Adobe - The writing on the wall comes into view

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
[]
You know that Photoshop CS2 is available "free", right ?
("Free" in the "What were they thinking" sense.)
[]
Back when the Adobe server was running, I got this.

PhSp_CS2_English__photoshop_CS2_1045-1412-5685-1654-6343-1431.exe
356,583,291 bytes
SHA1: 1EDFD80947F4A89A0D80C94AB7CAF3C2BE7224C5
[]
http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/...2_EOL/PHSP/PhS
p_CS2_English.exe
[]
I got (on 2013-1-15, SHA-1s):
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1.exe 375,638,402
1538166046E59DB6098F75C3196E84AD9310DEA1
...Disc2... 427,451,410
D06911267603474B43F3F39E4B00029787173962
...Disc3... 346,374,144
54BA48723D657E4A86903ED2C876381488C8F945
CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1.exe 431,239,168
1C6CC05D49244ED1417B3E2C3136D4FD0B7F57E0
VCS2.zip 470,962,176
ECEDF63053CC0B059B805C296E9047E08E7E81EB
I've never actually installed it (them?), just seemed a good idea at
the time. Is the one you show above included in those, or something
different?

The one I show there, would be an "item" on the Creative Suite
disc set at a guess. The tools would be broken out individually
on the original site.

Ah, thanks - so I don't need to download the one you mentioned, as I've
already got it.

I don't keep mine installed either, as the utility
level is too low to bother.

I use GIMP for quick conversions from PNG to GIF,
maybe a crop, add some text, that sort of thing.

I use IrfanView for those. (For my last six months of employment, I was
with a company that didn't have any, so I even used Paint!, for cropping
and adding text.)
[]
GIMP comes in various levels of "annoying". I use 2.4.7
[]
(I think I may have downloaded GIMP from time to time [probably after
recommendations here from such as yourself], but have never got round to
actually finding I needed it, so haven't installed it. I did have PSP5
and 7 [the latter purely because I had an image larger than 5 could
handle; I used 5 otherwise], but haven't wanted to do anything I can't
do in IrfanView for many years.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"He hasn't one redeeming vice." - Oscar Wilde

On 2018-09-07 09:48, Neil wrote:

[snip]

On 9/6/2018 10:53 PM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-09-05 22:38, Neil wrote:

On 9/5/2018 10:04 PM, B00ze wrote:

I've had that, where PDF's don't load - the last one was: This
document is using a Korean encoding and I don't support that (Acrobat
PRO was not complaining, but Reader refused to render the document.)
However, my client being a very large organization, we also get issues
with all the various PDF Plugins (in Office or in IE) and these break
the minute a new Office is released. The latest bug with Acrobat
Reader is the cursor - for some reason we do not yet understand, it is
sometimes a black square instead of an arrow when the mouse is inside
the Acrobat windows. And forget about decent error messages - That one
with the "Korean Encoding" is most likely NOT the real issue...

One would have to know PostScript and the PDF format to know the actual
problem. On one hand, these have always been standards published by
Adobe. On the other, most users are not programmers. Documents with bad
PDF code are not rare, though, and they can lead to a number of odd
reactions by Acrobat. I've never seen a "black square" replacing the
cursor, so I don't know what the cause may be there other than saying
that cursor styles are typically OS functions and I don't see any access
to cursor styles in Acrobat.

I tried to code PostScript a looong time ago, it is a strange "stack"
language, I never understood it lol. The cursor in Acrobat is custom,
it's not handled by the OS, hence the issue...

As for Elements, it is capable of more than most casual users need.
However, there are other apps in the same price range as Elements that
have the capabilities of the full version of Photoshop, but with very
different user interfaces.

My interface of choice was Brilliance, but it was never ported to PC.
Besides, the goal of getting Elements is to learn the PS UI ;-)

I don't find Element's UI to be all that informative about PS. Both use
a fairly standard menu structure, but the feature sets are different
enough that only a small number of items will have the same menu
locations in both apps.

If you prefer, it's to understand how PS and Layers work. Hopefully they
work the same in both programs. I'm pretty sure the extra features of
full PhotoShop are too much for me.

Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo Humans were created by water to transport it uphill.

