You've probably never heard this in real life:
Bar customer: "I'll have a pint of that IPA."
Bartender: "Coming right up."
Bartender slides a nice, cold glass of beer to the customer who admires it, picks it up and take a long drink.
Bar customer: "Mmmm. That's great."
Bartender: "That's be $5."
The customer becomes agitated. Rears back from his bar stool, hand on hips, raging with defiance.
Bar Customer: "How dare you charge me again! I was in the bar just last week and paid the full price for my beer. Now I own it and can drink it whenever I want. Charging me AGAIN for the beer is outlandish, scurrilous. You are just a greedy person! This is outrageous! Whoever heard of paying for beer twice?"
Bartender: "Get out of my bar you cheap bastard!"
The bar customer slams the door on his way out, muttering, "I'll find a place where I can pay for my beer once and then drink forever for free."
End of story.
So, yes, if you want to use Lightroom from Adobe you'll have to pay for a monthly license. In exchange you'll get state of the art software that is continually upgraded with new features and continually made to work with a wide variety of the latest (and ever changing) raw file formats.
This cost is the equivalent of 2.5 medium sized lattes at Starbucks. For your ten bucks you can use the program as much as you want. You could rack up hundreds of hours of use for $10 in a month.
But there are howls all over the web about the fact that Adobe won't sell the program outright but requires a license. How did we get to this place?
Many, many, many people stole the software and used it for free. Even working pros who made money from their use of the software chose to steal a "pirated" copy rather than pay for it. At one point bit torrent sites were overflowing with "free" copies, used as bait to pull people to their sites.
When Adobe realized just how out of control the situation had become they felt a need to protect their enormous investment of time, money, creativity, expertise and, yes, service.
Don't like paying $10 a month for two of the world's best imaging processing applications (Photoshop and Lightroom)? You are welcome not to. But don't make Adobe out to be some sort of villain. They are protecting their property as surely as any other company would.
Wanna blame someone? Blame all the people who didn't think twice about using pirated software.
Me? I like the constant upgrades. I like a program that works with all my various camera raw files. I especially like that I get new features for no extra cost.
For the approximate cost of two and a half cups of coffee per month. Amazing.
37 comments:
Confession: it took me a while to get to this point. I'm really glad I came around, too. It's been tough to go from the days of buying a physical copy of software (is that an oxymoron?) to a subscription basis, but having continual upgrades has been a definite blessing. I just never thought about it in the beer/coffee realm.
Now, don't get me started about buying a new Nikon Z6 only to find out that my Adobe programs were outdated, partly because my iOS was outdated, and couldn't be updated because my iMac was made in 2009 . . . most expensive camera purchase I've ever made.
Hi Kirk,
If I may, I'd like to offer a different perspective. I prefer to think of it another way: if you lease a car or rent a house, you can enjoy it as long as you keep paying. But as a renter/leaser, no matter how much you pay or for how long, you never develop any equity and once you stop paying you are out of home / car. But if you buy, once you make enough payments to pay it off, you own it and can keep it for as long as it remains functional and serves your needs.
Some people like the flexibility of renting vs. the commitment of buying, but with Photoshop, there is no longer a choice. For a working pro, regular updates may be useful to have. For me as a hobbyist, regular updates are not a draw (and may even be a drawback by changing the workflow or creating a constant learning curve). I'd rather have the option to pay a la carte for a specific update that addresses a need than have to incorporate constant updates into my "workflow."
I am not particularly worried about it, though: once my current version of Photoshop (the last version before the switch to the rental model) is no longer functional on my computer, I will move on to another product that lets me buy rather than rent.
As for software theft, I agree. It is unacceptable - not only with software, but also with music and movies too.
Ken
Ken, to follow along with your house analogy... You could hire a room full of highly talented programmers, have them work for years creating a program for you to use to do all the things your current Adobe software can do and you could own that business and the intellectual property and the application. For a one time investment of millions of dollars you could fully and exclusively own your own software. Just like owning a house... But just like owning a house, YOU have to pay someone for the materials, the labor, the land and the landscaping. And guess what? Where the house is concerned you'll end up paying off the mortgage only to find that taxes have increased to the point that, in reality, the house will never be paid for.
