# Adobe testing a new price point for the Creative Cloud Photography Plan



## ethanz (May 3, 2019)

Looks like they might try to raise prices: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...hy-plan-with-photoshop-and-lightroom.2180059/


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## Mt Spokane Photography (May 3, 2019)

My use is lightroom 99% of the time, but having photoshop for the few difficult cases is nice. I purchase the 1 year paid in advance version when it goes on sale, so I'm paid thru June 2020. I might buy another year if they go on sale.


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## LDS (May 3, 2019)

ethanz said:


> Looks like they might try to raise prices: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...hy-plan-with-photoshop-and-lightroom.2180059/



It's interesting to know that companies have no shame to offer the same product at different prices - just to test if lab mice customers can accept the higher price. It will be also interesting to know if that is based on users profiling ("Apple users may found the higher price more acceptable"...)

Anyway it looks they are trying to force people to buy 1TB cloud storage anyway - removing the option with 20GB only. And probably trying to see if that boosts the sales of "Cloud Lightroom". As most companies, they are now obsessed in collecting users data points.


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## Canon Rumors Guy (May 3, 2019)

> It looks like Adobe is tinkering with the idea of doubling the price of the Creative Cloud Photography Plan, as the $10/mth plan has vanished from the Adobe site and for some users, the cheapest price many people will see will be $20/mth.
> With the Photography Plan, you also received cloud storage from Adobe. With the $10 plan, you received 20GB of storage, the new $20 plan gives 1TB of storage.
> 
> However, if you only use the software and not the storage, the doubling of the plan price has no real advantage for you.
> ...



Continue reading...


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## Kit. (May 3, 2019)

I remember we have already had the same topic (with the same prices) several months ago here on the forum.


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## mk0x55 (May 3, 2019)

Sounds not too good to me... I wish they will offer a Photoshop-only subscription, even without ACR. I can't care less about Lightroom as I'm more then satisfied with Capture One.


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## LDS (May 3, 2019)

mk0x55 said:


> I wish they will offer a Photoshop-only subscription, even without ACR.



They do. Just go to the Photoshop page (https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html) and you will find the "Adobe Photoshop Single App" at $20.99/mo...


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## wtlloyd (May 3, 2019)

Marketing trick. Float an unreasonable price, then actual price ( I'm betting it will go to $14.99) seems palatable.


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## Del Paso (May 3, 2019)

wtlloyd said:


> Marketing trick. Float an unreasonable price, then actual price ( I'm betting it will go to $14.99) seems palatable.


That's about what we poor Europeans are already paying...but for 20 GB! 
Too bad I hate Capture one...yet, updating Capture one isn't cheap either.


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## mk0x55 (May 3, 2019)

LDS said:


> They do. Just go to the Photoshop page (https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html) and you will find the "Adobe Photoshop Single App" at $20.99/mo...


I missed that clearly. Well, that's not improving on things... let's see what they end up offering.


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## Viggo (May 3, 2019)

Even if half the subscribers stop paying, they still make the same amount of money... 

I wish they would at least offer Lr Classic and CC with 1 TB for the old price.


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## snoke (May 3, 2019)

drug dealer always make get addicted cheap.


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## gcl (May 3, 2019)

Great news for ON1, Luminar, etc.


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## Tom W (May 3, 2019)

I never really understand why people willingly go into the "rental" model when ownership is available. And using their cloud? Just how secure is it really?

I'm pretty much going to avoid Adobe now - I have yet to embrace the monthly payment plan, and have been using a previous version of Lightroom for the last couple of years.


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## neuroanatomist (May 3, 2019)

Tom W said:


> ...have been using a previous version of Lightroom for the last couple of years.


Works fine unti you buy a new camera.


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## cayenne (May 3, 2019)

Del Paso said:


> That's about what we poor Europeans are already paying...but for 20 GB!
> Too bad I hate Capture one...yet, updating Capture one isn't cheap either.




You might look into On1 RAW as a LR substitute. I've been using it for a bit over a year now I think and so far, I'm impressed.

I knew Adobe CC would start jacking up prices once they got their claws into everyone. I just do NOT like the rental model for software.

There are more and MORE viable alternatives for Adobe products that are not subscription.<P>

Davinci Resolve (especially with version 16 coming) - Can replace Premier, After Effects, Audition, and then as a bonus you get some of the best Color Grading software out there. The free version does everything about 98% of the people out there need.

Affinity Photo - Can replace Photoshop pretty readily, faster engine too.

On1 RAW (and others) - replacement for LR.

Affinity has replacements for Designer and with Publisher coming out soon, should be a viable alternative to other Adobe offerings.


I was thinking.....why doesn't Adobe offer their CC offerings *WITHOUT* cloud storage? I mean, not everyone needs cloud storage just to use their tools locally, where most people do their work, right?

Why don't the offer that option and keep the prices low?

cayenne


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## neuroanatomist (May 3, 2019)

cayenne said:


> I was thinking.....why doesn't Adobe offer their CC offerings *WITHOUT* cloud storage? I mean, not everyone needs cloud storage just to use their tools locally, where most people do their work, right?
> 
> Why don't the offer that option and keep the prices low?


Even better, why not just offer the software for *FREE*? I mean, everyone likes free, right?

Damn that pesky desire for profit...


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## Tom W (May 3, 2019)

neuroanatomist said:


> Works fine unti you buy a new camera.



And for that, I use DPP. Still use LR for JPEGs and I can save the RAW to TIFF I there's something in the Adobe program that I really need to use.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (May 3, 2019)

I see that the plan is offered both with 20 GB and with 1 TB cloud storage at B&H. It appears that its just another tier option for those who use cloud storage. I'm using it, because I use Adobe CC on my iPhone. I was trying to figure out the best way to get rid of those photos last night, the number has grown to be too high. I've used my phone as a method to backup images taken while traveling, even if they are jpg, I have a backup. They have long ago been loaded on my servers in raw format at home.


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## mensaf (May 3, 2019)

I switched over to Capture One a few months ago and I wish I did it sooner. Can't replace Photoshop with anything just yet. Provided they don't change the price of the full suite that includes Premiere and AE, I'm unaffected. I've got no problem switching to Avid if that happens, and I know a lot of my peers will, too. It's already a questionable call to keep paying for that service.


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## PureClassA (May 3, 2019)

Several years ago when Adobe announced it was moving to a subscription service, the cries on here and elsewhere were shrill. But the fact is in the last 5 years, the stock price of Adobe has QUADRUPLED. It's gone from about $70/share to today at $281. 

With my regular work running a financial planning firm, I actually bought Adobe stock for some of my clients when they made the announcement years back. It worked out pretty damn well.

Here's the reality of this move. Adobe is going to $20 per month. What they are determining now is what they realistically expect the subscriber loss ratio to be. In other words, they can afford to lose HALF their customers and still net the same fiscal position they are in now. But they won't lose half. They might lose 15 - 20%, which means their gross revenues will STILL go WAY up and my Adobe stock positions will go even higher.

Anytime companies make these decisions, they always calculate loss ratios. If Adobe is going to $20, they have already factored in a few folks leaving their platform.

For example, I have been a full subscriber at $50 for a year or two now. I recently bought Final Cut Pro to migrate there and cut my Adobe subscription back to LR and PS only. Again, all factored in.

If you want to move to Capture One or whatever else, go on ahead. Adobe understands and has accounted for your departure in their pricing model.


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## steen-ag (May 3, 2019)

If that is true, a'm out


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## Stuart (May 3, 2019)

And here's me hoping the new price point might be half the current one. No storage needed.
That might have been enticing for me as a home user.

But double 

I've no new camera's since i got installed versions of LR5 and CS6 - so not being forced to upgrade.


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## cayenne (May 3, 2019)

mensaf said:


> I switched over to Capture One a few months ago and I wish I did it sooner. Can't replace Photoshop with anything just yet. Provided they don't change the price of the full suite that includes Premiere and AE, I'm unaffected. I've got no problem switching to Avid if that happens, and I know a lot of my peers will, too. It's already a questionable call to keep paying for that service.




Give Affinity Photo a look....so far it is my best PS replacement. I believe they have a free trial...available for OSX or Windows.

This link here shows links for iPad and Desktop.....the iPad one is surprisingly powerful.

But check out the desktop page,.

Affinity Photo - Windows, OSX and iPad


HTH,

cayenne


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## kaihp (May 3, 2019)

LDS said:


> It's interesting to know that companies have no shame to offer the same product at different prices - just to test if lab mice customers can accept the higher price.



This is standard marketing practice to determine the price elasticity. Back in the Coupon age, companies would send out different prices to subgroups and look at the buy/mail-in rate.



wtlloyd said:


> Marketing trick. Float an unreasonable price, then actual price ( I'm betting it will go to $14.99) seems palatable.


It's called "anchoring". The first number that is mentioned "anchors" the people answering's perception.

Q: How many people did in traffic in the EU every year?
A1: Below 5.000
A2: Above 5.000

Q: How many people did in traffic in the EU every year?
A1: Below 50.000
A2: Above 50.000

In both cases the average answer deviates very little from the mentioned number, even when you ask people who work with traffic safety professionally.

(the real number is about 26.000 people gets killed in the traffic in the EU)


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## ethermine (May 3, 2019)

The annual subscription plan before was a negligible business expense. The increased price remains a negligible business expense.


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## FramerMCB (May 3, 2019)

ethermine said:


> The annual subscription plan before was a negligible business expense. The increased price remains a negligible business expense.


Whilst I agree with your statement - a lot of plan subscribers are hobbyists/enthusiasts and/or semi-pros and for this crowd (especially the hobbyists, some of whom are pensioners) it's not a "negligible business" expense...


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## PureClassA (May 3, 2019)

Subscription based services are what give companies cash flow safety. Don't be surprised if you see Capture One and others moving to that model in the not too distant future. They are looking at companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and many others and seeing there is indeed a HIGH tolerance if not an appetite for it. In order to insure their company is around for the long haul and able to offer new technologies, they have to employ a sustainable fiscal business model. You can't survive and grow with most of your customer base sitting on a purchase for years at a time or forever.


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## unfocused (May 3, 2019)

Kit. said:


> I remember we have already had the same topic (with the same prices) several months ago here on the forum.



Yes, we did. Same arguments being repeated. 

I will only add this: In both the previous thread and this one some people did not understand the difference between Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. Lightroom Classic is the desktop version, which resides on your personal computer, just like all the other Creative Cloud programs. Lightroom is Adobe's name for the cloud version of the program which does not live on your computer, phone or tablet, but lives in the cloud and is accessed by your device. I think Adobe hired the same naming consultant who advised Canon to have three different names for their consumer APS-C camera line.


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## Kit. (May 3, 2019)

I am at the moment at the zero cost Lightroom plan (cancelled the one in the previous region, yet to subscribe in the current one). It cannot "develop" photos, but it still can catalog them, and I don't use the cloud storage.


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## LDS (May 3, 2019)

PureClassA said:


> Several years ago when Adobe announced it was moving to a subscription service, the cries on here and elsewhere were shrill. But the fact is in the last 5 years, the stock price of Adobe has QUADRUPLED. It's gone from about $70/share to today at $281.



Evidently, from a shareholder perspective, any company that can exploit its market dominance to increase profits just forcing the customers to pay more without any need to invest more, is welcome. When you're the customer, not so much...


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## LDS (May 3, 2019)

cayenne said:


> I was thinking.....why doesn't Adobe offer their CC offerings *WITHOUT* cloud storage? I mean, not everyone needs cloud storage just to use their tools locally, where most people do their work, right?



They have no incentive. Having people moving their data "in the cloud" is another opportunity 1) to get a steady cash flow because they have to keep on paying or their data will be deleted 2) exploit those data trying to extract "valuable information" which can be resold for more profits

Step 2) may be hindered by regulations like European GDPR, but it could take time before the some real fines change the mindset of some companies.


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## Kit. (May 3, 2019)

cayenne said:


> I was thinking.....why doesn't Adobe offer their CC offerings *WITHOUT* cloud storage? I mean, not everyone needs cloud storage just to use their tools locally, where most people do their work, right?
> 
> Why don't the offer that option and keep the prices low?


The $10/mo photography plan (Photoshop plus Lightroom Classic) comes with a minuscule amount of cloud storage.

The $10/mo Lightroom plan and the $20/mo photography plans have a terabyte (or two, don't recall right now) of cloud storage.


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## PureClassA (May 3, 2019)

LDS said:


> Evidently, from a shareholder perspective, any company that can exploit its market dominance to increase profits just forcing the customers to pay more without any need to invest more, is welcome. When you're the customer, not so much...



No, but thanks to living in a free and competitive marketplace, the customer can choose whether to pay the new price or take his/her business elsewhere.


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## dtaylor (May 3, 2019)

I stuck with PS CS6 for a long time but finally relented and got CC.

Since I've moved to CC and paid Adobe monthly the "improvements" I've seen include:

A general loss of performance in PS that is not related to Retina display resolutions (i.e. the loss is there at FHD as well).
More bugs.
An ACR module that slams multiple cores to 100% and spins up my fans like a jet engine if I'm looking at a RAW file and doing NOTHING else. To the extent that I've investigated this, it appears to be due to an idle timer that fires continually to do nothing important, i.e. some "engineer" didn't set it up right so that it fires every 5 seconds or 1 second but instead fires as fast as it can.
A new document dialog that makes me sit and wait every time I use it so that it can download some stupid template options I never use. So if I click New... and wait 5 seconds, then immediately click New... again, I get to wait another 5 seconds because the "software engineer" was too stupid or lazy to display the dialog immediately and load the template options as they come in, and/or cache the download. This is over a 75 Mbps connection.
As for Lightroom, I don't use it. To the extent I've tried it to see if I would want to use it, it is inexcusably slow.

This, btw, is on two machines each with quad core i7's, 16gb and 32gb of RAM, full SSDs, and the desktop machine has one of the fastest video cards you can buy. I was mining with the thing during the last crypto boom.

If Adobe thinks I'm paying more for this they are pants-on-head retarded. There's very little holding me to CC and I've debated canceling and going back to CS6 as is. I've also considered Capture One.


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## dtaylor (May 3, 2019)

PureClassA said:


> If you want to move to Capture One or whatever else, go on ahead. Adobe understands and has accounted for your departure in their pricing model.



Adobe isn't delivering *anything of value* for their subscription service. They're milking an effective monopoly position. They desperately need a competitor who can knock PS and LR off the pedestal they're on.


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## Mikehit (May 3, 2019)

dtaylor said:


> Adobe isn't delivering *anything of value* for their subscription service. They're milking an effective monopoly position. They desperately need a competitor who can knock PS and LR off the pedestal they're on.


Your comment is illogical. If after all these years, with all the competitors out there they are still number one then to me it means that they are still offering something the others don't and that 'something' is worth the subscription charge: ie what they offer has 'value' to the subscribers.
People seemed fine paying >$600 for the full fat CS years ago, but start complaining when that cost was amortized over a monthly subscription charge.


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## dtaylor (May 3, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> Your comment is illogical. If after all these years, with all the competitors out there...



What competitors? Aperture is dead and C1 is the only major competitor I can think of.



> ...they are still number one then to me it means that they are still offering something the others don't and that 'something' is worth the subscription charge



The software has literally gotten worse since CS6. There is still years of prior code sitting there along with UI familiarity. That has value. But I paid for that value when I got CS6. I'm looking at the money I've paid since then _and I have nothing to show for it._


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## unfocused (May 3, 2019)

dtaylor said:


> ...This, btw, is on two machines each with quad core i7's, 16gb and 32gb of RAM, full SSDs, and the desktop machine has one of the fastest video cards you can buy....



I'm surprised that you are experiencing all these problems. The computer I have is new, but probably no more powerful than yours (most likely less), but I have not experienced any of the issues you raise. I would think that if the problems were as severe for other users, we would be hearing more about them.


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## YuengLinger (May 3, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> Your comment is illogical. If after all these years, with all the competitors out there they are still number one then to me it means that they are still offering something the others don't and that 'something' is worth the subscription charge: ie what they offer has 'value' to the subscribers.
> People seemed fine paying >$600 for the full fat CS years ago, but start complaining when that cost was amortized over a monthly subscription charge.



It isn't "what" they offer, but "who." Scott Kelby is the Tom Brady of software promotion.


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## Etienne (May 3, 2019)

mensaf said:


> I switched over to Capture One a few months ago and I wish I did it sooner. Can't replace Photoshop with anything just yet. Provided they don't change the price of the full suite that includes Premiere and AE, I'm unaffected. I've got no problem switching to Avid if that happens, and I know a lot of my peers will, too. It's already a questionable call to keep paying for that service.





cayenne said:


> You might look into On1 RAW as a LR substitute. I've been using it for a bit over a year now I think and so far, I'm impressed.
> 
> I knew Adobe CC would start jacking up prices once they got their claws into everyone. I just do NOT like the rental model for software.
> 
> ...



I am paying almost CND $1000 per year for the CC suite now. It's way over priced. I have been thinking of switching to Davinci and On1 for quite a while, but I am concerned about the learning curve to get up to speed. How long did it take you to get proficient at Resolve? Is it a complete replacement of Premiere/ Audition?

I am going to buy at least Resolve and check it out. Adobe is over-the-top greedy, and Premiere is full of bugs, and crashes all the time. I think Premiere is permanently a beta product. Sure their stockholders love it... now ... but I suspect they are going to bleed a lot of users who don't really use everything in there.


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## cayenne (May 3, 2019)

Etienne said:


> I am paying almost CND $1000 per year for the CC suite now. It's way over priced. I have been thinking of switching to Davinci and On1 for quite a while, but I am concerned about the learning curve to get up to speed. How long did it take you to get proficient at Resolve? Is it a complete replacement of Premiere/ Audition?
> 
> I am going to buy at least Resolve and check it out. Adobe is over-the-top greedy, and Premiere is full of bugs, and crashes all the time. I think Premiere is permanently a beta product. Sure their stockholders love it... now ... but I suspect they are going to bleed a lot of users who don't really use everything in there.



With Davinci resolve...there is a learning curve. I've been looking at the previews of version 16 coming out soon and if it hits like it shows, it will be the killer non linear editor suite to beat IMHO.

I've used it mainly in the past to learn color correction and color grading and it can't be beat for that. But in addition to learning theory behind color grading, how to read scopes, etc...and using node based editing it is not rocket surgery to learn the controls.

If you are used to a NLE like Premier, I think you will pick up the Resolve editor pretty quick. It appears with version 16 you will have two NLE screens...one for quick throw it together stuff and then the regular one that is more layer based and detailed. Again, premier like.

I"m coming into it from FCPX, so I'm used to the magnetic timeline, and the Resolve style like Premier is different for me to learn, but again, so far, Ii've not found it to be rocket surgery.

You can get the FREE version of Resolve to try out...there are no limits to you using it, no trial period, it just works.

The full version has extras like noise reduction, and I believe other features that are more suited to editing houses where you have multiple people working at once on a project.

The sound design looks very interesting...

