Adobe cancels all user accounts in Venezuela to comply with Trump order
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Perhaps not, but I'm sure at least a few Venezuelans are going to be able to afford Venezuelan lawyers to sue Adobe for not providing a product that was paid for and not issuing refunds.
Although it remains to be seen if that will do any good or not.
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Ae is mostly used for motion graphics. The examples you gave are for compositing so they’re not even close to being alternatives at least not for motion graphics .
Ages ago there used to be Combustion from Autodesk, the last version was in 2008.
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I work for a printing company, we have a lot of artists on Creative Suite all day.
If our company were to have an IPO, a top item for our "risks" section is that Adobe can demand any amount of money from us at any time, and if we don't pay it, we pretty much completely lose our ability to function.
Switch? Nothing else seems to have the prepress features we need besides Photoshop, and even if we found something, we have tens of thousands of lines of code representing hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment in automation that's tied directly into the Adobe products. Switching - if there were a viable alternative - would take us years to implement.
Adobe has us over a barrel more than any other thing our company depends on.
If anyone wants to throw out potentially viable alternatives, I'm all ears. Affinity Photo doesn't have spot color channels or scripting support. GIMP doesn't have, like, 100 features we need last time I checked it. As a subset of the features we need that are hard to find in other products, we need scripting, spot color channels, color overlays, and dot gain curves.
If our company were to have an IPO, a top item for our "risks" section is that Adobe can demand any amount of money from us at any time, and if we don't pay it, we pretty much completely lose our ability to function.
Switch? Nothing else seems to have the prepress features we need besides Photoshop, and even if we found something, we have tens of thousands of lines of code representing hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment in automation that's tied directly into the Adobe products. Switching - if there were a viable alternative - would take us years to implement.
Adobe has us over a barrel more than any other thing our company depends on.
If anyone wants to throw out potentially viable alternatives, I'm all ears. Affinity Photo doesn't have spot color channels or scripting support. GIMP doesn't have, like, 100 features we need last time I checked it. As a subset of the features we need that are hard to find in other products, we need scripting, spot color channels, color overlays, and dot gain curves.
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I bought DaVinci Resolve 14. Now I am running 16,1 which now includes what used to be the separate animation and compositing product. The software has gotten a ton of new functionality, and has become significantly faster on my old hardware. They have never asked for more money.
Of course the reason they can do this is that BlackMagic make their money selling hardware. Amateurs use a mouse and keyboard, the pros buy cameras, recorders, consoles etc. It's a close to perfect model; it applies to only a few businesses.
Of course the reason they can do this is that BlackMagic make their money selling hardware. Amateurs use a mouse and keyboard, the pros buy cameras, recorders, consoles etc. It's a close to perfect model; it applies to only a few businesses.
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If there's one company arguably worse than Adobe at showing utter contempt for their customers, it's Autodesk.
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deltanonymous
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Combustion is pretty much just Smoke now, but that's also more of a compositor. There's also Flame, which is not for the faint-hearted.
Also, if you're doing this to get away from Adobe, you definitely don't want Autodesk.
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train_wreck
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Insulting, inaccurate, and completely missing the point. Impressive...
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All I can do is laugh at this and say I saw this sh*t coming from a mile away. From Adobe. It was simply a matter of time until a situation came along where Adobe would pull this sh*t with their change in business model of license subscriptions. And it only took 6 eyars for it to happen.
Renting software - the company can revoke access on a whim and keep your money. Although it's happening to Venezuala customers per the random temper tantrums of the First Idiot of the US - the logic can still apply to any of their customers.
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... ive-cloud/
Find alternatives to Adobe Software like Affinity Software by Serif. Or Pixelmator or code editors like Visual Studio Code / Sublime Text.
But Adobe's making money and the sheep keep giving it to them.
Renting software - the company can revoke access on a whim and keep your money. Although it's happening to Venezuala customers per the random temper tantrums of the First Idiot of the US - the logic can still apply to any of their customers.
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... ive-cloud/
Find alternatives to Adobe Software like Affinity Software by Serif. Or Pixelmator or code editors like Visual Studio Code / Sublime Text.