If you hired the room full of talented programmers you'd find that you need to keep them on staff, potentially paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in order to keep updating your own personal software to work with changing operating systems and raw file format introductions.
Or, you could pay the equivalent of 2.5 decent cups of coffee per month...
As a software developer who has worked for a major business application publisher, I can say that the I'm only surprised that the subscription model took so long to arrive. The recurring revenue vs the illusion of a perpetual license is a win-win for everyone. It makes for more financially viable software publishers and provides ongoing support and refinement of the product for the consumer. It does represent an investment and a promise by the publisher, because if they don't maintain and improve the product, subscribers will leave. I agree with you completely Kirk on this. We subscribe to the entire Adobe Creative Suite and the value we get from it far outweighs the modest subscription cost. There are plenty of open source and perpetually licensed alternatives, and anyone is free to explore those instead.
Here's what I would like to see... the program Darktable (an open source Lightroom competitor) move away from the "free" model and become a workers' cooperative. I would happily support a monthly fee if I knew that the money were going to providing a decent living for workers, producing great software, and not in large part to massive profits for upper management and big shareholders.
But I do pay the Lightroom fee for now because I think it's a good deal for what I get.
I pay two software licenses to lease software for my business every year. One for software development which costs over £1k per year but is crucial to my business. I don't mind that one bit as the revenue it generates far outstrips the cost.
I also lease Office 365 for about £80 per year. Given that it used to cost over £300 to own and you upgraded every 2-3 years I am perfectly happy with that too.
I don't pay for Lightroom, but only because I have an old copy that I barely use, I simply don't do much post-processing (perhaps I should, but there are only 24 hours in the day). If I used Lightroom a lot then I really wouldn't sweat $10 a month. If I were a pro photograper I'd be laughing at how cheap it is. That's the sort of business cost that can be paid with half a morning's work.
If you want to be cheap, you can. Just deal with the fact that you can't scream at a vendor for a lower price to make your life convenient.
It is a service. With the service you pay for its use.
If you buy a product, the expectation of support and endless utility is naive.
I have an old "Blueberry" iMac. Turns on and works fine but is unsupported in virtually every meaningful way. I am not entitled to upgrades and support 'til the end of time.
Already there are yowls that earlier versions of PS cannot run on new OS's.
Cry me a river.
My first ten years use of Lightroom (including all the paid upgrades) cost me about £40 per year. I would be willing to continue paying that (inflation adjusted) for a subscription licence, though I would much prefer a perpetual licence. However Adobe will now only sell me a licence bundled with Photoshop, which is of no interest to me (or with an equally unwanted block of cloud storage) at £100 per year. I can see why I am not the only customer who does not like a 2.5 times price increase.
If I change to a subscription model then Adobe have got me by the short and curlies, and I have no fallback position or exit route when they increase the price disproportionately.
I don't see that your point about piracy of the software is relevant. Perpetual licences and subscription licence can be equally well protected with copy protection processes. It was Adobe's decision to apparently never apply any of the copy protection processes to Lightroom that were always in force for Photoshop.
I am a paying subscriber of the Lightroom/Photoshop software, and I don't think the difference between subscription and one-time paying is really that significant considering that if you weren't paying $10/month you'd be paying larger amounts once a year for upgrades (though you would have the option to NOT upgrade and continue to use your older version without paying again, as long as your computer hardware and OS software is still compatible with it). The only part of the new CC system that I don't like is the idea of hosting my photos in Adobe's cloud. For now, I deal with that by using the Lightroom Classic app instead of Lightroom CC; hopefully they'll keep the Classic version around.
Your bar analogy doesn't strike me as quite right, though. If I buy a beer, I know perfectly well I'm just buying one glass of beer, not a lifetime supply. Nobody thinks they have a right to free beer for life after buying one glass. You do, however, own the beer in that one glass, and the bar can't demand that you pay for it again. Whether you drink it in a few minutes or make it last the whole evening is up to you.
But what if you couldn't actually buy a glass of beer, but had to rent it? Instead of buying a beer for $4, you pay $0.25 to rent a glass full of beer. Three minutes later, you either give the glass back (minus whatever you've drank, obviously) or pay another $0.25 to keep drinking. Refills are free as long as you keep paying. Would you go for this "beer on the subscription plan" approach? Is it better or worse than just buying a drink for $4? Or is it just different?
