Photographers today face a troubling predicament – essential software like Adobe Creative Cloud can only be accessed through expensive subscriptions plans. The era of purchasing permanent software licenses has been replaced by never-ending monthly rental payments. While companies tout this as convenient and necessary, the reality is that recurring subscriptions disproportionately squeeze photographers while padding corporate profits.
As working artists, we value reliable tools, but not at the expense of fair pricing models. There are better solutions that could meet both photographers' needs and software companies' bottom lines, but the ever-powerful dollar continues to reign brutally over the industry. Change will require our collective industry demanding it, not quietly accepting the subscription status quo. Our creativity should not be constrained by compulsory rental fees.
If you’re a photographer today, you likely pay monthly or yearly subscriptions for your essential software like Adobe Creative Cloud. The subscription model has become pervasive in the photo/video world, with companies like Adobe and now Camera Bits (makers of Photo Mechanic), and others offering their software for recurring fees rather than a one-time purchase. But while subscriptions offer certain conveniences, they are ultimately bad for photographers, financially restrictive, and a greedy ploy by software companies.
Firstly, the subscription-based pricing of major photo/video editing suites like Adobe CC and Capture One is designed to squeeze photographers for recurring revenue. Instead of paying once for software at a fair price, now you must pay a monthly “rental” fee forever, with no end in sight. Adobe CC plans start around $10/month and easily balloon to $50-60/month for professional packages. For software you could once buy permanently for a few hundred bucks, you’ll now be locked into endless payments.
This subscription model is extremely profitable for software companies (don't forget Adobe's record revenues after their subscription switch), but financially burdensome for working photographers, especially for freelancers, part-timers, or small studios operating on tight margins. What if you had a slower work month? Too bad, Adobe still collects their 60 bucks from you for software access. Considering Photoshop used to cost $600+ once and was yours permanently, today’s endless subscription fees provide terrible value. Someone paying for the full Creative Suite will eclipse that former one-time fee in less than a year.
Additionally, if you ever decide to end your photography subscription, you lose access to the software entirely. This creates major problems. Photographers typically have years of edited images saved in proprietary formats like PSD. If you end your Photoshop/Lightroom subscription, you may lose access to edit those master files. You’re then forced to keep paying Adobe forever just to access your own work! Subscriptions force loyalty and impose nasty consequences if you want to stop payments and leave. You shouldn’t be penalized for deciding a company’s software no longer meets your needs.
Another issue with subscriptions is the constant pressure to upgrade plans for added features. Companies know photographers rely on a variety of tools, so they segment important features across plans. Want animation tools? 3D rendering? Advanced panoramic stitching? Be prepared to upgrade to a more expensive plan. Before, you could buy a full-featured software version with everything you need for photography. Now, features are arbitrarily restricted to push users into more expensive subscriptions.
Again, this subscription structure is designed purely to extract maximum fees from photographers. It holds necessary features hostage unless you upgrade. And the most advanced professional tools will likely require paying even pricier rates long-term. Why should photographers be nickeled and dimed for critical software functionality?
Many argue the switch to subscriptions was necessary to fund constant software updates and cloud features. However, the pace of meaningful updates has barely increased during the subscription era. The switch was not to improve the software but to lock in recurring payments.
Thankfully, there are alternatives for photographers who reject this endless rental model. One option is seeking out software that still allows a perpetual license purchase. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are two one-time purchases with no subscriptions, and as an Affinity user, I can attest that it's really good. Similarly, Capture One Pro offers a single purchase option, albeit at a steep $300 price.
Another avenue is sticking with older software versions that you already own outright. Just because Adobe releases the latest Photoshop doesn’t make your current version obsolete. Work on that license you own indefinitely. Companies want you to feel left behind on old software to force upgrading, but stand your ground. Older Photoshop/Lightroom versions have everything most photographers need without rental payments.
Open-source creative software has also come a long way in recent years. Tools like GIMP, Darktable, and Krita offer free alternatives to subscriptions for editing and post-processing. Support their development and avoid sending cash to corporations. While not every open-source tool is ready to replace the major players yet, the options are improving constantly and worth exploring.
The problem is this predatory subscription model is unlikely to change until it impacts the bottom line of software companies. Adobe and other vendors will continue forcibly shifting users to subscriptions as long as photographers pay up. They have zero incentive to offer fair buying options when people comply with expensive rentals. For any real change to emerge, photographers must protest with their wallets.
To be clear, I don't think we'll ever walk it back entirely from this new subscription-based landscape, but the point is that many photographers have options. Embrace open-source tools created by communities, not corporations. Seek out apps with fair one-time pricing. And when all else fails, stubbornly continue using older purchased software you own indefinitely. In particular, if you're a hobbyist, ask yourself if you really need to shell out several hundred dollars a year. Take a weekend to explore open-source and one-time purchase options.
