You may frequently hear complaints about Lightroom and Photoshop — too buggy, too slow, too bloated, too expensive — but it doesn’t seem to be putting a dent in Adobe’s performance. In fact, it’s quite the opposite as the company announced last week that it has achieved record revenues for the second fiscal quarter of this year.
As reported in a press release last week, Adobe generated $2.74 billion in the second quarter of 2019, a record for the company and a growth of 25 percent year-over-year. The success is attributed to “the explosion of creativity across the globe,” the need for companies to deliver “engaging customer experiences,” and their “strong ecosystem of partners.”
Many photographers have objected to the shift to a subscription-based model and given the complaints, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Lightroom is falling from favor in face of competition from Capture One and a growing assortment of alternatives such as ACDSee, Luminar and ON1. Photoshop is also seeing strong challenges from Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro.
Despite the anecdotal grievances, Adobe appears to be doing better than ever. Recently, photographers were angered by Adobe’s removal of Adobe’s $9.99 photography package, a move that proved to be temporary and only disappeared while the company was “running a number of tests,” according to an Adobe spokesperson.
Personally, I’m excited to see what Affinity has planned for the future. I’ve been using the beta version of Affinity Publisher over the last six months (the final version has just been released), and with the success of Affinity Photo, I’m crossing my fingers for a Lightroom alternative. Affinity appears to be focused on creating seamless integration between its various packages, now allowing image editing and vector design tools to be used in Publisher without switching applications. Creating something that works together as well as Lightroom and Photoshop — if not more so — is an exciting prospect.
Is Adobe printing money without enough care for its customers? Or is their performance proof that they are continuing to dominate the field with software that’s designed for professionals? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
I have CS and LR for free each month; instead of using squarespace I use adobe portfolio for my website hosting and they give me cs and lr for free!! Life is simple, you have to pay for web hosting no matter what. Why not use adobe portfolio?
What an interesting statement... "Company Is Making More Money Than Ever". My 1st thought is, ok, why do I or should I care? I am jealous and envious of NO company. Not loyal to anyone but my family and career, in that order. Everything to do with photography or what I need to get the shoot done are just tools. Brand loyalty doesn't make true sense because of the need for competition and that one company does not and should not make everything you need. Take Adobe, I mean, let's get serious, nothing, and I mean nothing, truly really beats Photoshop. Competes with PS? Heck yea... better than PS? Not today. To me, best use of my money goes with Lightroom and Photoshop. It used to be Aperture, sadly Apple became more of a media company. So what... That opens the doors for others to give a stab at it. Paying is not the issue, it's delivering products that are not buggy, work fast, regularly updated.
I would agree with their strategy if they would offer an option to keep the CC version if you quit subscription. Maybe with a condition that you must be subscribed at least one year.
Anyone who actually, voluntarily and literally *PAYS RANSOM MONEY FOR THEIR OWN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY*, as you do with nearly ALL the Adobe apps, you need a swift KICK IN THE HEAD and to have said head checked. You're an idiot.
By “strong ecosystem of partners” they mean "ability to leverage monopoly pricing and market power."
The thing is, in fast-changing technology driven markets, it's really hard to maintain barriers to entry because the ground keeps shifting under your feet. Generating ill will amongst your customer base will get you, inevitably, in the end.
I'm just curious, and I would never attempt this, but anyway wanted to know if this is possible or anyone has attempted this. Say you download and install Lightroom or PS and then you disconnect that computer from the internet, and use it only for downloading and editing images. How would Adobe stop you from using that software, if you were to stop paying the monthly fee of $9.99? I know someone has attempted or succeeded at this so I'm curious!
Lightroom is a dog, and now it's just an old dog.... glad I only tested it and didn't get bogged down with it. Photoshop on the other hand is something I use daily.... but I stopped at CS6. Simply couldn't see spending money on a subscription. For decades Adobe has had a problem with compatibility whenever they did updates, and those problems still linger. Last thing I want is unstable applications that I depend on. Now that I've pretty much transitioned everything from Aperture to Capture One I'm hoping there will be a day when I can do everything within Capture One. For now it's Capture One and Photoshop CS6.
I think just like you, Captureone is the best raw converter but since i have adobe for free i keep using it.
This video put me over the top. Check out the face editing at 1:48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOuTbVPSpgI