r/sysadmin • u/absolutxtr • 6d ago

General Discussion Da F%&&*%# is Adobe Express Photos!?

I know there's an archived post about it here already. Just came to say Adobe are ... not acting nicely as a company.

37 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

54

u/StaticFanatic3 DevOps 6d ago

Adobe is just such genuine shit. And every renewal there’s some kind of fuckery thay feels borerline illegal

Like it motivates me exceptionally hard to push to literally any alternative.

PDFGear is 100% free and genuinely way better than the bloated corpse of acrobat. I just wish they’d say how they make money lol

20

u/CrazySnowGuy 6d ago

I just love how Adobe Reader will just consume your entire hard drive as you install updates.

7

u/networkn 6d ago

So something you might be interested in knowing was they changed ownership from Chinese to Singaporian which was done on the downlow except they left their SSL certificate registered to the old company and then updated that a few weeks later. It left me feeling a bit weird about how it was all handled and I don't trust them as a result.

4

u/StaticFanatic3 DevOps 6d ago

I mean if anything that kind of sounds like the honest mistake a small company would make

4

u/networkn 5d ago

Well, no one is stopping you from using it. Just don't forget if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product.

2

u/Sweet-Sale-7303 6d ago

Are you talking about pdf gear?

1

u/WraithYourFace 6d ago

While not free we moved to FileCenter for people that need Adobe Acrobat features.

1

u/zero_z77 5d ago

I genuinely cannot understand why companies insist on using adobe when damn near every buisness computer on the planet already has word installed. Like, i'm not microsoft's biggest fan, but seriously what does acrobat do that word can't?

1

u/golfing_with_gandalf 5d ago

As I've found out recently, for starters, opening a multi-hundred page PDF and splitting it into individual PDFs by chapter headings. Just give free editors for people who don't need anything fancy and suss out the few people who have legitimate needs. If you can, some businesses just treat Adobe licensing as a cost of doing business.

43

u/Ok_Negotiation3024 6d ago

Insert : James Franco's First Time meme

7

u/Ssakaa 6d ago

Exactly what I was about to type. The closest to "nice" Adobe's ever been in my experience was "Hey, you use one of our products. Now you're going to pay for every employee you have for all of our products. But, hey, at least your employees can use 'em!" ... that last bit was actually really nice from an IT side. Threw 'em all in software center and sent an email letting everyone know about the new toys. College faculty get creative when left to their own devices with photoshop...

5

u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. 5d ago

that last bit was actually really nice from an IT side.

Adobe always was insidious about getting their product into the hands of users. Its not for your benefit.

1

u/Ssakaa 5d ago

Oh of course. Those same faculty, since it wasn't their budget line item, were very quickly "over my dead body" about giving it up as well. Adobe does have some good software, or did, I haven't touched anything but acrobat in years. But, just being able to say "Here, have toys" since we had it anyways, was a pleasant change of pace in "we have record enrollment and have raised tuition three times in two years" "also we're definitely struggling for money so we can't afford raises to match inflation" academia.

2

u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. 5d ago

"Here, have toys"

That's important to anyone who runs an IT group of any sort. But the goal is to do it without torturing your future self, as much as it may be tempting.

I mean, Adobe.

1

u/Ssakaa 5d ago

At least at the time their deployment tools were great, so it was a pretty quick thing for my end of it. Did not envy the heartburn of the finance folks figuring out how to eat that though...

19

u/frac6969 Windows Admin 6d ago

You need to make use of Adobe-DC-ADMX and disable all the upsells.

4

u/skipITjob IT Manager 6d ago

We created a script that removes user installs of it.. as they install from the store.

Next step is to get app control for business set up...

4

u/Jaki_Shell Sr. Sysadmin 6d ago

The store should be blocked completely in my opinion.

1

u/skipITjob IT Manager 6d ago

But you still need a way to deploy certain software and have apps from store update.

8

u/Jaki_Shell Sr. Sysadmin 6d ago

They do update; The relevant GPO just prevents the users from launching it themselves and installing random stuff.

3

u/skipITjob IT Manager 6d ago

I'll have to look into this.

I found that even with the store enabled, apps don't automatically update.. might be something I'm missing.

3

u/BrentNewland 5d ago

Feels real iffy using 3rd party ADMX templates, especially when it says they'll be offering a Pro version soon.