Beyond just photography software, this subscription trend has infected all kinds of industries, from streaming media to smart appliances. Consumers are increasingly forced into a "rental economy" where we make endless payments to maintain access and functionality. Corporations love this, because passive income from subscriptions is reliable and massively profitable. But for consumers already dealing with economic uncertainty, forcing more subscriptions is tone-deaf and will eventually incite pushback. Everything from your music library to your car's heated seats get locked behind recurring fees. And make no mistake, until consumers push back to the point it becomes unprofitable, subscriptions will continue to infiltrate more and more areas. That's the only reason BMW rethought those heated seats.
In the case of creative software, though, many photographers and artists still have agency. Many well-known tools remain entrenched in the industry, but not unbeatable. Realistically speaking, I think that the record profits seen from subscriptions show that collective action to reverse the tide might not be possible, at least at the moment, but you, the individual, should make an informed decision about your budget and needs without blindly accepting that monthly rate.
The next time you see that charge on your credit card, maybe take a few hours to look at what other options are out there and how much you could save. And that doesn't just go for photography software. As streaming service prices skyrocket, maybe check out your local library (they often have free streaming platforms as well). Paying for a monthly video game pass? How many games do you really play? Maybe buy one or two at a time, then recoup your costs by selling them when you're done. We, as consumers, have been gradually lulled into this subscription-based economy, and it's time we wake up and re-evaluate how much of it we really need.
Great article, I whole heartedly agree with you.
This is exactly why I chose Luminar AI outright purchase, before the subscription based model of Luminar Neo, 1 time payment and it does everything I need.
I used to have Photoshop on subscription and realized how much I was paying and in the end after I cancelled the subscription, I didn't own any software, they are getting way too greedy.
Yup I just paid once for the full Luminar AI and its a great editor! Highly recommend.
Yeah it's not necessary for Adobe to make everything subscription based; the model is clearly financially driven only and has nothing to do with anything that serves customers. Adobe is a gross company.
Adobe's only program which exceeds all others is Photoshop, but you can use free or licensed software to achieve basically the same thing if you know a little bit about how the programs work. Essentially you'll have to use two or three free programs to achieve the same thing but you can do it for no money or for maybe one license which is going to be max like 150 bucks.
The only way to fix this is to kill the services that force this s*** on you.
Self-inflicted misery! And we've ALL been guilty!
Some years ago, someone suggested that a group of us should all band up together and try the whole damn lot of these programs. I started to - the rest of them didn't. I'm still going - sort of!
And I have some pretty solid conclusions, now.
First up - the "subscription" versions are pretty well all just aimed at your wallet. While you CAN get "something extra" by paying a great deal more money, the burning question is - "Is it worth it?"
Cloud storage, for a start. Hardly a year goes by without a heartrending story somewhere on the internet of a cloud storage system going bust, costing its subscribers every last bit of stuff they had stored on it. And it HAS happened to systems that were storing photo libraries for photographers. There ARE alternatives - I prefer to store my photos somewhere or somehow that's completely under my control, and there's nobody out there who can pull the plug on me & destroy the lot.
[There are heaps of sensible articles about alternative ways to securely store all your images. Suitable for EVERYONE, from large professional studios down to complete amateurs. No need to accept the first offer someone puts to you!]
What about the wonders of modern science, then? All those "features", that you can't get on less expensive systems? Well, fun for some. Once again, I prefer to be in charge of my own photography. Perfectly happy to make "adjustments" - so long as I'm the one that's doing it.
Absolutely ZERO interest in having AI take over and do it all for me. Each to their own - that's simply MY take on it. My cheque book too of course. If I want to waste money on my photography, I'd rather blow it all on a more interesting piece of glass, than somebody else's wizz-bang, nut & bolts, bells & whistles photo processing software program.
Adobe started kicking this idea around, so here's my take on Adobe. Once upon a time, I used to buy all their updates - each year, as they came out. And things progressed. Then they started to plateau - but that was around the time the subscription idea came along. Yes they DO do more now, than the last copies of their programs that I bought. But to hell with it. I have 70 or 80 programs, now - just for fun! - and I cant keep up with all their updates anyway. Some of them do stuff I don't think Adobe has ever heard of - Adobe can likely say the same about them - OK so nobody's perfect - and who cares anyway?
So here's pretty much ALL that I still get out of Adobe.
Screen colour - it's a nice "grey card" soft grey, pretty well perfect for making the adjustments. Quite a lot of the other programs are way too dark, and it's hard to tell what on earth you're doing. TICK!
Pure laziness - but I still use PhotoShop to size my images - simply because I've been doing it ever since I started doing my own digital processing and I have yet to be bothered looking for an alternative.
SOMETIMES - adjusting light/shade or contrast. See grey card comment.
SOMETIMES - adjusting colour/hue. But not always, because they have a limited colour range and it isn't always flexible enough.
