This is around the time of the year that I have to decide whether or not to re-up my Adobe subscription. It's super shady the way they do it now. If you do nothing, they charge you like $800 and that's that. But if you go on and try to cancel, they offer you a rate of $480 for a year. Like, if that's the way they're going to play it, why not just give me the better rate in the first place? I hate these stupid games. It's the kind of thing that SiriusXM used to do before they gave me a permanent forever rate of $10 or whatever. I don't really use it much anymore. I could probably just drop down to the photo tier, which is Photoshop and Lightroom. That's around $240, which is more reasonable. I don't use Premier at all, since I have a perpetual license (and free updates) for DaVinci Resolve, which is superior in every way. Illustrator and After Effects use are rare. I've probably used Acrobat more.
One bit of perspective: When the Adobe suite was boxed and perpetually licensed, I would typically buy the new version every two years, and spend $1,200 in aughts dollars. So technically, $480 is a deal. I just don't like how they go about it.
Then there's Vectorworks, which I decided to try about a year ago with a Black Friday deal. That's a legit CAD app that also does lighting. So full on rigs that you can export to MA3, plus a very nice visualizer. That was an expensive self-taught "class" so to speak, but for $900, I did actually learn quite a bit. I get the software to an extent, but it's really overkill since I'm not doing actual rigging, including weight and power stuff. But because it's also CAD, I could theoretically build anything in it, and 3D print it. I have a feeling that's yet another expensive hobby I could land in.
By contrast, the Vectorworks folks are actually very cool, and real humans. That makes sense given the cost and niche of their product. When I found a bug early in the subscription, they were very supportive. As I neared the end of my sub, they reached out and asked if there was anything they could do to help, though they weren't going to extend another discount, which I get. At least they're honest about it.
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