Creative visual software doesn’t get as much action in Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales – but don’t tune out, because it’s the only week of the year some major VJ tools get discounted. It’s a good thing, too, because with more global lockdowns looming, Earth needs visuals.
Resolume is the biggest story here, with a 50% off sale through today Monday. That includes their superb cross-platform Resolume VJ software, Arena media server, and a new entry I will review this winter – Wire, a modular companion for the others. I would never leave home without a Resolume license handy; it just winds up being essential.
Vidvox’s Black Friday sale is legendary – US$100 off everything, which drops the flagship product by a third and educational pricing by half (to US$99). Vidvox still have the most innovative and expressive VJ tool on the Mac, and the developers have contributed powerful open source tools that benefit the entire live motion developer community. And yeah, even if VJing is a hobby, you can totally expense this and save us from terrible Zoom calls.
Working in Ableton Live? The excellent Zwobot tools are the deepest available, and there’s a 30% discount on through today Monday.
MadMapper, whose laser mapping tool I wrote about recently, has a healthy 20% off sale that’s at least still good today, with code MADFRIDAY.
Luminar AI is an impressive machine learning-powered suite of visual tools. Developer Skylum says there’s something new coming next year – so if you do have use for their stuff, now you can grab a steep 60% discount and then qualify for upgrade pricing when it launches next year.
https://skylum.com/checkout/luminar-ai/special-offer
Unreal has once again made a big Black Friday sale across their Marketplace so – grab those models. (A lot of this kind of software is otherwise noticeably absent, because it’s by subscription or even free – lest my editorial aim seem unfocused, because, well, I never!)
Hey, speaking of visuals, Adobe has a whopping 60% sale on Creative Cloud subscriptions. And since invariably we wind up needing the thing, that’s good news. Now, it is limited to one year only, but … well, you didn’t hear this from me, but a) yeah that’s registered by email address (cough), and b) if you haven’t yet tried to cancel an existing CC subscription, you might try it. It’s like trying to cancel cable TV in the USA; they’ll typically start throwing incentives on you to try to keep you, in a sort of Test of How Long You Can Stand Staying On The Phone With Them.
And yes, if the music tech side intends to behave this way with subscriptions, that’s cool – just know I will personally haunt your company’s PR over it.
Anyway, I pay for it – on some discounted rate I got grandfathered on a while ago, so – have at it:
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html
I can’t end on Adobe, so now is a perfect time to say – you should also totally have a look at Affinity. Designer, Photo, and Publisher are all strong alternatives and they’re 30% off their already low prices. They don’t exactly fit this round-up – Adobe’s breadth is part of what winds us keeping invested in them – but these tools look great if you’re ready for a break and I expect there is plenty of overlap with CDM readers’ interests.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
Oh and if you need to do some screencasting, Screenflow is 20% off, too.