But Adobe's making money and the sheep keep giving it to them.
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Ohoh.
You haven’t met Dassault Systems (Solidworks / Catia) yet. Autodesk are a decent firm
Edit: we use Autodesk and they like their money but aren’t shitty about it, so I thought I’d strike out the disclaimer. That said we’re moving to a competitor ‘cause they removed Alias from the package we subscribed to.
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So glad that Adobe cutting off access to it's software of Venezuelan citizens will help curtail the illegal regime.
Maduro's really going to take notice now of the US with Adobe throwing it's weight behind Trump's executive order.
/s
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caution live frogs
Ars Centurion
Well, CS6 won't run on Catalina anyway, and I can't justify the perpetual $350/year* hit to access the only 4 Adobe apps** I actually use... for $190 I can have all 3 Affinity programs on my Mac and iPad. One time payment.
*and that's the ACADEMIC price, 60% off the normal cost and STILL ridiculous. What kind of money do they think academics make??
**Yes I get access to everything they make for that price! But if I only need a few programs, I'm paying an exorbitant amount for shit I will never, ever install or use.
tl;dr: Adobe is making the choice to drop their software that much easier for me
*and that's the ACADEMIC price, 60% off the normal cost and STILL ridiculous. What kind of money do they think academics make??
**Yes I get access to everything they make for that price! But if I only need a few programs, I'm paying an exorbitant amount for shit I will never, ever install or use.
tl;dr: Adobe is making the choice to drop their software that much easier for me
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But the ID does not have to be real. Screennames are still viable. My ancient Adobe account does not have any of my personal credentials tied to it.
Something like Photoshop / AfterEffects / Illustrator etc ... will work locally on a box for about 30 days or so after the subscritption is cancelled (or in this case - cut off). basically Adobe titles ping their servers for vlidation every time they are used. And if the software cannot ping the server for any reason then it floats out to 30 days then locks up until it can ping the srever again.
We should all post to the people of Venezuela the current work arounds to mitigate Adobe's "logical" interpretation of President Cheeto's executive order.
If they're resourceful, a couple of strategic google searches will resolve Adobe's compliance.
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The FAR AND AWAY best low-cost cross-platform alternative to Premiere is DaVinci Resolve. It's free unless you need 4K or other higher end features.
I'm too used to thinking of the video suite when I think of adobe software... and there is at least one free alternative to the adobe suite that's much better (more stable, faster, more aggressive bug fixes, more attention to user requests, etc) -- DaVinci Resolve.
On the photo side you're right; the better options aren't free, but there are quite a few. I don't use Photoshop or Lightroom for my photo editing; I use Topaz Studio and Affinity Photo on the rare occasions that I need more finesse than I can get in Topaz (or On1, which I most often use as my DAM).
I haven't voluntarily used Premiere to edit any video in quite a while though. I got forced into it once, but once I had the edit transferred to Resolve I dropped my eval CC subscription like a hot potato so that I wouldn't have to give adobe any more money.
The video heavy hitter in CC isn't Premiere (which was never a particularly good NLE), it's AfterEffects. Real hard to find a reasonably priced alternative there, even Motion is only like 80% there.
Have you used DaVinci Resolve? Fusion is part of the package... it's the After Effect's competition...
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+1 for Affinity software!
Affinity Designer is a great alternative to Illustrator, and it cost me $50 for a copy I actually own. Yes, it can't quite do all the things Illustrator was able to, but it's close enough for me. (Doing scientific illustrations and fine-tuning matplotlib output, for the most part.) Most importantly, many of the keyboard shortcuts are the same as in Illustrator, so I only had to relearn a few commands. And each version update gets better, because they actually seem to listen to their customers.
Screw Adobe!
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You are wrong. People use HitFilm and Fusion for motion graphics as well as for compositing, because motion graphics generally involves compositing animated graphics over footage.
Autodesk still offers a compositing and VFX application, but it's called Flame and not exactly budget oriented.
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I'm not an artist, so I didn't have to interact with adobe software for a long time. But when I started taking up photography, I wanted to get a good photo management software (better than iPhoto / Apple Photos). I ended up chosing Capture One. It's great.