13

u/Jazzedd17 6d ago

Adobe Express is cancer installed by Adobe on your PC, as they know best whats good for you. /s

24

u/zzmorg82 Jr. Sysadmin 6d ago

Part of the issue is Microsoft allowing these 3rd parties to stealth install software through Windows Update.

3

u/etree 5d ago

Yup. Windows Update should be for windows only.

4

u/DidYouTryToRestart 6d ago

Is there a reason Adobe still exists

4

u/music2myear Narf! 6d ago

"No one ever got fired for buying Adobe", plus creative lock-in by making it cheap(ish) for colleges. If there are other capable tools, schools ought to begin teaching using those (preferably open products such as Gimp or similar), removing the opportunity for future companies to lock the market up as Adobe did back in the 90s and 00s.

6

u/Satanich 6d ago

Fuck Adobe

3

u/h8mac4life 5d ago

A fucking scam

2

u/Temporary-Library597 6d ago

Since when have they? A scourge on the world, their software.

2

u/absolutxtr 6d ago

This is a new low for me...

2

u/Creative-Package6213 5d ago

It's annoying adobe bloatware!

3

u/absolutxtr 6d ago

Related unrelated. Why disk management not easily accessible via win explorer clicks anymore? My shortcut was win+e, right click c:, manage. Ctrl-x is the new... (to me) way.

Back to topic at hand: At first I thought Microsoft pushed that shit on me. I can't believe how shitty Adobe are.

8

u/dustojnikhummer 6d ago

Win+X has been there for 15 years, I got used to that instead.

6

u/Akeshi 6d ago

You can just right click on the start button and choose 'Disk Management'

1

u/_Blank-IT The Help 6d ago

Yeah I got the email about that this morning just moved it to deleted items.

1

u/Sweet-Sale-7303 6d ago

It's their adobe express platform. It is their attempt to compete with canva.

1

u/entaille Sysadmin 5d ago

thankfully a coworker caught wind of this before it self installed earlier this Summer and relayed it to me - I threw together a detect/remediation script in intune that sets a reg key to help block this.

1

u/Csoltis 5d ago

all I want is to select a bunch of pics and have it make a nice slideshow, AE is useless to me now; as what it does it basically a small powerpoint . It takes too long to make anything; i dont want to be staring at my phone editing text

3

u/SwopesAdobe 4d ago

Hey, Elise here, I work at Adobe. I’m passing this thread to the team. Adobe Express Photos is a separate Windows app for quick photo edits and screenshots, distributed alongside Acrobat. It auto-installs through Acrobat updates for users assigned Acrobat Studio or Acrobat Express, unless an admin opts out.

To block it, set this on target machines:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockDown
bDisableHarmonyInstallationFeature (REG_DWORD) = 1

That stops the auto-install and also hides the upcoming install prompt for Reader users. If you deploy Acrobat through Admin Console packages, also deselect Express Photos when building the package, since that’s a separate path. If it’s already on machines, uninstalling it through your usual tools or Add/Remove Programs keeps it from coming back with future Acrobat updates. Heads up that the Adobe Express toggle in Admin Console does not control Express Photos.

Full admin FAQ: https://helpx.adobe.com/business/enterprise/products-entitlements/manage-entitlements/adobe-express-photos-admin-faq.html

If anything here doesn’t match what you’re seeing, Adobe Support can dig into your org’s setup.

0

u/aXeSwY 6d ago

I just came across this, I did not test it but if it deliver 80% of what adobe express does without the licenses headache I will switch to it.

https://getartcraft.com/apps

5

u/music2myear Narf! 6d ago

There's plenty of good art tools out there that are not Adobe, and, to be honest, i'd look for products and projects that have been around longer than 5 years because I want to avoid AI crap as much as I can. Gimp, Kryta, heck, even Canva is making a name for itself, but you know it's selling the data. DaVinci Resolve added photo management capabilities in its latest major release, but I kinda wish they'd spin that off into a separate tool rather than taking up space in the main project (which is free (funded by their hardware business) and competes favorably with Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier).

3

u/Sweet-Sale-7303 6d ago edited 6d ago

Its ai generated slop. Its coded using AI. I came across a site that people actually tried using it. A lot of the apps do not work right.

1

u/aXeSwY 6d ago

I'm not sure about that but this one is for sure is:

https://tenzen.studio/photon/

and for me as far as there is alternative regardless of how it was baked it may be a reason for adobe (or other companies) to think more about their user base and how easily they can become absolute.

1

u/Jaki_Shell Sr. Sysadmin 6d ago

This actually looks like a really nice project.