So as i was going through my Creative Cloud account to check up on a few things, i stopped and looked at the list of software that i have at my fingertips. For a short moment i think about how my 18 year old self would have felt knowing what toys that lay in his future. Sure we had Dreamweaver and Photoshop back then too. But compared to the things something like Photoshop is today... It was about a step above hacking lines in to stone. But unlike some people who only can see the saturation of a crowded market and a march of technology that slowly leaves them behind i am really glad for this. Not only does it make my life a lot easier as tools get better and become more affordable, but it acts as a equalizer.
You see when i was young... Pretty much the only way to get Photoshop was to pirate the living shit out of it. Why... Cost... The product it self was aimed at a professional market and priced as such. At around 10-15.000 SEK it was not only a pipe dream, it was beyond reality. Me and others did reason that pirating it was a victim less crime. It was not like we took away sales from Adobe since we could not even buy the software even if we pooled together.
Now i like to say that this does not excuse what we did, nor does it actually creates a moral ledge for us to stand on. Now the thing was ofc that outside of Paintshop Pro, Coral Draw and Photoshop there was not much to work with. So we simply did not give a fuck. We where young and brash. Not saying that renting your software from Adobe for a few hundred a month is all that much better. But going by the price of Adobe software in the past the pack i currently have active would run me in the hundred of thousands SEK range, and that is one torture i prefer to have delivered one needle prick at the time.
Anyway... As i said it is a equalizer because today pretty much anyone can get a computer and a software package that let them work with digital art, and pretty much every smartphone have a camera good enough to at least start out as a photographer och video photographer. The gatekeepers are fading away and that in my mind is a good thing. Sure it is getting harder to stand out and it becomes much more about marketing your self and creating a brand. But at least you do not have to work with stone age tools or steal to get going. Heck you do not even have to bow down to the likes of Adobe, Free software like GIMP and the fairly cheap Clip Studio paint offer really good places to start with digital art and for video and audio there is a plethora of tools.
I look forward to see what the future holds and i wish the kids of today the best of luck as they try their own wings creating the most amazing things.
Not particularly much meat in this post, but what is a personal blog worth if one can not indulge in the fancy of thought every now and then.
Until next time
Stay safe, be kind and play fair.
Bye.
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