I never use PS, store stuff in the cloud, or even use LR all that often but would be willing to pay $120 USD to own a new copy of LR whenever I bought a new camera that wasn't supported by the old software.
Right now I would have paid Adobe about $300 in subscription fees for software I seldom use if I had jumped on their bandwagon the last time I bought a new camera. And the recent scare about Adobe raising the subscription price to $20 per month was an eyeopener too.
Slow internet connection and the fact the work computer never, ever goes online makes for stand alone programs the choice for use. Have one for internet and the big, fast one for images and graphic arts. Anything that needs to be emailed is transferred via thumb drive with major league scanning for malware, etc before it touches the work computer.
Adobe does not work with this type of setup.
I was just outside in the rain mowing my lawn and thinking about the beer analogy and wanted to add one more comment. If I were at Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon and bought a beer I could do just about any legal thing with it that I cared to do. I could drink it slow, drink it fast, pour it out, or give it to some skinny college girl wearing short shorts and cowboy boots. I could do whatever I wanted for as long as it lasted and then I'd have to make a choice about what I wanted to do going forward. That's the way beer works and I think that's the way software should work too.
The idea of renting a refillable glass for, say, 25¢ per hour, every hour of the day and night for the rest of my life doesn't seem like a good bargain to me.
I pay for the LR/PS/Cloud, but I never use Photoshop or the Cloud (I use the Apple Cloud.) Still, It's cheap enough, as you point out, that it's not a problem. One problem I do find with subscription services, though, is that some of them want to check the Internet to make sure you're paying. If you're traveling, and you'd rather not hook into the local (and possibly corrupted) wireless connection, it can be a problem. Every time I'm in an airport, where I really don't want to hook into the wireless (after reading many warnings about this on Ars Technica and other sources) I get a note from Microsoft saying that they can't confirm my Word subscription. I've never had it shut down, but I'm pretty sure that if I traveled long enough without wireless, it would. Other than that, I have no problem with subscriptions...although it'd be nice if Adobe would separate LR and Photoshop and their Cloud, and price them separately and lower than the entire bundle, although I don't think they ever would. Why should they? They've got the hammer with a subscription, and can price it at whatever they think they need.
John Camp
Great analogy applies so well to Adobe and even image licensing in our industry !!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the thoughts
This, just a few days ago, from Adobe:
"We have recently discontinued certain older versions of Creative Cloud applications and as a result, under the terms of our agreement, you are no longer licensed to use them. Based on your preference settings, we are not able to see if you are using any of the discontinued versions.
"Please be aware that should you use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.
"Please upgrade to the latest version(s) using the instructions below. By upgrading, you will continue to receive all the value that Creative Cloud has to offer"
I do subscribe to the monthly photographer package, and have no issue with that. BUT ... I also have a paid for legally licensed LR version from a year or so before the subscription model. Is Adobe telling me that I'm not allowed to use it, because they no longer license that way? BS! That would be equivalent to Congress passing an ex post facto law.
I don't drink, so Capture One and Photoshop CS2 do everything I need to do at this point in my life and career.
I "happily pay" my annual subscription for my Adobe apps and Microsoft Office. But I also pay for a couple of alternative image editors that are not subscription based but have approximately annual paid for updates which like photoshop in the days of old I often skip one iteration to get more bang for my upgrade.
My real fear is the hardware side of things my main imaging machine (which is not my main computer) is tapped out to the last version of Mac OS. Right now that is okay all the apps I care about still run and my web design software works just fine but someday that won't be true. That is the day of reckoning for me as a hobbyist. Do I stop the subscription path and move to one of my perennial licensed software tools or do I pay for a very expensive hardware upgrade that may solve my software compatibility problem but I don't really need otherwise?
BTW I did just temp the Gods and bought a new camera, a Sony A6400, as my investment in glass is enough to keep me there but it seemed like a reasonable time to jump to some of the improvements. Time will tell.
I look at it differently. Never having been in a Starbucks, I don't know what 2.5 medium size Lattes is worth to me. I tend to look at the business model.
We have a good coffee-maker. A hardware investment. We only use it to make coffee for guests, so it's not in constant use. Of course there are times we need coffee, but we pay no monthly fee for coffee - no subscription. We pay when we need it and my wife tries out new types from time to time (upgrades, I call them). She likes the occasional upgrades - trying new tastes to entertain our visitors.
