Originally posted by cpk If your catalogue is on your hard drive, you are still in Lightroom Classic or, possibly, some combination of Lightroom Classic and the cloud version of Lightroom which can be done with care and some difficulty. My originals are stored on my hard drive in a location I specify in my preferences; but every time I edit a photograph it is taken from the Cloud. I have no .xmp files on my hard drive in my Cloud Photography directory and no catalogue; all edits are in the Cloud. I can export the original with its settings which then gives me the attached .xmp file. I do this when I want to edit the photograph in DxO or Affinity Photo; and then I import the edited version of the photograph back into Lightroom. This means that when I am in a coffee shop editing photos on my Surface tablet or Android device I am processing the original file, not a smart preview.
It turns out I'm using Lightroom Classic as part of a subscription bundle of Lightroom and Photoshop. It's fine for me because I don't edit photos anywhere other than at my desktop computer.
---------- Post added May 12th, 2021 at 08:52 AM ----------
Originally posted by house Piracy isn't theft. Its an absurd and inaccurate use of language. As far as I know it doesn't fall under theft anywhere on earth. You might as well call it murder or reckless driving.
I think piracy helped Adobe immensely as I pointed out in a post above. Piracy is how people learn and become addicted to the software. Those people would never pay the full price for private use and would have learned another less expesive alternative. Sames goes for businesses using pirated software. What happened is that everyone learned Adobe products and when they had the business case or got employed a legit copy was purchased. Those that have a business case are the only actual lost sales. It's one of the amazingly obvious things that people stuck in 19th century capitalism can't understand.
Because I'm certain piracy helped Adobe I'm very glad they've managed to reduce it. Already alternatives are becoming stronger. The bad blood caused by the subscription model is another huge cause of people abandoning Adobe. Subscription models are a holy grail of the last couple of years. Not just for software, everything should be a subscription. There are various economic reasons for this but none of those reasons are any good for consumers. It's just lock in and makes it more difficult for consumers to manage their costs.
Edit: A company with the revenue of Adobe should be able to produce much better software. A handful of people working for free in their spare time manage to pull off most of the functionality if not the polish. As with all companies the focus moves from improving the software to engineering the perfect upgrade path and lock in. Much like the market segmentation of Canon cameras for instance. My guess is that the man hours on marketing, financial set ups and most efficient artificial limiting of sofware completely dwarfs the engineering/software hours.
Excuse me, but piracy is theft plain and simple. It's taking something that is not yours, that you have not paid for, and have no rights to. I expect you are falling back on the concept that because software is not physical property, it cannot be stolen, but this has been decided in the courts to be wrong.
Intellectual property is property. Taking it without permission and without paying for it is theft.
In the case of Photoshop, piracy in no way helped Adobe, and in every way hurt Adobe's customers. Consider what Photoshop would have cost on the retail market if the 80-90% of users that had not paid for the software had paid for it. Instead, the legitimate users had to underwrite the thieves.
The rest of your post appears to be an attempt at deflection. I won't address that.
---------- Post added May 12th, 2021 at 08:57 AM ----------
Originally posted by house Being illegal and or wrong doesn't mean it's theft. Believing something is theft that simply isn't by any legal measure is quite odd. Unfortunately you're not the first I've encountered that insists on private meanings of established words. It doesn't make much sense though.
Pray tell, what do you call taking something without permission and without paying for it?
When a cargo ship or tanker is boarded and control of said ship is taken away from the crew, who are the representatives of the rightful owners, by pirates off the coast of Somalia, are you saying that is not theft?
I am genuinely curious.