The replacement in Davinci Resolve for After Effects, I believe is Fusion. I've not tried this yet....it is node based like the color grading area, and I"m guessing that will be a bit of a learning curve, but from what I've seen and researched, it is quite powerful...comes with good particle generators, etc.

Anyway, I'm waiting to shortly upgrade my computer and likely about that time, Davinci Resolve 16 will be out. I plan to set that up. If I can generate enough $$, I'm also wanting to invest in one of the Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema 4K cameras...and it comes with the full version of Resolve with it.....

Anyway, hope that helps.

For the price, I can't see why anyone wouldn't try it out....don't cost nothin' .....


C


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## Macoose (May 3, 2019)

neuroanatomist said:


> Works fine unti you buy a new camera.


Mr. Neuro,

I've got a question: What about converting raw files to Adobe dng? Is it not a viable option for the new camera delemma?
I'm sure you and others can explain any shortcomings in the format.
I read a few articles that say it's a fine alternative and would be interested to see any links to the contrary.

Thanks,
Macoose

Edit. Please don't do a lot of searching to answer my question. I'm looking for a general answer that covers the high points.


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## ethanz (May 4, 2019)

Macoose said:


> Mr. Neuro,
> 
> I've got a question: What about converting raw files to Adobe dng? Is it not a viable option for the new camera delemma?
> I'm sure you and others can explain any shortcomings in the format.
> ...



When you have 2,000 raw images from a sporting event, that is a lot of extra time to convert and hassle with.


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## privatebydesign (May 4, 2019)

ethanz said:


> When you have 2,000 raw images from a sporting event, that is a lot of extra time to convert and hassle with.


Why wouldn't you be using Photo Mechanic as a front end pre editor like pretty much every other high volume sports shooter?


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## crazyrunner33 (May 4, 2019)

mensaf said:


> I switched over to Capture One a few months ago and I wish I did it sooner. Can't replace Photoshop with anything just yet. Provided they don't change the price of the full suite that includes Premiere and AE, I'm unaffected. I've got no problem switching to Avid if that happens, and I know a lot of my peers will, too. It's already a questionable call to keep paying for that service.



I'd look into Resolve. I've got Premier, AVID and Resolve, but I could see switching over to Resolve. The only issue is After Effects, I don't see a suitable replacement on the horizon.


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## dtaylor (May 4, 2019)

unfocused said:


> I'm surprised that you are experiencing all these problems. The computer I have is new, but probably no more powerful than yours (most likely less), but I have not experienced any of the issues you raise. I would think that if the problems were as severe for other users, we would be hearing more about them.



Google returns a ton of hits for the slow new document issue. It also reveals a fix I didn't know about before.

I can't find info on the ACR issue, but that's because no matter how I word the search Google returns a bunch of other complaints about slow PS/LR/Bridge under CC.


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## mensaf (May 4, 2019)

Etienne said:


> I am paying almost CND $1000 per year for the CC suite now. It's way over priced. I have been thinking of switching to Davinci and On1 for quite a while, but I am concerned about the learning curve to get up to speed. How long did it take you to get proficient at Resolve? Is it a complete replacement of Premiere/ Audition?
> 
> I am going to buy at least Resolve and check it out. Adobe is over-the-top greedy, and Premiere is full of bugs, and crashes all the time. I think Premiere is permanently a beta product. Sure their stockholders love it... now ... but I suspect they are going to bleed a lot of users who don't really use everything in there.


It took me about 2 weeks to get used to Capture One. Initially, I had buyer's remorse because it was so different, but when I went back to Lightroom once the trial expired, it felt like I was using dated software and I just bought it.


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## Berowne (May 4, 2019)

privatebydesign said:


> Why wouldn't you be using Photo Mechanic as a front end pre editor like pretty much every other high volume sports shooter?



& re: Neuros comment about old LR-Versions.

I use LR 5.7 and if necessary (renting a 1Dx ) the Adobe DNG-Converter. Gave away LR 3 and LR 4 to friends of my son. LR 5 is fast enough for me, i am used to it and would not change it. But if i change, it surely would be Capture One. My impression is, that for whatever reason the resulting IQ in C1 is far better. I dont know why, but it seems to be so - in my opinion. 

[Edit: typo]


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## AlanWill (May 4, 2019)

Sounds like Adobe is getting greedy. I'm using both Lightroom /Photoshop and Capture One. I much prefer Capture One, & use Photoshop for things C1 cannot do (yet), but if Adobe hikes the price I'm dumping Lightroom /Photoshop!


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## Memirsbrunnr (May 4, 2019)

adobe really has the business model of a heroin dealer. Get people addicted, then slowly drive the price up when people are hooked and hardly have an alternative..


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## SecureGSM (May 4, 2019)

Memirsbrunnr said:


> adobe really has the business model of a heroin dealer. Get people addicted, then slowly drive the price up when people are hooked and hardly have an alternative..





Memirsbrunnr said:


> adobe really has the business model of a heroin dealer. Get people addicted, then slowly drive the price up when people are hooked and *hardly have an alternative..*



*hardly have an alternative... is *a bit of a exaggeration to put it mildly


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## degos (May 4, 2019)

All this wailing and hair-pulling about a commercial company being greedy, yet open-source projects like Darktable, dcraw and Rawtherapee are crying-out for samples and technical help in reverse-engineering CR3 format. If you're concerned about the future of digital photography for enthusiasts and small companies that can't afford hefty cloud subscription fees then get off your backsides and help.



ethermine said:


> The annual subscription plan before was a negligible business expense. The increased price remains a negligible business expense.



It's also a single point of failure for your business. What's your reversion plan if there is an outage? Sit on your hands and sing lullabies to your clients?


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## John daniel (May 4, 2019)

They do that and I leave Adobe for good. Even the actual price is borderland.

JD


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## Etienne (May 4, 2019)

cayenne said:


> With Davinci resolve...there is a learning curve. I've been looking at the previews of version 16 coming out soon and if it hits like it shows, it will be the killer non linear editor suite to beat IMHO.
> 
> I've used it mainly in the past to learn color correction and color grading and it can't be beat for that. But in addition to learning theory behind color grading, how to read scopes, etc...and using node based editing it is not rocket surgery to learn the controls.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the info!
I think resolve is around $400. I've been thinking about getting their pocket cinema camera at $1200 or $1300, which comes with Resolve, so I might get that and get into resolve at the same time.


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## ethermine (May 4, 2019)

degos said:


> It's also a single point of failure for your business. What's your reversion plan if there is an outage? Sit on your hands and sing lullabies to your clients?



Works just fine for me off grid when necessary. Perhaps you’re basing your question with the assumption I remain in a fixed location with no means of gaining connectivity outside of that location. I travel a lot, so that’ll never be an issue for me. Adobe servers going down to the degree I wouldn’t be able to complete a job isn’t even a worrying consideration. It’s like worrying about getting hit by an asteroid. 

Even if everything ended up going wrong to the degree in which you’re concerned about, I’ve been doing this long enough and I’m resourceful enough to find a workaround. So, ultimately non issues for me.


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## slclick (May 4, 2019)

I only use it old school LR style. No cloud, just LR nothing else in the CC plan so yeah, I wish I could get LR standalone. I guess it's all about sucking it up and accepting change.


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## Tom W (May 4, 2019)

cayenne said:


> Give Affinity Photo a look....so far it is my best PS replacement. I believe they have a free trial...available for OSX or Windows.
> 
> This link here shows links for iPad and Desktop.....the iPad one is surprisingly powerful.
> 
> ...



That looks interesting. All the tools that I actually use, plus a bunch more. How is the speed with Affinity? How up-to-date is the RAW processing (i.e., is the new RP camera body recognized yet?).


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## stevelee (May 4, 2019)

I was very resistant to the subscription model when it came out. A teaser price helped me decide to try it, but mostly I realized I was paying $600 a year for upgrades as it was. Before I retired I was using more of the apps more regularly. I need page layout very rarely now. I will occasionally decide that I want a letter to look really good, so I'll take advantage of the typographic features in InDesign. I don't do a lot of video, and I'm much more proficient in FCP than in Premiere, so I don't use the latter enough to get good at it. But I don't see cutting out or cutting back on my plan.


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## Mikehit (May 4, 2019)

dtaylor said:


> What competitors? Aperture is dead and C1 is the only major competitor I can think of.



maybe they are dead because they cannot compete with what Adobe offer - in other words, Adobe do a lot to satisfy a majority of people and Aperture/C1 cannot keep up ?



dtaylor said:


> The software has literally gotten worse since CS6. There is still years of prior code sitting there along with UI familiarity. That has value. But I paid for that value when I got CS6. I'm looking at the money I've paid since then _and I have nothing to show for it._


In what way has it 'got worse'?
What would constitute having 'somthing to show for it'?

You make a lot of bland statements with no real meat to them.


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## GMCPhotographics (May 4, 2019)

It just goes to show what a greedy corporation Adobe is. We all knew this would happen once the company got enough people off their purchase plan and onto a corporate greedy subscription model. Their Subscription service is hosted on the cheapest cloud available too...it's IP address isn't even a static IP. It bounces around every month. If you are behind a corporate firewall it's a real headache. 
If Adobe gains market share like Autodesk did in their market...expect phone number priced subscription plans...like Autodesk...who are another greedy corporate virus like entity. People moan about Microsoft...but they pale next to Adobe and Autodesk.


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## londonxt (May 4, 2019)

This software subscription model is dangerous and this is adding to the growing evidence of unease. I havent been impressed with what I have recieved for over a year (or is it two) with Lightroom Classic compared to the feature jumps between new version releases of the standalone product in the previous decade. A subscription model say to access content rather than just using the platform makes sense as it provides pressure to maintain a consistent flow of new or exclusive content to keep the subscriber happy. With Lightroom classic you are basically paying a subscription just to use the tool when previously with a one off puchase you could be sure that you would always be able to access that tool minus future updates. In the game industry there is often a subscription service to access online only games or to access the online feature of the game which again makes sense as there you are paying to experience infinite emergent gameplay that is only possible with the participation of an online community. 

