UKH

I've just cancelled my Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Programme subscription. It was up for renewal in March and I'm fed up. They're putting up the price and they still haven't fixed any of the things that have been annoying me for years so I'm taking my money elsewhere.

I used Lightroom, 99.9% of the time. I'm now looking for alternatives and seeking suggestions. UKC Photographers: you have your orders - what's a good Lighrtoom competitor?

Also, has anyone, here, made the move away from Adobe? Is there anything I need to know? Anything I must export before I lose access to Lightroom CC?

(I am not worried about Photoshop PSD files - I have so few of those, anyway, that I wouldn't be bothered if I lost them. But my lightroom meta-data is quite extensive.)

Rant for those who care: £ 121.20 per anum is simply too much to "rent" a piece of software - particularly because you have to pay it every year and they're basically adding nothing of use to me so I'm paying for nothing new. In fact, a lot of the new "features" are actually steps backwards in my eyes. I'll never ever want to use any of this software "mobile" and yet I still cannot even turn that feature off! Or cloud synchronisation. Who actually syncs high-resolution semi-professional photography to the "cloud"? Nah. "Creative Cloud" is just too obnoxious and opinionated for me - it tries to tell me how I want to use the software, not to let me use it my way. Typical for Adobe, actually - true to their top-most, focus stealing roots. Also, why is the software so slow? Can't you be spending these exhorbitant subscription fees on actually improving something that your EXISTING users use, not trying to add new junk to attract new subscribers? I'm not paying your costs while you develop software for another user-base!

In reply to Xharlie:

I'm with you on this. Email this morning has kicked me to cancel.

I found PS was nice to have but hardly ever really used. I'm sticking with lightroom as I really can't face losing my library. I'm just going to buy a perpetual license though. It was handy to be able to use it on my iPad but not £120/year worth of handy

In reply to Removed Userbobbyp:


...in other words, you'll buy LR outright?

In reply to Glyno:

Buying lightroom outright is surely better than dozens of hours learning new software and cataloging images

In reply to Xharlie:

You do know for £100 ish you can own lightroom outright. That is what I do. No complaints at all. It reads .psd and allows edits on top. I've never had the cloud on (Not with photoshop either which I have at work and have had at home).

I run Lightroom on a very old Computer and once its open it works just fine

The alternative are capture One and DXO (as RAW converters) I assume that is what you want as that is what Lightroom is. I've had free trials of both and happily bought Lightroom. You maybe surpried how much these cost once you have a feature set approaching Lightroom

Capture One pro is 279 Euros + VAT. Less if you have a Sony. But I find it very buggy and crash prone

In reply to Xharlie:

Conversely I've found the recent changes most welcome... I shoot an A7R2 which has silly-large files, the recent update has enabled essentially smart-previews for the Develop module, massively speeding up processing, especially on my laptop.
They also have added more lens support for Sony lenses for auto-correction.

Also - the Cloud part I use - it only uploads smart previews, meaning I can do menial tasks such as rejecting/accepting shots from a weekend on a train/plane, even some minor edits whilst out and about.

If it is the price - shop around as there's usually a discount floating around (I pay £6.72 a month I think)

In reply to Dan Arkle:


yes, I'm not disputing that, I was just confirming that by 'buying a perpetual licence' that was bobbyp's intention as I might do likewise.

In reply to Xharlie:

Darktable
http://www.darktable.org/

In reply to Xharlie:

Do you know how much does the software cost? A tenner a month will get one lunch for a developer. From a quick search, it seems to be around 100 people working on Photoshop itself. I know we all are spoiled and don't want to pay for something we do not own and cannot touch, but the intellectual property won't become any cheaper.

I have been using Photoshop & Lightroom for over a decade and I am more than happy to pay £10 a month.

In reply to Xharlie:

So its going up from £8.57/month to £10.10/month

That's an awesome value rant for £1.53/month. Worth every penny.!

Is the price increase due to dollar rate?

