PAYING ADOBE PHOTOGRAPHY SUBSCRIPTION Vs PAYING YEARLY UPDATE for Other EXCELLENT ALTERNATIVES

[Sourov]

! Apologies for the Capital Captions !

Bonjour,

Which one is Cheaper?

Paying Yearly Adobe Subscription fee 9.99€ (LR Ps)

Or paying Yearly updates for DXO photoLab, Nick Collection , ON1 , or NEO / Topaz Suite , C1?

Personally, All I want is to stick to one or two softwares max and learn in and out. Each softwares has is weak points. But, I am happy to live with it.

Like every car has a weaker side . And most of us can only afford One.

I use Silkypix Pro 11 and Affinity Photo. However, I did a trial with LR and it's so easy!! But I invested so much in to affinity photo and Silkypix Gives the best image quality in my opinion.

Point is, instead of using multiple softwares with could be time consuming, Isn't it better to stick with 1 or 2?

If so, what that would be for you?

--
Sourov Deb

 

[Annie Ng]

LR certainly isn't 'bad', it just is not the best converter. It isn't the cheapest either.

So going back to the original question. In what sense is LrC not the best converter?

--
Annie (She / her)
https://www.instagram.com/smallpotato.photography
https://www.smallpotato.photography

 

[Bob Janes]

LR certainly isn't 'bad', it just is not the best converter. It isn't the cheapest either.

So going back to the original question. In what sense is LrC not the best converter?

Just to clarify - ACR is the converter that LR uses by default.

I get better results with DXO and C1 conversion software than I did with LR/ACR - DXO does great stuff with noise reduction, while C1 cooperate with manufacturers to improve their demosaicing.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone put ACR forward as the best on the market. Your question is a bit like asking 'In what way is the Kia Picanto not the best car'.

 

[José B]

That sounds like you are using DXO as the raw converter rather than ACR. When used with a plug in like DXO Pure Raw, you get the LR interface (which is nice) combined with a better (IMHO) converter. You are paying for two products though.

The problem is with my iPhone 13 Pro Max. Only LrC supports properly the iPhone ProRAW DNG files. DxO does not support my iPhone and ON1 2023 is not handling well as the images appear too dark with it.

With iPhone 13 Pro Max, I use LrC for RAW conversion because DxO does not support my iPhone. In this case, would it be bad?

Hi Anne,

How do you transfer your iPhone 13 Pro Max RAW images to your desktop/Mac?

I ordered the 14 Pro Max. I have Amazon Photos. I haven't shot RAW on my iPhone Xs thus wondering about the workflow with the upcoming phone. My guess is to transfer the RAW images to Amazon Photos. Then from Amazon Photos I can just download the images on my PC and edit them via Adobe Photoshop.

José

 

[Annie Ng]

Just to clarify - ACR is the converter that LR uses by default.

I get better results with DXO and C1 conversion software than I did with LR/ACR - DXO does great stuff with noise reduction, while C1 cooperate with manufacturers to improve their demosaicing.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone put ACR forward as the best on the market. Your question is a bit like asking 'In what way is the Kia Picanto not the best car'.

It seems I get what you mean. It depends on the situation.

For me, DxO features best in class lens correction, together with DeepPRIME, it wins over LrC by a wide margin. In these senses, DxO is better than LrC. I agree.

Unfortunately these tools cannot be used for my iPhone photography. I can only rely on the cheapest choice which is LrC.

 

[Annie Ng]

Hi Anne,

How do you transfer your iPhone 13 Pro Max RAW images to your desktop/Mac?

I ordered the 14 Pro Max. I have Amazon Photos. I haven't shot RAW on my iPhone Xs thus wondering about the workflow with the upcoming phone. My guess is to transfer the RAW images to Amazon Photos. Then from Amazon Photos I can just download the images on my PC and edit them via Adobe Photoshop.

José

I use Google Photos, then download to PC via Chrome. I think the workflow should be similar with Amazon Photos.

