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Adobe Tests Doubling the Price of Photography Plan With Photoshop and Lightroom
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Surely, there must be a difference between a lens and a license! I can’t put my finger on it. It’s got to do something with ice?
I never bothered going to the Adobe site but now that you show this graphic, I remember seeing this when I was signing up for the plan. I specifically chose the 20GB plan because of the price increase.
This "story" was reported to PetaPixel by a reader and the Verge picked it up and now it's here (and everywhere). Unless there's information missing, I think this has been a complete misunderstanding.
Why don’t Adobe just sell their software for a one time fee that grants you a license for life? You know, how software used to be sold, and like how people want to pay for their software?
Adobe is a massive beast, whose tentacles spread through a much broader area than the Creative Cloud.
Actually, DaVinci Resolve and Fusion are solid competitors for Premiere/After Effects. For those who are Mac only, Final Cut Pro X and Motion are also reasonable alternatives.
https://affinity.serif.com/ has their Photo and Designer app which are awesome.
Last time I uninstalled Adobe, it took me an entire day just to remove it from the system. Uninstaller didn’t work, and that ****** company left files ***** everywhere on my computer.
Luckily for me, this is just a hobby and not my profession, so any lost feature between Affinity and Adobe don’t matter much.
Last time I uninstalled Adobe, it took me an entire day just to remove it from the system. Uninstaller didn’t work, and that ****** company left files ***** everywhere on my computer.
Luckily for me, this is just a hobby and not my profession, so any lost feature between Affinity and Adobe don’t matter much.
Photoshop stand-alone used to cost $699 ($349 for education pricing), Lightroom 6 $149.
$9.99 per month or $119.88 per year with the Photography Plan, gave a false sense of the true cost of the apps, and made it more accessible for many. Even at double the price for the subscription, it’s still much more affordable than it used to be. Especially for those professionals that used to want to keep up with the programs (for keeping their industry skills relevant).
Specialized / professional software is expensive. Even 20 years ago, Autocad was like $400, which is why pirated versions were so popular. Kaledo by Lectra, a CAD program used by fashion designers for textile design etc, is $4,000. With Kaledo, if a person wants to stay employable they have to keep up with each major version released, so that’s essentially an annual cost. It makes sense that the tools used to generate income cost relative to the income they generate.
$9.99 per month or $119.88 per year with the Photography Plan, gave a false sense of the true cost of the apps, and made it more accessible for many. Even at double the price for the subscription, it’s still much more affordable than it used to be. Especially for those professionals that used to want to keep up with the programs (for keeping their industry skills relevant).
Specialized / professional software is expensive. Even 20 years ago, Autocad was like $400, which is why pirated versions were so popular. Kaledo by Lectra, a CAD program used by fashion designers for textile design etc, is $4,000. With Kaledo, if a person wants to stay employable they have to keep up with each major version released, so that’s essentially an annual cost. It makes sense that the tools used to generate income cost relative to the income they generate.
Your description is valid for a small part of photographers. Either pro or just a rich one. Most photographers don’t spend as you described. Also big difference between one time purchase and subscription.
[doublepost=1556863884][/doublepost]I am a hobby photographer and I don’t even use LR every week, so difficult to justify any subscription. Doubling the price? No thanks.
Btw I don’t need PS but LR CC is poor for mass edit and export, so still need LR Classic.
First, the $9.99 Photography plan is still available. Second, new pricing doesn’t affect existing users. All existing users are under a membership contract which also locks in the price and cannot be affected. That obligatory contract is how Adobe was able to offer two programs for $9.99 in the first place. It was essentially subsidized and breaking the contract was akin to breaking a 2 year phone contract, subject to a penalty charge.
The point of the matter is, existing users under contract aren’t affected. Maybe when the contract expires then they might be, but Adobe has yet to actually do away with the $9.99 photography plan cost. It’s still on the site.
