“Recently, however, Topaz Labs switched to a subscription-based licensing model, which I strongly dislike.”
vegidio, on news.ycombinator.com ↗
Topaz swapped your perpetual license for $39 a month; Open Photo AI swapped that for an AGPL repo that upscales just fine.
Photoshop is $22.99 a month, forever. Photon Studio does layers, masks, Liquify and PSD files on your own machine, and the bill was one cancelled Adobe subscription.
“My original post blew up after I mentioned that I spent $2,000 to implement a photoshop replacement and cancel my own Adobe subscription.”
Photo booth software wants a monthly fee, an account and a connection to print a strip of four. Open Photo Booth does the strip offline and charges you nothing.
“Most photo booth software is sold as a monthly subscription, tied to an online account, and often limited per device.”
Film looks, grain, halation and RAW edits on your own disk, with no monthly ticket to somebody's photo cloud.
“You shouldn't have to pay big tech companies expensive subscriptions to make your photos look the way you want.”
Built something because a company wanted your credit card for a feature that fits in a single file? That's spiteware. Submit it and join the hall of fame.
