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Adobe faces big fines from FTC over difficult subscription cancellation::Adobe could face hefty fines related to its overly difficult and costly subscription cancellation practices due to an ongoing Federal Trade Commission Probe.
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I always try to buy subscriptions with PayPal for this reason. Because buried in their UI you can go turn off the automatic payments to that payee. They usually cancel the subscription themselves if you stop paying them.
Privacy.com is what I use. It lets you generate virtual cards to use so you don’t need to hand over your actual debit card. You can also set a maximum per day/month/transaction.
Capital One does this with a browser extension. It’s great. I can use a temp card for a one month sub, and then just delete the card.
Paying a fine to cancel a monthly is bullshit.
I was an Adobe customer years ago, but due to things like the above, they inadvertently pushed me to Open Source alternatives and I have not looked back. So I guess, Thank You Adobe is in order. Hope the fine is actually big as they really played dirty.
Same here.
I remember suggesting alternatives like GIMP to photography pros years ago simply because I could see where Adobe was heading when they changed to the subscription model.
Don’t get me wrong, they were innovative a long time ago however now they are structured purely on greed and add nothing deserved my of their services nowadays.
And don’t forget Inkscape for vector drawing.
Also Photopea is pretty cool too
Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus were terrible to use after using Adobe for years. Get Affinity suite instead and save yourself the rage and frustration. It’s one-time payment license (not a subscription) and they have deals. I got the license for the three of them for $90. They are way closer to Adobe products and definitely worth the one-time cost.
I love the concept of open source, but you can only make so many compromises in quality and usability, especially if you’re likelihood depends on it. Gimp, etc just aren’t there.
(On the other end of the spectrum, Blender is so amazing I can still hardly believe it.)
I love the concept of open source, but you can only make so many compromises in quality and usability
I think this is a false dichotomy. You contradict yourself in the next sentence with an example that FOSS isn’t necessarily inferior.
Blender enters the chat.
FOSS is a slow moving boulder. Eventually it catches us and consumes competition if it can keep momentum.
You need to check your reading comprehension. I never said there’s any such dichotomy about FOSS as a general concept. I specifically named Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus before and after that sentence. Just because a FOSS “alternative” exists, doesn’t mean it actually is an alternative, or at least an acceptable one. Each software has to be evaluated individually. In the case of Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus, they would not be acceptable in a professional creative space.
Agreed. Plus if you know Photoshop, you know GIMP as they are very similar and GIMP can even open Photoshop files. I use GIMP and Blender 3D daily.
GIMP and Blender are good, but what’s a good alternative for video like Adobes Premiere Pro?
Last I looked (Admittedly years ago) the open source offerings for video editing/production were quite behind
That is an easy one. The free and superior DaVinci Resolve. Not open source however but it is very very good. Many have switched to it. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Alternate headline: Adobe faces cost of business fee to dupe users out of money
Sadly the fine won’t be greater than the benefits this practice brings to Adobe so they’ll keep doing it.
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How do you get one of those?
I have used privacy.com for this in the past. Don’t know if there are better options.
Pre-paid card?
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I had a prepaid card that let me transfer the balance of one to the other. I don’t recall the bank but it was a VISA prepaid.
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A lot of the newer online-only banks offer virtual cards. Revolut, N26 etc.
Forgot which one, but my traditional CC offers this.
Master card has a similar thing.
I cancelled my credit card which incidentally was used for a photoshop and lightroom subscription I had used for an intro period. They sent me threatening emails for about 4 months before they gave up.
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It was a real card. I cancelled it because of fraud. The service worked until the end of the period.
For this reason I have never and will never buy an Adobe product. I’m an anti Adobe activist in all decision making conversations around their product suite and services.
I’ll never change my mind.
Fractions of pennies compared to what they’re taking in. This isn’t a fine, it’s racketeering.
We used to use frame.io which is now owned by Adobe. We had been with frame.io since the beginning so we were on one of their older business plans which they no longer offer to new customers, but throughout the years as we have been expanding we have purchased extra seats and storage when needed.
Earlier this year they came to us and said they are getting rid of the business plan completely for all existing customers. So either we upgrade to their enterprise plan which will cost us about $12k per year more, a 300% price increase. And of the enterprise features we would gain from upgrading, we won’t even use in our current workflow. Or downgrade to their teams account which maxes out to 15 users only. We needed 22 for our current team so we physically couldn’t downgrade to that plan.
