This is not to say that CS2 is necessarily superior to the GIMP; it may or may not be. It doesn't really matter;
Oh god no. As someone who has used every image editor under the sun, a good image editor _does matter_. It has a direct impact on how productive you are.
I love open source. I really do, but GIMP is one of the most horrid applications I've used. Not just graphics applications. All applications.
GIMP is anti-user. You to get frustrated doing simple things, and expect to spend more time on Google than GIMP. And not in the good blender way where you learn a new shortcut and you become more productive. The "oh I'd never expect to see that option there" way. Even something simple as basic window management is a pain in the ass.
MyPaint, .NetPaint, and Inkscape make GIMP look like a joke. I hope the unusable mess that is GIMP either dies or gets it shit together.
GIMP is only frustrating for simple things if you are adapted to the quirks of some other program. I can work 10x faster with GIMP than with Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, I hate the GIMP (especially the 2.8 version which tries to appease Photoshop snobs), but it's the kind of hatred one has for an unwanted but highly productive ally. I just hate Photoshop more.
Also, Inkscape, which I also use very regularly in my work, is not the best example to use when badmouthing GIMP. It crashes more, runs slower, and has an even less standardized and more unpredictable UI.
I think you misunderstand the author. It sounds to me like he meant that it doesn't matter which one you happen to prefer, as long as there is some meaningful number of users which would prefer to switch from GIMP to CS2 for free.
Wrong, the latest version of Gimp has major UI improvements. There are still some focus glitches and so on, but if you want to do serious image editing you either pay for Photoshop or use GIMP, it's that simple.
Paint.net and the like are amateur tools, they're not even playing in the same category. Pixelmator has a nice UI but is still underfeatured and so is Acorn. Inkscape is a vector tool.
I was optimistic when I learned that GIMP would open .psd files. Then I noticed the distinct lack of a slice tool. Googling found me no useable alternatives other than "crop, save, and ctrl+z".
May be trivial for those who don't work on front end development, but a huge selling point for Adobe.
I shelled out for Adobe's new month-to-month licensing for exactly this reason (CMYK PSDs). When paying month-to-month, the $700+ license becomes much more palatable.
What's the point of your comment? Just four paragraphs shitting on an open source project, and completely barren of actual content or insight. Who cares.
Adobe's official PR stance on this is somewhat confusing; are they releasing license keys to allow for an easier 'try before you buy', with the understanding on the honour system that you'll purchase a license (almost a humble bundle with a fixed fee)? Or is it a completely free license with the hopes to wet your appetite for CS6 and up?
UPDATE: You still need a paid license to use it legally. This is a service Adobe is providing to make life easier for existing licensed users of CS2 to enable continued usage. "While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers" (
http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2013/01/update-on-cs2-a...)
My understanding is that they wanted to shut down the product activation servers for CS2, so they released an update for it that removed the product activation check (and made the updates available on a publicly accessible web page), so that existing CS2 users could keep using it without things breaking.
It's not an update. The software is the same as released in 2005. Only the license keys are special keys that make the software bypass the Internet activation.
So why did they make the software downloadable at all and not just the special license keys? The Macromedia Studio MX 2004 suite they acquired uses the same activation servers. In that case they only made special license keys available and not the software.
This smells like a thinly veiled strategy to penetrate the market without saying so (for whatever reason).
I'm with you until your conclusion. Hanlon's razor. I think it's much more likely to be an accident caused by some incompetent support agent. Adobe is very bad at even basic strategy, let alone sneaky strategy.
The great majority of the pirated creative suite installs I see are virtually never used. It appears to be more of a status behavior than anything else.
If you have real work to do and you want to be "legit", you have one of the many superior free or low-cost alternatives available. And if you're making a living with creative suite at the core of your toolset, you have a copy of creative suite by hook or by crook.
I am a software developer, but sometimes I work with front-end guys, and doing a mock-up is in order. I use Photoshop because those guys use it, and can help me make changes and work with it. Is this an uncommon scenario?
I guess I can imagine a freelancer pirating in that scenario, but if you're working for a company a) they usually have a strict policy against pirate software b) they'll probably already have a site license for the front-end guys' copies.
