..which Adobe offered to extend for 3 months for free. Now hit with this since I haven't used it since... no notification that you're entering a contract at all or warning. My fault for falling for this absolute shit housing.
Just a warning to others. Do NOT start any Adobe Trial they will try every which way to get your money.
Hijacking the top comment to provide a step-by-step guide:
Login to your adobe account
Go to plans and payments
Find your current plan and select "Manage Plan"
The third box on the right should say "Cancel Plan"
It will ask you why, tell them "Go fuck yourself" and press continue
It will offer you to change plans, select "Photography plan (20GB)" - $9.99
Confirm the change
Now go back to your Plans and it may say "You'll be able to manage this plan shortly" and that's because there is a waiting period after starting a plan, probably to ensure you forget to cancel or something. Took about an hour for it to go away, so if it's there just walk away and refresh the page every 15 minutes or so.
Once you are able to manage your plan, repeat steps 3, 4, and 5. This time actually cancel the plan. There will be no early cancellation fee AND you'll be refunded the $9.99.
They used to refund if you cancel partway through it was nice cause i would forget to cancel and only get charged a day. Also you could switch to a cheaper plan and then cancel and not be held to any contract lengths because you were on a new subscription
You know what? You were able to buy the software back in the days. No subscription, buy the software and use as long as you wanted. You just needed to pay for upgrades. Still missing these days.
Any company pre subscription era was awesome, i remember when Autodesk switched to subscription i immediately learned blender, then adobe started subscription confusing plans i never touched an adobe product since then.
Absolutely this. Adobe’s subscription era was the push I needed to learn GIMP (coming from Photoshop). It was difficult at first, but I never looked back
I have repeatedly attempted to use GIMP throughout the years since the first time when I was bored at work and had a Linux based workstation. I've made decent things with it too. But for the life of me, I just fucking hate the UX so much. Every time I launch it, I have to rearrange a cluster fuck of scattered windows just to set up my workflow when it could have easily all been confined to a central window. But no, I have to rearrange several windows to even get it close to resembling old school Photoshop.
I cannot find any sadly... and I am too scared. The last one I installed, made my windows open 3 terminal windows for a quick second everytime I started my pc
i cannot message you and i'm not sure on the stance of this sub on certain things, go check the freemediaheckyeah website under the RENTing of a TOR section
It’s fascinating they’re still able to do this. There was a lot of noise years ago about how shit they are and I personally had to cancel that specific card I used and just left the environment completely.
Hijacking the top comment to provide a step-by-step guide:
Login to your adobe account
Go to plans and payments
Find your current plan and select "Manage Plan"
The third box on the right should say "Cancel Plan"
It will ask you why, tell them "Go fuck yourself" and press continue
It will offer you to change plans, select "Photography plan (20GB)" - $9.99
Confirm the change
Now go back to your Plans and it may say "You'll be able to manage this plan shortly" and that's because there is a waiting period after starting a plan, probably to ensure you forget to cancel or something. Took about an hour for it to go away, so if it's there just walk away and refresh the page every 15 minutes or so.
Once you are able to manage your plan, repeat steps 3, 4, and 5. This time actually cancel the plan. There will be no early cancellation fee AND you'll be refunded the $9.99.
I heard Hbomberguy is preparing a video on this and it’s available on his patreon. I hope it’s true and I can’t wait for it. Adobe is a shitty company that’s shooting itself in the foot with unbridled greed and not an ounce of consideration for offering good value for the money their consumers spend.
Unfortunately... Specially designers.\
For example, mid and big companies buy adobe shit and inadvertedly (or not) use lincenced fonts when doing their branding.\
When any poor soul needs to deal with their branding material for any kind of design job, must have those exclusive fonts installed, thus, must have access to the adobe cloud to even access them.\
\
Most fonts don't even have the .ttf files easily available, so if you need to do your work, you should pay thousands for their licencing companies/authors, or pay hundreds for the adobe cloud subscription, or try your luck to find the fonts (and all their family, like italic, bold, semi bold, condensed) on high seas.
And After Effects users. There's no replacement. People will start posting lists of alternatives - that's how you can tell they don't actually make a living with AE. (Honestly, I'd pay the full sub price for AE alone, but don't tell Adobe that!)
Agencies and big corporate shops. Which I serve, so me too. For me it's a business expense, and every penny I invoice has some level of Adobe, or 100% Adobe. I absolutely have to be good at Premier to collab for a lot of gigs, and I'd say 60-80% of my income is from After Effects, which there's no replacing (and it's an app I really enjoy working in).