 

[José B]

Hi Anne,

How do you transfer your iPhone 13 Pro Max RAW images to your desktop/Mac?

I ordered the 14 Pro Max. I have Amazon Photos. I haven't shot RAW on my iPhone Xs thus wondering about the workflow with the upcoming phone. My guess is to transfer the RAW images to Amazon Photos. Then from Amazon Photos I can just download the images on my PC and edit them via Adobe Photoshop.

José

I use Google Photos, then download to PC via Chrome. I think the workflow should be similar with Amazon Photos.

Hi Anne, many thanks for quick reply! Ok cool, can't wait to shoot with the Pro Max.

Cheers,

José

 

[Annie Ng]

Hi Anne, many thanks for quick reply! Ok cool, can't wait to shoot with the Pro Max.

Cheers,

José

Enjoy your new iPhone :-D

 

[Zeee]

I don't pay for yearly updates to software. I pay once and continue using it for a long time.

I'm curious as to what a long time means to you. How long do you go before an upgrade? 5 years would seem long to me. Every second not so much. I guess getting a new camera would change that a bit. I could not go 5 years without getting some of the new tech coming out. Big leaps don't happen every year but still.

When PS and LR were stand alone's were standalone I upgraded every year. It was more expensive back then. I also upgraded Silkypix, Bible Pro and a few others I used. I commented in another post. I spend thousands on camera gear so trying to save $50 a year is the least of my worries. I'm not saying I'm right, it's just what I do. It's part of the hobby experience. Did I really need the all the Canon xxD's starting with 20D and and all the D series. Not really. Didn't really need and ML and ML lenses.

Others just don't care about it enough to upgrade which is fine.

 

[keiththom]

I love Lightroom and photoshop and think the $9.99 a month price is reasonable. Especially with all the updates that come along with it. I'd rather do this than pay Hundreds of dollars for Photoshop and then have to pay again for updates. Adobe is the photography software all other are measured against.

 

[Zeee]

I love Lightroom and photoshop and think the $9.99 a month price is reasonable. Especially with all the updates that come along with it. I'd rather do this than pay Hundreds of dollars for Photoshop and then have to pay again for updates. Adobe is the photography software all other are measured against.

To me a big draw is LrC, PS and Portfolio. I once paid Zenfolio $150 a year alone. That plan was overkill for me anyway.

I looked at it recently. The base plan is now $8 a month. It was on sale for $4 a month but then it goes back to $8 after year. Not sure if that sale is still on but it does not matter anyway. I'm happy with my product and I'm not in the mood to rebuild my website.

I'm a little disappointed with the lack of NR AI but the masks made up for it. I have On1 NN, Topaz and PureRaw 1.

I had DeNoise and Sharpen AI. Topaz gave me a good deal on Gigapixel which gave me Photo AI for free and all 4 apps get support for a year. I've settled with Topaz. NN is very good and the new Tack Sharp plugin will be good but I'm tired of bouncing around. PureRaw is good for the tougher jobs and I'll see what v3 has to offer next year.

 

[Lokito]

I just wrote a new thread about his same dilemma, kissing the ring of Adobe.

Got to pay to play...

Save yourself the headaches and go with what you know, what works, and enjoy!

 

[José B]

Hi Anne, many thanks for quick reply! Ok cool, can't wait to shoot with the Pro Max.

Cheers,

José

Enjoy your new iPhone :-D

Thanks! I'm looking forward to taking some portraits with it. My main complaint with the Xs was I couldn't back up far enough to use the Portrait mode whenever I take a full body shot and blur the background. From a video I've seen of the 14 Pro Max the user was able to do so. Moreover, I can use the Depth Blur of Adobe Neural filter. I've also downloaded the Focos software just in case I want to edit the image on my iPhone.

 

[Pixel8888]

Adobe spend 20 billion dollars on figma. I think, sooner or later all Adobe apps will be web-based and online. It will save a lot of money instead of developing separate versions for Apple, Windows, Android, iPad and other platforms.

