Photoshop subscription

[Jediboy]

I have just taken the plunge and subscribed to photoshop for £8.32 a month.
My PSE14 still served me well and I didn't really need a change but a friend at work talked me into it.

With the subscription I get Photoshop 2020, Lightroom and Lightroom Classic as well as a few other bits.

I know a few here have left photoshop but thought I'd give it a go.

I have lots to learn as I'm rubbish at editing, and I've been watching some tutorials. Lots to learn but happy to have a good crack.

[Oldboy]

Good for you. Adobe give good tutorials on their website with videos. 

[Hinfrance]

I'm sure you will enjoy it. Learning new things helps make life interesting.

I have given up on Adobe, having taken that special offer. On renewal the price increased some 30% and although I still have a current sub (they charge very high penalty fees for cancellation) I shall not be renewing it.

Instead I use On1 2020 and Affinity Photo. The latter is only €27.99 at the moment, and frankly is more than a match for PS for most things even relatively skilled photographers need, and is better is some respects - the only bugbear for me are that macros (what Adobe call actions) and luminosity masking are not well developed, not that I ever used them in PS very much. It runs all the plugins I like to use - Nik, Topaz, Luminar, Franzis etc and most 64 bit plugins. Olivio Sarikas has a series of excellent tutorials for Affinity.

On1 - well, I can't praise that enough. Makes LR look like a dinosaur. I still have LR5 as a stand alone and that is better as a DAM. But as On1 picks up data from the file system any non image edit changes are picked up immediately. It's editing capabilities are vastly superior to LR (including, layers, overlays, and luminosity masking), so much so that a lot of the time I never have to use Affinity to finish off an edit.

[jinky]

I gave up on adobe when they stated subscriptions. If i`d carried n shooting professionally I`d have kept it and put it down to expenses. I seem to have more software than I need these days with old versions of Photoshop and Lightroom, Topaz, Fuji`s own raw converter, the very good free Photoscape and the free capture 1 which I have for Fuji raws too. If I shot much in raw I might have kept up lR but having tinkered with the output on my Fuji I end up using the jpegs more or less as is with just a few tweaks in PS or nik effex within that. I sometimes wished I`d spent more time learning more on photoshop etc and now seems as good a time as any for you to focus on it at that  price so have fun.

[Jediboy]

Thanks for the replies.
Interesting to read peoples thoughts and experiences. I've always made do with Elements, and to be honest most of what is on offer is beyond me.

But I'm keen to learn and develop (pun inteneded).

It'll be a steep learning curve (pun intended) as I'm not a natural at this stuff. But I have been stagnant for so long and keen to move on.

Wish me luck! I'll need it.

[Oldboy]

Good luck. 

[Jediboy]

Cheers Oldboy. 

[StephenBatey]

Good luck, and have fun.

We started with Photoshop when it was at version 4, and kept up with the versions until it went subscription only. My requirements are actually very few, and at Elements (not sure it was available in PS4's day?) would meet most of them. Alas, of the half dozen things I actually use, Elements lacked one (can't recall which).

One of the features I did use was the ridicuously easy to use feature to produce a thumbnail sheet. They dropped this in CS3, which is why I've stuck with CS2. Another was the terrible system of product registration. Over the many years of using it, the only full copy we have if the venerable PS4 (NOT CS4), and we have changed computers/had hard drive failures a few times. Each reinstall meant I had to find the PS4 disk, install it, then the PS5 upgrade and install it, then the... etc. etc. When Adobe finally turned off the registration server for CS2, they made a version available that didn't make registration checks, and I've been using that. It saves a lot of problems.

If I need later style features, I also have DXO and Affinity, both of which have their strengths and weaknesses and do get used when required.

It's probably worth noting that my requirements will be very different from yours, as I use black and white film (scanned in a V850) rather than colour in a digital camera. It means colour adjustments are unnecessary for me, and the ability of black and white film to retain details in shadows and highlights cuts out a lot of other stuff as well.

[anglefire]

I must admit I like the adobe stuff - though I didn't like lightroom until about version 5 - I also remember when it was Rawshooter (Think that was the name anyway!) - Now I find I use LR all the time and photoshop not so much.

I have just downloaded ON1 RAW2020 - and I see if that works for me. £60 outright, might not be a bad option. Though in truth £9 a month is about 3 coffee's (Which I don't buy very often!)

[Oldboy]

Another was the terrible system of product registration. Over the many years of using it, the only full copy we have if the venerable PS4 (NOT CS4), and we have changed computers/had hard drive failures a few times. Each reinstall meant I had to find the PS4 disk, install it, then the PS5 upgrade and install it, then the... etc. etc. and highlights cuts out a lot of other stuff as well.

That used to drive me mad. I've spent many hours trying to find my old disks for Photoshop when I've brought a new computer so I can install it. This includes buying online which I saved to a blank DVD as backup. 

[StephenBatey]

I just looked at Photoshop version history, and saw that v4 came out in 1996 and v5 in 1998, so that's about a quarter century and 5 "where's that disk?" episodes just to get CS2 installed.

So much easier with ACDSee, Affinity, DXO and Vuescan, all of which I have (alphabetical order!).

I don't like the subscription model in principal, but there have been incidents when problems have locked people out of the program, or a buggy version being the only available one. Rather like Windows 10. I still have a dual boot system with Win7, and toy with the idea of using Win7 permanently, and Win10 in a virtual machine for the internet.

And more on topic, how's the learning on Photoshop going Chris?

[Jediboy]

Early days Stephen.

I have had a play and edited some photos for the Glass comp. That was done in Photoshop. Has so much more than my old Elements, which is to be expected. Looking forward to getting into more over the coming days and weeks (months and years probably!). Loads of videos available online so thats helping.

For the first time in many years I even thought about shooting in RAW! May have a go and se what the results are like.

[StephenBatey]

In Brighton, there's a lifesize black cat sculpture about 20 feet up on the corner of a light coloured building. It's probably visible in Google streetview (Old Steine at the Palace Pier end, near to Pool Valley, west side of the building). I have a digital photo of it, taken from below, so think sky on one side of the frame, light cream building on the other, and centre stage a black cat that's just a silhouette in the out of camera jpg. Using the raw version it's clear that full detail is there, no mean feat with a shiny black onject.

Raw is well worth using if you have extreme conditions. Or just want to be able to underexpose a bit to preserve highlight details (which are often available as well). If you can retain both you can use raw as insurance.

Have fun, and keep healthy.

[anglefire]

I've loaded on1.

Doubt I will change from photoshop and lightroom.  Just don't like the UI and that it shows both raw and JPEG version of the same shot in the browser.

And the processing just seems harder. Perhaps me.

[Hinfrance]

Amongst the almost endless list of things that annoy me about Lightroom the fact that by default it groups RAW and jpgs, the opposite of your concern! If you can't see the jpg then you can't decide if it is good enough that the RAW can be binned to save some disk space. Obviously this can be fixed, it's just not easy to find out how. Next on the list is the fact that every time I open LR I have to run synchronise. Top of the list though is no layers - it means that almost every edit if you're using LR you have to switch to another app to finish off.

Things I don't like about On1 - doesn't seem to be a way to stack images other than by creating an album. Keywording is very basic. File renaming works well enough, but no presets. LR is definitely a better DAM, but then so is ACDSee, and that has layers too. RAW previews load quickly, but jpgs can take ages (I've noticed this in LR too - sometimes they don't resolve at all in LR - possibly my graphics card). Things I find indispensable - fast colour grading, luminosity masks. The dynamic contrast, colour adjustment and vignette effects tools.

Obviously it's each to his own