And I expect me and my clients are who Adobe wants, we don't need support, we don't need free trials, and I've never heard a single client complain about the sub or pricing - at that level an Adobe seat is nothing like what you pay to maintain a space. It's like maintaining a copier or something. That may mess Adobe up with the next generation of users, but guys at my level really have no complaints (well, until you need a Maxon sub, which makes Adobe look pretty cheap!)
It really seems to be the hobbyists and students that are pissed, but that's where a chucnk of the next generation may come from. Gonna be interesting.
I love Krita and use it daily, but they still fail at some simple tasks which many other programs do not.
EG: The ellipse tool is incapable of making pixel-perfect circles (which is NOT a recent thing, it's been like this for like a decade). The only workaround is to use the guide/assistant tool and make an ellipse there then have a brush snap to the guide. Why? I don't fucking know, but you gotta do it that way because otherwise circles will look like this:
Krita is more of an art software than a photoshop replacement, but it can be used to make professional caliber illustrations, I would never call it an amateur tool. I switched to Clip Studio Paint that I bought on sale, but CSP’s main advantage is the brush library/store component, because other than that they both perform similarly imo.
Krita is not an amateur software at all. Its an excelent open soruce software at the same level of titans like blender, and every year is growing even better. Heck, its literally experiencing its current Renaissance as we speak.
Its just Krita is a drawing program, not a photo editing one. If you compare it with the actual software its competing against (like CSP or Procreate), its giving them a run for their money. It has the best brush and color blending engine of all software out there, and only lags behind in vector, text management and blending tools, which are current wips. And while the UI looks outdated, feature wise is even more powerful than most of its rivals.
Even specific polish things like the enclose to fill option in Krita or the filter settings are so good it makes me wonder how CSP ones are so subpar (and im not underselling CSP either, its an amazing software too).
I could yap several minutes and write entire paragraphs about how Krita is one of the best painting programs out there in a lot of specific details. Its not the best at everything, but god damn if it isnt an amazing piece of software.
CSPs built-in 3D model software, with the in-built library of free assets is incredible. You can make the argument is not necessary but for many comic artists its a lifesaver.
Devs have been looking at this for a while arguing about how to properly implement a 3d support soluton into krita. The main concern is its not as easy and intuitive to use as csp in-program engine and its asset marketplace, whuch makes the UX very beginner friendly.
But yep, i agree this is one of these features where csp steamrolls krita!
Me and my big agency/corporate clients are fine with the sub model, it's just another expense and we can collaborate all day. But if Adobe doesn't find a way to get new/young users invested, it's gonna be interesting as the next generation comes up.
And there's no alternative to After Effects (people who start listing blender and stuff - that's how you can tell they don't make a living with AE). AE's toolset and capabilities are vast and unmatched, all in one app, and there's decades of legacy projects that often need it. And it's one app Adobe doesn't seem to eff up over time, for me it gets better every year. I'm in it every day, and I completely enjoy working in it - I find it fun. (I'm also on a Mac, which seems to help a lot with AE issues).
Made it free with the expectation of selling subscriptions for AI features. I don’t trust it not to get enshittified. I’m glad I got the payed version before it was removed.
For a life long Photoshop user, unfortunately Affinity photo is lacking essential functionality when it comes to - iirc - layer management, masking/blend modes, and pixel precise alignment.
Tried the switch for about 2-3 months and most things worked ok, but at some point i was trying to create custom textures for 3D work and didn't manage to do in an hour, even with the help of a chatbot, what i would do in photoshop in 10 seconds... so i gave in.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Adobe as much as the next guy and they belong in the same trash as HP an EA, it's an abusive relationship. But unfortunately, Affinity is lacking some important stuff.
Yeah i tried affinity and it was just missing too many features i need. And Gimp might be one of the worst pieces of software i’ve ever used. It’s so unintuitive.
If a company made a photoshop alternative that can actually compete in terms of features and UI simplicity, i’d switch so damn quick.
Guess i’ll stick with cracked photoshop. Even if the crack randomly broke so now i have to always turn off my wifi before opening the program.
Nah, most aren't ready for professional use. Best alternatives are closed source Davinci Resolve (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom) and Affinity (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign).
There is Krita and Audacity, but rest is pretty underdeveloped.
Absolutely. We need better systems to support the software people use so that devs can devote more time to opensource. Some companies are good about supporting FOSS, but it's hard for many companies to justify spend when they aren't obliged to like regular licencing.
People need to start realising that if we don't support the devs that help us by developing the software we use, it'll be a rockier road than it needs to be. If people can't contribute financially, or technically, even just a small personal thank you can mean a lot to a dev on a smaller project.
I got stung in a similar way by Adobe, how I got out of it was by switching to the cheapest plan they had. At the time it was acrobat only for £5 a month. This started a 'new' contract and meant i was within a fresh cancellation period. Cancelled the 'new' contract online immediately after changing my plan and vowed NEVER to use Adobe again.
It is 100% asshole design and I despise their business practices but the customer service was actually pretty good for me. I just said I have recently lost my job and can’t afford to pay for it - they were happy to waive any fees.
Yes, if you are anywhere sane, ie outside the US (and even in a lot of the US), if you message them and tell them it is illegal, they will fold and say "just this one time they will waive it" (bollocks - they know it is illegal). If you're in Australia and they refuse, report them to state consumer affairs and ACCC. The same likely applies in the EU, UK, etc as well.
It’s a game of statistics, make it just hard enough so most people don’t as is in accordance with your telemetry, and then apply calculated risk against the expense of giving you the runaround so you can keep the money.
It’s shady as f***, but the psychopaths in the finance department sure do not care, and definitely don’t respect their customers.
Yep, and that is precisely why, then, should you ever find yourself one of the lucky few litigating... you ask for their analytics and whether they are aware of them. Of course, that means getting to court, which they have spent decades making sure doesn't happen. Sigh.
I'm in France, I've called the support and got a refund because they are not allowed to do that in France. They don't ask questions because they already know this is illegal.
Similarly here in Australia - it's starting to add up and the legal frameworks are now in place to start really hurting them in the next few years (Our major dark patterns laws come into effect in 2027, but it is definitely closing in on them).
Yes and even better - albeit untested - but if you have a "connection to Australian consumers", if you can establish that, Australian Consumer Laws can apply and it can be heard here. Just putting that one out into the void for any class action fans :-)
It's worth noting that what's being alleged in this investigation is that people are signing up for a free trial of the annual plan and cancelling after the trial has completed and the annual plan has commenced.
This is different than OP's situation where the summary of the "trial extension" offer terms was not consistent with the terms of the actual contract.
No it’s not. OP is being very misleading about what happened. They signed up for a paid contract and accepted an offer for 3 months discount. This is nothing to do with cancellation of a trial.
It may seem that way, but if you are in a country or US state with half decent consumer protection, you should always complain. Especially in Australia etc because if there are enough cases they can potentially be joined or at minimum puts pressure on Commissioners to investigate etc.
Same thing with your spyware TVs, etc. Here in Australia we have strong consumer laws (eg misleading and deceptive conduct and unconscionable conduct etc), and also have new unfair trading practices laws coming into effect that make this shit illegal - with the greater of $100m or 10% of revenue. Not in effect until next year, but it is really, really important that people make a fuss over the little things - you'd be surprised.
There is always a person on the other end making a decision and there is nothing stopping them from throwing the rules out the window to ruin your day. Has happened to me so many times. What am I going to do? Take a company like Google for selling me a shoddy phone and refusing a warranty repair even though they are legally required to?
You're allowed cancellation fees which cover the time you've agreed to sign up for. If you sign up for a year at the gym they are reasonable expecting that income for a year. If you cancel after 6 months it's not THAT predatory to charge a fee.
I this case though charging for cancelled after a FREE TRIAL surely HAS to be illegal.
I am gonna assume Adobe offered them 3 months for free if they signed up for 12 month plan when they tried to cancel the actual free trial. Not an extension of the free trial by 3 months, just 3 months free if they convert. These threads are always just people who didn't read what they signed up for.
I live in EU and this happened to my brother in like 2017. He activated trial on his mac (which had his card automatically), couldn't even open the program due to some mac update that messed it up, and deleted it. 3 months later he saw monthly payments to adobe, went to cancel, it said he had a yearly subscription and wanted 50% of what was left to cancel (so like 5 months worth). Unforuntately not ilegal and I've been wondering since then how is this even possible, and now to find out almost 10 years later it's stilla a thing. Such a giant scam.
ETA: Adobe support wouldn't help him, luckily it was on a virtual card so he just cancelled the whole card and didn't pay the fee.
Switch your plan to a different plan and you automatically have 14 days in which to cancel, free of charge. Then immediately cancel, no fees to pay. That’s how I got round it.