Heaps of stuff flies straight past Adobe - not even interested in exploring what they have to offer, any longer - long ago gave up on them. Example - DxO PhotoLab & ViewPoint and (now) RAW. Affinity Photo (OMG - you should have seen the last attempt I made to use Adobe's panorama program - I hope you guys on the subscription model have been given something even slightly more practical). Capture One. Topaz. On and on.
The thing that continues to amaze me most, is when I go onto the internet and Google to find some specific post processing function. It ALWAYS turns up about ten paragraphs about Adobe, and then peters out, before you can find what you're looking for.
If as photographers we continue to let this happen, then we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Don't blame Adobe for all of it - they're just trying to make a living, like everyone else. Their ideas don't suit me, but I'm not egotistical enough to suggest that means I'm right or they're wrong. We just have different ideas, and that's perfectly normal, for two different people.
But I do feel sorry for all those millions of 'togs out there, who've never explored "what else" is out there. I use other programs for most of my work, because they suit ME better.
And I stay in complete control of my "spend", too. Which helps me to be able to buy what I want, for my photography - instead of merely being able to pay for something someone else wants to flog to me.
There are basically two halves of a successful photograph. You capture the image with your camera and then develop and edit the picture on your computer. We were basically forced into renting the computer software. How would you guys feel about being forced to rent your camera and lighting equipment by subscription? If you're a professional you may already do so and you just pass the cost to your client or accept lower margins. For the rest of you, how would you feel if you couldn't buy your camera and lenses outright and were forced to subscribe to a camera service?
Someone offered the comment about pirated copies . . . And that is just simply bull.
The subscription model, or let's call it what it really is, legalized rape by corporations, is being adopted by the automotive world too. I am not talking about things like OnStar, but basic functions like a heated seat, radio, etc, and soon to be followed by opening windows no doubt, and maybe for a few dollars extra per try, a motor that might start.
The legalized rape already exists in the media area . . . Netflix and others are continually diluting or diminishing services and jacking up prices and everytime they take something away on top of the price hike.
They have all seen what a fantastic money making ploy "subscription" is . . . give very little, sometimes nothing, and take everything
Here you cry about recurring monthly fees. On the other hand I frequently see how-tos about ps, lr and whatever commercial software. So you support being adducted. An kind of comparison between the commercial stuff and free capable sw happens once a year. A how-to even more rare. My perception is you are fine with paying on a high frequency a tiny sum.
SW Industry stated with the rental model. I work in white goods industry and see a trend also there to a rental business model.
For photographers, change to such a model too? Usage of an photograph for 1 month with an option to prolong. It will be funny...
I never went down the Adobe route.
There have always been choices out there. If down the line you realise you made a bad choice for your circumstances don't blame the company or its business model that you now believe you were unwise in choosing.
There are still choices out there. The usually free software from your camera manufacturer is a reasonable starting point. If it isn't, that's another poor choice you made.
Bitching about "Woe is me! Look what the company I've chosen to do business with is now doing to me!" is as useless as your original decision making.
Make another decision and move on, hopefully a little wiser.
Oh come on! This old chestnut? I just do not get the whinging and complaints. What is the Adobe photographers subscription (PS/LR/LR/Bridge) a year? A decent filter? You will spend way more on a decent bag, much, much more on just one lens. What? Do you want it for free? Adobe and all these other companies need to employ people to deliver these excellent products to us. So what if they make a bit of money. I use PS/Bridge and LR everyday in my business and I would be way more less efficient in my delivery to clients if I didn't have access to their software. If you're not a working photographer, the professional software suites are CLEARLY NOT aimed at you. Just get over it and download something else
Exactly! I was just about to post the same thing. Okay, gang, look in your camera bag or where ever you store your equipment. Add up the receipts. And after that, complain about Adobe's cost for a year's worth of freely upgraded software. This is like complaining about paying a 2 dollar fee to use ANOTHER BANK'S ATM. How many here walk into a coffee shop daily and drop 5 bucks for a cup of coffee? After the caffeine hit is gone, all that's left is waste water.
This is about Adobe making money and little to do about the cost. A little over a hundred dollars a year is a statistical blip for most of us relative to what we spend on photography. I just bought ONE ink cartridge for my P800....$85 CDN and didn't even blink. It's part of my photography costs.
If you prefer other software, that's fine. It's a reasonable explanation. But to stop using Adobe because of the relatively minor cost? Really?
You make the assumption we all have a bag full of expensive cameras and lenses and can afford to pay a subscription. I only have one camera and lens, which is fine for my photography and I own a copy of Capture One Sony which cost me £150. I don't have the money to pay for a subscription (or risk losing it all if I can no longer pay it) and I would like to buy the latest standalone version of Capture One but it is just unaffordable for me at this current time.
An excellent article. Many years ago I upgraded to Adobe's CS3 Creative Suite, but found the extra features of subsequent upgrades were, to me, not worth the high cost.
