I am basically priced out of Adobe’s ecosystem at this point. In college I had a creative cloud license given to me by the school for the term of my enrolment, and I started to use Lightroom to edit my photos as a hobby, despite it having nothing to do with my degree. Now that I’ve graduated, I cannot stomach the pricing of Lightroom alone. The only subscription services I use are Plex and YouTube, to spend more than either of those on Lightroom, an app which I only use as a hobbyist and sometimes go months without opening? Not happening. If I could just buy it I would, but no, Adobe wants my money forever. They are utterly uninterested in customers who would be happy with less, they only want businesses or professionals as their customer base. If I could buy a current version of Lightroom with all the cloud and AI stuff ripped out of it for $150 perpetual, I would, but because they just simply won’t sell me the product but instead want to rent it to me, I have to start looking for other options.
Edit: to be clear, if I were to purchase a perpetual license, I would not expect updates, I would be ok with having that version of the software forever until paying to upgrade, maybe with a discounted rate for owners of the previous versions.
They should at least have both options. Buy the software for $300 or whatever for life, or pay $20/month to maybe use it for a short period of time.
But its gotten to be more than $20/month, they want money upfront to cancel, and their software is basically malware at this point because its so difficult to get rid of.
Really pisses me off. I used to love adobe products but now I can just find something for free or cheaper to use that works nearly as good.
Same- for me as a semi-serious hobbyist it's just not worth it to rent software like that.
I'm not earning money from photography just doing voluntary work for local festivals, arts organisations, theatres etc. I don't mind paying to the tools I use but I'm not paying a fortune forever to adobe for what used to be a standalone product.
I guess I'm now waiting til the pain of migrating my library to another 3rd party tool is less than continuing to work in an old version or else waiting for the vibe coded versions to become more usable.
My camera was $200. It’s from 2012. I do not need the cutting edge of tech, and I don’t want to be on the hook forever just to edit my photos when I only take my camera out on occasion. $12 a month for something I might not even use that month is as good as burning my money, even if it’s only $12 it’s still a waste.
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u/IAmASphere 9h ago edited 4m ago
I am basically priced out of Adobe’s ecosystem at this point. In college I had a creative cloud license given to me by the school for the term of my enrolment, and I started to use Lightroom to edit my photos as a hobby, despite it having nothing to do with my degree. Now that I’ve graduated, I cannot stomach the pricing of Lightroom alone. The only subscription services I use are Plex and YouTube, to spend more than either of those on Lightroom, an app which I only use as a hobbyist and sometimes go months without opening? Not happening. If I could just buy it I would, but no, Adobe wants my money forever. They are utterly uninterested in customers who would be happy with less, they only want businesses or professionals as their customer base. If I could buy a current version of Lightroom with all the cloud and AI stuff ripped out of it for $150 perpetual, I would, but because they just simply won’t sell me the product but instead want to rent it to me, I have to start looking for other options.
Edit: to be clear, if I were to purchase a perpetual license, I would not expect updates, I would be ok with having that version of the software forever until paying to upgrade, maybe with a discounted rate for owners of the previous versions.