Thinking of unsubscribing Adobe Photography plan

I have been Adobe customer for around 20 years and subscriber for photography plan for maybe ten years now. I think it is a great software, probably the best. Now I am thinking of going to unsubscribe Adobe apps. I mainly use Nikon cameras and it comes with free Nikon NX Studio. Affinity suite 2 is now in trial mode and I purchased perpetual license of the Luminar Neo. I'm feeling new enthusiasm towards editing photos and creating new kind of images. Maybe I was in a rut and now I just need a break from Adobe. Things have changed in 20 years quite a bit. What I realize now is that I don't own anything from Adobe and can't use Lightroom for even a short period in case I need it for something the other software can't do. I know a few people are still using those years old Photoshop versions. I kind of miss those times when I just purchased a boxed version of Lightroom. I made the final decision to unsubscribe after watching Tony and Chelsea Northrup video on Adobe software.


I hope Adobe would make some changes to how long to subscribe etc. I use Lightroom, Photoshop & Premiere and it's also making less sense now because of competition offering a lot of good features for less money (free).

Be aware that with the perpetual license of Luminar Neo will get you the next two upgrades. After that, you will need to pay for upgrades.

Mizachs said:

I purchased perpetual license of the Luminar Neo.

Click to expand...

That will probably last for about a year, maybe two max... AFAIK Luminar has been the biggest .... artist when selling their "perpetual licenses" taking liberties on what they consider "perpetual". IIRC not a single product of theirs has yet made it to it's unencumbered third anniversary.

Miksu80 said:

I made the final decision to unsubscribe after watching Tony and Chelsea Northrup video on Adobe software.

Click to expand...

You need to consider this video as quite the hypocritical misunderstanding in which they only demonstrate their misconceptions. Adobe has only clarified their terms and services to reflect the needed rights to offer cloud services - rights which everyone without a blink of an eye would give to any hosting service... For example they need to protect themselves from content that would break the law if it were hosted on their webservers for any reason...

Mizachs said:

I have been Adobe customer for around 20 years and subscriber for photography plan for maybe ten years now. I think it is a great software, probably the best. Now I am thinking of going to unsubscribe Adobe apps. I mainly use Nikon cameras and it comes with free Nikon NX Studio. Affinity suite 2 is now in trial mode and I purchased perpetual license of the Luminar Neo. I'm feeling new enthusiasm towards editing photos and creating new kind of images. Maybe I was in a rut and now I just need a break from Adobe.

Click to expand...

Appreciate that and I would caution you as others regarding the Luminar perpetual license.

Miksu80 said:

Things have changed in 20 years quite a bit. What I realize now is that I don't own anything from Adobe and can't use Lightroom for even a short period in case I need it for something the other software can't do. I know a few people are still using those years old Photoshop versions. I kind of miss those times when I just purchased a boxed version of Lightroom. I made the final decision to unsubscribe after watching Tony and Chelsea Northrup video on Adobe software.

Click to expand...

I'm with you on every point other than the T&C issue. Never would listen to what these click baiters have to say although in this case they may be the proverbial "blind squirrels".

Miksu80 said:

I hope Adobe would make some changes to how long to subscribe etc. I use Lightroom, Photoshop & Premiere and it's also making less sense now because of competition offering a lot of good features for less money (free).

Click to expand...

Adobe has no reason to change their revenue stream as it is working, handsomely for them. As you identified, there are many other solutions everything from Adobe to manufactures' software to shareware such as DarkTable. That's what free markets bring and as a user, you can make the decision.

Now comes the flood of Adobe apologists who will claim Adobe is perfect. Adobe is #1. Any time a company becomes top dog they begin to not care about their customers.

I got a good deal on Luminar Neo. In around 8 months after cancelling Photography plan, I have paid the perpetual license back. It was only 99 € for Luminar Neo. But I'm sad to leave Adobe apps after investing a lot of time in learning how to use the software. Time for a break and see what will competition actually do for me. Also Da Vinci Resolve works great with Nikon videos. Something to look at if I cancel Premiere next year.

