Some good alternatives on iOS: Canva, RAW Power, and VITA. And the Photos clean up feature.
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Adobe Takes 40% Off Creative Cloud Pro for Your First Year
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When I installed Adobe Creative Cloud on my Mac something was eating the CPU constantly. Pegged at 100% anytime the machine was operating. I did some digging and some module Adobe installed was the culprit. I stopped the module, found the location, and removed the module. What the module was doing I have no idea. But the apps (PS and LR) seem to work without issue.
Adobe is one of those companies that thinks they know what is best for everyone. Their software will take over a machine.
Currently there is an issue with Lightroom on MacOS 26. Adobe says it is Apple's problem. Apple says it is Adobe's problem. Yeh, I know beta software. But it points out the issue that Adobe never thinks they are incorrect. Their snobbish attitude and complete disdain for their customers is the benchmark for the software industry.
Adobe is one of those companies that thinks they know what is best for everyone. Their software will take over a machine.
Currently there is an issue with Lightroom on MacOS 26. Adobe says it is Apple's problem. Apple says it is Adobe's problem. Yeh, I know beta software. But it points out the issue that Adobe never thinks they are incorrect. Their snobbish attitude and complete disdain for their customers is the benchmark for the software industry.
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No way I would subscribe. Even with the discount.
Maybe adobe felt companies don’t have any other choice so they can get away with abusive terms and would be fine. For personal users it’s whatever.
Different credit card is tough though I’d argue. But still possible.
Not only that, the price goes up year after year. Even the student version of the subscription goes up prices through the roof after just 1 year. It’s highway robbery.
Fortunately my photoshop plan was started quite a while ago so I could still pay the “cheap” subscription price to keep it going, otherwise I’d be hell bent on alternatives already.
I reeeeally hope Apple's endgame with their Pixelmator/Photomator acquisition is a successor to Aperture.
Having an Adobe subscription is part of my CODB, it's like insurance, a business license, the cost of registering my work with the US trademark office, etc. So my clients pay for my subscription.
More worrisome to me than the cost is Adobe doing more and more with AI, and last year they released T&C that said they could access users' files for "machine learning" until a massive backlash forced them to "clarify" their policies.
Yeah, if you didn't mean to do it, you wouldn't have written it into the T&C. So though I use their products as they are the industry standard, I don't trust the company any longer.
More worrisome to me than the cost is Adobe doing more and more with AI, and last year they released T&C that said they could access users' files for "machine learning" until a massive backlash forced them to "clarify" their policies.
Yeah, if you didn't mean to do it, you wouldn't have written it into the T&C. So though I use their products as they are the industry standard, I don't trust the company any longer.
The first time they bundled the apps together as a suite was back in the early 2000s.
I bought the first Adobe Creative Suite back around 2004 - and I paid over $1000.
I think you're comparing against a single app price.
Huh? Which suite?
The Adobe Master Collection... which was all the Adobe apps... was $2,600 to purchase.
Hell... Photoshop by itself was $700 to purchase.
Yeah you could use them for the rest of your life without paying another dime... but then you'd be stuck using that same version for life. You'd never get any new features or improvements unless you paid for an upgrade.
The upgrade for Master Collection was $1,200 and the upgrade for Photoshop was $300... after you initially spent $2,600 or $700 upfront.
Fun fact... Adobe products were always expensive. They were for professionals who were making money... not casual users. Moms and dads weren't spending $700 for Photoshop or $2,600 for Master Collection.
Yes I know people hate subscriptions. BUT... I'd rather make smaller monthly payments and get continual updates... than spend $2,600 upfront and $1,200 every couple years for updates. And I do.
I was a former Adobe pirate. I learned Photoshop in college in the 90s and 2000s.
But as an adult I'm a happy subscriber to Adobe Creative Cloud. Because I make money with it.
💲🙂
I switched to Affinity 10 years ago...best decision ever.