They could have branded it almost as a Photoshop Lite, a friend remarked if it was legitimate then it becomes the drug dealer model, cheap entry to get you hooked then the prices go up. Could have helped Adobe capitalise off the large base of people who pirate it because they can't afford it.
It is, but apart from being somewhat strange - I doesn't have just some functions removed, they are implemented differently from mainline Photoshop, it still has not Retina support, unlike Lightroom, for example. Clearly and surprisingly Elements is not a priority for Adobe, I tried the trial, but not going to buy it, looking for something else.
I always thought elements was more geared towards basic level photo editing but that's just my perception. Maybe that just needs better branding and promotion.
I assume that most people glossed over the details of this new article, so here is a link to Adobe's page with the installer and a serial number. No registration, no checkbox saying you already own it, just CS2 for Windows XP. This appears to be a change of philosophy since this morning.
Wouldn't the whole point be to impress people with CS2 so that they upgrade to a new version and Adobe gets paid? So... yeah, it needs to work and it needs at least basic support. If I download my "free" version of Photoshop and the installer crashes I am less likely to buy the new version.
A crippled version of the most current version of the software would make much more sense.
I disagree. CS2 could do almost everything I'm doing with PS today. To take even more extreme example, I would be pretty happy with MS Word 1997 if I never had to open new document formats introduced in the later versions. Yes, it's 15 years old and I don't even know how many versions obsolete.
It still seems to contain an unpatched code execution vulnerability from 2010, fixed in CS5 and up [1], I'd say that's "bad enough" to warrant not using it.
Wouldn't either 1) fixing the "technical glitch" that caused them to shut down the activation server or 2) just giving away CS2 for free be better solutions than this?
1) I don't think it was a glitch, I think the activation server for this outdated, unsupported software was being sunsetted. 2) I don't know, but there's a huge difference between CS2 that can legally be used by anyone and CS2 that can legally be used only by people who paid for it.
1) I'm just calling it what they called it. 2) There is a big difference but it doesn't mean it's a smart decision. If they said "Here you go guys, we aren't supporting this anymore so feel free to use it however you want" Adobe would gain some respect by a portion of their target market. Instead, they posted download links and said "please don't download this!"
If this is what passes for an apology from Ars Technica for wrongly reporting on this story from the start, when I believe it claimed that this was free Photoshop for the masses, it is a weak apology. A news organisation should stand behind its stories with its reputation and sadly Ars believes it has little reputation.
Couldn't they have made a simple password protected download page? The licence holders this whole thing was intended for already have registered an 'adobe id' (have access to the backend of the adobe website).
Learning to work with a big software package makes it harder to switch to another editing suite. Free cs2 does make sense.
But there is a licence required to legally use the software. They have (contact) information. To avoid confusion, Adobe could've used some kind of login to hide access to this download to people that don't have the required cs2 licence. Instead of this, Adobe gave you the option to register for a new Adobe ID. This process didn't check if you had any business on this download page. If this is truly an accident, as in, if they don't want you to use the unlicensed suite, why is this page still up? They know there's a lot of traffic coming from the blogs.
From the forums:
"
Dov Isaacs wrote:
What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don't require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available."
On that same page users mentioned that this "looked like a legitimate product form the official web-site."
I'm not really sure what you're getting at. You think it is not an accident? (They changed the URL, by the way. The one all the blogs were linking to is 404.)
Earlier HN threads called this whole thing 'marketing', I'm not going to say this wasn't an accident. I'm saying that: a thing like this, where people get excited over nothing could have been avoided with just a little notice on the download page. That would've been enough to stop this as it was going on. Giving people access to software you don't want them to use is silly.
It's illegal to use it if you don't already have a license. If you're willing to download an illegal version of Photoshop, you might as well just get a cracked version of CS6.
I love open source. I really do, but GIMP is one of the most horrid applications I've used. Not just graphics applications. All applications.
GIMP is anti-user. You to get frustrated doing simple things, and expect to spend more time on Google than GIMP. And not in the good blender way where you learn a new shortcut and you become more productive. The "oh I'd never expect to see that option there" way. Even something simple as basic window management is a pain in the ass.
MyPaint, .NetPaint, and Inkscape make GIMP look like a joke. I hope the unusable mess that is GIMP either dies or gets it shit together.