As a hobbyist that may open Lightroom a few times a month I have not had value for money with the new subsciption service, even though I was willing to give it a go with the benefit of doubt. I would be happy with paying for the base package then extra for new features as an when they come, even if it was like an a-la-carte menu, this would inspire Adobe to invest in new features (e.g. HDR and Panorama have been pretty much under-cooked and stagnant since they released). I would even go further and be more flexible on my demands and suggest that a cloud computing model would be a win/win where as a casual hobbyist I would pay as and when I used the software rather than having to pay even if I don't use it! What a bizarre world. I am sure there is a case here for an investigation by the Monopoly commision!

I mean think about it if multiple vendors went for the monthly subscription model even when you are not even using the stuff not many people would be happy to do that for more than a handful of the lucky vendors and as proven in other market areas such as electricity and internet providers, subscription models that auto-renew and maintain a priceplan even when new users get better offers for the same service, this sounds more like a dangerous captive market situation than a truely competitive market. Don't see why Adobe should be allowed to get away with corrupting software!


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## dtaylor (May 4, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> maybe they are dead because they cannot compete with what Adobe offer - in other words, Adobe do a lot to satisfy a majority of people and Aperture/C1 cannot keep up ?



You cannot concur that the image editing market has resulted in something of a natural near-monopoly without also agreeing that complaints about pricing and service within that market are valid, as price and service distortions are _inevitable consequences_ of such a market.



> In what way has it 'got worse'?



Don't play dumb. I've already listed the ways that have annoyed me. If you take 5 minutes on Google you can find a long list of complaints about CC's performance. So many in fact that I cannot identify the performance issue which annoys me the most amongst all the other performance issues.



> What would constitute having 'somthing to show for it'?



Improvements in features, performance, stability, and/or security.


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## jolyonralph (May 4, 2019)

Tom W said:


> I never really understand why people willingly go into the "rental" model when ownership is available. And using their cloud? Just how secure is it really?



Because you never really own software. Both in terms of the licence agreement that comes with your purchase, but more realistically in that once you buy it, it's going to only remain current for a certain amount of time. 

New cameras come out and you need updates/upgrades. Just because you buy a software licence doesn't give you unlimited upgrades for life. So from time to time you'll have to buy an upgrade or, in extreme cases, new software entirely.

And even if you don't buy a new camera, your software will become out of date if you don't install security fixes, or if you upgrade your computer/operating system and the old software doesn't work.

On average you'll get 3-5 years max out of a piece of purchased software before you can't use it any more and you need to buy a replacement. How does the price of buying Lightroom & Photoshop outright every 3 years compare to subscription - when you can have the latest version all the time.

I get people don't like to subscribe and they feel 'renting' is inferior to 'owning'. But if you're using the software seriously then you really shouldn't be complaining. 

ps. Cloud is very secure nowdays. Probably safer than having stuff on your own hard drives. BUT. It's still slow, and 1TB is a tiny fraction of what most serious photographers have in terms of raw files


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## jeanluc (May 4, 2019)

Googled “Adobe Photography plan”. Same price. $9.99.


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## lexptr (May 4, 2019)

For years I pay subscription fee, despite using LR/PS accessionaly. That is because 1) I don't want to think about pausing/restarting the subscription; 2) I want to support the developer. Current price is about right. I would say: on the high side of "right" (just compare with what you get with Office 365 family subscription for less money). 20$/month would be too much. So looks like I will search for better alternatives.

Another sad part here is that they probably will still get more from those who stay. And they ain't gonna give a heck about once loyal users like me. Greedy maniacs!


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## Mikehit (May 4, 2019)

dtaylor said:


> You cannot concur that the image editing market has resulted in something of a natural near-monopoly without also agreeing that complaints about pricing and service within that market are valid, as price and service distortions are _inevitable consequences_ of such a market.



Do you have the numbers to base your conclusion of 'near monopoly'? Or are you talking about what _may _happen _if _they wield their power because I don't see much evidence of Adobe abusing the market nor distorting the market - can you tell me in what way you see this happening?
What I do see is them having a highly successful model and you cannot hold that against them and what they have got going for them is a suite of products that integrate at whatever level you want to go which is whey they are especially successful with multimedia people. There are plenty of alternatives out there - free or paid for so people will move once the cost-benefit starts to fail. But not seeing enough benefit in their products, or them raising their prices (shock! horror!) is not the same as them abusing their market position. 

Remember the main driver for them going subscription was seemingly maintaining revenue stream in the face of the amount of software piracy going on so maybe we should be aiming our criticism at those who pirated the software rather than buying it - and many of those are probably the same people complaining about the subscription model: but they weren't buying the software anyway so why precisely are they complaining?
And if you want a lower-level software on a paid-for package why not buy Elements? All I know is that my LR Classic/PS package is barely more expensive than buying OnOne (who offer the stunning reduction of $10 by renewing each year).


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## bergstrom (May 5, 2019)

can they not offer a plan without cloud storage. I just want plain photoshop and lightroom classic


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## bergstrom (May 5, 2019)

PureClassA said:


> Several years ago when Adobe announced it was moving to a subscription service, the cries on here and elsewhere were shrill. But the fact is in the last 5 years, the stock price of Adobe has QUADRUPLED. It's gone from about $70/share to today at $281.
> 
> With my regular work running a financial planning firm, I actually bought Adobe stock for some of my clients when they made the announcement years back. It worked out pretty damn well.
> 
> ...



so, screw the consumer.


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## unfocused (May 5, 2019)

bergstrom said:


> can they not offer a plan without cloud storage. I just want plain photoshop and lightroom classic


Sure but it wouldn't be any cheaper. Cloud storage is like video in cameras, it costs almost nothing to include but it boosts sales.


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## unfocused (May 5, 2019)

I thought Canon offered free photo processing software with most of their cameras. If so, then no one *has* to buy Lightroom or Photoshop. Let's face it, most of us use Photoshop and/or Lightroom because we prefer it to other products. It's an add-on like a second lens, speedlight, tripod, etc. There are plenty of alternatives. Many of which are free or nearly so. The complaint about Adobe seems to be that people don't want to pay the company the price they charge for a superior product.


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## StoicalEtcher (May 5, 2019)

I think the position for Adobe is simply that PS/LR (and to some extent other parts of the packages) are now so well developed that there is little major upgrade possible for developers to offer, beyond tweaks and minor improvements and new file format compatibility. As a result, there would be real risk that purchasers of the package would decide each new version did not offer enough to bother buying it, and so Adobe's revenues would not keep renewing at the same rates as they used to. The old system whereby each 3 year upgrade was a major improvement have gone.

Against that backdrop, not only does the monthly subscription option give Adobe a more stable income flow, but it also removes the risk of the next new version not being tempting enough for users to upgrade to.

Therefore, it is unfortunately good business for them to have moved to this model, and I'm not sure it's fair to blame them for that. Once you have that model, everyone knows that you surely can not be performing well if your revenues aren't growing x% every year  - so what can you do other than increase the price regularly?

Don't get me wrong, I strongly dislike the subscription model myself, but it is inevitable. The only real solution is for enough people to get behind another product to strengthen the alternate - but then where are all the guides to that, and the colleges teaching it as part of the post-processing modules, etc... And, once that alternate became really popular, the owners would want to raise equity to go further, and the equity owners would then require annual revenue (& profit) growth, and then, guess what...?


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## jedy (May 5, 2019)

jolyonralph said:


> Because you never really own software. Both in terms of the licence agreement that comes with your purchase, but more realistically in that once you buy it, it's going to only remain current for a certain amount of time.


But no one is forced to upgrade if they can live without the newer features. They keep their copy of the software for no additional money. Subscribers will be continually paying or will lose the software completely.



> New cameras come out and you need updates/upgrades. Just because you buy a software licence doesn't give you unlimited upgrades for life. So from time to time you'll have to buy an upgrade or, in extreme cases, new software entirely.


But you get to pay for upgrades as and when it suits you. Professionals don’t necessarily buy into new equipment as soon as it’s released anyway. I, for example have a separate bank account which I top up at my own choosing and amount to cover for things like software upgrades.



> And even if you don't buy a new camera, your software will become out of date if you don't install security fixes, or if you upgrade your computer/operating system and the old software doesn't work.


 See answer above re: bank account.



> On average you'll get 3-5 years max out of a piece of purchased software before you can't use it any more and you need to buy a replacement. How does the price of buying Lightroom & Photoshop outright every 3 years compare to subscription - when you can have the latest version all the time.


Outright? You buy an upgrade and only when you choose to, not every 3 years.



> ps. Cloud is very secure nowdays. Probably safer than having stuff on your own hard drives. BUT. It's still slow, and 1TB is a tiny fraction of what most serious photographers have in terms of raw files


Firstly, where’s your proof that cloud is safer than local storage? Servers could go down, hackers could steal/erase your content. That doesn’t apply to local storage. As for your last point, you’ve just confirmed Adobe’s subscription is worse. Slow cloud storage and the vastly increased rental cost of needing a lot of cloud storage if you have a huge amount of files to store


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## Kit. (May 5, 2019)

jedy said:


> Servers could go down, hackers could steal/erase your content. That doesn’t apply to local storage.


Oh, really?


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## jedy (May 5, 2019)

Kit. said:


> Oh, really?