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-09-07 09:48, Neil wrote:

[snip]

On 9/6/2018 10:53 PM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-09-05 22:38, Neil wrote:

On 9/5/2018 10:04 PM, B00ze wrote:

I've had that, where PDF's don't load - the last one was: This
document is using a Korean encoding and I don't support that (Acrobat
PRO was not complaining, but Reader refused to render the document.)
However, my client being a very large organization, we also get issues
with all the various PDF Plugins (in Office or in IE) and these break
the minute a new Office is released. The latest bug with Acrobat
Reader is the cursor - for some reason we do not yet understand, it is
sometimes a black square instead of an arrow when the mouse is inside
the Acrobat windows. And forget about decent error messages - That one
with the "Korean Encoding" is most likely NOT the real issue...

One would have to know PostScript and the PDF format to know the actual
problem. On one hand, these have always been standards published by
Adobe. On the other, most users are not programmers. Documents with bad
PDF code are not rare, though, and they can lead to a number of odd
reactions by Acrobat. I've never seen a "black square" replacing the
cursor, so I don't know what the cause may be there other than saying
that cursor styles are typically OS functions and I don't see any access
to cursor styles in Acrobat.

I tried to code PostScript a looong time ago, it is a strange "stack"
language, I never understood it lol. The cursor in Acrobat is custom,
it's not handled by the OS, hence the issue...

As for Elements, it is capable of more than most casual users need.
However, there are other apps in the same price range as Elements that
have the capabilities of the full version of Photoshop, but with very
different user interfaces.

My interface of choice was Brilliance, but it was never ported to PC.
Besides, the goal of getting Elements is to learn the PS UI ;-)

I don't find Element's UI to be all that informative about PS. Both use
a fairly standard menu structure, but the feature sets are different
enough that only a small number of items will have the same menu
locations in both apps.

If you prefer, it's to understand how PS and Layers work. Hopefully they
work the same in both programs. I'm pretty sure the extra features of
full PhotoShop are too much for me.

Regards,


Photoshop has layers.

GIMP has layers.

You don't have to spend a lot of money to see layers.

A quick way to make a layered image in GIMP:

1) Open an animated GIF. Each layer is one frame.
2) Open a multi-page PDF or PostScript document.
The pages will be layers.

Open the layers dialog. Click the radio button on the
top item. The layer underneath it will magically be visible
in the image window.

HTH,
Paul

In article , Paul
wrote:


If you prefer, it's to understand how PS and Layers work. Hopefully they
work the same in both programs. I'm pretty sure the extra features of
full PhotoShop are too much for me.

Photoshop has layers.

GIMP has layers.

photoshop has adjustment layers

gimp does not.

On Sat, 08 Sep 2018 03:49:50 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Paul
wrote:


If you prefer, it's to understand how PS and Layers work. Hopefully they
work the same in both programs. I'm pretty sure the extra features of
full PhotoShop are too much for me.

Photoshop has layers.

GIMP has layers.

photoshop has adjustment layers

gimp does not.

More importantly, Photoshop has 'smart objects'.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

If you prefer, it's to understand how PS and Layers work. Hopefully they
work the same in both programs. I'm pretty sure the extra features of
full PhotoShop are too much for me.

Photoshop has layers.

GIMP has layers.

photoshop has adjustment layers

gimp does not.

More importantly, Photoshop has 'smart objects'.

that's true, but they are two different features, used for different
purposes.

photoshop has had adjustment layers since version 4 in 1996, twenty-two
years ago.

the gimp does not have plans to implement adjustment layers, according
to their own roadmap.

the lack of adjustment layers is a significant shortcoming and a
showstopper for many users.

smart objects are also incredibly useful, yet another thing the gimp
lacks, and another significant shortcoming.

and the list does not end there...

On 2018-09-08 03:43, Paul wrote:

B00ze wrote:

If you prefer, it's to understand how PS and Layers work. Hopefully
they work the same in both programs. I'm pretty sure the extra
features of full PhotoShop are too much for me.


Photoshop has layers.

GIMP has layers.

Yes, and I have trouble understanding how they work, i.e. the one time I
used gimp to do something really simple like grab a rectangle, I had to
go on Google and research how the hell to do it, and then I had to play
with layers and I did not find it very intuitive. I might've wanted to
grab that rectangle with Color 0 being transparent, which would explain
the layers, but I still had a hard time understanding...

You don't have to spend a lot of money to see layers.