I currently get for £6.98/month, runs out at that price in March. (Flickr-Pro 1 year discount offer).

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

Thanks. That looks interesting.

For the record, I'm not really that set on a lightroom replacement as far as database management is concerned - more for the RAW conversion and panos and HDR. Those are the features I actually use.

In reply to ChrisJD:

I was already debating ditching it at the old price because it just didn't justify the monthly cost. It was the most expensive piece of software I own, by far. But, anyway, the price hike just pushed it over a threshold and prompted me to confront the question instead of ignoring it for another year.

In reply to Xharlie:

Then you do have more options.

But they are spendy as well.

In reply to ChrisJD:

Photoshop price to rise after Brexit hits Adobe Creative Cloud
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/adobe-photosh...

“We wanted to share some important information about your renewal price,” the company wrote in an email to customers. “You may be aware that currency exchange rates have fluctuated significantly over the last few years. As a result of recent changes in exchange rates in your region, the price of Adobe products and services is increasing starting on 6 March 2017."

(FWIW, I have a perpetual Lightroom licence and am very happy with it. I don't use creative cloud.)

In reply to andyjohnson0:

I was on a standalone licence from LR1 to LR6, only changed to CC 9 months ago. Been happy with the decision as get feature updates not available to LR6 standalone users - e.g haze and warp in Pano-Merge. Also use the auto upload/sync from phone to LR on PC, very handy. I don't begrudge £10/month (in a few months time when the £7/month runs out).

In reply to Xharlie:

I was a happy Lightroom CC user until very recently, but after evaluating the features in Lightroom I actually use, I decided to purchase a standalone Lightroom 6 license instead. I don't think £10 a month is bad value for what you get at all, but for my needs I decided that Lightroom 6 would be more cost effective.

In reply to Only a hill:

What bothers me about the subscritption model is not the cost, although it does add up over the years. It's what happens after I stop paying for whatever reason, or the provider goes bust.

Will I be able to use my photo library on the something else? Will I loose my edits?

In reply to StefanB:

Yes, those are absolutely valid concerns – I share them. At least with the standalone Lightroom 6 you can keep using the product for as long as your camera hardware and operating system work with it.

In reply to Only a hill:

My understanding (may be wrong!):

Currently:

If you have LR6 and you then went to CC for a bit, then stopped your CC, your LR-CC catalog 'should' be fine in LR6 (I am not guaranteeing this, lol).

if you had LR5 and you then went to CC for a bit, then stopped your CC, your LR-CC catalog would not open in LR5. But a LR6 cat would not open in LR-5 either.

Not sure what happens for LR6 users if they bring out a LR-7 standalone...

In reply to ChrisJD:

I can confirm that my CC catalogue works fine with Lightroom 6.

I'm assuming that when 7 comes out, there will be a facility for migrating older catalogues. Pretty sure this has been a feature for a while when a new version is released.

In reply to Only a hill:

Yes, a new version of the Cat is created from the older version Cat (which stays put, ie the older Cat file remains intact). But the new Cat is not backwards compatible.

In reply to Xharlie:
I bought LR. Then I bought Corel Paintshop Pro which seems to do most of what PS does as far as I can tell in a similar way. And of course PS CS2 is free if you hunt around the web. I had issues with Corel's handling of RAW which went away when I bought a new camera.

In reply to Xharlie:

Never made the move to CC because everything I read made it sound worse. I still use PS CS6 which is fine for most things - in fact it's still an extremely powerful tool, limited more by one's ability to use it than anything. One of the best things about not upgrading every 18 months is that you don't have to learn all the new stuff and you can put more energy into being creative.

In reply: has anyone used rawtherapee? can it do all lightroom does and can you import image settings to lightroom upgrade in future?

In reply to stp:


Just to redress the balance then, I have been very impressed with CC even though I was against the idea in principle. I am sure it is cheaper than the stand-alones used to be, plus it is nice that your software is always bang up-to-date,

Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:


Same here

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Same here as well. Excellent value for money and incredibly powerful software.

