If you're anything like me, you have come to really hate subscriptions these days. Some apps (with their own subscriptions) are even dedicated to discovering how many online subscriptions you have. From applications to streaming services, it's easy to rack them up. I think we have managed to keep our total count to about half a dozen, but I am probably missing one or two.
One of the worst offenders has been Adobe with their Creative Cloud collection of applications running just under $35 a month. A software engineer named Brandon Thomas, who writes in Rust, tried to cancel an annual membership and got hit with hundreds of dollars in cancellation fees. This sparked enough motivation to reconstruct the entire Creative Suite offerings in open source in Rust. This was reportedly accomplished using AI. Since the underlying Adobe code is private, this wasn't copied per se, so it isn't piracy as I understand it. This may be a moral gray area, however, so I am open to others' thoughts.
I have periodically been asked to demonstrate my skill in these applications or needed them for other reasons, but I've never maintained a subscription. However, we do own a slimmed-down version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements. Anyway, I decided to download them all this morning, and we ran a test using PhotoCraft, their answer to Adobe Photoshop. It did not disappoint. Using the first photo below from Oregon's beautiful Wallowas, we digitally removed the picnic table. It worked remarkably well. In fact, as a newbie, I was rather astonished.
So, what are your thoughts?