Sure, but I figure PS (or Infinity as suggested by Mayayana - I had a
look at their website and I love it) is better at this than GIMP, i.e.
easier to understand/use? Grabbing a shape ought to be simple, and yet
in gimp it is not; that time I used it, I could draw the rectangle
alright, but making a brush out of it was really difficult. Back in my
DPaint days, making a brush was very simple: Pick the tool, draw,
release mouse button and bang, you have a brush...

A quick way to make a layered image in GIMP:

1) Open an animated GIF. Each layer is one frame.
2) Open a multi-page PDF or PostScript document.
The pages will be layers.

Open the layers dialog. Click the radio button on the
top item. The layer underneath it will magically be visible
in the image window.

I can see how this can be fun to use, to be able to see the previous
frame transparently through the current one...

Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo Virus detected, delete Windoze? (Y/n).

"B00ze" wrote

| Sure, but I figure PS (or Infinity as suggested by Mayayana - I had a
| look at their website and I love it)

I just mentioned that. And it's Affinity. I haven't
tried it myself because it won't run on XP and I
already have 2 versions of PSP. But others seem
to be impressed with it.

For basic functionality I'd recommend PSP5, which
is available at old version sites for free. It never had
a registration key. The company later sold out to
Corel. PSP4 was given away with hardware purchases.
PSP5 may also have been. But despite being free and 20
years old, it does almost everything newer editors can
do, including layers. But it does it simply, without bloat.
I still use it for most editing, despite also having PSP16.

Here's a quick drawing I did recently for a customer
who wanted a fence built:

https://www.jsware.net/Files2/trellis.gif

I also do most photo editing in a combination of
Aftershot Pro and PSP. Mostly PSP5.

What PSP5 doesn't do are things most people rarely if
ever need: Dragging points to select irregular shapes.
Auto-filling background to make it look like a removed
object was never there. Advanced filters for doing things
like altering facial shapes. PSP also has less plugins than
PS and Adobe have made efforts to prevent their plugins
from working in other programs. I used to like the plugins
for doing things like lighting effects on 3-D text, but that
kind of thing went out of style years ago.

A decent editor will do layers, multi-undo, selections,
color adjustment, brightness/contrast, sharpen, resizing,
etc. Most of that is just basic math. High end editors may
do things like slightly better resampling for enlarging
images, slightly more sophisticated sharpening, and
specialized filters. But it's all still just math, so there's
a limit in terms of how much it can be improved.

Adobe's wildly overpriced products only survive for the same
reason MS Office does: Monopoly incompatibility and
a handful of specialized functions desired by people who
work with it all day. A secretary needs MS Office. A
fashion photographer needs Photoshop. Then there are
all the suckers who fork out $500 because they heard
those are the only programs to buy.

Both companies have also primed the market by offering
student discounts. And adult ed classes typically teach
MS Office or Photoshop, rather than word processing
or image editing. The people teaching the classes don't
even know what their options are! They usually don't know
much about computers or software. They just know how
to use the one program they were taught on. Similarly,
the people who want to learn digital photography end
up thinking that Photoshop is the only tool there is. Very
few people even know the possibility of researching software
options. So it's a vicious circle of manipulation and a kind
of commercial extortion.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
Both companies have also primed the market by offering
student discounts.

They weren't the first: when I was at university (around 1980), UNIX was
provided either cheaply or free _to academic institutions_, in the
(presumably it worked) hope that those who went out into industry would
demand to find it there. (Until Linus Torvalds decided to code a clone
from scratch - AIUI, anyway [IANAL]! Come to think of it, that must have
been before "look and feel" became copyrightable.)

And adult ed classes typically teach
MS Office or Photoshop, rather than word processing
or image editing.

Very good point; I'd never thought of that.

The people teaching the classes don't
even know what their options are! They usually don't know
much about computers or software. They just know how
to use the one program they were taught on.

I guess I'm the same when showing people how to do things (I don't do it
professionally) - but I usually make clear that I'm using the method
(and software) that I know, and that other such exist.

Similarly,
the people who want to learn digital photography end
up thinking that Photoshop is the only tool there is. Very
few people even know the possibility of researching software
options. So it's a vicious circle of manipulation and a kind
of commercial extortion.

Indeed.


--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

As for cooking, what a bore that is. It's such a faff, thinking of what to
have, buying it and cooking it and clearing up, then all you do is eat it -
and have to start all over again next day. Hunter Davies, RT 2017/2/4-10

On 9/11/2018 9:31 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"B00ze" wrote

| Sure, but I figure PS (or Infinity as suggested by Mayayana - I had a
| look at their website and I love it)

I just mentioned that. And it's Affinity.

