My friend Jeff Tranberry is one of the great unsung heroes of the Photoshop community. After working in design & photography, he joined Adobe, did many years of testing of Photoshop & ImageReady, and most recently became Chief Customer Advocate. He tackles what’s sometimes “an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about*” on behalf of customers, all while maintaining composure during his little daughter’s medical odyssey. You can read about Jeff & his work on the Photoshop team blog.
*Okay, Cameron Crowe’s words, not Jeff’s, but always kinda great
So what exactly is the point of a post like this? That Adobe employees are tasked to convince us that the mother ship’s offerings are… what exactly? Hey, it’s software. Let’s not get too carried away. Adobe has few competitors, yes, we get that. But to become all worked up about this or that Adobe employee… what, are we ten years old that something like this makes a nanosecond of difference to us? I think not.
[I thought it would be nice to show one of the real people here who work tirelessly to answer customer questions, identify problems, and push for positive organizational changes. “Adobe” doesn’t exist; only people do. Adobe & every other corporate entity is a granfalloon. –J.]
I call on the pod person formally known as Mr Nack to refrain from such posts in the future. Sir, we simply don’t care anymore. The emotional connection with Adobe is long gone. It’s over. Dead. Kaput. Finito. You know it, we know it, why pretend?
[You’re the one still stopping by here to heckle me. Why not lead by example? –J.]
Sure, point us to a few tips here and there. But you don’t care anymore and neither do we. You’re coasting at this point. And that’s okay. But let’s all stop pretending.
[*God* do I ever hate crap like this… –J.]
Cosmo, I don’t recall ever appointing you to speak for me. Please stop the ‘we’ and ‘us’ and just speak for yourself.
Thank you.
you are pathetic…
get a life!
Please accept my sincere appology for posting in anger and implicating you personally in decisions made by Adobe management, which I feel strongly are not in the best interests of many long-time customers. Such comments are not acceptable in the realm of public discourse and I have lost the right to post here in the future. I honestly hope the Creative Cloud iniative works out for both Adobe and its customers. I had such high hopes for it when it was announced, prior to it being mandatory.
[It’s okay: I take the good with the bad. Thanks for the follow-up. A ton of people here care deeply about your happiness, and that’s why it’s (probably too) easy for me to take criticism personally. In linking to the story about Jeff I was simply trying to highlight just one of them. –J.]
Chief Customer Advocate… good joke.
you should learn at adobe what your customers want. the voices are loud enough… all over the internet.
Chief Customer Advocate what a joke title….
[Don’t get bend out of shape, John I am sure Jeff is a fine guy but until Adobe resolves the PR mess they have created in CS6 users minds this issue ain’t going away so why enflame it) and…
I wonder in the PS space, who he will be an advocate for:
Current Users (CC) or Former Users (CS6) ?
I think we all know the answer.
I’m sure Jeff’s a great guy.
Unfortunately, the layers palette in CS6 and now CC has had rather unfortunate interactions with type that corrupt files. In CS6, there was a bug that would cause text attributes for layers to do a “musical chairs” so that when the file was corrupted, when you tried to edit the layer, the text changed to the attributes of another layer. The bug was fixed, but the corrupted files weren’t. Now in Photoshop CC, there’s a new bug with text layers. If you scale text, the character tracking values show up in bizarre values (although the text looks fine). If you then later go to edit the text layer, you can’t. The text tool generates an error. You can temporarily repair a text layer my moving it up/down in the layer order. But once you finish editing, the layer will have the same problem if you come back to it later.
The CS6 bug was documented during public beta but still went out with it. CC has what what I call “live beta” so I have no idea if this bug was known before CC went live. It’s all well and good that we have a customer advocate. Perhaps there have been valiant battles behind the scenes to get critical bugs fixed before a product releases. But I can’t square the idea of file-killing bugs…not on some esoteric new feature, but on text layers…with company specialists who supposedly have my back.
Several years ago I ran into a problem and Jeff was the person who came to my rescue and solved the problem. People make software work— don’t forget who is behind the scenes. We are not in a robot/computer aware world yet and let’s hope we never are! though science fiction (which isn’t so scifi anymore) has us closer than what I would like.
35,000 folks have signed.They don’t like Adobe CC licensing.Show @Adobe how you feel. https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Another more fiscal way to show @Adobe you dont like the CC licensing scheme.http://adobe2014.tumblr.com #adobe2014
Tom, I don’t get why that Adobe2014 blog post was not updated with the figures from the latest quarterly report from Adobe.
John, thanks for deeper insight into the team. I’m surprisingly surprised (yeah, meant to write that) by some of the rhetoric here. Just wanted to say I appreciate all of the help you AND Jeff have offered us…you guys are rock stars to us in the studio!
Thanks for sharing!
Michael
adobe has lost all credibility if you ask me.
they don´t care what customers want.
all they care about is shareholder happiness.
photoshop CC is not even worth an upgrade.
all that is worth an upgrade in photoshop CC is ACR 8.
and that could be easily made available in CS6 too. but adobe forces us to rent(!) a new photoshop version to get the ACR 8 features and camera support.
[No, updated camera support is provided to CS6 as well as CC. –J.]
and they call that SUPPORT!!
all this shoulder padding from one adobe employee to another adobe employee is kind of embarrassing.
[I’m sorry I brought it up. You’re right: we’re all a bunch of lazy, coasting imbeciles. That’s why I’m typing this at 2:17am—because I just don’t care. You win. –J.]
the NEW ACR 8 features a NOT included for CS6 users.
[Correct. Adobe doesn’t provide new *features* for free to users of older versions. It does however provide bug fixes & compatibility updates to users of products currently for sale, and CS6 is currently for sale. –J.]
and camera support in ACR 8.x… ?
we will see if there will be future ACR camera support for CS6 after the current ACR 8 version.
you say there will be?
can i quote you on that?
[Please do. –J.]
or will it be the usual response from adobe… “buy (rent) a new PS version or use the free DNG converter”.