My only gripe is that I can't bundle the photography package with InDesign.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Same here!

In reply to Xharlie:

I have too many, paid for, plug ins* on CC to make it worth changing.



* mainly luminosity masking ones

In reply to Xharlie:

PS is still professional software in the eyes of Adobe, which is rightly so. I used to pay around £800 per version for a single licence, therefore cc is actually quite a lot cheaper year to year than it used to be.

It really depends on what you're using it for, as to whether you need it. It's a hugely powerful piece of software that most amateurs probably don't need.

What key features are you looking for in a new programme?

I shoot tethered and process in capture one, and retouch is ps.

In reply to jonny.greenwood:

For most people who used Photoshop before CC they bought upgrades maybe every three years like myself for about 150$ now if you want Photoshop you have to pay for CC and your paying a lot more for it', it is not a cheaper option as you say.

However it gets worse the more adobe products you have, I have Creative Suite CS6 to have this on CC with Photoshop will cost about £45 a month and takes it out of most amateur's budgets, I also have Redgiant and Video Copilot plugins for After Effects so I will continue to use CS6 Creative Suite as long as possible.

I resent the attitude that only professionals should be able to afford to use this type of software, are professionals afraid that amateurs will be able to produce better pictures or videos than their efforts, surly software should not be limited to an elite it should be there for all to express their creativity, the more that can afford it then the cheaper it should get, many previous Creative Suite users find Adobe's CC policy extorsion, see copy from photographylife below.



From PhotographyLife.com

What Adobe Should Have Done
I have been in Information Technology for more than 15 years. I have been through enterprise-wide ERP software implementations, bought and used software and even participated and contributed to large scale software development. Adobe should have learned from other software companies on how to handle its product pricing and strategy before making its Creative Cloud jump. When it comes to software, many companies today offer both packaged and SaaS versions, letting the customer choose what works for their needs. And for many software packages, there is an option to move back from the cloud to a local environment – again, it is all about giving customers choice. But what Adobe has done is what some people referred as “extortion” – a forced migration to future upgrades, limited pricing choices and questionable future. In a software world, this sort of move could bring a company down. Heck, even Microsoft commented on Adobe’s stupid decision to move to the subscription model as “premature”.
What Adobe should have done, is give its customer two options – a boxed version with an upgrade path, essentially continuing the Creative Suite line, and a choice to go to the cloud. People that would benefit from collaboration and other benefits of the cloud would choose a subscription model, while everyone else would stay happy with their “owned” copies of the software.

In reply to Garbhanach:
Why should an amateur be able to afford it? Name one other professional product that is marketed that way... software isn't free. Especially when adobe have the likes of Apple and Google fighting over their engineers and developers.

If 911s were cheap everyone could be a racing car driver... bollocks. It's got nothing to do with elitism. It's just business.

In reply to Garbhanach:


You seem to be ignoring the 'up front' cost of the software,

Chris

In reply to Xharlie:

I spent a lot of time extracting my work from Lightroom and Photoshop, this weekend, before my subscription ends next month. I am truly not going to miss these programmes.

Once again, I was continually bugged by prompts about "lightroom mobile" being signed out - of course it is, I don't use it and don't want it, so why bug me about my decision not to use it? Can't I choose my own workflow - or even make the simple choice that I don't want to use "mobile"?

Once again I was thwarted by the inability to do simple and obvious things like to export collections without losing the folder structure. Thankfully, a plugin can do that sort of thing but this is a basic file-management task, it shouldn't need a plugin!

Need I point out that the trial period for that plugin exceeds the remaining duration of my subscription but, normally, I would have to BUY that? Adobe want me to pay them tonnes of money and also refuse to implement features to support my workflow, choosing instead of let me purchase someone else's plugin for it? It's not like exporting with a folder-structure is exactly a niche use-case for a content management application.

I also found I had to restart Lightroom several times because it stopped responding, or when the "pick" flags I was trying to set were all being applied to the first image in the current set instead of the selected one, or because it just crashed outright, or because I did something like an "export" and the U.I. was left in an unusable mess for no apparent reason. All of these are bugs I have seen for years - as long as I have been using Lightroom. They have never been fixed. They are known - Google shows that, at least, just like Google shows that there is a demand for the ability to export with a folder structure.

So what, exactly, are those hundreds of developers doing? Perhaps they are making the next-greatest-thing for other photographers somewhere else but, for me, the software simply does not fit into the way I want to work.

It could. All they would need to do is acknowledge that different people work differently and make different choices, and then give those choices to the user. They need to be less "opinionated".

But more choice means less lock-in.

This thread is proof that Adobe's lock-in strategy is working. It nearly worked on me but I'm out, now, and I am glad I got out now instead of waiting longer.

Adobe are also really stupid, here, because I actually didn't have a choice but to cancel, now. It was now, or next February, or the February after that. If I could have left the subscription in place, sure in the knowledge that I could cancel in any month of my choice, I might not have acted so spontaneously. Instead, I had to consciously acknowledge the total sum that one year of use would cost and make a buying-decision.

Even the 60-days-free that Adobe offered me when I went to cancel did not change my mind about that decision. Oh... and on that note, if you're going to offer me 60-days-free, that's equivalent to about 16.6% discount in a year. Why should I have to be on the edge of cancelling in order to get that discount? Those are scummy tactics!

That discount is the monetary equivalent of those damnedable, flashing "exit intent" pop-ups that snatch at your attention when you move your mouse towards the top of your browser window to switch tabs or close the tab.

Key to the replacement is that it does not lock me in to an "ecosystem." I do not want an "ecosystem" - I want software that does what's written on the tin, under my own command. I want to choose my own workflow, I do not want to buy someone elses opinionated, one-size-fits-nobody workflow. I want to own my own files and metadata.

Preferably, I would buy a few tools that work together well rather than one monolithic, do-everything package. Individual tools can be replaced without a massive loss.

In reply to Xharlie:


I very much agree with you. Sadly, this is the world we're moving away from. Unless users make a stand, I think most software will end up as expensive monthly subscriptions where all data is stored in the cloud.

In reply to Xharlie:

Have you considered Capure One? Higher up front cost, but that's it, free updates within the version you buy.

Also, you get 3 licences, so if you only run one machine, you could perhaps club together with a couple of friends and use 1 licence each?

From what I gather, lightroom is adobes attempt at capture one.

In reply to Chris Craggs:




If you want to take that into consideration it would cost me about £560 per year for CC so every three years I would be paying for a Standalone Creative Suite intead of of paying about £150-200 for an upgrade, CC compared to standalone is extorsion.

In reply to jonny.greenwood:



Yout talking bollocks, Adobe have never advertised Photoshop as only for professionals this is from their current web site

Make it. Creative Cloud.
Designer. Photographer. Filmmaker. Dreamer. No matter who you are, Creative Cloud gives you the world’s best creative apps so you can make just about anything you want, wherever inspiration takes you.
Capture the moment. Then make it momentous with the Creative Cloud Photography plan. The world’s leading photography tools use Adobe Photoshop technology to help you craft incredible images every day, everywhere — whether you’re a beginner or a pro. It’s everything you need. All in one place.

In reply to Garbhanach:

You said it, not me...

"I have Creative Suite CS6 to have this on CC with Photoshop will cost about £45 a month and takes it out of most amateur's budgets"

In reply to jonny.greenwood:


You said
It's a hugely powerful piece of software that most amateurs probably don't need.
Why should an amateur be able to afford it? Name one other professional product that is marketed that way... software isn't free. Especially when adobe have the likes of Apple and Google fighting over their engineers and developers.