I cancelled my Adobe plan about a year ago. I was paying about $10- a month to use Lightroom. It seems like $41- a month is a lot to pay unless you are a professional photographer.
What I did when I subscribed was to find which country had the cheapest monthly subscription cost. So I created an Adobe account where I said I was in Turkey, and paid $5/month for Photoshop. I'd use my VPN to give me a Turkish IP address, and paid for the subscription using a credit card that didn't charge me a foreign transaction fee.
I'm currently sifting through the options for personal photo editing software and sadly, Adobe isn't on the list. I'd love to give Lightroom a go, but I'm subscriptioned out.
Some cards do have a feature where you can generate separate card numbers that get charged to the same card. It's designed for shady merchants you don't trust
Curious to hear how that works over time. My hunch is that they would track you whenever you go online with any of the Creative Cloud stuff active. Or do you just use that VPN 100% of the time?
What I haven’t seen people saying is that we all thought we were subscribed to the premier product - I.e. the best. Now Adobe splits their offering leaving customers needing to go up another tier even though subscriptions already increased this year, at least in the UK. After 25 years I jumped and haven’t looked back. It’s been a good discipline to learn new software and work hard at the change.
Adobe, as well as many other software companies, need to offer a free tier for hobbyists. Those of us who make a living from it can subsidize it, since they’ll never go back to perpetual licensing anyway. Even Autodesk offers Fusion 360 for free, and their AutoCAD pricing schemes are nonsensical.
I'm with you up to a point. I have gotten a lot of great (billable) use out of Illustrator and InDesign, and the feature sets of these apps is just incredibly deep. Every time I think I know a lot about InDesign, I discover some arcane thing I didn't know it could do. Same with Illustrator.
But I resent that there's no choice in the matter. And because Adobe is essentially a monopoly in certain industries, they're not so answerable to the users. They can do stuff like muck up the interface with unwanted AI popups, and the user doesn't have much recourse.
My team at work was using their file syncing service for a while, but it was terribly designed and very neglected and unreliable, and Adobe had zero incentive to make it better since it was a bundled feature. It's not like we could just stop subscribing because our business literally depends on that software. In fact, if they jacked the price up 100% in a year we would have no choice but to keep paying.
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I am not so rich to waste money on Adobe. Everyone is different tho. Maybe some people actually need to batch edit thousands of photos in Lightroom, idk. I prefer much cheaper alternatives like Pixelmator or Photomator, or even simply edit in Apple Photos. Hopefully it has all the needed tools for editing a shot, as well as finally iPhones take photos that don’t even need any editing at all. As for the dedicated cameras, if one learns manual mode then the jpegs would be so good that you won’t even need to do anything in post
Creative Suite 5.5 was $299 if you were a student or had a parent who was a teacher/academic (which is how I was able to secure it for that price) and I believe that was the Master Collection.
Let's see, $60/month for 12 months = $720.
FCP X or Davinci Resolve $299
Motion/Compressor $100
Affinity Suite with photos, designer, and publisher $165 (including iPad versions)
Add Logic Pro for $199
Apple Photos: $0 (for DAM, admittedly, it is not LR)
You could add Luminar, On1, or similar for a more powerful RAW developer if so inclined. You could add Capture One, but then the price goes up a lot.
$763 And you are set for years. Heck, FCP has been massively upgraded since that $299 back when it first rolled out.
And no monthly fees. Better yet, buy it through the app store and you get no licensing headaches.
FCP X or Davinci Resolve $299
Motion/Compressor $100
Affinity Suite with photos, designer, and publisher $165 (including iPad versions)
Add Logic Pro for $199
Apple Photos: $0 (for DAM, admittedly, it is not LR)
You could add Luminar, On1, or similar for a more powerful RAW developer if so inclined. You could add Capture One, but then the price goes up a lot.
$763 And you are set for years. Heck, FCP has been massively upgraded since that $299 back when it first rolled out.
And no monthly fees. Better yet, buy it through the app store and you get no licensing headaches.