It's not a strange business model - the makers of the hardware and the makers of the coffee have been in business for many decades. I see it simply as selling the customer what he or she wants when it's needed and not making them partners in sustaining the bottom line of the company.
While I don't disagree with the basic concept (you personally decide whether to go with the subscription model or not and live with that decision), I think that a lot of people (me included) were pretty pissed that for a couple of years, most of our subscription fee was used on making Lightroom and Photoshop compatible with iPhones and iPads, something that I personally had absolutely no interest in.
Adobe did not improve significantly on the desktop versions of LR and PS for quite a while, and as long as customers kept paying to play, they had absolutely no incentive to do so. That is the major weakness of the subscription model, and the sole reason why I cancelled my subscription about a year and a half ago and went with Capture One for RAW development and Affinity Photo for retouching.
Just like I could not care less what camera system other use, I don't care what software they use. However, I do not take kindly to those that want to make me believe that a subscription model is in my interest and that I am either ungrateful or supporting software piracy if I don't support it. The subscription model takes away all my leverage as a customer and leaves me at the mercy of the vendor - that is a fact, not an opinion.
So, I am presuming you don't have a cellphone? Right? Or did you find a service that would bill you one one time fee for unlimited service?
I have no interest in making you believe anything. I am expressing my opinion about the nature of the service from Adobe and the value (to me) of their business model.
I purchased two programs with permanent licenses, Cool Edit audio editor, and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Cool Edit was $25 and I forget the cost of Dreamweaver, probably around $100. However Adobe eventually bought both companies and jacked up the price of their version of Cool Edit to $250 and removed downloads from the internet. Dreamweaver was also no longer available, so I was out the money and the utility of the programs after reinstalling Windows.
Two CADD programs that I owned permanent licenses for went through the same buy-and-kill routine that Autocad uses to prevent competition.
Much of the theft that Adobe and Autocad experienced was driven by their exorbitant pricing, so they helped drive up the pirating. I honestly believe that if their prices had been more reasonable their profits would have actually been higher. I never used pirated software, and have thrown away many free (limited) versions of Adobe software that came with scanners and other hardware without even breaking the celophane wrapper.
In 2005 I got sick of having programs that I paid for being killed of by virtual monopolies and I switched to linux and GPL licensed software that protects the rights of the user. You can look up the GPL if you're interested. In my book I never stole from Adobe, but they as good as stole from me twice.
Now I get equivalents of MS Office (with much better cross version compatibility between MS Office formats than MS Office), Lightroom, Photoshop, CADD, and other programs all licensed under the GPL. I also donate to the projects. Many of the developers of these programs do get paid by companies that make money servicing government and corporate linux users (US Army, Navy, nearly every stock exchange in the world, Amazon, banks, etc., etc...), and even Microsoft and Apple contribute code. The poster who wanted a pay model for darktable (it's officially not capitalized, an 'equivalent' of Lightroom) can easily get on their website and make a donation of any size.
Many free software projects are happy to take donations. You can see a list of photography and imaging related software at pixls.us, and if you go to their forums you can talk directly with some developers of many free photography related programs and make feature requests. There are also tutorials on youtube for most of these programs. The licenses mean that you can download them in perpetuity and no one can buy them and make them unavailable.
I no longer worry that Adobe will buy and kill the programs I use, which I consider a better guarantee than paying monthly or one-time fees to Adobe.
Lee
I don't drink beer in bars.
I don't drink coffee from Starbucks.
I don't drink Koolaid from Adobe.
What really happened was that the customer only took a sip of the beer that he bought last week, put it in his locker at the pub, then came back this week, put it on the counter and took another sip, only to hear the bartender say, "That's be another $5."
I hate Apple. I hate Adobe. I hate beer. I hate coffee. I hate Canon. I hate Olympus. I hate blogs. I hate having to hate so much stuff. I hate being a hater. I only build my own stuff from parts I get online. But I hate online. I'm still trying to make my own version of Lightroom. So far I have a front splash page designed but nothing else. It's taken me three years to get this far. I think I'll work on menu structure next. I hate wine. I hate everyone who drinks wine. I built my own phone but I must have done something wrong because it doesn't work. That's okay, there's no one I want to talk to. Everything should be free because I pay taxes. I bought some pants once and they wore out. I only had them ten years, wore them everyday. Can't believe the company that made them cheated me out of $12. But it's better than renting pants. Ah fuck. Who cares?