So in reply to your statement Why should an amateur be able to afford it? Name one other professional product that is marketed that way..
I name Adobe CC
Adobe says on their website
Make it. Creative Cloud.
Designer. Photographer. Filmmaker. Dreamer. No matter who you are, Creative Cloud gives you the world’s best creative apps so you can make just about anything you want, wherever inspiration takes you.
Capture the moment. Then make it momentous with the Creative Cloud Photography plan. The world’s leading photography tools use Adobe Photoshop technology to help you craft incredible images every day, everywhere — whether you’re a beginner or a pro. It’s everything you need. All in one place.

I am not replying to any more of your posts.

In reply to Xharlie:
I am an enthusiast photographer who just wants to tweek pictures to make corrections & adjustments to produce pictures for mainly net sharing, screen viewing and occasional prints. I have found PS Elements 13 does all I want at an affordable price (I updated from earlier versions). I did once use PS6 for processing and the only thing I miss about that is the access to Channels to do toning - Elements has only basic tools for that. I recently discovered the Google add-on Nik Collection which works really well with PSE for a number of effects.
For what I do can anyone convince me to spend lots of money on a subscription to CS.

In reply to Garbhanach:

Through the copy and pasting of comments and the Adobe marketing, I think we've wandered off piste somewhat.

My point is PS hasn't changed in the 15 years I have used it. Yes, faster, more accurate, etc. But to the 1st year student, or the old pro, the interface is exactly the same now as it was back then, pre CC. A curve is still a curve, the pen tool still makes paths.

Before CC, the pricing was big upfront, then less to upgrade - £800 for the box, £250 every time they changed the name. This was not appealing to amateurs.

Now that Joe Bloggs has a laptop fast enough to process files, and a camera with the resolution to make editing worthwhile, how do Adobe get him using PS. How about a monthly subscription and some 'you can be whoever you want to be' website... And he takes a hit on £100 for a year rather than £800 for life.

It's a great platform for people to decide whether they like using it or not. Are you saying you preferred it when it was £800 up front?

In reply to Garbhanach:

Anyone who considers Adobe CC is a cheaper option to the previous standalone versions is kidding themselves on to justify paying for it..

If someone wants to pay up front to get the latest updates then that option though CC should be open to them, to restrict everyone to the Adobe CC though is wrong and against what others offer and a drastic change by adobe, there was an analogy on this post to If 911s were cheap everyone could be a racing car driver,however many cars are available to either buy or lease nowadays but that option is not available now with Lightroom and Photoshop and the rest of the software adobe used to offer.

I wonder if Adobe latest price increase is due sales of CC being down and I can only hope that many will like the OP on this post will leave CC and bring Adobe to bring back standalone versions. The people who paid and subscribed to adobe’s standalone versions should not be left in the lurch because Adobe was being ripped of by other freeloaders.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Given the way you've framed the question, I don't think anyone would have a chance in getting you to change to CC. Horse to water and all that

In reply to ChrisJD:
I think that I did frame the question incorrectly - I will try again.
>"I am an enthusiast photographer who just wants to tweek pictures to make corrections & adjustments to produce pictures for mainly net sharing, screen viewing and occasional prints."

Given the above description of my photography which features of CC would users recommend to me that I don't get in Elements?

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

That's better

Never used Elements, so don't know the answer.

I think Chris Craggs is a good person to respond to this

In reply to Garbhanach:

Great job on not replying to my post. Seamless

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

I use Elements (no longer have Photoshop). It does everything required in that quotation. Crucially, it has such indispensable things as Levels, Hue/Saturation, colour controls, Unsharp Mask, various filters, and most of the Photoshop tools, such as polygonal/lasso, magic wand, healing brush, clone stamp, blur, sharpen etc.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

I'd suggest downloading a LR trial and giving it an open minded try.

Been using LR since V1 Beta, having come from Bridge/PS and some time with Capture-1.

LR is now so integrated with my photographic process/thinking, hard to imagine not having it. Can't remember last time I used PS, an external stitching program (have AutopanoPro) or an external HDR package (Have Photomatix). Occasionally use LR extensions for Google Nix Collections for some fun edits.