Affinity is the name of the company, e.g. "Adobe", the name of their
image editing product is Affinity Photo.

[...]

Adobe's wildly overpriced products only survive for the same
reason MS Office does: Monopoly incompatibility and
a handful of specialized functions desired by people who
work with it all day. A secretary needs MS Office. A
fashion photographer needs Photoshop. Then there are
all the suckers who fork out $500 because they heard
those are the only programs to buy.

So... in your opinion, people who are secretaries or photographers
should buy programs they don't know because...?

Both companies have also primed the market by offering
student discounts. And adult ed classes typically teach
MS Office or Photoshop, rather than word processing
or image editing.

If I pay someone to teach me about image editing or word processing,
they damn well better teach me with the tools I'd be using to earn a
living. I'd sue them and the organization that hired them if they used
PSP5 or OpenOffice.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 09/11/2018 8:31 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"B00ze" wrote

| Sure, but I figure PS (or Infinity as suggested by Mayayana - I had a
| look at their website and I love it)

I just mentioned that. And it's Affinity. I haven't
tried it myself because it won't run on XP and I
already have 2 versions of PSP. But others seem
to be impressed with it.

For basic functionality I'd recommend PSP5, which
is available at old version sites for free. It never had
a registration key. The company later sold out to
Corel. PSP4 was given away with hardware purchases.
PSP5 may also have been. But despite being free and 20
years old, it does almost everything newer editors can
do, including layers. But it does it simply, without bloat.
I still use it for most editing, despite also having PSP16.

Here's a quick drawing I did recently for a customer
who wanted a fence built:

https://www.jsware.net/Files2/trellis.gif

I also do most photo editing in a combination of
Aftershot Pro and PSP. Mostly PSP5.

What PSP5 doesn't do are things most people rarely if
ever need: Dragging points to select irregular shapes.
Auto-filling background to make it look like a removed
object was never there. Advanced filters for doing things
like altering facial shapes. PSP also has less plugins than
PS and Adobe have made efforts to prevent their plugins
from working in other programs. I used to like the plugins
for doing things like lighting effects on 3-D text, but that
kind of thing went out of style years ago.

A decent editor will do layers, multi-undo, selections,
color adjustment, brightness/contrast, sharpen, resizing,
etc. Most of that is just basic math. High end editors may
do things like slightly better resampling for enlarging
images, slightly more sophisticated sharpening, and
specialized filters. But it's all still just math, so there's
a limit in terms of how much it can be improved.

Adobe's wildly overpriced products only survive for the same
reason MS Office does: Monopoly incompatibility and
a handful of specialized functions desired by people who
work with it all day. A secretary needs MS Office. A
fashion photographer needs Photoshop. Then there are
all the suckers who fork out $500 because they heard
those are the only programs to buy.

Both companies have also primed the market by offering
student discounts. And adult ed classes typically teach
MS Office or Photoshop, rather than word processing
or image editing. The people teaching the classes don't
even know what their options are! They usually don't know
much about computers or software. They just know how
to use the one program they were taught on. Similarly,
the people who want to learn digital photography end
up thinking that Photoshop is the only tool there is. Very
few people even know the possibility of researching software
options. So it's a vicious circle of manipulation and a kind
of commercial extortion.




I still use PSP 7.01 as me Main graphics program, It still works on
Windows 10 and does everything I need, Gotta love it.

Rene

On 11 Sep 2018, Rene Lamontagne wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I still use PSP 7.01 as me Main graphics program, It still works
on Windows 10 and does everything I need, Gotta love it.

My go-to image editor was Paint Shop Pro 9.01. But when I migrated from
my old XP clunker to this new fancy-schmancy Win7-64 computer earlier
this year I found that that version of PSP doesn't work. It must be the
64-bitness of it, because it does work on a Win7-32 computer here. So
for now I have it installed in an XP Virtualbox. It's quite
inconvenient. Maybe I'll dig out my old PSP7 discs and give it a try -
that version did most of what I need. I hope they're not floppies!

On 09/12/2018 1:56 AM, Nil wrote:
On 11 Sep 2018, Rene Lamontagne wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I still use PSP 7.01 as me Main graphics program, It still works
on Windows 10 and does everything I need, Gotta love it.