Netflix costs me more than my Adobe subscription and gives me pleasure.
I make zero money with it.
If I didn't like it I could do something else.
But I wouldn't be spending my bandwidth (great or small) yelling about their business model.
So, you don't like Adobe. Yay, go get something else.
Horses for courses.
I've just upgraded Photoshop to CS6. Because it makes a few plugins run better without work-arounds and saves a few minutes on every image.
I've just been reminded why I didn't do this when it came out. CS6 has a new grey interface and a slightly improved clone tool. Whoopee.
I've been using Lightroom since it emerged from Shadowland to version 1. As it matured the changes became less "must have" and began to look like the upgrades to the Canon cameras I had then. New improved buttons. Or whatever. I only upgraded after every two or three new releases. Maybe it would have been different if I had enough income from photography to justify it as a tax deduction.
Lightroom has a great print module but the raw conversions aren't good enough for Fuji files IMO. For that I use either Capture 1 or turn the sharpening off in LR and use a plugin in Photoshop. It's for the two or three plugins that I still use Photoshop. Like a paper that I know well how it will print, those plugins work well for me.
I haven't seen much from Adobe lately that will make my photographs "better". Same with cameras really. I guess I'm really over wanting the latest and greatest. It's another tiresome thing to learn and often is change for change's sake.
For quite a few years the change to digital photography has been used to generate a vastly expanded income to camera makers, software developers and their hangers-on. I think those days are coming to an end. It's a peculiar feeling no longer caring about that stuff. I have a sneaking suspicion it makes you stupid. Can I actually do anything in the field of image making is the question that is raised.
I find it interesting that many here feel that they "own" the software when they possess a perpetual license. It is, at the end of the day, a license to use someone else's intellectual property, and as such you're bound by the terms and limits of that software. The beer analogy, in as much as the idea that you can do whatever you please with the beer, doesn't hold water...er...beer because you cannot do that with the software you license.
The same idea applies to commercially licensed photographs. You grant a specific license for specific use for a given price. If the licensee wishes to use the photo beyond those terms (in terms of time, distribution, etc) then they must seek further license and, in most cases, pay for that usage. Software is no different.
The Lr/Ps bar/beer analogy is a poor one, IMO. Each glass of beer costs a certain amount to manufacture and ship and store. Adobe doesn't have to make some new code and pay a programmer to do it each time I use an Adobe program. I get the need for a company to have steady revenue, and Thom Hogan has written on a number of occasions about software companies going under when revenue streams dried up. He is generally in favour of the subscription model in concept, but has been critical of Adobe's way of doing it. The way Adobe introduced a $19.99/month plan (with 1TB of cloud storage) and temporarily hid the original $9.99/month plan (with 20 GB of cloud storage) comes to mind.
I generally like using programs loaded onto the computer I am using, and storing files on a local drive. I don't completely trust Cloud storage, so for my work I use a combination of local drives (which have copies of all files) and the Cloud (which contains only the most-important ones, or ones that I want to share). I get the feeling that Adobe is going to get rid of Lightroom Classic in the not too distant future and go all in with Lightroom CC, which requires a connection to the Web. Microsoft did something like this with an Office 365 program that I have used extensively in my job for over a decade. I was furious when I found out that the older drive-based program had been completely deleted during an Office 365 "update", and a less-featured, Cloud-only version with a poor interface had replaced it. I was eventually able to download and reinstall the old drive-based version, but had to suffer with the new, "improved" version and its poor workflow in the mean time. Will Adobe do something similar to Lightroom Classic? Will I use the program and really start to like it, and then Adobe will take it away? Only Adobe knows. I don't want to start extensively using a program that will ultimately become "the next Aperture".