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The penalty for canceling a month to month Adobe Photography Plan is you have to pay 50% of the remaining year term, upon canceling. The photography plan is an annual contract, which locks you in for a year at a fixed price.
https://www.adobe.com/legal/subscription-terms.html
So anyone who is on the photography plan cannot be affected by a price hike, until their subscription expires. Ultimately most are reacting to something that does not actually affect them.
https://www.adobe.com/legal/subscription-terms.html
So anyone who is on the photography plan cannot be affected by a price hike, until their subscription expires. Ultimately most are reacting to something that does not actually affect them.
As their are a number of alternative applications with (for most use cases) perfect compatibility, such as Affinity Photo, that is no longer true.
You'd be surprised. I just recently had several independent discussions with a couple of professional art designers who all are sick to death of Adobe's crap. The term "extertion scheme" was used more than once. They all independently confirmed that more and more agencies are jumping ship, mostly switching to Affinity.
Art designers, and photography professionals are not equal.
An art designer could profit from designs using a pencil and a sheet of paper. Their tools are a matter of preference rather than industry standard. Granted, some art designers indeed are limited to industry standards, and those people are not switching to Affinity. Pro photographers who are used to Lightroom Classic, will continue to use it even in the case of a price hike. Many pros moved over to Capture One for shoots (so they are already away from the Adobe standard for core work), but they still pay for and use Lightroom classic for organization if that’s what they are used to. Pro photographers will not skip a beat.
They will, quietly, until you pay attention to your bank account statement.
My student plan started from $15.99/mo, then raised to $25.99, then $31.99, within a year. Then, one day, I saw a whopping $51.99/mo. I was like m..k? Immediately cancelled and re-subbed to the same plan so that the price was $28.99/mo. Borderline ridiculous.
The Cost of Doing Business fo Adobe taking on an additional user is close to zero. Not so true for other hardwares
Your situation and this situation are completely different. You were not in an annual contract like all other people on the Adobe Photography Plan are. Therefore you were subject to price changes, anyone on an annual contract (all Photography Plan people are) and paying month to month, their fees are locked in for the duration of their contract.
https://www.adobe.com/legal/subscription-terms.html
Your contract terms literally conveys that you are subject to price changes. See the difference between “Month to month” then scroll down and look at “Annual contract, paid monthly” which is what the Photography Plan is. Only renewal rates at the end of the year contract can be changed with the photography plan.
I agree in principle with this, but actually I might reinterpret this to say that the cost of a software title should be equivalent or proportional to the value it provides its users—not just monetary value in terms of income, but also value in terms of time saved. There are a lot of utilities I use out there for the Mac that have cumulatively saved hours and perhaps days of my time. I don't mind paying a premium for apps that offer me that kind of value, even though it may be difficult to translate that into additional income earned in the real world.
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We’re getting subscriptioned to death.
Life is full of "subscriptions." How many things to do you "own" or use on a regular basis for which you pay a monthly premium or maintenance fee? "Subscriptions" make expensive things more readily available to those who could not afford to buy them outright.
Of course, subscription software is not like making installment payments on a car or a home. You will never "own" the software to which you subscribe, ever. Of course, even one-time software purchases never conferred "ownership" in the past, either, as I recall—you were merely given the right to use the software in perpetuity once you purchased it. The difference is not usually apparent in real life, though.
Indeed, I agree completely with your entire reply. In general, in life many do not understand the value of what they have, they don’t appreciate it (perhaps in part due to not realizing the full extent of its capabilities, or fully utilizing its potential contributions, even if “it” is a person under appreciated). In this case I think those who have a problem with the price increase, aren’t serious users and are unable to truly appreciate it. $9.99 was an okay price to pay for something they didn’t use or rely on every day, but $19.99 becomes too much for something casual.
Those that seriously use it, are more likely to / probably understand its value.
Possibly the term "art designer" was too specific, as a good portion of the people I talked to are in fact also doing photography professionally. All of them pointed out that they have pretty much zero difficulties of exchanging files with Photoshop and Illustrator users, as Serif's applications are more than compatible enough to the "industry standards".
The only two Adobe apps they usually admittedly have not replaced (yet) are Indesign (but many were full of praise for the Affinity Publisher beta) and Lightroom. But in the latter case, several people I spoke with specifically mentioned that they have not updated to the subscription based recent version.
