Shelter from the Cloud?
If you’ve been using Photoshop as well as Lightroom, you may have been surprised and disappointed by Adobe’s behaviour earlier this year, offering customers the Hobson’s choice of subscribing for Photoshop or being unable to upgrade beyond CS6. For Photoshop newcomers the monthly subscription of $19.99 certainly eased the painful initial outlay of buying Adobe’s software, but existing customers were being offered a price rise disguised by a half-price discount during the first year, after which you pay the normal $19.99. What’s more, they would no longer own the CC software and it would stop working if you ever stopped paying, which would make it pretty difficult to fine tune your pictures. Not surprisingly, this deal wasn’t universally popular among photographers.
So now Adobe have made a concession to existing Photoshop CS customers – the Photoshop Photography Program.
If you own Photoshop CS3-CS6 and subscribe before the end of December, Photoshop CC’s subscription will now be $9.99 / £8.54 per month and will include Lightroom, plus the 20Gb online storage space and the Behance web service. The monthly price is not a first year introductory discount but will be your normal price so long as you keep subscribing. Any subsequent price rises will be based on that figure.
Anyone who already subscribed to Photoshop CC will now get Lightroom too.
The benefits
It’s not a big step back by Adobe, and it is clear they are not about to abandon their decision to force customers over to their subscription model. But to look on the bright side, they have now tackled a number of problems. Existing Photoshop customers get more for the monthly subscription, not a disguised price hike, and Adobe have soothed the fear that the price will rise once they have a firm grip around your genitals.
Less incentive to innovate?
Of course, there are other big reasons why Adobe have not yet “convinced” people, to use their own expression. One is the belief that guaranteed revenue streams make companies grow lazy and reduce their incentive to produce innovative new features that make you want to upgrade. Obviously this won’t affect the motivation of individual software engineers, and external events may still lead to Adobe responding with new capabilities like the publishing to tablets which was added to InDesign CS6, but it’s hard to question the assumption that dependable revenues inevitably encourages cost-cutting and a less adventurous ethos. Business just works that way (my accounting background comes out again!) and you can only hope that Adobe escape that fate.
The exit strategy
But another big objection is most interesting in this case, and that is the “exit strategy” – what happens to Photoshop and your pictures when you stop subscribing? Previously, of course, you’d buy Photoshop and just expect it to keep going until a major change in the operating system or until you bought a new camera. But with a subscription-limited service, it’s more like electricity or water and sewerage – Photoshop will just stop working. Fair enough in contractual terms, but what about the photos you’ve edited? They are your intellectual property, not Adobe’s. How would you then print or share them, and especially if they needed fine tuning? If you have any sense of thinking ahead, was it ever sustainable to rent Photoshop on its own?
Plan for a proper copy of Lightroom
While it’s easy to welcome this Photoshop Photography Program deal in superficial terms, we’ve got to put aside the “good for photographers” fluff and “for the price of three lattes” hype (real coffee drinkers don’t drink overpriced latte). What’s important is that this deal gives you the subscription-limited Photoshop, you are not getting a proper copy of Lightroom either – if you stop subscribing, Lightroom will stop working. Ending your subscription will sacrifice the ability to fine tune work on layers and other Photoshop-only features, and at that point you’d need to buy a proper copy of Lightroom to adjust and output your pictures.
Whenever I stay in a hotel I always make a mental note of the fire exits – a result of when I had a day’s fire warden training – and I think it’s a pretty good analogy. If you subscribe, remember to look for the exit door.
I had a lenghty ‘chat’ with Adobe re the offer. Don’t kid yourself. $9.99 is the teaser rate and you are not locked in. There are no discounts or refunds for those of us that within 2013 already purchased PS6/LR5. They told me that future market strategies will dictate price. They were VERY CAUTIOUS in addressing compatibility of plug-ins and presets going forward.
There are no assurances that 3rd party (even majors (‘NIK’, ‘OnOne’) will be straight foreward compatible. Their reply to me was that you can always delay the CC install until your plug-in vendor ‘catches up’. Reasonable, we do that now to one degree or another.
Most assuredly cameras etc. will overpower PS6 at some future point and those of us that did not go CC will have to stop using PS or pay up. That is the wonder and pain of digital – your equipment is outdated before it hits the streets. Of course you can always stop upgrading and be content with what you thought was an absolute marvel when you just had to own it.
They tried to make a big deal out of ‘free’ upgrades. If I’m paying them monthly juice what is free? Their next biggy was the new ‘VR’ tool. Since I almost always shoot from a tripod what do I gain from that?
Thanks but no thanks, at least for the forseeable future. PS has better ‘spot reduction/removal then LR5. I use LR for initial sdustments and the advantage of SQL lite. Beyond that either plug-in mentioned above does all my heavy lifting, much better and faster than I could ever do in PS. So after all these many years it’s so long PS.
I have just gotten off the phone with an Adobe Rep and his explanation of an exit strategy was a little different from yours. Let us say that Lighroom upgrades your catalog from an online subscription and then you cancel your subscription. The only way to use that upgraded catalog is to purchase a Lightroom upgrade. You have not purchased a perpetual license to the new Lightroom. Do you think this rep was mis-informed?
Vinny, sorry that I didn’t get back to you sooner, but I think I was misinformed or guilty of wishful thinking. It does look like “The only way to use that upgraded catalog is to purchase a Lightroom upgrade “
..which isn’t the ideal we hoped for but I suppose live-able with as long as there remains the alternative of a standalone Lightroom. Hmmmm….
What will the UK price be?
£8.54 a month – I said it in the post.
It seems likely that this will be enough to get me even though I already have LR5 and am for the moment perfectly happy with CS6 for Photoshop. I’m sure I’ll miss the rest of the CC suite eventually but not for a year or two unless they come up with something really clever. Which brings me to my biggest concern which is the one of innovation that you mention. I recall what happened in the industry I used to work in when the upper tier of management decided our site could make more money as a commodity supplier rather than a specialist ingredient one. I worked in R&D and no, my commitment didn’t change but our budgets got smaller when things got tough and direct work with our customers ground to a halt. I don’t mind paying £8.74 a month for a developing LR & PS but I remain sceptical.
Of course longer term I think all developing software will go to subscription…particularly when the software starts thinking for itself and demands payment. This will be the true Judgement Day. Never mind titanium steel alloy terminators it will be the creative agencies brought to their knees by Photoshop code demanding its own fees….a world without adverts and multi-media….arghhh!
Any idea what Adobe will offer people who have already signed up for 1 year subscribtions of Photoshop CC, single app? Automatic upgrade – or will they just be stuck with their now obsolete 1-year plan?
From what I’ve heard, you’ll transition to the new deal later this month.