The move to a subscription model was entirely for Adobe's benefit, otherwise they would continue to offer one-time purchases for small businesses who needed their software but couldn't justify the monthly cost in perpetuity. By now I also distrusted Adobe's ethics and worried that if I went the subscription route then they could increase prices on me and I would have to pay whatever they asked or lose access to all I had created with their software.
It's a shame I would have continued to upgrade from time to time as features came out that would benefit my business, but I will not have my work held hostage to Adobe's profits.
You don't "have to" subscribe as the author claims. The problem is people want to have their cake and eat it. And the companies know how to push our fomo buttons.
If users vote with their feet, business practices will change. I paid €90 for LR6 having paid €60 for LR4. With an effective price of €144 thereafter every year forever, that got a big FU from me. I just stuck with LR6 and was happy to discover Capture One later when I wasn't happy with how LR was working with my Fuji files. I wasn't the only one to abandon Adobe, but it could afford to lose a significant % of users and still make huge profits (check out their share price) as the changes amounted to a stealth price hike of 300% for anyone that upgraded every two years. There was fury at the move then, no doubt by those same people defending it to the hilt. They would need to lose more than half their user base to reconsider.
Over the next five years I purchased three perpetual capture one licences, but it was a free choice, I could have made do with one and been happy. The three perpetual licences all together cost me €340, and affinity photo cost me €25 for a perpetual license for Photoshop type work. I paid €365, when I could have lined Adobe's pockets with €720. To think I could have just paid €120 over this period.
Now capture one has increased prices and called a halt to feature upgrades during the license period which has annoyed many, and it also introduced a subscription model as an alternative. That it stopped feature upgrades for license holders made sense in that context as there was no longer a release schedule and with a subscription model, some feature upgrades could now be significant. There were rarely nay decent mid-release ones anyway. And that's the incentive to subscribe.
So yes, the price hikes are annoying. But I also remember when Photoshop would cost €500. I could have taken out a new perpetual license of capture one for €210 this month. In the end I decided to subscribe for 5 years, at which point I will take the free licence my loyalty discount will have earned. And I'll stick with that for 3 years or more. At this point I'm using their model to ride the AI wave of developments. So I'm the one taking advantage rather than the company. Doing this will work out cheaper than taking out a new subscription every two years like I do now, and cheaper than a LR subscription. And if my finances are hit I can stop subscribing at any time and still have access to my capture one 23 perpetual license. Just like I still have LR6.
When Adobe launched the subscription model, after ditching Adobe I bought Adobe shares. So if you are aggressively defending Adobe, thank you, you have paid for all my photo editing costs for the next 20 years.
And capture one isn't the only ship in town offering perpetual licenses.
But people are lazy and millennials and later are far less patient, used to instant gratification whether free or on credit. And have less disposable income, more able to self justify 1 Banana now, over 5 bananas later. And these are the generations Adobe is targeting, dominate YouTube, and troll any internet forum with bias confirmation and tribalism. So we have the corporations, shills, fanboys and the internet and big data all pushing us in one direction.
Rather than moaning about LR not offering both the latest features now AND on a perpetual license basis, just move to another software that isn't subscription only. It's like moaning your BMW isn't an Audi but continuing to lease your BMW anyway.
And one more really annoying thing about being a (Adobe-)subscriber... The customers are being used as beta-testers! The amount of bugs on new Adobe applications is insane. One thing I've learned years ago is to not be amongst the first to update Adobe apps as it's like begging for problems.
Hi there. As a pensioner with a fixed income, I have to be surprised at the whining about these subscription models. It seems dishonest to me when I consider another factor in photography: Gear! Which of you needs a medium format Fujifilm GFX? Or a Sony alpha 9II just because it has a “global shutter”? Or more simply... who switched to mirrorless without asking and was that really necessary? How many spent more on new hardware this year than on a subscription? There will certainly be some professionals who need such devices (GFX or Sony a9II), but most photographers don't. Nevertheless, a lot of money is spent on it. Without complaining 🙂
I've been an Adobe and ON1 subscriber for years. But, as I'm getting close to retirement, I'll need to reconsider Photography has been so much of my life, that I'll continue with the Adobe subscription at the very least (the cost is about what I'd spend for a single restaurant meal). I shoot with both the Fuji GFX 100S and the Nikon Z8.
Here's an interesting concept. You own the gear you paid for. When you sell it and get % of that money back, that money is yours too. Adobe owns you, and has you paying to beta test it's software, and defending it online for what amounted to an egregious price hike. For a lightroom user that upgraded every 2 years - 300% price increase. But some can't see the wood for the trees and just think $10 is cheaper than $150.
When you spend $1000 on a lens in 2020, it is yours forever, unless you break it or sell it. No ownership fees to pay otherwise you are locked out from using it. I still own my LR6 license. It's mine. I can still use it 10 years later. I don't need to log in online within certain time frames. I don't have to randomly re-enter my license key.
