Speaking of ulterior motives, the way web.dev presents itself on the surface as a general web development learning resource feels a little icky, especially since it's clearly very Chrome-focused once you dig in. It's weird to me that what is essentially content marketing for Adobe gets a blog post on this site instead of the Chrome team's blog. As others have mentioned this browser-based Photoshop works only in Chromium. I've never seen MDN push Firefox-specific content like this before.

Yeah, I actively avoid web.dev becauee every time I read something there I end up being steered towards another Chrome-only nonstandard feature. MDN is always clear about what's supported where and when features are Firefox-only, it clearly warns you and provides alternatives and fixes for other browsers.

Adobe strong-armed everyone to the subscription model long before they supported web. There's no relation at all.

You can still get pirated versions of CC everywhere. Adobe didn’t act like they had the benefit of their users in mind in recent years, so there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

If your reason for not wanting web is "I can't pirate it anymore", I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. And it's probably not even true. With a web app like this which is mostly client side, it will probably become possible to rip it and host it on non-Adobe servers or package it up with a local web server. Especially if they offer an offline mode. I imagine pirate groups are already starting to think about building tools for this.

I‘m not condoning piracy (cue for exceptions like defunct license servers), I merely tried to ponder why I don’t think this change is for the benefit of the user and what its purpose is. I don’t know whether it will be as easy to pirate, but it certainly is a step to give users even less control over their (the user’s) software.

There are a lot of casual users that the business model doesn't address. If you're a pro artist then CC is just a business expense and your clients pay for it. If you're not it's really hard to justify spending that amount of money for software you use once or twice a year. Don't forget the piracy to pro pipeline either.

I am still able to run my copy of CS6 without problems thank God... I had to do some tweaks to get it to run on Windows 10 though. Not upgrading to Windows 11 until I have to because I hear that is even more designed to force users into mandatory software updates by creating new incompatibility with older apps.

It's really future OS updates that threaten that.

There have been no major advancements in PhotoShop for my needs that really warrant an upgrade. No added value. I paid for CS6 long ago, and it should run properly without artificial disruptions indefinitely, because that is how it was marketed to me.

Did you purchase the Master Collection Suite? If you so, is CS6 still viable for commercial-level work? Have apps aside from Photoshop CS6, like Premiere and Flash Pro, continued to work? Do you have any issues with plugins?

I think what they're saying is more or less true, though they're obviously putting a spin on it. This is them trying to catch up to what professional teams already expect, and what "prosumers" are increasingly expecting. Teams that collaborate on art and design, or who have to deliver assets to other people, moved to the web a few years ago. It's so much nicer.

I also believe them when they say performance was an issue that kept them from doing this until now: the fact that the Photopea guy can do a large subset of Photoshop's functionality in the browser is astonishing, but power users expect a lot more, and wouldn't pay Adobe's organizational licensing fees for anything less.

Yes, this will allow them to enforce their subscription model more tightly, and likely push all kinds of new monetization at users. You're right about that part, I just don't think it's the only reason.

I've never met anyone who couldn't grasp the idea of programs running locally on a computer. Practcially every user of Android/iOS will understand it intuitevly. Back in the day anyone of all ages and abilities I knew on 90s-2000s hardware could download and install programs. Anyone who couldn't honestly wouldn't get much benefit from a computer.

Indeed, the convenience argument is just a pretext. They long to see the back of the days when you could buy Photoshop 7.0 for a one off fee and still use it today.

I see these comments in virtually every web app thread that there is, and it's immediately clear that the people making them have never worked somewhere with a vaguely incompetent IT department (most companies). There are companies where adding a new application to the image/getting IT to install it requires forms, waiting, and sacrificing a small animal. Those people are also not paying for it and thus don't care at all how much it costs.

I was referencing my experiences of the average computer user in that time peroid, which was mostly but not exclusively home PCs. They managed. And I know nowadays many of them hate the constant UI changes and sluggish JS browser apps.

But as to organisations, if it is that bad, it sounds more like an exacting support contract or overly bureaucratic processes. (Or how things are in the public sector.) In either case, if the company makes the process of getting its work done needlessly tedious, then it deserves to founder and give way to the agile competition.

It is really unfortunate if this is a main reason that webapps are so popular with all their bloat, wastage and transience.

Subscription pricing models are hardly unique to Adobe. I can’t even find any decent accounting software that doesn’t require some kind of a subscription. It’s pretty common, for better or for worse.