Mizachs said:

I got a good deal on Luminar Neo. In around 8 months after cancelling Photography plan, I have paid the perpetual license back. It was only 99 € for Luminar Neo.

Click to expand...

That's about 200 € too much... If I were you I would write off that purchase and get something more reliable, like Capture One, On One, DxO, anything but Luminar. They already have announced their next big thing and this means that Luminar and any knowledge you acquire in using it is on borrowed time (they don't have the manpower to keep two big image editors alive, they failed time and again in that endeavor)...

Edit: I pay about €80 Euro/year for the photography plan - if I don't buy a new disk drive or two in that year, then I may pay €20 for the year...

tbcass said:

Now comes the flood of Adobe apologists who will claim Adobe is perfect. Adobe is #1. Any time a company becomes top dog they begin to not care about their customers.

Click to expand...

Followed by the flood of apologists for non top dog companies. As a customer I have been treated worse by some of those than Adobe.

I'll second that comment about the click baters. Money made on sensationalism. I hope your decision is not weighted too much on that. If you subscribe to Prime they are being sued for the same thing - making it difficult to drop their subscription. I dropped them a few months ago and it was much easier than it was 5 years ago so that was a good change. Like Adobe they had no choice but to make that process easier. If found guilty I hope they both get what is coming to them.

I can see wanting a change. Sometimes that gets things going again and software has come a long way. While subscription would not have been my first choice but when I look at the big picture, I have plenty of software I own but can't use because support stopped, usually after a year. I don't want to convert to DNG to make archaic versions work, etc. So I wonder what does ownership mean or do for me. Adobe released Denoise AI during the mid year upgrade cycle. I don't recall any company will ever releasing something that big until the fall upgrade cycle and you have to pay for it if you want it. Each to their own on that one.

If Adobe ever ticks me off I have wondered about what my next steps would be. I have Canon's DPP and Affinity on my list. Affinity is v1 so I guess I'd have to upgrade to 2. There are a few others out there that I keep my eye on.

Good luck with your hunt. I hope you find something that works for you.

tbcass said:

Now comes the flood of Adobe apologists who will claim Adobe is perfect. Adobe is #1. Any time a company becomes top dog they begin to not care about their customers.

Click to expand...

The hate has been on for Adobe since they changed to a subscription model. I bought Photoshop some 20+ years ago and it cost me somewhere around $700 CAD. A year or two later a new version was released, but even with a discount for an upgrade, it was expensive, so although I would have loved to have those new features, I did without. When the next version came out I spent several hundred dollars again... and skipped the next version because...

I presume the cost was high because it costs a lot to develop and distribute big software programs like Photoshop. And revenue for Adobe probably wasn't as high as they'd hoped because many people would do what I was doing while others would simply find and use illegal copies of the software. I remember some of those people rationalizing that theft with arguments like "I wouldn't buy it at that price, so Adobe isn't losing money" or "it's their own fault for charging that much". People can justify all kinds of things when it suits them to do so, but theft is theft.

So when Adobe offered me both Photoshop AND Lightroom for slightly less than $15 CAD a month, I jumped at it and I've had no regrets. The cost is the equivalent of going out for a coffee at Starbucks a few times a month, or going out for a couple of beers with friends once a month. And for this I get really good updates to extremely powerful software several times a year. As far as I can tell, top dog or not, Adobe DOES still care about their customers, and most of the people who complain about Adobe shouldn't be using their software anyway because they either don't need it or can't be bothered learning how to use it properly.

Notice how I'm not complaining about software I don't use or don't like. I imagine other people have different needs and/or different preferences to mine. If someone else likes some other software better, that's fine. That's up to them.

So... if you don't like Adobe, fine. Get on with your life rather than whinging about it on public forums and thereby implying that you think everyone should see the world the same way you do.

ppage said:

tbcass said:

Now comes the flood of Adobe apologists who will claim Adobe is perfect. Adobe is #1. Any time a company becomes top dog they begin to not care about their customers.