When I sell my $1000 lens for $400 10 years later, I'm down 60% but still have access to all the images I took with it. With my x100v I sold it for $700 more than I paid. When you stop paying for adobe after 10 years you are $1200 down and have nothing to show for it. You can't access your raw edits, just turn jpegs you exported.
A golden cage is still a cage.
As I have said in another reply here, you are assuming all photographers own expensive equipment. I own very little photography gear, in fact an A7III and a Voigtlander prime lens - total cost around £2199 (A7III was bought with cashback). It took me a good few years to be able to save up for my gear. My standalone copy of Capture One Sony cost me £150. Also, don't forget some photographers will shoot with secondhand gear to save on costs. We are not all blessed with the sort of money to buy multiple cameras and expensive £1000+ lenses and certainly don't all have the bottomless funds to keep paying for a subscription. It's also worth mentioning when that subscription software increases in price, the end users simply have no choice but to pay up or they lose the software and have to look elsewhere.
I purchased my first PC in 1991. I am a retired physician. So, I have been around computers for awhile and have a fair amount of software I have collected over the years including from the DOS days. Some was updateable as OS changes evolved. Some became extinct.
I am now retired and photography is just a hobby including drone photography and video. I now find myself stuck because I can't justify a sub just for a hobby. I know I am not alone.
I had enough being jerked around by Adobe in various ways before they even went to subscription model. I use RawTherapee and the GIMP for photo processing now. They're free to download and install, free to use. Incidentally, my most used camera is a Sony A7 that I got off eBay years ago, still going strong.
Yep, we're not all rich photographers with the luxury to be able to pay for a subscription.
End users tend to hate the subscription model, but companies love it; it makes it easier to justify new hires (because of the relatively stable income stream and not having to need to wait for a new release to keep things going). Software developer wages are quite high these days.
I have no problem with the subscription model, however, with so many companies in so many industries going to this model (not just photography, think Netflix, etc.) it becomes harder to keep up with them and many pay for unused subscriptions; I've had a subscription to KelbyOne that I keep meaning to cancel, but keep forgetting ... so there goes another $20 in the next billing cycle.
But you just said $10 was nothing. Are you starting to see the big picture?
At any point Adobe could double the price again, in fact they just hiked prices. As could any number of subscriptions. Your car lease rate could go up. A subscriber is nothing but a slave to the industry they defend.
With some industries it makes sense. If you anyway spend $100 a year on music for "assets" that depreciate heavily to pretty much nothing mostly, paying a bit more for a music subscription makes a lot of sense. Unlimited access for you to explore and save money on those dodgy CDs with the one good song, steady revenue for the company. But you can also still buy the CD if you are a casual listener.
Same with netflix. You view TV shows and movies, who doesn't. But Netflix is a non-essential luxury, you don't need to watch those shows. You can pick up the breaking bad box set if that's what you want to do. They don't have you by the balls if you stop paying, and anyone with an ounce of common sense would finish their favourite show before stopping or taking a pause.
For photographers, editing software is essential, even for a hobbyist. Having access not only to the RAWs but the data from your edits is essential. Adobe has arranged it so you can't stop. You can't one day say, listen Adobe I've given you $5k over the years, I just want a perpetual license going forward thank you. You have to switch and Adobe relies on the fact that most people won't.
You pick and choose what is important to you. For me, photography has always been a passion, not a hobby, so I choose products based upon that passion.
"Our creativity should not be constrained by compulsory rental fees." - how are these related? If anything, there is a school of thought (I don't necessarily agree with it, though) that the more constraints you have, the more creative you get to overcome them.
And then if anyone, being even a small business, sees 10, 30, or say, 50$/month as a serious problem, then something is really really wrong with that business, and their energy should be spent on increasing the revenue instead of complaining about Adobe.
I tried switching to affinity photo but it's missing a lot of photoshop's features (for example masks on groups). Most of my existing psd files won't load and affinity are disinterested in fixing so I'm back to being adobe's hostage
Here you go:
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/how-to-use-compound-masks-in-affin...)%2F%20alt%20(Win).
Never had an issue with any PSD files with the original affinity photo, and affinity photo 2 has addressed thr stability issues I was having, with crashes more or less a thing of the past.
€45 for the new affinity. The last one was supported for free for many years and cost me only €25. Happy to upgrade and support their continued relevance.
Give photo 2 a go, they've got 40% discount running at the moment.
I do not understand the grumbling about subscription fees. Nobody sane ever said photography is inexpensive.
I'm an amatuer photographer. My subscriptions for the Adobe photographer's plan, Luminar Neo, and cloud storage for photos are not very burdensome. When I started my photography hobby, the ongoing cost of film, paper, and darkroom chemicals was roughly equal to the subscriptions, adjusting for inflation. And the [amortized] cost of my gear far exceeds that.
Your gear is yours to keep forever with out continued license fees. Buy used and depreciation is minimised also. It's not at all comparable.
A NAS and HDD for secondary back up off-site is yours forever also. But not everyone is literate with how that all works, so I can see why some would pay for a cloud option - but even then it should only be the secondary back-up.
Don't go back to the 80s though, compare to 10 10 years ago when LR6 cost about €80 and was yours forever. And maybe you would reward Adobe for any upgrades two or three years later with an upgrade. This was the advantage of digital over analogue... those big cost savings.
Subscribing for something you would otherwise never have is a solid value proposition and keeps a cashflow for the company and access to customers it might never have had. Switching to a subscription model that disguised what amounted to a several hundred % price hike for many you would think no sane person would do.
Ah yes, a "greedy ploy by software companies".
"...software you could once buy permanently for a few hundred bucks..." Yes, but "permanent" is relative. Regardless of new features, in my experience, just keeping your operating system reasonably up to date required you to buy the new "permanent" version every 2-3 years anyway. The subscription model is still more expensive, it's true, but the old way was far from "permanent" in practical terms.
Most of the people I see complain about this in online forums are advanced amateurs ("prosumers") with multiple pro-spec bodies and lenses listed in their profiles. If the software is really too expensive, sell one of your "L" lenses and use the proceeds to cover your monthly subscription for the next five or ten years.
Obviously, each of us needs to decide what our threshold is. I use the least expensive CC photography plan ($10/month), which I admit is more expensive than the distributed cost of the old "permanent" LR versions spread out over 2-3 years. But in real terms, it's not going to crimp my lifestyle. But I'm a still photo hobbyist. Folks who need the $60 "all apps" plan definitely have more sophisticated needs than I do, but they were probably also spending a ton of money on the software with "permanent" licenses.
I normally appreciate Alex Cooke's insights, but this piece would have more credibility, in my view, if he hadn't also posted a "which should you buy" video comparing a $6000 and $9500 lens just a few hours later (https://fstoppers.com/reviews/which-these-premium-lenses-better-demandin...).
I just did a quick tour of some of the members that have a negative view of Adobe's business model. There are a few that list their equipment. I must say, there's some well equipped shooters here with a large sums of money in their camera bags. Don't get me wrong. I love that photographers have a bunch of stuff because they are supporting the camera companies. Camera companies, like software companies, have to earn a profit to stay viable. That's why I'm an advocate of this; when the new stuff comes out and you have the budget, buy it! Will it make you a better photographer? No, but it makes what you do easier and it keeps the camera companies afloat.
All things are relative. It's Adobe making money that irks many. Fine.....as long as you have the same opinion about Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fuji, etc when you plop down $3000 for a new body or $3000 for a new 50 f1.2.
I see no problem paying $10 a month. I spent more than that at Starbucks every month, and get a lot more out of it.
It's funny that the pitchforks were out when the change to subscription was was announced by Adobe. And rightly so. At the time people were less tribalistic and most were smart enough to see it for what it was - a huge price hike, especially for those hobbyists/amateurs that were happy with Lightroom and upgrading every 2-3 years. For this large base of people the changes represented a 300-500% price hike. Some left, others let Adobe walk over them.
Previously the price difference between LR and PS was about 5:1. Roughly. So subscribing makes sense for those that use Photoshop a lot. For those mostly in LR, they should realise they are heavily subsidising PS users. Pay more get more... tough if you were happy with less.
There are a lot of Adobe users with Stockholm syndrome for sure.
It seems that one factor in the discussion is how serious someone is. Lightroom is sufficient for a lot of people and there are those that are more price sensitive. I don't see that the price of the plan is a huge one, prices on everything go up every year.
It's all relative those though. Prices do indeed go up, up LR 6 cost me €60 I think as an upgrade. Today's money probably about €90. So roughly 6x cheaper based on my upgrade tendancies. Or to put it another way, the price of a decent lens.
Photography is expensive enough, it's easy to just say in the scheme of things it's not much. Bigger picture it's really a lot. For you and I maybe. But for most these days it's yet another service to pay for, TV, music, cloud, printer ink, prime... Suddenly you're looking at over €100 a month.
For some that €12 a month is a big deal. Others its a principal thing, death by a thousand cuts is still death. Although they put prices up, I like how capture one has approached the subscription model: yes you can subscribe and there are some additional benefits to that, but you can also choose to take out a perpetual license and upgrade in 5 years or more. I don't like being treated like a cash-cow, and paying to be a beta tester to boot!
There really is no such thing as bug free software, as it's impossible to determine all the ways that people will use the software. Writing software is an expensive, time consuming process and it's not surprising, given the short release cycles, that bugs get introduced. Regression testing is time consuming and often turned over to new developers.