Maybe I'll buy "Affinity Photo" or "Pixelmator" later. They're supposed to be quite good.
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That sounds like it would make for a huge opportunity for a company like Serif to make a huge market share grab.
I suspect that if they started going down the road of asking users what they need in order to make the switch that they'd suddenly get a HUGE number of customers lining up to jump on board... even if it was for a "pro" version of Affinity Photo just so that they could get off of the Adobe bandwagon now that they just got this warning shot across their bows...
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Dear Arsians,
Please allow me to add one important detail: In practice, Adobe had 0 customers in Venezuela.
Around 2002, the Venezuelan government banned USD transactions with Venezuelan credit cards. After a couple of years, carrying USD was outright illegal. The complete USD ban came and went, however in the last 10 years, a Venezuelan with a local account CAN NOT use their credit card to pay for anything or any service outside of the country.
So if Adobe had Venezuelan customers, they were paying already with a credit card with address (and account) outside of Venezuela.
I don't know if this was the internal rationel Adobe had to apply this measure, but certainly it was one of the main ones.
The thing is, the measure applied by Adobe also affects the free accounts.
Go figure!
Bonus information
As a result of this internal blockage made by the Venezuelan government -for decades now-, the country's economy is completely black-market. Today, USD is de-facto currency, dealt with cash, yes USD in cash. Thousands of Venezuelan (with time) opened their accounts overseas. Socially, it was implanted:
Cual es tu zeller? (what's your seller?). It's PayPal without it. They way it works, is you go and buy something, the vendor asks for your e-mail (which you have linked with your -overseas- bank account), and then you as a buyer ask for the vendor's e-mail. The buyer goes to his/her bank account and makes the transfer to the 'seller' account and that's it! Once the confirmation e-mail is received by both parties, transaction is done. Without the local government seeing a penny in taxes, nor getting any trace for that. Mind you, even the government's own supermarkets chain, have special corners on which products are sold in USDs. There are even some stores with POS card devices, attached to foreign accounts which allow them to accept foreign credit card with USDs
That's how the economy moves there today. Granted, that doesn't mean it's a wide reaching economy nor that there's variety. Such system it's a survival one.
Go Figure.
Please allow me to add one important detail: In practice, Adobe had 0 customers in Venezuela.
Around 2002, the Venezuelan government banned USD transactions with Venezuelan credit cards. After a couple of years, carrying USD was outright illegal. The complete USD ban came and went, however in the last 10 years, a Venezuelan with a local account CAN NOT use their credit card to pay for anything or any service outside of the country.
So if Adobe had Venezuelan customers, they were paying already with a credit card with address (and account) outside of Venezuela.
I don't know if this was the internal rationel Adobe had to apply this measure, but certainly it was one of the main ones.
The thing is, the measure applied by Adobe also affects the free accounts.
Go figure!
Bonus information
As a result of this internal blockage made by the Venezuelan government -for decades now-, the country's economy is completely black-market. Today, USD is de-facto currency, dealt with cash, yes USD in cash. Thousands of Venezuelan (with time) opened their accounts overseas. Socially, it was implanted:
Cual es tu zeller? (what's your seller?). It's PayPal without it. They way it works, is you go and buy something, the vendor asks for your e-mail (which you have linked with your -overseas- bank account), and then you as a buyer ask for the vendor's e-mail. The buyer goes to his/her bank account and makes the transfer to the 'seller' account and that's it! Once the confirmation e-mail is received by both parties, transaction is done. Without the local government seeing a penny in taxes, nor getting any trace for that. Mind you, even the government's own supermarkets chain, have special corners on which products are sold in USDs. There are even some stores with POS card devices, attached to foreign accounts which allow them to accept foreign credit card with USDs
That's how the economy moves there today. Granted, that doesn't mean it's a wide reaching economy nor that there's variety. Such system it's a survival one.
Go Figure.
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I was still using Photoshop 7 (from like 1993?) until a few months ago. Many Adobe products were just as good (or better!) in the earlier versions, before they added features so people who aren't artists or designers can do beveled edges and oil-paint filters with one click. (Have you seen how awful the splash screen art has become, BTW?)