My go-to image editor was Paint Shop Pro 9.01. But when I migrated from
my old XP clunker to this new fancy-schmancy Win7-64 computer earlier
this year I found that that version of PSP doesn't work. It must be the
64-bitness of it, because it does work on a Win7-32 computer here. So
for now I have it installed in an XP Virtualbox. It's quite
inconvenient. Maybe I'll dig out my old PSP7 discs and give it a try -
that version did most of what I need. I hope they're not floppies!


My PSP 7 is on a single CD.

Rene

On 12 Sep 2018, Rene Lamontagne wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

My PSP 7 is on a single CD.

That's my recolection as well. I seem to recall that there are also a
couple of update patch files, which I think I saved, too.

"Neil" wrote

| Adobe's wildly overpriced products only survive for the same
| reason MS Office does: Monopoly incompatibility and
| a handful of specialized functions desired by people who
| work with it all day. A secretary needs MS Office. A
| fashion photographer needs Photoshop. Then there are
| all the suckers who fork out $500 because they heard
| those are the only programs to buy.
|
| So... in your opinion, people who are secretaries or photographers
| should buy programs they don't know because...?
|

Where'd you get that? I said just the opposite.

| Both companies have also primed the market by offering
| student discounts. And adult ed classes typically teach
| MS Office or Photoshop, rather than word processing
| or image editing.
|
| If I pay someone to teach me about image editing or word processing,
| they damn well better teach me with the tools I'd be using to earn a
| living. I'd sue them and the organization that hired them if they used
| PSP5 or OpenOffice.
|

I wouldn't worry if I were you. You'd end up
arguing so much with the instructor that you'd
either be kicked out or leave in a huff before
you even got around to talking about software.

And since when are adult ed courses to teach
professional skills? Usually they're taken by people
who are interested in learning something new or
expanding on a hobby.

If you need an MS Office class for work then
obviously it should be MS Office. If you're learning
word processing in adult ed it should cover word
processing. Maybe Notepad, Wordpad, MS Word
and Libre Office Writer. That would also allow the
teacher to point out a very important point that
most people don't know:

Menus on Windows tend to be similar. If you
know Edit - Select All in one program then you
know it for all programs.

It would also teach people
the difference between word processing and
MS Word. That's the distinction these people miss.
By the time the class is done they should
understand that they don't necessarily need
to spend the extra cost to buy the monopoly
product.

I see examples of that problem constantly:
Students who don't know how to write except
in Word. They don't even know a DOC from a
DOCX. People who write a 100 KB Word DOC
to make their shopping list: Milk, eggs. People
who send email ia Word because they don't
understand DOC vs EML. And visit the digital
photo groups. You'll find lots of people who are
expert in different camera models but who all pay
through the nose for PS because that's what
they heard is good. And what do they do with
PS? Mostly things like color saturation or plugin
effects that they could do with IrfanView.

So a graphic editing class:

"In this class we'll cover the basics of editing,
like basic tools for cropping, selecting, brightness,
layers, etc. The tools that any basic editor offers
and that you'll want in your image editing. We'll
also cover some drawing. At the end of the class
people will have an idea of the software landscape
and the functions available.

8 weeks. $110 includes software.

Then another class could be "Photoshop tricks":

"This class will cost an arm and a leg for software.
We'll learn how to use the special, advanced tools
provided by Photoshop. By the time you're through
you'll be able to convincingly remove Uncle Rick from
the family Thanksgiving photo. You'll also know how
to make photos of yourself look 10 years younger."

8 weeks. $720 includes software.
(CORRECTION: You can no longer buy this software!)


There was actually a case closer to home some
years ago. I make an editor that's specialized for
VBScript. Mine's one of the best. A company called
Sapien also used to make an editor called Primal Script.
Theirs was better in some ways, not as good in others.
They charged extremely high prices compared to my
editor and others. (Something like $175 vs $30 for
my editor or another competitor, vbsedit.) Then
I came across a wepage from dowjones.com. They
were teaching a class in Windows Script Host and
the Sapien editor was "included" in the class. In other
words, people were forced to buy and acclimate to
the overpriced editor before they even knew their
options. No wonder Sapien was getting away with
those prices.

Ideally, if a school of any kind is teaching software
they should be buying licenses themselves, so that
the student is not stuck with a specific program and
to prevent corrupt backroom deals bewteen software
companies and schools.