I experience that in my work also, the head honchos insisting the programmers push out software that hasn't been adequately testing, and when the walls start falling in and I spend half my time dealing with customer complaints, detailing error logs, meetings with pogrammers , it's it doesn't matter because my cost as an employee comes out of a different pot and officially the rollout is done on time and to budget.
You mention short release cycles, but that's a cause not a consequence and can easily be fixed: have a beta-tester programme and don't rush to release. When releases were once per year as a new version we got finished versions, with those features not yet ready rolled over to a subsequent release although firmware updates did also happen. Lightroom really needs building again from the ground up... but subscription model is an incentive to offer the bare minimum to keep existing users from leaving.
I agree about subscription software being a rip off.
I have for years now have to subscribe to Auto desk for REVIT and Autocad.
Huge cost and with REVIT it is not bacward compatible. If done in 2024 version 2023 cannot open it. If you open a 2022 drawing in 2024 REVIT it is updayed to 2024 and unusable by 2022.
There are other options but not automatic.
I despise Photoshop being subscription. Luckily PSE is still a one time purchase for now.
Alex, I think you nailed it with Capture One and Affinity Photo. AP is more than adequate for most photographers, and Capture One tends to have at least one 40-50% off sale for a perpetual license each year, making it reasonable to buy only when the feature updates suit your needs. Imo, subscriptions are only necessary when cloud services are involved - Adobe has the market cornered in this space, but it's hardly essential for many working professionals and hobbyists.
I had capture one 23, and didn't want to pay for a license just to get the latest AI masking, as I would literally be paying for the same software again + one feature. That's always been the case with capture one and why I tended to upgrade every two years, to benefit from a more significant upgrade. But now since there are no "releases" it's just one ever evolving software, you don't get in-release feature updates for the next 12 months. So, to benefit from two full releases of features, I would now have to update every 3 years. And those AI tools were mighty tempting.
Crunched the numbers over an 8 year period here were my options:
1. Upgrade every two years like before. Cost = €1116
2. Subscribe for 5 years, take the free perpetual license I'm entitled to and stick with that for three years = €1007
For what it's worth over the same period LR would cost me €1152
I went through other configurations, but because the way the capture one loyalty bonuses work, these two options make the most sense. Upgrading every three years only works out about €50 less than upgrading every two years got example.
So while I am absolutely against a subscription only model, and the price isn't that different I think done right it gives options. The main issue for me is not being able to stop. That's not consumer choice, but enslavement. Even if you chose to upgrade every year with capture one, you could still choose not to before.
I chose option 2 in the end to take advantage of the AI updates over the next few years, but also because it works out cheaper than subscribing every 2 years which I was doing before (when the prices were admittedly cheaper).
Photographers these days don't know how good they have it. Subscriptions aren't always great for everyone but for a lot of people they are much better value than the old purchase/upgrade lump-sum pricing model.
In the mid-90s I worked in print publishing. We used a variety of software suites to produce the books and magazines that we were creating. Illustrator, Photoshop, Quark Xpress, and many others. Each of those cost up to a thousand mid-1990s dollars to buy. When a new version came out, you had to buy the new version for another one thousand mid-1990s dollars. For each and every application suite. Often the choice to upgrade wasn't optional if you wanted to maintain compatibility with vendors, even if you didn't really care for the new features or performance upgrades.
If someone had told mid-1990s me that I could have access to everything Adobe made including product upgrades and new versions for $60 a month, then mid-1990s me would have punched a baby to get that kind of deal.
These days I don't need all of those apps, like a lot of people here in the comments, I have the Photography plan with Lightroom and PS. I get Lightroom CC as well even though I only use Lightroom Classic, and I don't care about the trivial amount of cloud storage that comes with the plan, but even with those unecessary extras, it's far and away the best value $15 I spend on photography each month. Also, if I want to do something that needs a different product, I can add that to my plan for a month and then drop it after. No need to pay the full price for fully-functional, latest version, industry standard software. just $20-ish to access it for the month that I need it for.
I don't want to go back to the days of having to find a thousand dollars to start working on something new, or have a version that's still supported by my OS and the vendor.
When you star the article by labeling the Adobe suite as "essential," you're setting yourself up for a failing argument. In fact, Adobe is not at all essential for photographers, but they've done a great job of convincing a lot of you that they are. We have jpeg and tif as standard interchange formats.
In the free software world, we value sovereignty, and work to produce tools that, while maybe not as polished, are powerful and quite usable if you're willing to put in a little bit of time to understand them. Several supportive communities exist to help you along the way.
I've never used lightroom and when I look at it now, it looks too simple. Not enough control for my tastes.
I agree with the author and this post. I'm a hobbyist. I don't make money with my hobby. Cameras and gear are expensive enough. I used to use the Adobe suite, but I've not subscribed for a while now. And using free alternatives simply don't give the same results. As a result? My hobby has fallen to the wayside. I don't do any editing or post anymore. I shoot photos primarily from my average phone.