Basically for the size of our business. We were too big for the teams account and not big enough to justify an enterprise account. There was no longer a plan to cater for business of our size.
And we had about a month to make a decision. As our yearly plan was coming up for renewal.
And the way the Adobe sales team approached this was terrible too. They kept emailing everyone on my team wanting to meet up and help ‘optimise’ frame.io into our workflow better. The way it was worded everyone thought it was a scam email at 1st. I eventually replied to see what they wanted as I’m the account manager and normally deal with frame.io for account renewals and what not, and straight away their call turned into a sales call telling us we needed to upgrade to enterprise.
We went looking for an alternative as we knew we couldn’t use frame.io any more. And luckily came across krock.io which is a very similar video review platform which actually has some really nice features frame.io didn’t have. And priced at a reasonable price with unlimited users. So if anyone wants to get away from adobe/frame.io. I encourage you to try out krock.io and see if that fits your video review needs. They have a free trial to try it out. Hopefully more people can get away from adobe/frame.
Not surprised. I have been using Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher for 5 years and don’t miss Adobe at all. People should check them out if they haven’t found their own good alternatives already.
The alternative is cracked cs6
From limewire
I got mine from pbay and will never let it go
Still on a cs5 micro someone made lol
That and photopea, which owns
5 is fine too
I long for the day when people who think about doing this kind of shit worry about jail time, not just slap on the wrist fines.
At a minimum they should have their business license suspended for a period of time.
Let’s see how many customers a business gets when there’s the risk that said business gets shut down for a month.
With the requirement that all staff below management still get paid regular salary.
They’ll keep doing it until we start taking the problem of monopolies seriously
remember boys and girls it’s always morally responsible to pirate Adobe programs.
Or better yet, just don’t use Adobe products. Staying in their ecosystem is how they end up getting money anyways if that’s what you know how to use.
They’re the de-facto option in most of the industries they have products for, if you decide not to use any of their products, you’re alienating yourself from your peers.
And they’ll keep being the de-facto option if you just keep accepting that they are. In the end, Adobe software and their alternatives are often similar enough that transitioning from one to the other isn’t difficult.
Why? I use bought or free stuff all of the time, they all export to documents they can read.
It’s getting easier and easier to use free alternatives to Adobe products.
Yarr/Yo-Ho!
Can you get a semi current build of photoshop? Asking for a friend who is struggling with gimp and hasn’t sailed in ages…
Gave up on Photoshop and Gimp. Take this, you’ll need it:
Haven’t used anything else in years.
I use Photopea all the time, I love it because the UI is almost an exact copy paste of PS, my only complaint is I wish they had a lifetime license to get rid of that side bar ad, the only options are all subscriptions/monthly. And I know the donate page literally says they don’t do subscriptions, but what else do you call a one time payment for 30 days of ad free?
Ad block works to block the ad, but I haven’t found a way to get that screen space back.
I haven’t found a way to get that screen space back.
uBlock Origin’s element picker is probably what you’re looking for. Install the addon, click the uo icon, towards the bottom click the eye dropper icon, select the element on the page you want gone, then click create the button. So long as the underlying name of the element doesn’t change, you should be all set!
I just have to say that this is now my photoshop replacement without a doubt. Thank you so much for this! Completely changes everything for me 👍 👍
I’ll give it a spin. Ty!
I actually have no idea but it has to be available somewhere
There is an “Adobe Master Collection 202X” crack (where X is the current year) that includes all the current Adobe programs and a custom installer made in the style of the old Creative Suite installer. I believe it’s by m0nkrus, or at least that’s who uploads it to the private tracker I use. They release several new ones throughout the year so you can keep the programs up to date, and obviously the installer lets you choose which of the programs you want to install.
ty! the hunt begins
Back in the day there used to be a patch that could block the app from communicating with adobe’s servers to verify the subscription.
That might still exist in some form, but with all of phthoshops new AI features I’d imagine that you’d need constant communication with those servers for the app to actually function.
I’m sorry I didn’t provide any actual help.
That takes me back…I used to work at a computer training company where we would build PC images with the trial versions of everything on them, and every 30 days we’d reimage the machines. The president of the company was shady af. I got out of there just as Adobe was making the transition to subs. I do not miss explaining to the class attendees why everything was watermarked as trail versions.
Acrobat X started failing for me using that crack. Launches and immediately shuts down.
I’m sure this all hinges on their weird “annual commitment” thing.
