, it's just not expensive enough to make it worth my while to change to a different software and also lose all my catalog history, just to cough up the same amount of cash in the end.

Now, if someone came up with an actual equivalent that ran on Linux, so I didn't have to have a dedicated Windows box just for this, I'd line right up with my money ready.

[dmbche]

I think Resolve just released a lightroom equivalent didn't they?

Edit0: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/davinciresolve/...

Yeah and seems the only limitation you get is no GPU acceleration with the free tier. I'd give that a spin I like resolve much better than premiere for video and it has AI integration as well

[vladvasiliu]

Yeah, I saw the thread on HN the other day, and was genuinely intrigued. But according to the reviews I’ve seen, the workflow is fairly different. I have 0 experience editing video, so picking up a tool with a completely different approach isn’t exactly appealing, but maybe I’m missing something.

[dmbche]

I'm biased as I have been editing video (including color, exposition, curves and luts) with Resolve for a while (and have edited pictures in their color editor before because I really like their workflow), but for what it's worth I would give it maybe one (1) hour of trying out yourself, you might be very pleased ( or you're welcome to curse me for wasting an hour of your time).

If you are pleased indeed, you might just put 120$ in your pocket rather than adobe's this year. Who'd say no to that?

Have a good one

[vladvasiliu]

Just downloaded it to take it for a spin. First off, it doesn't support Olympus raw files, but, fortunately, I had some DNG lying around, which did work. However, it expects to pick from a list of raw formats. All seem to work, but it's not immediately clear what the difference is.

The settings are a bit daunting at first; some are what you expect in a regular photo editor, and others are... weird for me. Like, what's "lift" and where are my white and black sliders?

Color tools seem to be interesting, but there seem to be multiple places where you select color spaces, and all defaults seem to be video-centric (which I guess isn't unexpected, but it just means you have to know to go hunt for them). There's also a dedicated "color" page, which I think is what all the fuss is about, but if I switch to it, my photo disappears and I'm presented with a video timeline...

I also haven't found any trace of masking, and noise reduction seems to be a paid feature, so in my case the free version wouldn't do...

All in all, I want to like it, especially since it runs on Linux, and will probably continue to check it out from time to time, even though I'd have to convert the raws to dngs beforehand.

[oliwarner]

I struggle to think of it as insidious. The problem you have is you're reading it wrong. There is no monthly licence. It's an annual licence that you can either pay up front or split, either way, you need to pay.

In 1995 it cost us the equivalent of $2k up front to buy Photoshop. I think there was actually a small discount but it was a hecking big payout. You'd get to keep that version forever, but what if you only needed it for a month? What happened when just a year later Photoshop 4 came out? Tough.

I get that software subscriptions suck, but it's the compromise that makes it both affordable to you in your life, and affordable to Adobe.

[bnj]

It’s insidious because you’re being required to agree to pay for a year of use, split monthly, but cannot decide to cancel during the term of the agreement without paying for use that you don’t want. Just because the terms are clear doesn’t mean it’s not an insidious pricing scheme.

If it were not insidious, it would be easy to answer the question: “what costs for adobe are being covered by the early termination fee?” - but there aren’t any costs, the fee is a punishment to dissuade you from cancelling and hoping that you will miss the window to prevent automatic renewal.

[oliwarner]

I can understand not wanting to pay Adobe every month, but the commercial reality would require a month-long contract would have to be extraordinarily expensive, to offset the people who do only need it occasionally who'd otherwise be on an annual contract.

Is that predatory? Maybe, but is it worse for those users than only offering the $1k package they used to? Of course they're trying to get you hooked, pricing at a point to minify budget issues, and recurring year-round to avoid expense approvals. Educational licenses also pretty predatory.

Don't get me wrong, they want your money; as much of it as they can extract. You don't have to play the game if you don't want to.

[LocalH]

"commercial reality" is just executives deciding they don't like how the world really works, so they're going to change it out from under us

they'd monetize the open air of the earth if they could figure out the logistics

[oliwarner]

Yes, but it's theirs to monetize.

What post-scarcity utopia do you think you're living in?

The commercial reality is them finding the way to get the most from the market. This isn't a bizarre twist of software licensing, every company is doing this to you.

[ilt]

You are paying less monthly if you commit to annual pricing, if not, you can still pay monthly pricing which is higher. Commitment means you will likely be a paying customer for a year at the least and hence company gives you a discount. What’s the insidious aspect? The whole thing can be confusing, yes, but it does what it says.

[bnj]

For an adobe creative cloud subscription? I just looked at their pricing page and could only locate "annual, billed monthly" options. If there's an actual monthly subscription which is just a little more expensive then I'd say the insidious aspect is in hiding it.