Well, I like to disconnect from the internet when editing and don’t need to be online. I have backup disks that go nowhere near the internet. The likelihood of a local disk being hacked is much less likely than a permanent cloud service. If a server goes down you lose access to your files, if a hard disk fails, you use your backup disk.


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## jolyonralph (May 5, 2019)

jedy said:


> Well, I like to disconnect from the internet when editing and don’t need to be online. I have backup disks that go nowhere near the internet. The likelihood of a local disk being hacked is much less likely than a permanent cloud service. If a server goes down you lose access to your files, if a hard disk fails, you use your backup disk.



Cloud data (for serious clouds, and I have no doubt Adobe's is in this category) use multiple distributed servers with multiple levels of redundancy. The only way the data will be compromised is if you use a weak password or you are careless with your password security, which I'm sure you wouldn't be.

For most people the likelihood of your local disk being hacked is much more likely than a permanent cloud service. If a cloud service goes down you use your backup cloud service!


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## jedy (May 5, 2019)

jolyonralph said:


> For most people the likelihood of your local disk being hacked is much more likely than a permanent cloud service. If a cloud service goes down you use your backup cloud service!


I’ll make this clearer. I use my computers internal hard disk for programs only. All important files are kept on external disks and away from the internet as much as possible. No one is hacking my external disks.


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## LDS (May 5, 2019)

degos said:


> then get off your backsides and help.



Wrong call, sorry. Just a small part of photographers are also software developers or the like, or have the technical skills for such kind of jobs (or even the time). Unluckily "open source" software was born among IT people to solve IT problems. It works far worse outside that environment. Moreover, most people don't want "free" software - they are OK to pay for it, just they would like to see different options to pay for it. For some subscriptions are fine, for others they are not. It's a matter of how your life and your job are organized, and how you manage your finances and expenses.


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## LDS (May 5, 2019)

PureClassA said:


> No, but thanks to living in a free and competitive marketplace, the customer can choose whether to pay the new price or take his/her business elsewhere.



In a truly free and competitive marketplace, antitrust agencies would have barred many acquisition, and broken many companies. The IT marketplace is one of the less free and competitive, with a bunch of companies with a strong control over their market. There is more competition among camera and lens makers than graphics software.


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## unfocused (May 5, 2019)

jedy said:


> I’ll make this clearer. I use my computers internal hard disk for programs only. All important files are kept on external disks and away from the internet as much as possible. No one is hacking my external disks.



Once you connect an external disk to your computer, it is no more or less secure than an internal hard drive. If you are saying that you never connect your external drives when your computer is connected to the internet, I suppose that might offer some security, but then in the context of this discussion, I'm not sure it is relevant. Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom Classic do not need to be connected to the internet to work, as they reside on your hard drive like all other programs. You need to connect every few months so Adobe can verify the subscription and number of computers you have the programs active on, but for day-to-day usage, you don't have to be connected to the internet. (You do for the cloud-based Lightroom CC, but not Lightroom Classic).


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## unfocused (May 5, 2019)

LDS said:


> In a truly free and competitive marketplace, antitrust agencies would have barred many acquisition, and broken many companies. The IT marketplace is one of the less free and competitive, with a bunch of companies with a strong control over their market. There is more competition among camera and lens makers than graphics software.


In a truly free and competitive marketplace, there would be no need for antitrust agencies. Antitrust agencies are only needed in cases where the market is not free and competitive. 

Adobe became the dominant player in the market by playing by the classic rules of the marketplace: offer a product that is superior to what others have, purchase companies that will make your brand stronger (Aldus, for example) and market your product relentlessly (Scott Kelby world). The result for consumers has been an incredibly sophisticated and versatile product that far exceeds the capabilities of its competitors. In many (but not all cases) Adobe charges more than its competitors but people buy it because they consider it to be a better product. The last thing we need is government stepping in and screwing that up.


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## Kit. (May 5, 2019)

jedy said:


> Well, I like to disconnect from the internet when editing and don’t need to be online. I have backup disks that go nowhere near the internet.


Ransomware does not need to be connected to Internet in order to encrypt your data. It may as well be triggered by you attaching your backup disk.

The cloud services have all the protections you have, and some more. In particular, they have much more competent backup and security engineers. And if you really care about your data, you will have an off-site backup for it, and the cheapest regular off-site backup solutions these days are cloud storage based.



jedy said:


> The likelihood of a local disk being hacked is much less likely than a permanent cloud service.


The only extra risk of the cloud storage compared to the local one is that the company that provides it suddenly goes out of business. Still, if it's Adobe or (especially) Amazon, the chances of that are negligible compared to the chances that you personally go out of business.


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## SecureGSM (May 5, 2019)

Kit,
Some practices and methodologies you are referring to are quite unsubstantiated.
None of the public cloud providers would guarantee any data protection or integrity whatsoever. Read SLA. It is all at your own risk.
Adobe, Amazon and other known to have a long track record of cyber security incidents, millions and millions of user accounts leaked, user data accessed by third parties, etc.
the rule of thumb is: transfer to cloud only the data that you can absolutely can afford to have lost completely or illegally obtained by non-authorized party.

Only 20% of enterprises are on cloud already, insecurity is one of the issues there


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## LDS (May 5, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> remember the main driver for them going subscription was seemingly maintaining revenue stream in the face of the amount of software piracy



No. That was a little icing on the cake, but you can easily find pirated copies of CC, if you want.

The main driver for switching to subscription, and not for Adobe only, is that as markets mature, and adding new features to products becomes difficult and/or expensive, the old cash flows disappear. If once a two/three years old device or software looked outdated, not so much today, and the average lifetime increased to five years or more. It happened to computers, it happened to OSes, it happened to software, it's happening to smartphones.

Just as long as you have a market captive enough, you can find other ways to sustain or increase the cash flow. The two main solutions today are switching to subscriptions (or cloud services, which is mostly the same), and monetize users' data - often both. Only if a product is appealing enough you can try to raise prices, as it's happening in the smartphones market, as long as they can. In all situations, anyway, the losers is the customer - a symptom that those markets aren't really "free" enough.


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## LDS (May 5, 2019)

Kit. said:


> he chances of that are negligible



Yes, who would have said Kodak would have gone out of business?


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## unfocused (May 5, 2019)

SecureGSM said:


> ...None of the public cloud providers would guarantee any data protection or integrity whatsoever...the rule of thumb is: transfer to cloud only the data that you can absolutely can afford to have lost completely or illegally obtained by non-authorized party.



Cloud storage is for backup and convenience. Copy (not transfer) files to the cloud so that if your home/business storage is lost, corrupted or destroyed, you have a backup. Copy to the cloud so you can share files or access them remotely. Having your files in only one place is risky, no matter where that is.

Yes, anything you post, sell or give to someone else can be stolen. The only protection for that is copyrighting important images, but let's be realistic, how many of our images are so valuable that they are worth stealing?


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## LDS (May 5, 2019)

unfocused said:


> In a truly free and competitive marketplace, there would be no need for antitrust agencies. Antitrust agencies are only needed in cases where the market is not free and competitive.



Sorry, no market remains free and competitive without rules and a regulator enforcing them. Otherwise the old apes behaviour takes the precedence, the 800 pound gorilla wins, and customers simply pay more than needed.



unfocused said:


> Adobe became the dominant player



Sure, like Microsoft, Google, etc - often adopting behaviours that should have been sanctioned but were not. Anyway, when you have a dominant position, usually stricter rules applies to avoid abuses of that position.

Like it or not, democratic governments were created exactly to stop the abuses of a few powerful ones. If you prefer oligarchies dominated by a restricted ruling class who can abuse its power at will, your choice, but not mine.


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## Kit. (May 5, 2019)

SecureGSM said:


> Kit,
> Some practices and methodologies you are referring to are quite unsubstantiated.


No one here was asking for _my_ backup schemes.

I am just addressing some common cognitive biases (like items in one's personal possession being seen as inherently more "secure").



SecureGSM said:


> None of the public cloud providers would guarantee any data protection or integrity whatsoever. Read SLA. It is all at your own risk.


And what kind of SLA do you have with your SoHo setup? Who will replace your data if your hardware gets physically stolen?


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## michaelgalassi (May 5, 2019)

I've been looking for that last push to move me to either On1's Photo Raw or Skylum's Luminar, both of which I've purchased. Both companies have demonstrated outstanding ethics and seem very customer friendly. Both are actively improving their abilities to import pre-existing work done in LR to their product. It would seem that Adobe is on the cusp of providing me with that little nudge.


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## LesC (May 5, 2019)

In the UK the £9.99 option is still available so i guess it depends on how the 'pricing tests' go in the US? However, I bought Luminar a few months ago to give it a try and whilst I still prefer Phtotoshop, if Adobe double my subscription, I will cancel & move over to Luminar. Not so much a case of if I can afford it but as a matter of principle. 

The poll over at Petapixel suggests many will do the same - currently just over 85% say they would cancel.


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## Kit. (May 5, 2019)

LDS said:


> Yes, who would have said Kodak would have gone out of business?


Kodak as in NYSE:KODK?

And what was exactly your problem with Kodak "have gone out of business"? Canon stopped servicing your Kodak DCS-1? Or you ran out of your stock of Kodachrome?


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## jeffa4444 (May 5, 2019)

neuroanatomist said:


> Even better, why not just offer the software for *FREE*? I mean, everyone likes free, right?
> 
> Damn that pesky desire for profit...


Its a reasonable question. I have there lightroom classic / photoshop cc subscription with 20GB storage. Ive never used the storage and never will all my stuff is backed-up 4 ways locally would not risk someone else just in case I decided to not use the service in the future. Im certanly not against them makng a profit, holding my asset I am.


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## Ozarker (May 6, 2019)

LDS said:


> Yes, who would have said Kodak would have gone out of business?