Speaking of Aperture - the only reason I am even contemplating a Lr/Ps subscription right now is that Apple's Aperture is truly on its last legs. I have been using Aperture for around 8 years, mainly because its organization and adjustment tools (and brushes) are just about perfect for my needs. But it won't open RAW files from recent cameras - I have to first convert them to JPEG or TIFF. And it is becoming less and less stable as time goes on. Also, it will supposedly stop working on Macs running the next version of macOS. Apple's Photos app just doesn't work for me, even with added plug-ins. So I am looking at a Lr/Ps subscription as the most-likely replacement for Aperture.
I would like to continue ranting, but I think I'll go download a trial version of Lightroom Classic and try it out before committing to it. Cheers!
Adobe is a business & must make $. Use another software if one think the price is too high. I don't use LR/PS so no impact on me :-)
Kirk,
I usually am in agreement with you on most things, however, on this one I just can't agree with you .
It is not the monthly Adobe tithe, the need to connect to the internet even when travelling or even a slow crash prone LR ( at least up to when I cut ties in 11/17). It is the loss of future access should I decide to change vendors. I do understand that the Library module would still be accessible at least for now.
Being a creative person I often return to previous work with new ideas, insights and inspiration on how to rework an image. I would no longer be able to rework those images without either exporting to another vendor's raw converter and lose some or or all of my adjustments. I could export to another vendor's pixel based software and again lose my adjustments and at the same time create a tiff or psd with several times the file size and my adjustments baked in. I could also create a dng file, however, it doesn't always play nice with other software I use. So while I don't lose access to my original files I do lose access to my creative adjustments.
With the latest Adobe trial balloon of doubling the price and hiding access to the $10 plan, the warning emails threatening legal action for using older software which I paid price for and the potential loss of access to my creative adjustments I am doubly glad I bailed a year and a half ago.
I made the switch to Capture One after trying three other packages. I kept LR during the switch as I did have to redo many of my images. It was expensive in time and effort even while still having access to my LR adjustments. However, if I had to do it again but without having access to the LR adjustments I couldn't do it.
I may appear very anal about this, however, my image files represent over twenty years of my creative life. I don't want any company that is beholden to its shareholders to seperate me from my images or as a previous commentor stated 'have me by the short curlies.
There's always that one open source/Linux guy.
We will just have to agree to disagree. Respectfully, of course ;-)
For me, $10/month ($120/year) is a lot to pay. The legacy perpetual license Lightroom was $129 and was only $79 for upgrades. So one year of CC is already ~$40 more than the upgrade price.
I am still using Lr6 as it supports my cameras and lenses. I don't really need all the new features. I'm just a enthusiastic hobbyist at this game. On the other hand, pro photographers can and should be on the CC subscription plan. It makes a great deal of sense for them. For me? Not so much.
If Adobe offered a more reasonable exit plan I would be interested. That is, if I choose to terminate a CC subscription I would no longer have access to updates but the version I did have would remain fully functional. Not just the Library mode but Develop mode, too.
DavidB
I've been using rawtherapee lately, full featured isn't the word, it's a labour of love by imaging geeks, don't understand half the features, it's free and open source
https://rawtherapee.com/
The issue of access to images is a false argument as LR Classic is a desktop model. One is not required to store images on Adobe's server. Of course anyone storing images on ANY cloud service is at the mercy of their internet connection and the viability/orneriness of the company.
There are a ton of alternatives especially for hobbyists. Pros can choose (and do) Capture One. Then there are those who complain about the cost of C1.
Photography is very cheap is you shoot JPG and upload to your phone (subscription required). However, should you choose to edit RAW images the price goes up. As you get more experienced, the tools get more expensive.
No one is forcing anyone to buy Adobe products. Just as no one is forcing people to buy Microsoft or Apple products. I would note that the financial condition of all those companies is quite robust and funds great R&D. The reduced capital available to the small companies does constrain their ambitions.
When you rent a car, the renting firm does not have it at its disposition. When you rent a house, the landlord cannot let it to somebody else.
When you buy a beer and drink it, it is gone.
Compare this with software "renting". Do you see the difference?
For me, it was over when Adobe imposed its "renting" model. Renting is not even the right term for this exploitation scheme.
I refuse to pay $9.99 a month. I much prefer to pay $119.88 per year. So I do.
At either of those prices, in 8 years I'll just about be even with what I paid for my Nik plug-ins and their various upgrades before Google started giving them away, and then paying the $50 or so that DxO just got for the latest upgrade.
Now, get off my lawn.
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