It's sad, I really loved using Sketchbook Pro to draw with as it's pen brushes look like the real thing, something photoshop has yet to pull off. The stripped down interface also helps. It wasn't without it short comings, most drawing have to be finished up in photoshop, but it was getting closer and closer to a one stop drawing program for my needs.
The new version was inching even closer as they released news of the new features, but this was all thrown in the trash when it suddenly arrived for sale on the Mac app store.
Yes, the features were there as promised but Autodesk dashed all hopes of me (and many others) buying it when they decided to let their marketing department take over the company in same way Adobe has and made the software subscription only. Yes, they offer a non subscription version outside the app store, for more than I ever paid for a full version before, and yes, they do offer an upgrade price, which is about what I paid for a full version before but that is not available to app store buyers. To top it off, their online chat help is a robot whose answer to ever question is to tell you where to buy the new version online.
"You just lost a customer, sorry"
"The upgrade is available to those with serial numbers online"
REALLY?
The thing is, this pay us protection money every month or your software will "have a little accident and not work anymore" scam has not been working out all that well for Adobe or Microsoft so I don't know why anyone else would adopt it. They might as well be screaming "please pirate our software" at the top of their lungs at people who would never normally even think of doing such a thing.
So I'll be sticking tot he old version, finishing in my CS version of photoshop and looking around for the alternatives who are ever so quickly nipping at the heal of these money hogs for eventual replacements.
2 comments:
This is exactly why I didn't want to upgrade past CS5. My art tool works just fine, I don't need to upgrade it until it no longer works. Paying monthly is, as you put it, "protection money," and while it's their product and they can do what they want, I can choose to look for something else. I love Illustrator, couldn't have made what I've made without it, but there are other methods.
Sketchbook has far superior pen tools than photoshop so I was looking forward to having some thing "just to draw in" without having to finish it in photoshop and that WASN'T photoshop. I am on CS6 and won't upgrade now anymore. We aren't the only ones either. The app store reviews are terrible for the new sketchbook so far, the pay or lose it thing really pisses, I think, the common user off. Illustrator is great but there are a ton of other close to it out there now, photoshop is also great but slowly others are catching up to it as well. I have been trying pixelmator and Corel paint as alternatives recently.
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