Kodak has not gone out of business. Still trade on the NYSE @ under $3 a share. Certainly not a big player in any world, but not out of business.


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## LDS (May 6, 2019)

Kit. said:


> Or you ran out of your stock of Kodachrome?



My Kodachrome of yesterday may be your cloud data of tomorrow. Don't believe even companies like Amazon could not fall (Enron? WorldCom? Lehman Brothers?), because of unexpected market changes, or simply change business model, and drop some products and customers when they are no longer remunerative enough.


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## Kit. (May 6, 2019)

LDS said:


> My Kodachrome of yesterday may be your cloud data of tomorrow.


And how many _years_ did you have to switch from Kodachrome before it became unavailable?



LDS said:


> Don't believe even companies like Amazon could not fall (Enron? WorldCom? Lehman Brothers?), because of unexpected market changes, or simply change business model, and drop some products and customers when they are no longer remunerative enough.


I don't believe we are talking about stock market investing here, and "unexpected market changes" don't happen in a vacuum, but are driven by the customers' preferences.


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## SecureGSM (May 6, 2019)

Kit. said:


> No one here was asking for _my_ backup schemes.
> 
> I am just addressing some common cognitive biases (like items in one's personal possession being seen as inherently more "secure").
> 
> ...


Please take you time to realise how physical security / data loss prevention strategy differs from cyber security objectives. Then please consider review of your contingency and mitigation strategies. Bottom line is public cloud insecurities is not about your files getting lost to the point beyond recovery but about mitigation of risk of unauthorised access to your business data and inadvertently revealing sensitive information of your respective clientele, visual imagery inclusive. I hope it explains.


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## SecureGSM (May 6, 2019)

unfocused said:


> Cloud storage is for backup and convenience. Copy (not transfer) files to the cloud so that if your home/business storage is lost, corrupted or destroyed, you have a backup. Copy to the cloud so you can share files or access them remotely. Having your files in only one place is risky, no matter where that is.
> 
> Yes, anything you post, sell or give to someone else can be stolen. The only protection for that is copyrighting important images, but let's be realistic, how many of our images are so valuable that they are worth stealing?


Thank for the feedback, personal images is the least what I would be worrying about. Business data is a different story though. I trust You have heard about GDPR? Cyber security compliance is on the rise. For a small business a data breach may result in substantial issues. Not arguing the point though.


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## Kit. (May 6, 2019)

SecureGSM said:


> Please take you time to realise how physical security / data loss prevention strategy differs from cyber security objectives. Then please consider review of your contingency and mitigation strategies. Bottom line is public cloud insecurities is not about your files getting lost to the point beyond recovery but about mitigation of risk of unauthorised access to your business data and inadvertently revealing sensitive information of your respective clientele, visual imagery inclusive. I hope it explains.


Here we go again: you are mistakenly thinking of your local storage as of inherently "more secure".

If you consider yourself a kind of business that can be targeted for its customers' data, _all_ your backups (as well as all your other persistent storage) shall be encrypted with keys not easily available to an attacker. Neither your local not public cloud backups are the exception.


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## SecureGSM (May 6, 2019)

It Has nothing to do with encryption keys, but let’s agree to disagree. Enterprise security is obviously not your day job. All good.


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## LDS (May 6, 2019)

Kit. said:


> I don't believe we are talking about stock market investing here, and "unexpected market changes" don't happen in a vacuum, but are driven by the customers' preferences.



Who's speaking about stock market? Those companies didn't exist in a vacuum or in Wall Street only - they had customers which were hit by the bankruptcies and may have lost a lot.

"Unexpected market changes" are not only driven by customers, but also by the appearance of new technologies the incumbents could not grasp in time. There could be also ill decisions and many other situations that can run a successful company into the ground. Splits, spin-offs of less remunerative branches of business, and merger happens, and companies do realign their priorities.

if they hold all of your data, I'd be very careful about having all one's eggs in a basket. You like to talk about the stock market, do you put all of your money into a single investment because you trust a company so much? Or do you fear it could crash one day? There's a reason why banks in most parts of the world are heavily regulated and customers' money partly protected by governments... maybe one day that will happen to data also, but not now.

Thinking that cloud storage and applications will be there "for ever" is quite dangerous - and especially if you are one of the smallest customers you are among the ones more at risk - as you are an irrelevant percentage of their profit (if even a profit).


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## PureClassA (May 6, 2019)

bergstrom said:


> so, screw the consumer.


No. You can choose whether to remain or go. It's a business. They exist to make as much money as they can by offering a product/service that people want. If they have determined that the broad market still has a healthy appetite to pay $19.99 per month for their product, they'd be stupid not to. It's called price elasticity, and Adobe obviously has created so valued a product for this industry that they appear to have quite a large elasticity.

Unfocused Brought up a great point. You have DPP with all Canon cameras. It's a fine software. Use it instead. It's free!


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## PureClassA (May 6, 2019)

unfocused said:


> I thought Canon offered free photo processing software with most of their cameras. If so, then no one *has* to buy Lightroom or Photoshop. Let's face it, most of us use Photoshop and/or Lightroom because we prefer it to other products. It's an add-on like a second lens, speedlight, tripod, etc. There are plenty of alternatives. Many of which are free or nearly so. The complaint about Adobe seems to be that people don't want to pay the company the price they charge for a superior product.



This guy, playing "no fair" with his logic and stuff....


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## Kit. (May 6, 2019)

SecureGSM said:


> It Has nothing to do with encryption keys,


It has everything to do with understanding the actual risks and workable ways to mitigate them, as opposed to spreading FUD about the technologies you are not yet trained to accommodate (right?).



SecureGSM said:


> but let’s agree to disagree.


Why did you start it then?



SecureGSM said:


> Enterprise security is obviously not your day job. All good.


Not a day job, that's correct. I have a more interesting and better paid job, thank you very much. Still, enterprise security people I work with (and used to work with) have (and had) no problems with Google, Amazon and other cloud services.

But what I hope, based on my limited (decades long) experience as a network and data security developer and a network admin, is that SoHo security is not your bread either?


----------



## Kit. (May 6, 2019)

LDS said:


> Who's speaking about stock market? Those companies didn't exist in a vacuum or in Wall Street only - they had customers which were hit by the bankruptcies and may have lost a lot.


So, which customers lost their data due to the bankruptcy of WorldCom, for example?



LDS said:


> "Unexpected market changes" are not only driven by customers, but also by the appearance of new technologies the incumbents could not grasp in time.


This one is indeed driven by customers.



LDS said:


> There could be also ill decisions and many other situations that can run a successful company into the ground. Splits, spin-offs of less remunerative branches of business, and merger happens, and companies do realign their priorities.


Still, no one is going to kill a cash cow. They will start with increasing the prices (or the opposite, switching to the "freemium" model), which will give you a lot of time to move your data to a safer place.



LDS said:


> if they hold all of your data, I'd be very careful about having all one's eggs in a basket.


I would be very careful about having all the eggs in one basket _no matter_ who is holding it. I would be slightly more relaxed, though, if it were Google or Amazon or Adobe, as opposed to my apartment or a mom-and-pop shop. Not because Google or Amazon or Adobe cannot lose them, but because my data is more likely to be lost in my apartment.

The good thing is that you can have more than one basket with the same eggs.


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## SecureGSM (May 6, 2019)

Kit. said:


> It has everything to do with understanding the actual risks and workable ways to mitigate them, as opposed to spreading FUD about the technologies you are not yet trained to accommodate (right?).
> 
> 
> Why did you start it then?
> ...



Can we leave this conversation, please. thanks  you do not know what you are talking about, plain and simple. I am in a senior role with 15+ years in Cyber Sec strategy and enterprise sales. your comment about me not being trained yet to accomodate a technology is hilarious.
My patch in my organisation is Software Services, Global Markets -- Cyber Sec (Qradar, i2, Resilient, BigFix), Hybrid Cloud Integration, Analytics, AI, Cognitive, Watson, IBM Cloud Private, Containerisation, Microservices.
one of a very few crosbranded enterprise business practitioners in my neck of wood. I work for a large multinational, I am not at liberty to mention the name but I am sure you get the gist and can look me up on LinkedIn.


----------



## LDS (May 6, 2019)

Kit. said:


> So, which customers lost their data due to the bankruptcy of WorldCom, for example?



There is not worst dead than someone who don't want to listen. Evidently, in each market you lose different products

when a company crashes. If it was Kodak, you lost film/chemicals availability, if it was Enron, or WorldCom, or Lehman, it was something different. With a "cloud" company, evidently the risk is to lose the service, and in the worst case the data - being that the product. Of course the sector is still too young to see big companies suffering deadly situations, but there's no reason to believe it won't happen.



Kit. said:


> This one is indeed driven by customers.



No - because not always customers have no control over it. A new technology could, for example, made all cloud service no longer secure.



Kit. said:


> Still, no one is going to kill a cash cow.



It only depends on how milk they can extract from each cow. Remember, once a cow can't be milked enough, it's killed, and sometimes no much time is allowed. It may happen that many little customers becomes an hindrance which doesn't get much revenues compared to the cost of supporting them, so, sure, they will up prices so much to make you leave, and make space for more remunerative customers. Think it as a kind of "cloud gentrification".

Also, to be able to migrate somewhere else you need the opportunity to do so - which means you need another cloud service, or your own infrastructure to do so. If you no longer have it, and also it becomes impossible to source it, good luck...



Kit. said:


> I would be slightly more relaxed, though, if it were Google or Amazon or Adobe



Do you know how many products Google already killed because they were not remunerative enough? Ask Google Code or Google+ users, for example.