This subscription concept extends to other software. I *had* permanent licenses to a cad program, but their activation servers no longer recognize my old version. Again, I don't use it for work anymore, so I can no longer justifying new pricing. Exact same story with autodesk 3ds max. I had a "permanent" license from 12 years ago, no longer supported.
Corporate greed and bloat. It hurts all of us.
This is absolutely correct. I'm paying good money right now because sports photography is hobby of mine. But I'm dropping Adobe after I retire because it's too expensive. There goes my hobby. Maxpreps is eat up with advertisement and a disaster to try to follow your school of choice. It's time to punt and get everything back into perspective. By the way, I still take film pictures and enjoy it better than digital.
Let's be honest, subscription based softwares is making cracked software more relevant for many people especially students and beginning artists. They use adobe softwares in school or because it's one of the most prevalent therefore one that has the most resource to solve problems so they continue with it but can't afford it so they crack it.
I used Photoshop CS6 for a little over ten years and refused to get on the subscription train. When my computer died I was forced to subscribe to the Photoshop/Lightroom plan as the newer OS would not support CS6. I think these tech companies do consort to force people to their will. At the same time, if you are a full or part time commercial photographer and can't afford $9.99 a month you need to rethink your business plan. Recently Adobe has added some features which help considerably in the editing process so improvements in the software efficiency can be very beneficial to someone in business. To the casual user it's probably better in the long run to purchase software. There are quite a few excellent options out there and you don't really need Photoshop unless you do complicated composites or require a specific tool other software doesn't offer. If you are a Fujifilm user, Adobe doesn't handle the files well so when I use my Fuji gear I process the RAWS through DXO PhotoLab and they come out beautifully. They all end up dinging you in the end though since most software companies have a built-in obsolescence.
I agree to some extent about subscriptions. The ONLY one I personally would exclude is actually Adobes subscription options that is beyond a bargain.
Here in Sweden you had to pay close to 1400usd for just the standalone Photoshop and close to 5600usd for the full suite so not exactly anything anyone would cough up unless you made a ton of money as a professional retoucher/photographer.
Today you pay 10usd monthly or 120usd/year, so it doesn't matter how you cut the cake it would be cheaper nor money well spent to buy the standalone version for 700usd.
Using a software for 6-7 years without any real upgrades to Photoshop isn't really the professional approach or you never needed Photoshop in the first place.
In comparison I much prefer my 120usd/year for LR/Photoshop/bridge/fonts etc and fresh version upgrades yearly on to of the regular upgrades.
So the outrage about Adobe CC prices are truly absurd to me and I'm a hobbyist/some paid work that literally skips one lunch a month and pay happily for my CC subscription.
On the other hand, capture one pro could really benefit from losing their price plan. It's absurd for what you get.
Retouch4me plugins? 149usd a piece so that roughly translates to 1000usd for a good workflow and THAT is a price strategy that doesn't interest me as a non professional, off they priced it at 3-5usd/monthly I probably pay that happily to speed up my projects.
So to sum it up, yes some subscriptions are way to pricey. Adobe CC? Biggest bargain subscription on the internet!
Include the history of Adobe prices(double the prices for European prices)
Photoshop 1.0 $895
Photoshop CS3 $649
Photoshop CS4 $699
Photoshop CS5 $699 ($999 for the CS5 extended)
Photoshop CS6 $699 ($999 for the CS5 extended)
Photoshop CC $297 / year
Photoshop CC 2020 $285.48 / year
Photoshop 2021 $636 / year
Photoshop 2022 $239.88 / year (Billed Upfront)
Except you certainly didn't upgrade every iteration, or your employer was paying. Hobbyists used elements, pirated copies or open source like GIMP and if paying mostly would pay once and never or rarely upgrade.
Adobe's model makes sense for heavy Photoshop users. It absolutely shafts predominantly LR users, who effectively subsidize Photoshop.
Affinity photo 2 is more than enough for what a lot, if not most people need that aren't working professionally and need good team/client integration. It's €45 right now. Not every year, but once. And Serif supported the last version very well.
£240 every year for ever, or one off payment of a similar amount for a perpetual license from those editors still offering this, an extra €45 for affinity for the next few years and a new lens, camera, or holiday with the cash saved.
For professionals that absolutely need Photoshop, and who can write it off as a business expense or have the employer pay anyway, not so much a bargain as ultra convenient. The price is more expensive than upgrading every three years.
i'll be the odd man out here. I think 10-15.00 a month for Adobes creative cloud photography pack is a really good deal. (photoshop and lightroom) before this you might get a little upgrade and a few new features every few years.. and you'd really pay for it. Wasnt photoshop like 400.00? and lightroom 200.00? stand alone? These days every quarter you get some new features that really do make photo editing easer. There are alternatives. These companies need money to stay competitive, pay employees and have a product. the reoccuring subscription model allows them to plan long term.
I think its worth it.