Comment

Comment on photopea.com now locks out users blocking ads

lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

I am totally supporting developers wanting to make money with their product.

But the developer of Photopea has basically built a product for people who want to get rid of Adobe’s stupid subscription model and now he tries to force them to pay for his own subscription by breaking the application. That really doesn’t sit right with me.

Why would I need to pay 8€/month for image editing features that run in my browser?

It also doesn’t help that he went on Github and complained to the developers of uBlock Origin, replying with troll answers like “How can I help you?” but not wanting to accept any other answer than them allowing him to serve ads.

This guy can get rekt, in my humble opinion. I did like the product before this change, though. Does anyone know of similar image editors out there? (GIMP is terrible)

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the_q@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
GIMP isn’t terrible. You’re just used to doing things a certain way and GIMP does it differently.

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- lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s true, I was working with Photoshop many years and it’s hard to unlearn that.
  Maybe I’ll give it another chance.
  
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  - Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There’s also plugins to bring a photoshop-esque UI to GIMP if that will help with your muscle memory.
    
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    lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Oh, that’s nice! I still remember Gimpshop but it’s been dead for years. But I see now that there’s at least PhotoGIMP, that’ll really help me out.
    
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  - the_q@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    People want you get paid for their work?
    
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    SaltySalamander@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Then they should sell the product for a one-time fee, not a fucking subscription.
    
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TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I don’t really understand why you’re using ad-supported proprietary software that you’ve never paid a dime for (or given a dime to, since you use uBO), claiming that you don’t use GIMP or Krita instead because the former “is terrible” and the latter isn’t meant for cropping (a trivial, fundamental feature of the software), and then acting entitled to use the Photopea author’s own personal work with zero compensation. So you have free alternatives, refuse to do even the bare minimum to learn how to use them, and then go full “you took my only food; now I’m gonna starve” when Photopea’s author stops you from using their own site for free that they run and maintain at their own expense.

If anything, you seem ignorant and entitled, and I say that from the perspective of someone who resents digital advertising and proprietary software.

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- woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  then acting entitled to use the Photopea author’s own personal work with zero compensation.
  
  Running batch tasks on the Photopea author’s own infrastructure because Photopea is a website. Lichtmetzger wrote in a reply that he’s not using Photopea to edit a photo once in a while and now he’s bummed out (I would kinda understand that) but that he’s actually processing a big number of images on someone else’s resources.
  
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  - lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The images get processed in your own browser. The only infrastructure I’m using is the bit of Javascript and HTML I am loading when accessing the site, the rest is handled by my own machine.
    
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    woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The only infrastructure I’m using is the bit of Javascript and HTML
    
    If Photopea was so simple, you could just download the necessary parts and self-host.
    
    It’s won’t work because there is actual server-side code running, meaning you’re hogging someone else’s resources to do your commercial-grade tasks.
    
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- lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  If anything, you seem entitled and willfully ignorant
  
  I understand why people might think that. As I’ve said in another comment, it’s the attitude of the developer that mildly infuriates me. I am not against paying money for a good product and I would’ve even paid the subscription, if 1. it wasn’t so high (96€/year for a tool processing images in your own browser) and 2. he wasn’t such a dick on Github to people.
  
  I know developers need to put food on the table, but then they should at least be honest about that. Going into the uBlock Github and trolling people there while claiming you “always supported ad blockers” isn’t the right way and I am not financially supporting developers who act like this.
  
  Also, some people don’t seem to grasp that I’m not actually processing images for free on the developers’ infrastructure. The image processing is done via Javascript on my own machine. So all I’m doing is loading the website initially, it’s not like I’m taking money out of the devs’ pocket by blocking his ads. Added to that, the site worked fine for many years, why do you need to put an aggressive Adblock detection in now? It’s a cat and mouse game against uBlock and he must now he will never win this game.
  
  Of course, it’s his own tool and he can do whatever he wants with it, but it’s still shitty to do it.
  
  After all, you’re right, I’ve decided to give tools like GIMP another chance. The problem for me is that I used Photoshop for many years (that’s what I learned when I was attending art school, blame the system) and moving away to another tool like GIMP is a lot of work, because it works very differently. I learned there are plugins for easing the transition and I’ll find another tool.
  
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hedgehog@ttrpg.network ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m confused what your issue is with the dev. He seems to have posted because uBO was breaking the site for premium users and then got told “just stop monetizing effectively.” Only one reply (don’t use such an obnoxious way to insert the ad sidebar) was actually helpful, though it was at odds with part of his monetization strategy (pay for Premium to get that extra space).

If uBO devs had said “Sure, give this account premium access and we’ll check it out” and he’d refused, that would be different, but instead they said there was nothing he could do to help them and banned him from participating.

It also doesn’t seem that he’s intentionally breaking the app when uBO is in use. Rather, uBO breaks the app when ads aren’t being served and he is now detecting when this happens and serving a message about the fact.

Does anyone know of similar image editors out there that can batch-crop images in a certain aspect ratio/resolution and then export them to webp?

Not similar, but Image Magick can crop images from the cli and has webp support.

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- VerPoilu@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  He’s making it purposely hard to block the ads. The side effect of that is that it’s hard to block the ad without breaking the website itself.
  
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  - hedgehog@ttrpg.network ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The way I read it, he was making it hard to remove the empty sidebar after blocking the ads in it.
    
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- chloroken@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  It also doesn’t seem that he’s intentionally breaking the app when uBO is in use. Rather, uBO breaks the app when ads aren’t being served and he is now detecting when this happens and serving a message about the fact.
  
  I have a bridge to sell you.
  
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BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
He’s not forcing you into a subscription model, he wants you to either allow ads or go to a subscription model.

You don’t need to pay 8 Euro a month, you just need to allow the ads.

It’s not broken to prevent ad blockers, we all got used to a system that wasn’t sustainable, and now we’re seeing what is actually required for sites and apps to survive.

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- VerPoilu@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I wouldn’t mind paying a few cents, but 8€ is way more than what he could possibly get out of the ads.
  
  I wish a system like Flattr or even BAT could take off. Paying a few dollars a month to not get ads anywhere in a sustainable way seems like the way to go.
  
  (Note: I seem to remember shady stuff about the BAT token but I do not know the details. Don’t incendiate me on that).
  
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KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

GIMP is terrible, sorry

Its actually not, but if you really hate the interface then try photogimp

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- Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Believe me, the interface isn’t the problem with GIMP, and there are definitely problems.
  
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  - woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    there are definitely problems.
    
    Of course there are but the claim was that Lichtmetzger only needs to crop a bunch of images and Gimp is 100% capable of that and I say that as someone who can’t stand Gimp any longer and moved to Krita and others.
    
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    Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Alright, yeah, that’s fair, as long as those images don’t have alpha components at least.
    
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  - KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    and there are definitely problems
    
    Yeah and there are problems with all software, but the real issue with GIMP is people dont want to learn how to use it. I took the time, I changed the hotkeys, I tweaked the settings, now GIMP is my mainstay pixel pusher
    
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