Known Participant

Question

How can I afford to use Photoshop when it costs $600/year?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
May 7, 2013
5 replies
20650 views

I am a hobby photographer. I have used Photoshop 4, 5, and 6. Using Photoshop has generally cost me about $100/year or $200/2 years.

I, as is true of many hobby photographers, have enjoyed using PS to edit my images. I use only PS from the Creative Suite. I use functions that only PS provides, such as, layer masks. It seems I must stick with Photoshop 13 (CS5) and hope that there will be addons to keep it current. Any other suggestions?

cc
ps

This topic has been closed for replies.

S

SteffenK-XhxWYj

Participant

I always bought PS and LR latest version. I will still use it until it is useful. Then I will look for an alternative.
From now on I won't buy any Adobe products anymore. I won't invest also in my Adobe products trainigs, books or magazines.
I totally lost all my trust to this company called Adobe.

Photography is a hobby for me.

It is always great for a company to affect the customers emotions. And my will keep a while. Lots of talks about this customer treatment will follow at water coolers, barbeques etc.

This business move will be one of the most negative examples in the last couple of years.

No More Adobe!!!!

U

ustamills

Participant

I agree with the sentiment. This new pricing model kills my relationship with Adobe.

I've owned Photoshop or CSx for awhile now. I could always buy it and now matter how long I kept it it would work, even if I never pay another dime. I would only buy a new version if something was compellingly awesome. But now Adobe just compels me to pay. And to add insult to injury, if I stop paying, even if I've paid in for 3 years ($720) I LOSE ALL OF IT.

Additionally, this is more expensive, not less. At $20 a month they've just hiked the price for me. AND I CAN'T KEEP IT.

If anyone knows where I can go complain to Adobe about this I would. But I'm sure they made their decision and don't care about someone like me.

I'll use the S/W I've paid for until it quits working, buth then I'm guessing GIMP is my next step. This move by Adobe sucks.

PhotoRoy1

Known Participant

I just read the FAQ of the blog you mentioned Noel and it answered my question. You still get to download the software on to a local machine. If you have a year prepared subscription you only have to go online every 99 days to confirm your subscription. The rest of the time you can work offline. So the speed of processing depends on your machine and OS and not on the speed of your connection.

Roy

U

uhanepono

Participating Frequently

photoline, gimp, on one's perfect photo suite,

B

Blacktip75

Participant

I share your pain as a hobby photographer, I finally bit the bullet and switched from Gimp to Photoshop CS6 less then a year ago. As I am in the US often I bought a US version, now they want to rip me off with a $400 a year subscription for PS alone (EU Prices are a near criminal rip off, 600 a year is probably AU prices right? Edit, I just noticed AU is no longer being robbed, only EU is over 50% more expensive now). Guess no upgrades on Photoshop, I still use Lightroom as my workflow start so I don't have problems for some time.

Most fun will be my developers at work, I am not signing off on cloud software due to medical regulation, so no more PS upgrades for the design team... that will not be popular for certain. Finance will love it though, we will save tens of thousands in license costs by going Gimp

C

charles badland

Inspiring

The problem is not the Cloud. The problem, as I see it, is the pricing. Adobe will greatly benefit from moving to a continuously upgraded Cloud service (I assume more difficult to pirate). And I believe Adobe users could benefit as well from this continuous cloud setup.

BUT, the price of Cloud access is much more than one would pay for a perpetual license, even if the user upgraded every 18 months. For example, the CS6 Web and Design Suite is $1900. And upgrades run about $375 every 18 months. So in 10 years as professional user, who keeps up to date with each version, would spend about $3800. Compare that to a 10-year Cloud license of $6000.

I don’t know who placed the price-point, but in my opinion this Cloud pricing model hurts the “mid-range" user the most. Someone who uses maybe 3 or 4 Adobe apps. Which I believe is the majority of Adobe's clientele. Bad call by Adobe Marketing IMO.

Evil Edison

Known Participant

The biggest problem with the pricing is that it is based on the Master Collection. If you use MC then it is a pretty reasonable deal but I completely understand that people who only use a few of the apps (or the smaller suites like Production Premium and Creative) are feeling ripped off. Maybe Adobe needs to offer bundles of products at a lower price--like $30-$35 a month. Better yet, how about an option to bundle a certain number of apps a-la-carte?

A

Anonymous

vince heying wrote:
It seems I must stick with Photoshop 13 (CS5) and hope that there will be addons to keep it current. Any other suggestions?

PS13 is CS6, but your hope will not be realized as there will be no updates to it. Gimp?

V

vince heyingAuthor

Known Participant

I made two mistakes in my 'question'.

I know Photoshop 13 is CS6. A typo.

Also, what I meant by addons is not Adobe updates; but rather what I meant is addons from sources outside Adobe. There are addons to Elements to provide functions that Adobe does not provide. There may be a whole industry outside Adobe to keep Photoshop 13 up to date.

Noel Carboni

Legend

You may have missed some details.

It's $9.95/month for the first year, $19.95/month after. I read that as $120/year then $240/year. I'm not sure where you got your $600 figure. This is for a single product: Photoshop CC with what used to be Extended functionality (there are no longer two editions, you always get 3D).

Yes, I realize this is still a price increase over what Photoshop standard used to cost if you kept up to date with upgrades to all the releases. It's about a wash with the Photoshop Extended upgrade pricing.

There is of course Photoshop Elements for those who don't want or need the full functionality of Photoshop. Much as that may seem insulting, Elements is actually not a half bad editor. Only thing is you can't do layers AND high bit depth editing at the same time - but that's not a kiss of death. It's quite possible to create very nice images using 8 bit editing; you just have to think about what you're doing a bit.

It's probably fantasy to think that 3rd party developers are going to be able to "keep Photoshop CS6 current" through plug-ins, scripts, actions, etc. Yes, you might find someone may create a deconvolution tool or something to rival some of the added plug-ins, but nobody's going to be able to make Camera Raw a filter, or add features to the 3D subsystem, or make UI improvements.

-Noel

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded