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Photoshop that isn't subscription paid?


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#1 Nightmeres

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Posted 18 September 2017 - 11:47 AM

i think this is the right forum for this, does anyone know of a way to get Photoshop without having to pay subscription fees? like a one price thing that is relatively inexpensive.



#2 Kite

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Posted 18 September 2017 - 02:15 PM

Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to find a one time Photoshop payment that is cheap (or legal at this point, probably?). Even the student discount is monthly or yearly based subscriptions as far as I can tell.

 

I'm pretty sure Photoshop costed over $600 as a one time payment before they switched to the subscriptions. So no, you're probably not going to be able to find it for cheap as a one time payment. :shrug:

 

My advice here would be to look for an alternative program that's either cheaper or free that will do what you want it to do if you aren't willing to go with the subscription. Photoshop has a lot more competition today than it did years ago when everyone was pirating it. While Photoshop is definitely still probably one of the more powerful options and it has a lot of tutorials for it, there's a lot more options available in general.


Edited by Nick, 18 September 2017 - 02:29 PM.

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#3 Lüt

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Posted 18 September 2017 - 10:06 PM

Adobe screwed everybody over big a few years ago when they forced their entire userbase to migrate to cloud.

 

Until then, their programs had always been released individually, and when the point eventually came that Adobe had so many different programs using so many different version numbers, they consolidated everything into the Creative Suite to unify the program versions. There were 6 releases in the Creative Suite, the latest obviously being CS6.

 

I bought the "design standard" pack of CS4 back when I started graphic design in college. It included Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and other accessories like Bridge, LiveCycle Design, Device Central, ExtendScript Toolkit, and Extension Manager. Individually, the 4 main programs sold for $549 - $699 each. However, with student discount, the entire pack was $299. Years later, CS6 came out, and I wanted to get the new "design & web premium" package that had those, plus the web programs Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Pro, and the "extended" version of Photoshop. The individual web programs were again in the same $549 - $649 price range, and this particular 7-pack-plus-extras was going for only $539 for students. $539 for a package containing 7 programs each individually priced higher than the entire package? Hell yeah, except I wasn't going to have the money until the semester ended and summer came about.

 

And then Adobe pulled their shit. You'd think the price of the standalone software would only go down once they released cloud subscriptions, but no, they pulled every single CS6 package from every physical and online shop, unsold, schools included, the instant cloud became available. They've been ripped to hell and back for their cloud sham for years now, but they just turn a deaf ear and keep going.

 

So if you want the last standalone version, you're going to have to look for a used CS6 copy on ebay (like this maybe, but beware possible scams). That said, once Adobe forced cloud, not even people who were willing to pay for CS6 cared about pirating it any more. I've been fine with CS4 - it's not like the digital imaging industry didn't exist before then - but if I ever need a later version, I'm sure never giving in to cloud, so CS6 is the limit for me. I wouldn't suggest going lower than CS5 though, particularly if use the Camera Raw feature for digital photography - it's great with HDR options.


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#4 Timelord

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Posted 18 September 2017 - 11:17 PM

Sure. Use CS1, or CS2. I found CS4 to be a pile of rubbish, and I would never touch a later version.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 18 September 2017 - 11:19 PM.


#5 Anthus

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Posted 19 September 2017 - 12:56 AM

Photoshop is way overrated. As Nick said, there's tons of programs that can do pretty much anything PS can do for free, or at the very least, way cheaper.

 

Or, you could just pirate it.


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#6 kurt91

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Posted 22 September 2017 - 02:44 AM

Mind if I use the thread to ask a similar question?

 

I tried using Photoshop because I wanted an art program that had a "pressure simulation" feature. Essentially, I wanted it to take the lines that I made and widen them in the middle a touch and narrow the ends to look like it was drawn with a pressure-sensitive tablet, which I don't have. Photoshop can do it, but it's incredibly difficult for me to do. The curve tool has you click to place a new anchor point, then drag it to get the curve that you want, which I can never get the hang of. Finally, once you draw your line, or "path", you hit "Stroke Path" to get the hand-drawn line to appear.

 

Paint Tool SAI is another tool that I tried, and I really like it. The curve tool here will bend the line automatically as it follows the mouse, and you just click every time you want to "staple" it into place. However, SAI's idea of pressure simulation is that you have to manually set the percentage at each individual anchor point instead of it doing it automatically like Photoshop does.

 

Is there a tool or plugin for a tool that has a happy medium that I can use? I'd love to have a program with Paint Tool Sai's curve tool and interface, but with the automatic pressure simulation of Photoshop. I've looked, and tried multiple alternatives, but they don't have what I want. InkScape seems to work identically to Photoshop, which doesn't help me at all. Paint.NET has an easy-to-use curve tool (but limited since you're restricted to only four anchor points), but no pressure simulation effect nor any plugin that can do it.

 

Honestly, for years I thought I was just a shitty artist. It turns out that I hay have just been missing a step that apparently a lot of artists use. Kind of a jerk move for all of those "How to Draw" books to implement that part but never tell the person trying to learn. I was always upset that none of my pictures looked right no matter how much I practiced. I honestly think that I could come up with some decent stuff if I had a tool I could use for inking in my pictures and smoothing out the shakier lines.



#7 Lüt

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Posted 22 September 2017 - 03:28 AM

I tried using Photoshop because I wanted an art program that had a "pressure simulation" feature. Essentially, I wanted it to take the lines that I made and widen them in the middle a touch and narrow the ends to look like it was drawn with a pressure-sensitive tablet, which I don't have. Photoshop can do it, but it's incredibly difficult for me to do. The curve tool has you click to place a new anchor point, then drag it to get the curve that you want, which I can never get the hang of. Finally, once you draw your line, or "path", you hit "Stroke Path" to get the hand-drawn line to appear.

That's Photoshop's hacked-up quasi-implementation of Adobe Illustrator tools. It takes the most basic of basic AI drawing features and sets them up to render in rasterized format rather than in vector format (hence you have to "Stroke Path" to get the actual art to appear).

 

Illustrator's line/shape tools work similarly, but they're drawn in a WYSIWYG manner (no additional commands required to display the final product), and more to your point, Illustrator also has a "line width" tool that you can drag or shrink to widen or narrow your line.

 

As an example, one of my Advanced Illustrator class projects was to take a live image and make a cartoon version of it, so I decided to troll the class and came up with this:

Spoiler
If you look at the lines around the chin, the side of the face, under the nose... or the flaps of the jacket's collar as it lays on the shoulders... those are all single lines with the width tool applied at different points to make them look thicker and thinner than they truly are (they're really just the same as the path shape you have to outline in PS).

 

So if that's what you're looking for, the width tool was only introduced in Illustrator CS5, so you'd need CS5, CS6 or the cloud subscription to use it.

 

And, maybe even better than that in some cases, you can choose a variety (like, a variety) of stroke brushes to apply different styles and shapes to your line art. If you're really interested, I can take some screenshots of the program to show you.



#8 Adem

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Posted 22 September 2017 - 09:47 AM

Have you tried using Paint.NET? It's basically an off-brand Photoshop, but it's a free-to-download program. It's not the greatest editor by any means, but (depending on what you need it for) it should get the job done!

 

Pixlr also has a decent browser-based image editing software. Neither of them are quite as nice or easy to use as Photoshop but if you need to save the money then you can probably make it work.

 

EDIT: I suck and only just saw the other mention of Paint.NET. :heh:


Edited by Adem, 22 September 2017 - 09:50 AM.


#9 kurt91

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Posted 22 September 2017 - 01:31 PM

How does the curve function in Illustrator work? Is it the same method as drawing paths in Photoshop, because like I said, I can't seem to get the hang of doing that. Of course, if it's drawing the actual line as I go instead of a near-invisible path, it might be a bit easier to figure out. One of the first things I tried to do when I attempted Photoshop was to try and find a way to make the paths easier to see. Even toning down the opacity of the original sketch didn't help enough to actually see where the path was going, so I got very uneven and jittery lines.



#10 Timelord

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Posted 23 September 2017 - 01:51 AM

Mind if I use the thread to ask a similar question?

 

I tried using Photoshop because I wanted an art program that had a "pressure simulation" feature. Essentially, I wanted it to take the lines that I made and widen them in the middle a touch and narrow the ends to look like it was drawn with a pressure-sensitive tablet, which I don't have. Photoshop can do it, but it's incredibly difficult for me to do. The curve tool has you click to place a new anchor point, then drag it to get the curve that you want, which I can never get the hang of. Finally, once you draw your line, or "path", you hit "Stroke Path" to get the hand-drawn line to appear.

 

Paint Tool SAI is another tool that I tried, and I really like it. The curve tool here will bend the line automatically as it follows the mouse, and you just click every time you want to "staple" it into place. However, SAI's idea of pressure simulation is that you have to manually set the percentage at each individual anchor point instead of it doing it automatically like Photoshop does.

 

Is there a tool or plugin for a tool that has a happy medium that I can use? I'd love to have a program with Paint Tool Sai's curve tool and interface, but with the automatic pressure simulation of Photoshop. I've looked, and tried multiple alternatives, but they don't have what I want. InkScape seems to work identically to Photoshop, which doesn't help me at all. Paint.NET has an easy-to-use curve tool (but limited since you're restricted to only four anchor points), but no pressure simulation effect nor any plugin that can do it.

 

Honestly, for years I thought I was just a shitty artist. It turns out that I hay have just been missing a step that apparently a lot of artists use. Kind of a jerk move for all of those "How to Draw" books to implement that part but never tell the person trying to learn. I was always upset that none of my pictures looked right no matter how much I practiced. I honestly think that I could come up with some decent stuff if I had a tool I could use for inking in my pictures and smoothing out the shakier lines.

 

Curve used to work by setting the points, then dragging the arc. Did this change? Usually, with a pen tablet, you are better off with freehand motion and pressure, than trying to simulate it. 

 

If CorelDraw and Corel Studio are still around, those are what I used to use with an input tablet, to simulate oil on canvas, watercolour, and inks. I have no clue if there has been a release of these since ~2004-ish. 

 

For anyone curious, my graphical workstation is still an Apple G5 machine (dual 2.5GHz, OSX 10.4). Most of the  very useful tools that I used on that were never ported from the PPC architecture, to the Intel architecture, so I never saw a reason to convert. I do not do video work, so that has never been a concern. 

 

The fanciest rendering that I did, was to do quasi-3d manipulation of flat images in AfterEffects. 


Edited by ZoriaRPG, 23 September 2017 - 01:53 AM.



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