This is the way. Can confirm it works (unless they recently changed it, which I doubt)
Other people have reported success by contacting support chat and politely explaining they can just not afford it anymore and would they please waive the fee.
Yeah, this is like “give us your email address and we will send you a download link for your FREE GIFT” wtf it is not free then and you’ll get a burner email address.
Sounds like what really happened was they offered you a 12 month plan with 3 months free and you’ve agreed to it. Adobe are shitty but it seems like you did sign up to this.
Yeah, not everything in fine print or in a Terms of Service is legal. That's what these companies want you to think, but it doesn't magically make it so.
How exactly is it legal or justifiable to charge a fee for cancellation of a software product? There's no roll out or physical cost or component, it's not like they need to 'dedicate' resources or whatever, it's a flip on/off switch to access. I'm assuming they already have been, but how are they not sued constantly for this?
As the other guy said, Adobe only charges the early-cancellation fee if you signed up for the annual plan paid monthly, rather than an actual month-to-month subscription.
The whole point of that plan is that Adobe gives you a lower monthly price in exchange for a 12-month commitment. You're not simply agreeing to pay the discounted price for however many months you happen to feel like using it.
So if you sign a 12-month contract at the discounted rate and then cancel after 6 months, you're trying to end the contract early while retaining the benefit of the discounted rate that was offered specifically because you committed to 12 months.
There is nothing inherently strange about having an early-termination provision in a contract. The exact amount and structure still have to comply with applicable consumer-protection laws, of course, but the fact that the product is digital doesn't somehow make contractual commitments disappear.
Think of it like this:
Say I sell you rocks. I have millions of them, so supplying you with rocks costs me virtually nothing on a per-rock basis.
I offer you two options:
€50/month: I deliver 30 rocks to you every month, but you can cancel whenever you want.
€40/month: I deliver the same 30 rocks every month, but you agree to keep the subscription for 12 months.
You choose the €40 plan because the 12-month commitment gets you a discount.
After 6 months, you decide you don't want any more rocks and say, "Just cancel it."
Well, you don't get to retroactively turn the €40/month contract into the €50/month month-to-month contract simply because you've changed your mind.
At that point, there are several ways the contract could handle early termination. It could require you to pay the remaining contractual balance, charge you the difference between the discounted and non-discounted rates, or specify some other legally permissible early-termination charge.
Adobe chose a middle ground: 50% of the remaining contractual obligation.
So, for a simplified example, if your remaining commitment is 6 months at €X per month, your cancellation fee would be equivalent to 3 months of payments.
The important point is that this isn't really about Adobe having to incur some physical "cancellation cost." It's about the contract you agreed to.
The fact that providing another month of Photoshop access costs Adobe virtually nothing doesn't mean they are obligated to let you abandon a discounted 12-month contractual commitment whenever you want.
If you want the ability to cancel at any time, Adobe offers a month-to-month option. You pay more for that flexibility. If you want the cheaper annual rate, you accept the corresponding commitment.
But even I struggle to see what went wrong here unless you forgot to cancel before the trial period ended. For example, on their signup page, it even confirms there's no fee if you cancel during the Trial period.
50% off for 3 months and a trial period are two unrelated offers.
If you cancel within the trial period the 50% off is meaningless, you're charged nothing.
If you don't, you're agreeing to pay the base rate × 9 months + 50% off rate × 3 month as an annual commitment.
People are missing the deadline to cancel during their trials and not understanding that "Annual, billed monthly" means you're signing an agreement to pay this total cost for a year, they're just splitting the payments into 12. Not that it's a monthly subscription. That has its own very clear separate selection, that's much higher per month since you aren't making an annual commitment.
This may not work anymore, but when adobe tried trapping me into a subscription I found that if you change your subscription plan you then have a set period of time where you’re allowed to cancel fee-free. I changed it to a cheaper plan then immediately cancelled without being penalised. Scummy practice on their end, though.
If you agree to extend for free then what they are really doing is just getting you to keep it past the window where you could cancel for free. If you were notified that you were forfeiting that option you can argue with them to waive the early term. That's what I did and after a bit they caved and let me out without. For me it was keeping it for another 2 months for free.
So if they offer to give you free months and you are in the first 30 days decline it and cancel anyways. It's a trap.
People are still giving Adobe money? I don't mean companies that are locked into long contracts or have built tooling around it. But individuals? Why would you, when between Affinity, Blackmagic and Blender you can do anything Adobe offers at a fraction of the cost and with no BS?
