Post #407,931
2/5/16 12:31:56 PM
2/5/16 12:31:56 PM
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Adobe and El Capitan
After about the tenth time it happened (once costing me about an hour of unsaved work on a complex drawing) I searched online to see if anyone else was suddenly having issues with the "eyedropper" tool in Adobe Illustrator. Apparently many have: the attempt to impart the color values of a placed bitmap to an Illustrator vector object, a hitherto routine capability of the software, will now bring the software (CS5 in my case) crashing down in an eyeblink. I mean that literally: the second the eyedropper tool is applied, any open Illustrator windows disappear.
It turns out that this is related to some obscure incompatibility between the older Adobe "suites" and Apple's latest system iteration, "El Capitan" (which I have providentially not installed on my machine at BDS), and has been noted with displeasure by other users. Complaints to Adobe, the once-noble developer founded by engineers and long ago fallen into the claws of marketers, have been met with a magisterially indifferent silence, which has been widely and, I think, correctly interpreted as "Fuck off, you slackers, and get with the "Creative Cloud' subscription model. We are not going to waste a minute of tech support time even taking notice of of your pathetic whinging, much less pay a software boffin to address the problem." I tell you, if I have anything to say about these matters come the revolution, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is going right up against the wall.
disgruntledly,
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Post #407,932
2/5/16 12:53:09 PM
2/5/16 12:53:09 PM
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Other than using "free" Reader, I haven't given them money since PageMaker.
And even that was an upgrade from Aldus. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #407,933
2/5/16 1:01:25 PM
2/5/16 1:01:25 PM
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I've given them plenty
And in return, I've been making a decent living off their flagship products (the coin for which, as I never tire of repeating, comes this century from my threadbare pockets and not BDS' bulging coffers) since 1987, and while I used PageMaker from iterations 2 through 6, I readily acknowledge that InDesign was from the first a notably superior product. But I simply detest the subscription model they're pushing (let your subscription lapse? Say goodbye to your ability to work with any of your existing files. No thank you), and hope to limp along on CS5 until my projected retirement in another twenty months..
cordially,
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Post #407,938
2/5/16 6:45:25 PM
2/5/16 6:45:25 PM
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Beware other dirty tricks
CS5 contains Acrobat 9, correct?
We have a separate Acrobat 9 Pro license. It can no longer be (re)installed because Adobe turned off/changed the EULA text(!) server and the installer crashes.
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Post #407,942
2/6/16 4:35:48 AM
2/6/16 4:35:48 AM
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Acrobat (full product) is losing its lustre
Now that Word 2016 (on Windows, at least) makes a very creditable effort of loading and converting PDF files.
Acrobat still obviously has oodles of features that pro users will want, but I reckon there's a long, long tail of people who just need to go "PDF->DOCX" without any faffing about.
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Post #407,944
2/6/16 10:31:06 AM
2/6/16 10:31:06 AM
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For reading and printing on Winders, SumatraPDF is my choice.
It works very, very well and is nice and fast.
Unfortunately, we use lots of PDF forms at work and I seem to have to use Acrobat for that - I haven't found anything else that lets me fill out PDF forms. I hate it because it is so slow and so horrible to work with.
:-/
PDF to DOC has lots of reasonable tools, but AFAIK, they don't retain the form-like functionality. And even if they do and work reliably (do they??), having to do PDF to DOC to PDF seems broken.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #407,960
2/7/16 1:12:35 PM
2/7/16 1:12:35 PM
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Yeah, for complex cases you still need proper software
But the basic "I need to get this PDF, do a few light edits, and then send it on" case, which is incredibly common, is totally covered by Word 2016.
Other wordprocessors, which may or may not have PDF-reading and export abilities, are available.
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Post #407,941
2/6/16 4:33:47 AM
2/6/16 4:33:47 AM
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OTOH
The sub model gives me two advantages:
1. I would never have come up with the £600-odd that PS costs
2. I would never have come up with the £200-odd that PS costs to upgrade
For £8/mo I get PS CC, LR and Portfolio.
If I let my sub lapse, I have about a month or so grace before everything stops working.
The sub model is evil but at the same time it means I can use PS CC.
As for your technical tribulations, I can only commiserate at the same time that I observe that you're at least 4 versions behind (CS6, CC, CC2014, CC2015). CS5 is six years old now. For context, that makes it roughly contemporary with OS X 10.7, which received its last release (10.7.5) in October 2012.
If you need a perpetual licence for a PS product that's got some semblance of support, the jump to CS6 is the one you need to make.
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Post #407,950
2/6/16 3:35:47 PM
2/6/16 3:35:47 PM
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Funny definition of perpetual, that
We did move on. I brought it up as Rand mentioned using CS5.
The only reason we have it is to futz with the occasional PDF form. The cost of the subscription is not worth it for the amount of use.
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Post #407,954
2/7/16 2:04:50 AM
2/7/16 2:04:50 AM
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CS6 is a perpetual licence
You have to ring Adobe to buy it, though.
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Post #407,956
2/7/16 11:33:23 AM
2/7/16 11:33:23 AM
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Yup, just like that 9 Pro license was.
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Post #407,961
2/7/16 1:12:59 PM
2/7/16 1:12:59 PM
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I've got a standalone 9 Pro licence on my work laptop right now
Was installed just the other week.
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Post #407,974
2/8/16 6:18:47 PM
2/8/16 6:18:47 PM
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Our derailment happened about a year ago.
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Post #407,935
2/5/16 2:32:22 PM
2/5/16 2:32:22 PM
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What a nightmare.
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