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Exactly. And how could you even pay for a license for CS6? Isn’t that no longer supported by Adobe? If a developer chooses to abandon their software, it should be free (imo)
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For what it’s worth, I did the same. UI is mostly the same. On the Mac, Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher are coded in Coco and much more responsive than the Adobe Suite.
Admittedly, Affinity is a fledgling company. Just doesn’t have the history of development that Adobe has.
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The sanctions are against the government of Venezuela, not against common citizens (unlike sanctions against Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria, which are against anyone in these territories).
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I have both; both are quite good. I have recently shifted from Pixelmator to Affinity Photo because it's cross platform. Pixelmator is definitely the Mac-ier of the two. But Affinity Photo has the functionality of Pixelmator Pro, which I also have, but which I could never quite get the hang of.
Like someone else from above, I am not a graphic design professional, so I can't possibly justify the cost of Adobe CC. I just need the occasional drawing or an explainer graphic for how some router numbers its slots. Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer are perfect for me. (Designer less so because the amount of art talent required to use it effectively is slightly higher than what I possess.) But I do understand why maybe they aren't right for folks like Aurich.
TLDR: If choosing between Pixelmator and Affinity Photo, you will win either way. But I do prefer Affinity Photo for more capabilities and for also having a Windows version.
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I'm guessing they don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with something more specific like this, and are just blocking the whole country because it's easier.
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Doesn't work very well for Premiere Pro. Can't imagine the workflow of editing 8K in CS6. The latest version of PrCC couldn't even open 4K60 HEVC from a Galaxy S10+. Meanwhile 2 versions old Vegas 15 can. Put me in an odd position with my renewal coming up.
Photoshop is a little easier to keep for long periods of time.
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If everything you say is correct, then Jon Brodkin needs to promote your comment in order to compensate for a significant omission.
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train_wreck
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Why couldn’t the Venezuelans just pay using Venezuelan currency? Presumably Adobe was a registered company there?
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Assuming Adobe accepted it, of course. It's reasonable to expect that they might not, given the inflation rate.
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Here’s another vote for Serif’s Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. These are very usable substitutes for Photoshop and Illustrator. I haven’t used Affinity Publisher yet, but it ought to be usable for layout just as well as InDesign.
Serif is based in the UK.
Serif is based in the UK.
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Could you pay the sub and then dl the bootleg version you like? My morals allow for that.
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Did Corel run all their products and acquisitions into the ground? For years they were a staple of go to's if you couldn't afford Adobe. Hearing great things about Affinity but looking at designer for example they are definitely playing catchup with features the competition have had for years.
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This is a perfect example as to why there must be alternatives, be open source, be another competitor.
This is absolute BS and a very dangerous precedence.
This is absolute BS and a very dangerous precedence.
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Get DaVinci Resolve. It's free for the non pro version (the pro version is still cheaper than Premier) and it has all the stuff Premier has, best in class color grading tools, an amazing compositor built right in and it has a full DAW built in as well so in audio it handily kicks Premiere all over the place. Even though it's free it's actually made by a reputable company (Black Magic Design) who makes most of their money selling hardware so the software is just something to help them sell more hardware.
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That's not the way OFAC works. If the company determined that allowing the licenses would put them in violation of OFAC rules, then they legally can't send money to those same individuals. They may actually have an obligation, once the company has determined that they have assets that are covered by OFAC, to segregate that money and report the assets to Treasury annually.
Is it messed up, yes. Is Adobe being overly broad with their interpretation of the Executive Order, very likely (although I know several financial institutions that have made the same interpretation). At the end of the day, Adobe doesn't know enough about their end users to know whether or not allowing them to maintain access will put Adobe in violation of the sanction. I'm assuming the revenue from Venezuela, doesn't outweigh the risk of continuing to maintain operations there if one of their users happens to be (and is very likely to be) someone covered by the sanction.
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fellow human
Ars Praefectus
I could have sworn Adobe was Canadian but nope.
Nice for them they have a way to save a bunch of money on server infrastructure while blaming the government.
Nice for them they have a way to save a bunch of money on server infrastructure while blaming the government.
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