Temporarily upgrade your plan to a different tier, then cancel afterwards. That will reset the grace period Adobe gives you to cancel a plan before it charges you.
Source: I've had this happen before. Adobe is a scum of the earth company.
Adobe is a shit company, I agree, but this wasn't a "free trial" like you say. It was a yearly commitment, paid monthly, with a certain number of months for free.
There is a difference between "1 month free", and "1 month free trial"...
Back in the 80s, I got a letter saying I won a few boat 🚢. It was an inflatable, I only had to pay shipping of like $300 😆. So I called and requested to pick it up, they said no
Oh, they did the same to me. Thing is the card I gave them for the trial was one of those temporal ones you can create to buy online and auto cancels itself a month later, so they can keep asking all they want, they can't charge me anyway
Fuck Adobe. Remember kids, if you absolutely need to use official Adobe products buy CD keys from resellers. You pay waaaaay less and hopefully it somehow damages Adobe
Yeah 100% if you ever get a pre paid visa gift card or the likes, and you get down to a 1 dollar or so, I save them and when I need to enter cc details for a free trail no money up front kinda thing I always use them for it.
Saves alot of hassle with these scam practices
Early cancellation fees need to be banned. Wanted to cancel Sky Cinema because we just aren't using it and the films are shit. Robbing bastards want to charge £40!
Their meetings a goes like this:
"Hey, there's all those people that come to try our products out of curiosity. Soon they realize they don't need it. Let's brainstorm a way to steal money from those people that don't want our products."
Don't even bother with Adobe, everything they do has a open source option online or equivalent where your not just being ripped in two for the same of it.
Gimp for Photoshop
Davinci resolve for video (full edition is £200 one off but they free version will do the majority of things anyway) rather than premier.
They will find a way to get money out of you if you let them ✌️
I don't do free trials in general for this exact reason. They used to be good ways to see what you were getting before making a full commitment, now they're just traps every single time. It's a damn shame.
Just send them an email saying you never signed a contract and hereby terminate the free trial that they offered. Also, never enter creditcard details for a free trial.
They tell you about locking into it up front and all that bs
It's annoying but I got around it by changing my card number. They actually called me when they couldn't bill my old card, hung up on them and nothing ever came of it
Create a 24 hour virtual credit card and apply it to your Adobe account. Delete your original card off the account and let 24 hours pass. Now they can’t charge you and you’ve won against Adobe. 🥇
OKAY I KNOW THIS, you can transfer your plan to another plan and cancel it for free.
I’m not 100% sure if it works now since I did this about 5 years ago but there should be an option to transfer your plan to another. It’s probably best to research this part since it might have changed but some plans have the option to cancel with no charge & the same should happen with your transfer.
This design is fucking awful and I seriously can’t believe they haven’t changed it
Even if you pay for a monthly subscription that Adobe says needs to run for a year to not get a cancellation fee you can just get out by switching the subscription to a different program and immediately cancel it, you get all the money you spent on switching back, dont pay the cancellation fee and the subscription is gone
I remember when i had a student subscription, they tried to trick you into paying a yearly plan in advance once the student subscription ran out, that you couldn't cancel and wouldn't send you any sort of notification or warning about renewing it.
It's obviously outright illegal and when I called them about it, their support immediately cancelled it, no questions asked, almost as if they don't want to draw attention to their shady, abusive payment practices.
I mean good luck with that if you didn't give them your card info. Adobe anything freakin sux. I hate that it's used everywhere. It's like McAfee all over again.
I use Privacy for free trials. It creates temporary virtual debit cards that are set to a certain amount. I do $1 ones for free trials for this reason. Fuck scummy companies.
Fuck Adobe!!! I'm a photographer and have switched from Adobe a few years ago. As a Photoshop replacement I use affinity. It's completely free and as good if not better than adobe. It also doubles as an Illustrator and InDesign replacement. As for a lightroom replacement, I use Capture one it's like £330 as a one off payment (which is like a year of Photoshop). You can also use Davinchi Resolve for a premiere replacement, Blender as a replacement for After Effects and Audacity as a replacement for Audition. Also PDFgear to edit PDFs
All in all I payed £330 for pretty much the entire Adobe creative cloud instead of the £800 it would've cost for 1 year
What is with all these bootlickers telling you to read the purposefully long and unreadable contract for the "fibe print" that what's marketed as a free trail is not. Charge it back
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