My approach is my data can be lost *anywhere". I do not trust any of the technology or companies storing them. Nor I think even the biggest company is unbreachable or can't lose data, no matter how they work to protect them.


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## unfocused (May 6, 2019)

SecureGSM said:


> Can we leave this conversation, please...


Advice we can all agree on.


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## cayenne (May 6, 2019)

crazyrunner33 said:


> I'd look into Resolve. I've got Premier, AVID and Resolve, but I could see switching over to Resolve. The only issue is After Effects, I don't see a suitable replacement on the horizon.




I've not attempted to use it yet, BUT....Davinci Resolve also includes Fusion, their equivalent of After Effects.<>P
From what I read and watch, it appears to be as powerful, but there is a learning curve as that Fusion is nodal based rather than with layers type editing paradigm....and you don't have quite the number of 3rd party plugins that AE has, but from what I can tell, it is every bit as powerful.

Resolve also includes a sound editing section now too, that is supposed to be on par with Adobe Audition....I've not researched this one much yet.

But worth looking into, especially for the price (FREE).


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## cayenne (May 6, 2019)

SecureGSM said:


> Kit,
> Some practices and methodologies you are referring to are quite unsubstantiated.
> None of the public cloud providers would guarantee any data protection or integrity whatsoever. Read SLA. It is all at your own risk.
> Adobe, Amazon and other known to have a long track record of cyber security incidents, millions and millions of user accounts leaked, user data accessed by third parties, etc.
> ...




Not to mention, that many of the cloud storage offerings....well those companies take advantage of your content and use it to train AI systems and do facial recognition for databases, etc. Hell, who knows that they do with that data they generate from your content, nor who or what agency it goes to next.

Are you comfortable with that?

Just some things to ponder.


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## snappy604 (May 6, 2019)

Kit. said:


> Oh, really?



Yz Rly... Adobe was hacked in 2013.. leaking about 150 million records. Consolidated data is in some ways easier to protect, but also a much more tempting target. Hopefully improved security now.


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## justaCanonuser (May 7, 2019)

Currently I try to leave the world of Adobe, like an addict saying NO to the drugs he used to consume. I simply do not want to add subscriptions for software to the pile of regular payments draining already my account every month. Pay some hundred bucks once and use it until you need an upgrade is much better for financial self-control.

These days I test a combination of DPP 4 and the freeware Darktable e.g. for non-Canon lens corrections (I have my own way of organizing images anyway). Darktable has a surprisingly huge list of "modules" and is quite powerful, but has many flaws, so it is definitely no pro tool. One big flaw is that the modules you just want sometimes work, sometimes not. This instability is a typical freeware problem and can really distract your workflow. I may change to the Capture One non-subscription offer, hoping they'll stick to it for a while. 

The bigger problem for me is Photoshop and Illustrator, I use both now about 20 yrs, and like them. Maybe I have to reside to Corel products, despite for me their products have quite anti-intuitive interfaces (currently I have Coreldraw and Corel Paint installed on one of my computers). Corel packages are quite expensive, too, but there are still non-subscription options available.


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## Hector1970 (May 7, 2019)

Compared to the price of cameras and lens Photoshop and Lightroom is quite cheap. I think Adobe thinks so too and is testing the water. I don’t mind paying what I am at the moment but if Adobe stretch it I may look at alternatives. Lightroom is very bloated for a simple tool and there’s been some very unstable versions released. It’s been passed out by a number of basic pieces of software. Photoshop is a lot more powerful this I would miss more. Any price rise is a great opportunity for Luminar or Affinity to persuade customers to switch to them. Adobe is doing well. They smell an opportunity here but they could also kill the golden goose.


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## Ladislav (May 7, 2019)

I don't use the cloud storage and I don't want that cloud storage for sure. I already have *1TB for 5 users *with Office 365 Home for about £8 per month. Raising cost by £10 to give me 1TB I'm not going to use is proper rip off. Plus, I trust MS to secure it and provide better tooling much more than Adobe.

I like Lightroom and I don't mind subscription model but to pay double, I expect significant improvements in the product to see increase in the value. That is a major issue because there were few new tools in Lightroom since it became rental but no major improvement and performance is still crap.

Lightroom benefits only from classic vendor lock-in because I can't take my library and import it to another product with all my develop settings easily. I can only import TIFFs with processing and loose ability to modify it later or RAWs and loose all my processing.


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## Ladislav (May 7, 2019)

A lot of people here argument with moving to Capture One from Lightroom. It also cost $20/month and cheapest perpetual license is $299. No surprise that Adobe wants to get the same if people are willing to give it to competitor 

And before you start arguing that you own perpetual license and don't have to update every year, let me give you another example - FoCal. 

You buy a perpetual license of FoCal with an year of updates and you have very high chance that if you run it on Mac, it will stop working after major OSX update. I'm using FoCal once per year and in past two years every time I wanted to use it I found that my current version does not work with current OSX and Canon cameras. Surprise surprise, my year of updates has expired as well. First time, I paid. Second time, I deleted FoCal and did calibration manually with Spyder LensCal. 

Even perpetual license can be just another way of rental if vendor cuts off updates.


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## Rbus (May 7, 2019)

On the Adobe New Zealand page we have two options for the Photography Plan.
The current plan 20 gig storage at Australian $14.95 per month (NZ $16.03) and an extra Plan at
Australian $31.35 per month with 1 TB of cloud storage. This is more than double the monthly price.


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## AlanF (May 7, 2019)

Ladislav said:


> A lot of people here argument with moving to Capture One from Lightroom. It also cost $20/month and cheapest perpetual license is $299. No surprise that Adobe wants to get the same if people are willing to give it to competitor
> 
> And before you start arguing that you own perpetual license and don't have to update every year, let me give you another example - FoCal.
> 
> ...


For the hell of it, I opened a very old Focal version 1.9 (2012 vintage) on my Mac to see if it would work in manual mode on some old 5DSR files (introduced 2015) I had stored. It did calculate the AFMA. Pity you deleted FoCal.


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## uri.raz (May 7, 2019)

Ladislav said:


> You buy a perpetual license of FoCal with an year of updates and you have very high chance that if you run it on Mac, it will stop working after major OSX update. I'm using FoCal once per year and in past two years every time I wanted to use it I found that my current version does not work with current OSX and Canon cameras. Surprise surprise, my year of updates has expired as well. First time, I paid. Second time, I deleted FoCal and did calibration manually with Spyder LensCal.



I thought Mac users got used to that sh*t long ago. Apple switched processors twice, and users had to re-pay for all their software each time.

I got PSP 5.01 beta in '98. Twenty years and half a dozen major windows releases later, I had no problem installing it on a new Windows 10 machine.

[Yes, there's old software that wouldn't install on new Windows, e.g. MS Office and Nero Burning ROM, but situation is much better than it is on the MacOS side of the fence.]


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## jeffa4444 (May 7, 2019)

Kit. said:


> Here we go again: you are mistakenly thinking of your local storage as of inherently "more secure".
> 
> If you consider yourself a kind of business that can be targeted for its customers' data, _all_ your backups (as well as all your other persistent storage) shall be encrypted with keys not easily available to an attacker. Neither your local not public cloud backups are the exception.


AS we have learnt neither online storage or local storage are foolproof both have been compromised by hackers. The real difference is if you store all your stuff in Adobe cloud service, if for any reason to choose to end using the service you have to download everything which would be time consuming if it runs to thousands because you would lose your access when your payments end.
Ive backed-up my stuff locally 4-ways and keep a regularly backed-up drive off-site.


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## jeffa4444 (May 7, 2019)

PureClassA said:


> No. You can choose whether to remain or go. It's a business. They exist to make as much money as they can by offering a product/service that people want. If they have determined that the broad market still has a healthy appetite to pay $19.99 per month for their product, they'd be stupid not to. It's called price elasticity, and Adobe obviously has created so valued a product for this industry that they appear to have quite a large elasticity.
> 
> Unfocused Brought up a great point. You have DPP with all Canon cameras. It's a fine software. Use it instead. It's free!


All of your points are correct. However history teaches us that the minute you try and gouge your customer someone else will rise and take those customers and Adobe has increasingly new entrants into the photography sector all eager to take some of their crown. Plenty of global examples of this. 

The majority of users of the photography plan are not professionals, price is sensitive and cheaper alternatives are out there.


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## JuanMa (May 7, 2019)

justaCanonuser said:


> I simply do not want to add subscriptions for software to the pile of regular payments draining already my account every month.



That is the key…


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## cayenne (May 7, 2019)

Ladislav said:


> I don't use the cloud storage and I don't want that cloud storage for sure. I already have *1TB for 5 users *with Office 365 Home for about £8 per month. Raising cost by £10 to give me 1TB I'm not going to use is proper rip off. Plus, I trust MS to secure it and provide better tooling much more than Adobe.
> 
> I like Lightroom and I don't mind subscription model but to pay double, I expect significant improvements in the product to see increase in the value. That is a major issue because there were few new tools in Lightroom since it became rental but no major improvement and performance is still crap.
> 
> Lightroom benefits only from classic vendor lock-in because I can't take my library and import it to another product with all my develop settings easily. I can only import TIFFs with processing and loose ability to modify it later or RAWs and loose all my processing.



You might look into the On1 RAW offering. I believe the newest versions can import your LR development settings in, as long as you are working from a fairly recent version of LR.

