I spotted Online Goddess’ blog post, Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop, which itself is a reply to Gavin Anderegg’s An infuriating goodbye to Photoshop on Bubbles and had to add my tuppence worth.
Like Gavin and OG, I’ve been using Photoshop a long time. I switched to Photoshop 5 after Corel bought Paint Shop Pro and ruined it, and although I always preferred PSP7 over Photoshop, PS5 saw me through the years of blogging and pixel art and eventually working in web (when standards were lower and I was allowed to design stuff for clients).
When Adobe went over to the subscription model and Photoshop became “Creative Cloud” I was not particularly happy, but even as my own design work tailed off I was still regularly dissecting PSDs for clients and so it seemed only fair to pay for something I was making money from.
I wasn’t particularly happy with the way CC seemed to take over my computer with background processes, nor the fact that I had to regularly update my startup apps list to prevent it strong-arming it’s way into the fresh boot line-up, but these were minor annoyances that I could overlook (griping out loud to nobody listening in the process).
As the years went by, the cost slowly crept up and the best monthly price was reserved for those who cycled through new accounts using multiple email addresses, or went through an endless threaten to cancel / get new offer hassle. The double pricing scale was infuriating but I kept on renewing.
Eventually the days of slicing PSDs gave way to exporting from Sketch and later Figma, but Photoshop still helped when I inherited the odd legacy project or needed to do a bit of basic image manipulation. I seemed to use it just enough to keep it, but never quite enough to warrant spending time looking at alternatives. Convenience has a price, I guess.
Until… earlier this year, when I went to edit my hosts file to point a client’s domain at new IPs to test a migration prior to the DNS switcheroo, and there before my very eyes were a set of IPs that I very much had not put there.
In my opinion, this was a step too far. Given that Windows makes the user load the hosts file with administrator privileges to edit it, CC editing it unrequested, unwarranted and without direct permission felt weirdly violating. Like Gavin said, this was malware behaviour. I cancelled my subscription on the spot and immediately removed Creative Cloud from my computer.
I’m pretty much exclusively using the free Affinity software now, having previously paid for and used Affinity Designer for editing SVGs. It’s got enough similarities to Photoshop that I’m not completely lost, and free is a pretty convincing price point to be honest…
I spotted Bubbles in my basic referrers this morning, and my heart lit up. A little directory, surfacing blog posts from actual bloggers, what in the old web is going on?! This isn’t the first time I’ve spotted a resurgence in indie / ‘old’ web stuff lately. Personal sites are making a comeback, bloggers are… read full entry »
I’ve been thinking about doing the 75HARD challenge. If you’re not familiar with 75HARD, it’s a fitness challenge that first did the rounds years ago and has had a bit of a resurgence this year. The rules stipulate that every day, you must: This isn’t a new thing, I’ve considered it several times, and even… read full entry »
Got “recognised” by two different people on reddit yesterday as “that blogger” and god, if it hasn’t made me miss the olden days of blogging. Write any old crap that comes to mind, publish, receive immediate feedback and support from peers and friends. Do it all again a few days later. I’m not sure at… read full entry »
New Look! Yes, as you can probably see, I’ve changed the way the site looks again. I’ve been tinkering about with this one for a while between work projects. The theme is based off the lovely Storyteller by Mauer Themes. I paid for the theme (fair’s fair) then completely re-created it so that it would… read full entry »
This blog post is a follow-up to yesterday’s post: Security alert: pipdig insecure, DDoSing competitors. Firstly, to re-iterate, my accusations are as follows… pipdig did knowingly and with malicious intent: used other blogger’s servers to perform a DDoS on a competitor manipulated blogger’s content to change links to competitor WordPress migration services to point to… read full entry »
pipdig, WordPress theme and plugin provider, caught distributing malicious code to customers and DDoSing competitors
Forgive the click-baity title for just a minute and hear me out. I responded to Molly Forbes‘ tweet earlier today (which admittedly lacked context, so I was making a massive assumption on its intent)… https://twitter.com/mollyjforbes/status/1107661795261665283 …with the words “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who likes instagram.” Admittedly, my response was actually borne… read full entry »
After a brief twitter conversation yesterday, I realised that I have over 17 years of blog posts on this site, but no way of distinguishing those actually worth reading from what is mostly a collection of personal old waffle. So, here’s my jemjabella all time top ten, as decided right now on no scientific basis… read full entry »
My attempts at maintaining my strength and fitness this year have been indisputably more consistent (and as a result, visible in my overall health and weight). I’ve been wanting to write more about what I get up to, but didn’t want to make this blog fitness-focused; it is supposed to be more general/personal than that…. read full entry »