Tears, Fears, Time To Shift Gears

My trusty old iMac died. I bought it back in 2006, which means it was obsolete. Which is funny because I drive a car that’s older than that.

Anyway, that’s where the tears come in.

Here’s a close up of me channeling Julie London.

Cry Me A River, baby.

Losing the old computer wasn’t so bad. I’d bought a new iMac in January. Did I have a premonition? Not really. The old iMac’s browsers were maxed out, and I could no longer access certain websites.

I was extremely lucky because I only lost the machine. A resourceful tech at my local Mac store was able to rescue the hard drive. I bought a hard drive enclosure, also known as a disk enclosure, for $30. It plugs into a USB port on my new iMac. I can access all my old files– whew!

So my old iMac biting the dust was no big deal, right?

Wrong.

That’s because it took my beloved Photoshop (version CS2) with it. I’d been using Adobe Photoshop to color and finish my work since 1997. I knew it by heart (well, almost). Version CS2 was released in 2005, and had also become obsolete. My old iMac could run it. My new iMac cannot. Cue more tears, and some icky raindrops…

I learned Photoshop thru trial and error. I had a lot invested. To suddenly lose your go-to image-editing program after almost 18 years was traumatic. How traumatic? Well, it’s the sort of thing that makes the color drain from your face…

I know what you’re thinking: why all the hand-wringing? Just buy the latest version of Photoshop and run it on your new machine– simple, right?

Yes and no. Here’s the thing: you can no longer buy Photoshop and download the program onto your computer. Adobe has switched to a subscription model. You can buy a one-year subscription to Photoshop (or any other single Adobe application) for US$239.88/year (US$19.99/month).

Having subscribed, you would now access Photoshop via “the cloud” (a shared server located somewhere in cyberspace). Photoshop would not physically reside on your computer.

I paid about $550 for Photoshop CS2 back in 2006. I had it for somewhere between 9-10 years. Let’s call it 10 to make the math easy. That works out to $55/year, or $4.60/mo.

I didn’t like the idea of paying $240/year, and having to renew the subscription every year. (Assuming no price increase, the cost of the subscription for 3 years would be: $240 x 3 = $720.)

I also didn’t like the idea of not having the program on my computer. It would make access to Photoshop dependent on my internet connection. If my internet service provider was having problems, I’d lose access to “the cloud.” No cloud, no Photoshop.

But I needed Photoshop! …or did I? Being a brave and daring fellow, here’s what I decided to do:

How’s that for coining a phrase??

I scraped together all my pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters and bought Pixelmator for $30.

Pixelmator is a graphics editing program developed specifically for the Mac OS X operating system. It’s not as elegant as Photoshop, and it lacks certain Photoshop features. But it gets the job done. I used Pixelmator to create all the illustrations in this post.

I learn best under pressure. My old computer died on Saturday, Oct. 10th. I bought Pixelmator on Monday the 12th, and accepted a big assignment the same day. The assignment was due the following Wednesday, Oct. 21st.

But that’s a story for another post… ??

Mark Armstrong is an illustrator specializing in humor, marketing, branding and social media. You can view his portfolio in slideshow format, and watch his short video 13 Reasons To Hire An Illustrator on YouTube.