Ask HN: Is there a Photoshop rental service? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there a Photoshop rental service?

8 pointsbkyan21 comments

Is there a service where I could remote to a server (either Mac or Windows) with Photoshop installed where I could use it for an hour or two for several dollars or euros per hour?

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You can rent individual applications from Adobe's Creative Suite directly:

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.h...

I don't think you'll find any hourly-based software usage although that would be really interesting to see ... something like EC2-running-x-application boxes.

Thanks -- it looks like this is the only viable option for me.

>remote to a server (either Mac or Windows) with Photoshop installed where I could use it for an hour or two for several dollars or euros per hour?

Nope, against the EULA too. http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/pdfs/Photoshop_On_a_Serv...

Oh! Well, that would explain why I can't find a service like this...

Have you tried pixlr (http://pixlr.com/editor/)? It is a very scaled down version of Photoshop, but if your needs are basic it can fill your need and is free. It even has support for .psd files and can preserve layers.

Thanks for the suggestion! I just tried this with a recent PSD that a client sent me, but it came back with an error.

If you only need some hours, why you don't use 1 month trial version? http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photosho...

Unfortunately, my clients send me PSDs at random points throughout the year, so I can't squeeze my usage into a single month. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Not a service, but you can go to Kinko's which has retail locations everywhere. And they have high-end printers next to the computers.

exactly. or use Gimp.

The problem I run into when trying to use a different image editor, like Gimp, is that sometimes my clients send me PSDs with complicated photoshop layer masks/filters that come across wrong/weird in anything else.

I've used Kinko's for this in the past when I lived close to one. Unfortunately, it's kind of a long drive from where I live now, so it's not the most economical solution. Thanks for reminding me, though; I had forgotten about that as an emergency option.

Hmm, the question makes me think that rather that wanting to use such a service, the asker wants to build one, and tries to see if there are any competitors.

I get clients sending me PSDs, every once in a while, that I can't just export as-is with Wenovo PSD Viewer. It's kind of a pain to have to chase down a designer pal just to have him or her turn on/off a layer or two and export to PNG for me. I do this maybe 8-10 times a year, so it's hard to justify paying for a Photoshop license just to perform some exports.

Get Photoshop Elements then. Way cheaper.

And it's ironic that I would get downvoted for proposing this, but you can get a copy of Photoshop for free of the intertubes.

(I say, ironic, because in other threads I would get downvoted for saying that "freely sharing" commercial software should remain illegal and it doesn't matter if it's "only a copy" and "you wouldn't ever buy it anyway". Make up your minds people...).

Hmmm... I thought that was a separate product rather than a "viewer" version of Photoshop. Thanks for the tip! I'll check it out!

While I want the best deal possible, I'm not desperate enough to go the free route... ;-)

I would absolutely recommend getting Photoshop Elements. It's got most of the features of Photoshop you'd ever use, and is much cheaper. You can get it bundled with Premiere Elements for $74 on Amazon right now, in fact. In fact, I bet you'll be surprised how powerful Photoshop Elements is; I could follow many detailed Photoshop tutorials in it with no problem at all.

The only problem you might hit with Photoshop Elements is that you can't group/ungroup layers in it by default. If you need to do that much, you might want to get Elements+ (http://simplephotoshop.com/elementsplus/) as well, which is an addon that unlocks some of the hidden features of Photoshop in Photoshop Elements.

Oh, nice! This could work for me! :) Thanks for the suggestion!

No problem at all! You might want to try out a Photoshop Elements trial along with an Elements+ trial and make sure it fits the bill for what you need, but I bet it would.

Wilco!

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