Monthly Wrap-up, January 2023
Are we really getting more value in subscription apps? An essay from one of our community members. A big heartfelt thank you.
Pantone, Adobe, Etc
Old news but in case you didn’t hear this, Photoshop and CreativeCloud apps no longer have Pantone libraries. Worse yet all of your documents are now broken unless you pay the new monthly ransom fee. Watch video.
I bring this up because this model we’ve mostly bought into is not about giving customers more value. It’s about “growth”. I forgot about this feature deletion for two reasons. The first reason is that I have and use Pantone Connect but most of the time I don’t need it so it’s not installed on my Adobe applications. Two years ago I ditched my suite subscription (way too expensive) and I stopped using Premiere quite a while ago. The only thing I was keeping the full suite for was my need for a publishing app like InDesign which I use a lot.
Along came Affinity Publisher and although it lacks a few very technical features that I used rarely, it handles the vast majority of work I do for publishing on-demand. I do believe that even with a highly customized print environment I could still get by. Publisher which is very wallet-friendly still comes with most of the Pantone libraries I need so I don’t use Pantone Connect on a day-to-day basis. I could but I don’t, most of my general use is the color bridge library.
I had to use Photoshop the other day on an older file that did use Pantone libraries that used to be there. Broken! Worse yet, after going through the headache of installing the software and setting up Photoshop for Pantone Connect the file was still broken. I had to redo all the work where color libraries were used. What a smooth user experience.
I know most of the community could care less about this particular issue but I have two questions. First, how does everyone feel about this kind of thing? Second, for those of you that do use Pantone libraries, what are you doing? Are you on board with the $90/year connect app? How are your old files working out? Is anyone a bit worried about the new Capture One plan to help us all out? I am not sure I understand it yet but it looks like I’ll have to buy it if only to open other people’s files.
Yes, I know as edge uses for photography and graphics applications become more and more specialized with fewer of the general public supporting the products they will become more expensive but when you pile the absolutely hell-bent business model that all these companies must grow when the user base is shrinking I think they are all paving the way to their own destruction. I’d still be an InDesign user if that app alone didn’t put the monthly cost over the entire suite. The entire model is skewed so that if you use one additional app you're forced to buy/rent all of them.
Reader Response To Les’ Essay
Les’ essay about Taking Or Making Pictures seems to hit a note with many in our community. One of our readers was contemplating similar thoughts and has a well-thought-out essay he produced at almost the same time. Well worth reading. Take a look at his thoughts in A Handful Of Days. His photography is worth taking a look at as well.
A Big Thank You
We crossed a bit of a milestone this month. We are the proud recipient of a digital trophy that I assume is to encourage us to spend more time publishing more newsletters. All joking aside, we’d love to spend more time producing for this small community with far more in-depth pieces. Les and I have been kicking around a lot of “big, big plans”. We would love to make all of them happen for photographers that love making and seeing prints. Heck, I would love to do this full-time, half-time, or even an eighth time. Probably not going to happen but maybe?
We both wanted to thank all of you that support our efforts. Every little bit helps and has helped us do any of this. We hope to continue to do more. Over the next couple of months, we’ll share some of our pie-in-the-sky dreams. Until then a sincere thank you and encouragement to help us keep going if you can.
I don't know that much about Adobe & Patone being just a hobbyist photographer. I use the Adobe LR 6.14 stand alone version as of yet & an older version of Affinity Photo. Maybe 1083 or something or other. I'm a light weight when it comes to post processing. I do use an X-rite i1Display Pro for my monitor, have a ColorChecker Passport I use once in a while, a X-rite i1studio & will probably will make my first ICC paper/printer profile this month coming. I also own a DataColor SPYDERPRINT that has never been taken out of the box as of yet. Purchased it when I purchased the Canon Pro100 & it seems to have a larger color charts for making profiles. My prints match my screen so I haven't had to make a profile. I did purchase a pack of Canon Fine Art Smooth paper when purchase printer ink. Canon has no profile for it on my printer. Hence making a profile. Called Canon & they have one for the Pro1000 & larger it seems. So I ask the questio, is it only for pigment ink based printers? Tech says there is no profile for it for use with the Pro10. I ask why & he just says, above his pay grade. Need to ask someone from Japan. Doesn't make any sense to me but I guess not everything has to.
Anyway, I have been enjoying your news letters, thank you. Once I get back to work, Maybe I'll go paid, I'll look into the paid subbed bennys & decide.
I refuse to pay a monthly ransom for software use. I use the old standalone version of Lightroom and Photoshop. I purchased Capture one several versions ago, and then purchased an upgrade. Now that they're pushing everyone towards the subscription model, I'm done. I bought Affinity Publisher (and the upgrade v. 2) and used it to publish (POD) a book last year and it worked perfectly for me.