 

[Zeee]

Adobe spend 20 billion dollars on figma. I think, sooner or later all Adobe apps will be web-based and online. It will save a lot of money instead of developing separate versions for Apple, Windows, Android, iPad and other platforms.

They said web based 6 years ago and yet Adobe still puts work into LrC. Still waiting. All apps are on your device. Storage is in the cloud.

 

[Pixel8888]

Adobe spend 20 billion dollars on figma. I think, sooner or later all Adobe apps will be web-based and online. It will save a lot of money instead of developing separate versions for Apple, Windows, Android, iPad and other platforms.

They said web based 6 years ago and yet Adobe still puts work into LrC. Still waiting. All apps are on your device. Storage is in the cloud.

 

[Zeee]

Adobe spend 20 billion dollars on figma. I think, sooner or later all Adobe apps will be web-based and online. It will save a lot of money instead of developing separate versions for Apple, Windows, Android, iPad and other platforms.

They said web based 6 years ago and yet Adobe still puts work into LrC. Still waiting. All apps are on your device. Storage is in the cloud.

I think that's why they bought figma, to aquire the know how. 20 billion dollars is a lot of money. And their shareholders want a return of invest.

We will see where this goes. As long as I have the option to store files locally.

 

[jfriend00]

When Adobe went subscription, I decided to stick with LR6 for awhile and then switched to Capture One perpetual license with Affinity Photo for occasionally pixel editing. I've since bought a couple annual upgrades and used Capture One Pro successfully. I like it as a RAW image editor.

At the time, Capture One had a nice editing advantage with layers and better selection using color that made a big productivity difference in my editing. But, this is no longer the case. The only main editing advantages I found in C1 have been surpassed by LR's latest layering advancements (AI generated selections of subject, background, face, eyes, skin, etc...).

Meanwhile, I've grown frustrated with some basic things lacking in Capture One. For example, Capture One basically doesn't support videos in their catalogs. While you can insert a video in the catalog, you can't really do anything with it. You can't keyword it, can't sort if by metadata, can't use it in collections, can't export it with a collection, etc... So, you pretty much can't use any of the cataloging features with videos. I am not a big video shooter, but I will shoot some wildlife videos mixed in with my stills and I need to keep track of them all in the same place since they're all related to the same trip/shoot/etc...

Meanwhile, videos are first class members of a LR catalog that can be tagged, sorted, used in collections, exported, etc...

Then, Capture One announced version C23 for 2023 and it doesn't really carry anything that I'm interested in, so I definitely won't be buying that perpetual license upgrade.

I'm concerned that the trajectory of development for things I care about in Capture One has slowed and is falling behind LR and since any choice like this is a longer term choice (because of the long term development of a library of RAW adjustments that don't easily move between programs), I'm beginning to think that Lightroom is just the safer choice these days and for the next dozen years. We know LR will be around for a long time. We know the company is financially successful. We know they will continue to actively develop it. They appear to be out-developing Capture One with new features.

The only thing I'm slightly worried about that we don't know is whether Adobe will maintain a photography plan at $9.95/mo. If you go with LR, invest in the whole catalog, get several years of RAW photos in their system and then they raise the price to $20/mo, you're kind of hooked at that point if you want to keep using your current catalog for editing new images. This is the rub of the subscription model. You have to keep paying in order to keep using your current tools (opposite of perpetual licenses).

 

[Zeee]

When Adobe went subscription, I decided to stick with LR6 for awhile and then switched to Capture One perpetual license with Affinity Photo for occasionally pixel editing. I've since bought a couple annual upgrades and used Capture One Pro successfully. I like it as a RAW image editor.

At the time, Capture One had a nice editing advantage with layers and better selection using color that made a big productivity difference in my editing. But, this is no longer the case. The only main editing advantages I found in C1 have been surpassed by LR's latest layering advancements (AI generated selections of subject, background, face, eyes, skin, etc...).