Click to expand...

The hate has been on for Adobe since they changed to a subscription model. I bought Photoshop some 20+ years ago and it cost me somewhere around $700 CAD. A year or two later a new version was released, but even with a discount for an upgrade, it was expensive, so although I would have loved to have those new features, I did without. When the next version came out I spent several hundred dollars again... and skipped the next version because...

I presume the cost was high because it costs a lot to develop and distribute big software programs like Photoshop. And revenue for Adobe probably wasn't as high as they'd hoped because many people would do what I was doing while others would simply find and use illegal copies of the software. I remember some of those people rationalizing that theft with arguments like "I wouldn't buy it at that price, so Adobe isn't losing money" or "it's their own fault for charging that much". People can justify all kinds of things when it suits them to do so, but theft is theft.

So when Adobe offered me both Photoshop AND Lightroom for slightly less than $15 CAD a month, I jumped at it and I've had no regrets. The cost is the equivalent of going out for a coffee at Starbucks a few times a month, or going out for a couple of beers with friends once a month. And for this I get really good updates to extremely powerful software several times a year. As far as I can tell, top dog or not, Adobe DOES still care about their customers, and most of the people who complain about Adobe shouldn't be using their software anyway because they either don't need it or can't be bothered learning how to use it properly.

Click to expand...

I wish my friends (mostly curing team) knew what a few beers meant. Ouch. My visa bill hurts. :-D Last week we and 3 other couples went out for supper, drinks and entertainment. Blew about 18 months worth of subscription in one evening.

I'm really looking forward to fall. I'm wondering if Adobe will do a few things to Denoise AI Eric Chan pointed out in is blog. Some rumours about Sharpen AI coming out. We'll see.

Notice how I'm not complaining about software I don't use or don't like. I imagine other people have different needs and/or different preferences to mine. If someone else likes some other software better, that's fine. That's up to them.

ppage said:

So... if you don't like Adobe, fine. Get on with your life rather than whinging about it on public forums and thereby implying that you think everyone should see the world the same way you do.

Click to expand...

tbcass said:

Now comes the flood of Adobe apologists who will claim Adobe is perfect.

Click to expand...

Straw man much? No one has made any such claim. LR and PS are undeniably far cheaper, more powerful and easier to use compared to DXO, C1 and Topaz. All of which I own.

I don't care a hoot about the also rans like Affinity et al. Why would I if I can get the Photography Plan for a paltry $10 a month less what I make with Adobe Stock?

tbcass said:

Adobe is #1. Any time a company becomes top dog they begin to not care about their customers.

Click to expand...

I just can't wait for your next pearl of wisdom. You might well ask:

What happens when companies like DXO crank out version after version with few improvements? Do they provide adequate value for money or do they oh so cleverly break up normal processing functions into three or four separate products in order to churn even more money from their users? At the rate they're going, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them boarded up. The latest DXO rumor? Phone home required every 30 days...

What happens to a company like C1 when nobody can figure out what the cost of ownership is for at least a half a year between a wildly overpriced $25/mo subscription or a steep "perpetual?" license for $299 while "restructuring" and laying off half their workforce?

What happens when a company like Topaz takes four or five of their suddenly discontinued products and jams them all under one roof for $199 plus $99 Gigapixel plus frequent bug fixes, plus updates and paid upgrade offers, for which they will be nagging you each and every time you open the program?

No more for me, thanks!

All resident Adobe haters should thank the lord that Adobe is forcing the little guys you love so much to work harder and put out a more competitive product or fall by the wayside.

Zeee said:

I'll second that comment about the click baters. Money made on sensationalism. I hope your decision is not weighted too much on that. If you subscribe to Prime they are being sued for the same thing - making it difficult to drop their subscription.

Click to expand...

What is Prime?

When someone says DXO or Topaz isn't for them I just ignore it.

--
Tom

tbcass said:

Thank you for proving my point.

Click to expand...

You had a point?

Reilly Diefenbach said:

tbcass said:

Thank you for proving my point.

