

Yeah, so it’s subscription software. If you don’t pay yearly, you can’t use it. You need to sign in to activate, just like Adobe Cloud.
I’m not running a business. I’m just a guy who takes photos.
Without answering every post individually, people asked why I don’t just switch. If you process digital photos, the edits get saved, so you can change them. It’s like a digital darkroom. I’d lose all that and be left with the unprocessed photos. Hundreds of hours. And, there’s a lot of knowledge and study that went into learning how to do it, so if I switch, I’m starting over with a new app. There are open source ones, but they’re honestly pretty bad. I tried them all.
The crack blocks the activation server in my hosts file and then patches the app to think it’s activated. You can’t update it then, but I don’t need to.
My larger question is if that type of crack is just… a risky thing to do from a system security perspective.
Like… this is a piracy forum. That’s why I’m asking here :)



Man, this was almost the answer! I didn’t even think of a VM. I’m on a Mac though, so I’d need to get a Windows VM. At that point, it descends into loony die on a hill territory (running pirated Windows software in a Mac VM to avoid a subscription) and I have to just pay them :D