Meanwhile, I've grown frustrated with some basic things lacking in Capture One. For example, Capture One basically doesn't support videos in their catalogs. While you can insert a video in the catalog, you can't really do anything with it. You can't keyword it, can't sort if by metadata, can't use it in collections, can't export it with a collection, etc... So, you pretty much can't use any of the cataloging features with videos. I am not a big video shooter, but I will shoot some wildlife videos mixed in with my stills and I need to keep track of them all in the same place since they're all related to the same trip/shoot/etc...

Meanwhile, videos are first class members of a LR catalog that can be tagged, sorted, used in collections, exported, etc...

Then, Capture One announced version C23 for 2023 and it doesn't really carry anything that I'm interested in, so I definitely won't be buying that perpetual license upgrade.

I'm concerned that the trajectory of development for things I care about in Capture One has slowed and is falling behind LR and since any choice like this is a longer term choice (because of the long term development of a library of RAW adjustments that don't easily move between programs), I'm beginning to think that Lightroom is just the safer choice these days and for the next dozen years. We know LR will be around for a long time. We know the company is financially successful. We know they will continue to actively develop it. They appear to be out-developing Capture One with new features.

The only thing I'm slightly worried about that we don't know is whether Adobe will maintain a photography plan at $9.95/mo. If you go with LR, invest in the whole catalog, get several years of RAW photos in their system and then they raise the price to $20/mo, you're kind of hooked at that point if you want to keep using your current catalog for editing new images. This is the rub of the subscription model. You have to keep paying in order to keep using your current tools (opposite of perpetual licenses).

The only reason it may double is if they drop the 20GB and only offer 1TB. Has not happened in 6 years. Not even a price increase. I think there would be a lot id people dropping Adobe, me included if they did.

 

[jfriend00]

The only thing I'm slightly worried about that we don't know is whether Adobe will maintain a photography plan at $9.95/mo. If you go with LR, invest in the whole catalog, get several years of RAW photos in their system and then they raise the price to $20/mo, you're kind of hooked at that point if you want to keep using your current catalog for editing new images. This is the rub of the subscription model. You have to keep paying in order to keep using your current tools (opposite of perpetual licenses).

The only reason it may double is if they drop the 20GB and only offer 1TB. Has not happened in 6 years. Not even a price increase. I think there would be a lot id people dropping Adobe, me included if they did.

No price increase in 6 years with inflation the way it is now sounds to me like a price increase is probably overdue, not evidence that it will never come. The longer there hasn't been a price increase, the more likely one will be coming.

I would agree they probably wouldn't just double it all at once, but some price increase actually seems more likely than not in the next few years. And, when you're on subscription, you either accept the price increase or you can no longer edit your catalog's images.

 

[dwight3]

The subscription model is the way of the future. I suspect you will find more and more of the software houses going that way. The subscription is good for the software house and they can pass savings along to the customer.

If a software house produces an editing program there will inevitably be updates. The software house determines whether you pay for updates or if they're included in the initial license. Some updates are major so you usually pay for a major update but you may get a discount for having a license for the previous version.

The subscription model supplies updates, major and minor, within the subscription.

So which is more expensive will depend on how often you update your software.

That makes a difference to the software house. If you purchase updates less frequently than they're available, the cash flow to the software house is unpredictable. That means the cost to produce the update is not easily covered by sales, so the price has to be higher to make updates feasible. The subscription model provides a predictable cash flow, so funding the updates is easy. The company can then charge less for the software, benefitting the customer.

LR and PS used to cost a lot. $300-600 per version (with good discounts for updating a current license). Versions came out once every year or two. LR and PS were separate programs back then, so you can see that the subscription model has really dropped the price. And now the user gets all the updates as they come out. (You don't HAVE to update, it's your choice, but you might as well because they don't cost anything more).

So, the cost of software will depend on you. Do you update to have the newest technology and features? Or do you depend on legacy software?

You do have to factor in the cost of updating your computer operating system, and how that will affect your chosen software.