Click to expand...

You had a point?

Click to expand...

I didn't post that. Read what I posted.

tbcass said:

Reilly Diefenbach said:

tbcass said:

Thank you for proving my point.

Click to expand...

You had a point?

Click to expand...

I didn't post that. Read what I posted.

Click to expand...

Mmm, no thanks. Once was more than enough.

tbcass said:

Zeee said:

I'll second that comment about the click baters. Money made on sensationalism. I hope your decision is not weighted too much on that. If you subscribe to Prime they are being sued for the same thing - making it difficult to drop their subscription.

Click to expand...

What is Prime?

Click to expand...

Sorry. Amazon Prime.

I thank lord that Adobe has competition. Without alternatives Adobe fans would find themselves in MS Office circa 2000-2015 trap when Microsoft made zero improvements to the suite while enjoying $10B profits every year from this product line. Money for nothing.

Regarding Capture One I use. I bought version 10 5-6 year ago (one can check when precisely it was on November 50% off sale) and upgraded to 16.3, again in November last year at 50% off. I paid around 120 -150USD for each purchase. It makes ca. 2-3 USD a month for the past period and into the future. Who can beat the price? I considered the software complete, though not perfect, even 5 years ago. I only used MS free ICE app for panoramas (feature missing in CO at the time). What is more, I could install both versions lately on one PC ( I wanted / needed the old version due to a rare bug with printing in the new version ). I am not eligible for upgrades any more. Normal stuff. I do not care. What works works, at least till I upgrade my camera in X years or I become Al - addict / believer. Again, fair to me.

Did I regret 5, 4, 3 or 2 years ago that I could not use the latest and greatest? Well, a little. Sometimes. Luma masking, layer opacity and, more lately, panoramas for RAW or Al masking were rather big improvements for me. Do I regret not having upgraded every or every other year for an average cost of ownership of 10 USD a month (like in Adobe subs)? Not at all. I still find CO better for my needs than lightroom / PS (checked Adobe products recently on Adobe Al hype).

To sum up, there is still life outside Adobe at similar, (much) lower cost or zero cost. Competition is good. It is in Adobe's fans' best interest to have alternatives even if they believe to be in PS heaven.

ljed said:

I thank lord that Adobe has competition. Without alternatives Adobe fans would find themselves in MS Office circa 2000-2015 trap when Microsoft made zero improvements to the suite while enjoying $10B profits every year from this product line. Money for nothing.

Regarding Capture One I use. I bought version 10 5-6 year ago (one can check when precisely it was on November 50% off sale) and upgraded to 16.3, again in November last year at 50% off. I paid around 120 -150USD for each purchase. It makes ca. 2-3 USD a month for the past period and into the future. Who can beat the price? I considered the software complete, though not perfect, even 5 years ago. I only used MS free ICE app for panoramas (feature missing in CO at the time). What is more, I could install both versions lately on one PC ( I wanted / needed the old version due to a rare bug with printing in the new version ). I am not eligible for upgrades any more. Normal stuff. I do not care. What works works, at least till I upgrade my camera in X years or I become Al - addict / believer. Again, fair to me.

Did I regret 5, 4, 3 or 2 years ago that I could not use the latest and greatest? Well, a little. Sometimes. Luma masking, layer opacity and, more lately, panoramas for RAW or Al masking were rather big improvements for me. Do I regret not having upgraded every or every other year for an average cost of ownership of 10 USD a month (like in Adobe subs)? Not at all. I still find CO better for my needs than lightroom / PS (checked Adobe products recently on Adobe Al hype).

To sum up, there is still life outside Adobe at similar, (much) lower cost or zero cost. Competition is good. It is in Adobe's fans' best interest to have alternatives even if they believe to be in PS heaven.

Click to expand...

Competition is good for everyone. Two things that kept me when it went subscription. I could still store files locally and Portfolio. They also didn’t turn into a cash and just collect money for nothing. The improvements were worth every dime to me. Competition made that happen.