If you buy Adobe CC Pro's all-in-one bundle you get one year at a time to use it, for almost the same price as it cost me to use CS6 Suite for nine. You can't even get secondhand instances of the software like I did as a youth with CS3. The only way to get that nowadays is through piracy, which predisposes users to piracy anyways because the pirates actually disable Adobe's broken cloud features that hinder your work. Meanwhile Blender, ffmpeg, Krita, ZIM, and Inkscape are all free but which I support with donations.

We all saw this coming back in 2015 when CC first came out. It's just that the revolt was expected to happen sooner.

I don't see anyone else here talking about the huge strides that Adobe has taken in the past few years with their masking tools in particular. Adobe is still the leader at least in this segment because their tools are still the leaders functionally.

If competitors want to leapfrog Adobe, they're going to have to continue to innovate past Adobe in functionality, not just price. After all, that price isn't really that onerous: their photographer's suite (Lightroom and Photoshop) are together only $120 year. That's not free, but it's not so much that I'm willing to make my job as a photographer harder or less effective because of it.

But there are so many hobbyists, including here HN, who just went with it and have given Adobe thousands of dollars over the past decade just to keep using Lightroom or Photoshop! It just boggles my mind. There was a brief period where you had no good alternatives - GIMP wasn't it - but for almost all hobby needs, you now have very good pay-once options (e.g., Capture One instead of Lightroom). It's basically a monthly fee you pay for not having to think about the problem, and people are willing to pay it for many years.

Makes me think I should be doing more bait-and-switch...

It’s so insidious to sell yearly subscriptions that you pay for monthly. I want to pay by the month precisely because I decide on a monthly basis whether I need a service. If you want out early with Adobe you have to cough up half of the remaining subscription time.

For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler. I’ll pour one out for the pro’s.

I was using Affinity for quick edits. I happily paid for their software as it's worth what they were charging for and not subscription based.

Then it was bought and Canvas decided to release it for free. What sounds like good news, for me it's concerning: Companies need to make money. If users are not paying, well, they might actually be the product the company sells: either with ads or intelligence. I hate ads as much as I hate my data being harvested, so I'm out now.

A couple of weeks ago I found what seems to work for me now: I bought a tablet capable of running Fedora and Darktable, and that's what am using now.

Then I went to look at the image on my drive, and it wasn't there. LR had uploaded it and deleted it from my hard drive!

They broke faith with me with that action, I deleted LR and have never touched it since.

If you use Sony cameras, you should check out Capture One, which (last I tested) has a deft touch with Sony files.

You need professional PDF creation with profiles, preflight tools, editing capabilities abd form creator tools.

Oh and there is InDesign which is an industry standard. You need compatibility with your clients' pipeline.

So until there is a real competitor for Acrobat and a change in the whole industry, Adobe is unavoidable.

Prefer evidence from the eyes over noise from the ears.

Creative Cloud Standard Suite is US$989.88 per year at $659.88 per month or $839.88 per year if you lock in for a year. You lose unlimited access to AI features and instead get 25 monthly credits for them. You also lose access to premium AI features like video generation as well as partner models (Google, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Topaz)

Photoshop is $413.88 / year or $275.88 / year if you lock

Lightroom is $215.88 / year or $143.88 / year if you lock

PS + LR is $359.88 / year or $239.88 / year if you lock

After Effects is $413.88 / year or $275.88 / year if you lock in

Acrobat is $419.88 / year or $299.88 / year if you lock in

But two things are happening: First, competitors are realizing pro software can be a "loss leader" for a different offer (see: Blackmagic Resolve, Canva's Affinity suite).

Second, AI is making it possible to create open source alternatives that are very full-featured. Blender is a pre-AI example, but we're seeing an explosion of brand-new high-polish OSS apps this year.

I'm not moving away from Lightroom yet, because I have a massive catalog containing 20+ years of photos. But new users coming into the ecosystem have far more options now. It's a tough time to charge a subscription for something that's getting actively commoditized.

There are whole certficiations and tutorials for Adobe lightroom, photoshop etc. If I know what I want to achieve, I should be able to interact with an LLM and figure it out. Massive boost for me tbh.

I worry about the longevity of some of these. Are they going to be free with little further development and just languish?

If I was a graphics shop, I don't think I'd be jumping off Creative Cloud and re-gearing staff to Cavalry and Affinity in too much of a hurry.

I assume everyone is tired of their subscription fee?

I love Lightroom but it’s too expensive for my hobby use. I wish all the photo systems had better interoperability. I’m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.

* anyone who thinks Maxon is any better than adobe should re-think that. They really hosed Z-Brush users