HTH,

cayenne


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## snappy604 (May 7, 2019)

Ladislav said:


> I don't use the cloud storage and I don't want that cloud storage for sure. I already have *1TB for 5 users *with Office 365 Home for about £8 per month. Raising cost by £10 to give me 1TB I'm not going to use is proper rip off. Plus, I trust MS to secure it and provide better tooling much more than Adobe.
> 
> I like Lightroom and I don't mind subscription model but to pay double, I expect significant improvements in the product to see increase in the value. That is a major issue because there were few new tools in Lightroom since it became rental but no major improvement and performance is still crap.
> 
> Lightroom benefits only from classic vendor lock-in because I can't take my library and import it to another product with all my develop settings easily. I can only import TIFFs with processing and loose ability to modify it later or RAWs and loose all my processing.



On1 can import most of your LR settings


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## PureClassA (May 7, 2019)

jeffa4444 said:


> All of your points are correct. However history teaches us that the minute you try and gouge your customer someone else will rise and take those customers and Adobe has increasingly new entrants into the photography sector all eager to take some of their crown. Plenty of global examples of this.
> 
> The majority of users of the photography plan are not professionals, price is sensitive and cheaper alternatives are out there.


 All true, however, consider the relative in-elasticity of migrating software for most folks. $20 isn't going to be enough to push them away


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## Labdoc (May 7, 2019)

Price is still $9.99 https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom/compare-plans.html?promoid=VKW3KGR6&mv=other


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## fentiger (May 7, 2019)

not the same subject but similar, a couple of day ago i cancelled my iTunes .
next day everything on my mac and iPhone was wiped clean. not a single song left. they have their talons so deep in your goolies, your stuffed.


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## stevelee (May 8, 2019)

fentiger said:


> not the same subject but similar, a couple of day ago i cancelled my iTunes .
> next day everything on my mac and iPhone was wiped clean. not a single song left. they have their talons so deep in your goolies, your stuffed.


As expected with a subscription.


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## Rudeofus (May 9, 2019)

Here is the best response to a forced offer of 1TB cloud storage (for those who can't just cancel): as many people as possible should fill their unneeded cloud storage space with random data. I am quite sure, that Adobe thought "we'll sell them 1TB, but most will use less than 100GB", planned their hardware resources accordingly, and random data cannot be compressed either. 

If enough people do this, Adobe will come scrambling "save sooo much for reducing storage to 50GB!!!"


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## stevelee (May 9, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> Here is the best response to a forced offer of 1TB cloud storage (for those who can't just cancel): as many people as possible should fill their unneeded cloud storage space with random data. I am quite sure, that Adobe thought "we'll sell them 1TB, but most will use less than 100GB", planned their hardware resources accordingly, and random data cannot be compressed either.
> 
> If enough people do this, Adobe will come scrambling "save sooo much for reducing storage to 50GB!!!"


More likely they would use this as an excuse to raise the price on everybody and require you to have another couple of terabytes.


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## Rudeofus (May 9, 2019)

stevelee said:


> More likely they would use this as an excuse to raise the price on everybody and require you to have another couple of terabytes.


They are just in the process of studying, how roughly doubling the price would affect the size of their customer base. I don't think they can make a profit from supporting their software plus storing the full 1TB of pure random data at US$20/month. They can even less likely make a profit from storing a couple of TB of random data at US$40/month, and would at the same time lose almost all non-professional and most of their small scale professional customers.

This is Adobe's ultimate weakness in this game: they force you to accept an offer, which includes storage space that most people won't need. They offer this service at a price, which only works out for Adobe, if in fact only few people use up their full quota of online storage space. At the same time it costs most of us nearly nothing to fill up the 1 TB quota with garbage data. Adobe would be in deep trouble, if people followed up on this in numbers.


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## Del Paso (May 10, 2019)

PureClassA said:


> No. You can choose whether to remain or go. It's a business. They exist to make as much money as they can by offering a product/service that people want. If they have determined that the broad market still has a healthy appetite to pay $19.99 per month for their product, they'd be stupid not to. It's called price elasticity, and Adobe obviously has created so valued a product for this industry that they appear to have quite a large elasticity.
> 
> Unfocused Brought up a great point. You have DPP with all Canon cameras. It's a fine software. Use it instead. It's free!


The trouble with DPP is that, if you use several different camera brands, you'll have to use an additional development software...
Why, for Christ's sake, isn't everybody using DNG, why so many proprietary systems? I could have kept on using LR 5.7 for life, if I hadn't bought the 5 D IV.


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## privatebydesign (May 10, 2019)

Del Paso said:


> The trouble with DPP is that, if you use several different camera brands, you'll have to use an additional development software...
> Why, for Christ's sake, isn't everybody using DNG, why so many proprietary systems? I could have kept on using LR 5.7 for life, if I hadn't bought the 5 D IV.


No you can convert your 5D MkIV files to DNG for free and then still use LR5.7


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## StoicalEtcher (May 10, 2019)

I am the only one to find it a little ironic to be talking about the advantages/uses of the DNG file format (creator: Adobe) on a thread mostly complaining about Adobe?


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## privatebydesign (May 10, 2019)

StoicalEtcher said:


> I am the only one to find it a little ironic to be talking about the advantages/uses of the DNG file format (creator: Adobe) on a thread mostly complaining about Adobe?


No you aren’t, look at my posting history, I have taken a ton of flak and been labeled an Adobe apologist (that’s the politest) for pointing out that Adobe are the only software company I know of that offers a fully supported free program and format to facilitate a work around so you never have to upgrade their software.

Meanwhile the disenfranchised will bemoan their lot in life and proclaim confirmation of my corporate shill status...


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## Mikehit (May 10, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> This is Adobe's ultimate weakness in this game: they force you to accept an offer, which includes storage space that most people won't need. They offer this service at a price, which only works out for Adobe, if in fact only few people use up their full quota of online storage space. At the same time it costs most of us nearly nothing to fill up the 1 TB quota with garbage data. Adobe would be in deep trouble, if people followed up on this in numbers.



So what are you hoping to achieve with this?


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## Rudeofus (May 11, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> So what are you hoping to achieve with this?


Present a legal way, how to stop Adobe from engaging in the behavior, which has been discussed in this thread for seven pages already ...


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## unfocused (May 11, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> Present a legal way, how to stop Adobe from engaging in the behavior, which has been discussed in this thread for seven pages already ...



What behavior? Offering a superior product and charging for it?
I think you seriously overestimate the cost of cloud storage. Many services offer unlimited storage for less.


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## stevelee (May 11, 2019)

I pay the full monthly subscription price and use enough of the products that the yearly total comes out to only slightly more than I was paying in annual upgrades.

But I don't want to go this route with all of my software. The next version of MacOS will break the non-64-bit apps, many of which I use all the time. The current OS warns you of them when you start them up. I may try to hold out from the OS upgrade as long as I can. But eventually I will need to find alternative solutions for music notation software and my check writing, to name two.


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## Rudeofus (May 11, 2019)

unfocused said:


> What behavior? Offering a superior product and charging for it?


You've got to be kidding me ... that's what you took home after seven pages of forum postings?


unfocused said:


> I think you seriously overestimate the cost of cloud storage. Many services offer unlimited storage for less.


The underlying assumption of such services and pricing models is that people don't use up their quota. People with a few hundred MB worth of data effectively subsidize power users and the whole cloud storage operation. Adobe's price calculation may work out with such a user base, but will likely blow up, if a sizable part of their user base fill up their quote with uncompressible data.


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## Mikehit (May 11, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> You've got to be kidding me ... that's what you took home after seven pages of forum postings?




What I see is:

people who use Photoshop CC sahying an increase in price would be too much for them
People who do not like the subscription model saying that they are abusing their market position for no other reason they are raising prices
Some people who do not like the subscription model coming to the rather odd conclusion that what Adobe are doing is illegal




Rudeofus said:


> The underlying assumption of such services and pricing models is that people don't use up their quota.


 And you act as though they are the only company who do this. Almost every services company builds this into their overhead/cost calculation and would be dumb if they did not.


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## Rudeofus (May 11, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> What I see is:
> 
> people who use Photoshop CC sahying an increase in price would be too much for them
> People who do not like the subscription model saying that they are abusing their market position for no other reason they are raising prices
> Some people who do not like the subscription model coming to the rather odd conclusion that what Adobe are doing is illegal


I share your disagreement with Group 3, and you never read any statement from myself supporting this position. Group 1 may be right or not, let's wait and see how this unfolds. Group 2 is a perfectly valid concern: a price hike of 100% is not a common thing, and a clear sign of market domination.


Mikehit said:


> And you act as though they are the only company who do this. Almost every services company builds this into their overhead/cost calculation and would be dumb if they did not.


A price hike of 100% is neither a common nor a smart thing, especially from a company already making healthy profits off the product. What Adobe offers in return for the extra cash is apparently something only few people seem to want or need or are willing to pay for. Future will show how this ends. 

If you look at Microsoft, which also had an extremely dominant market position: people still put up with them on laptops and desktops, but flat out rejected their offerings in the smart phone and music player market regardless of merit. Microsoft still earns a lot of money with their server and desktop software, but unwittingly and unintentionally cut themselves off from large future markets.


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## privatebydesign (May 11, 2019)

Corporate shill back.

Maybe Adobe know what they are doing and they are putting trust in the bean counters that have more then delivered so far in the transition to subscription. Maybe they know their market is creative professionals who value the software suit they make and maybe they value that core much more than the comparative low income part timers and single app users spread across a wide variety of genres.

The strength of the suit is the cross platform integration, if your have ‘a tech guy’ who can talk to the graphics guy in the studio it is an afternoons work for him to make a custom studio app, they can make any number of other output relevant to todays studio setups and aren’t on the $9.99 per month package!

Maybe trying to keep everybody happy isn’t working as Adobe want and they see specialization and prioritization as keys to increased profitability. They have always considered themselves as suppliers of software products aimed at ‘professional’ creatives, the hard truth is if you are not in that category Adobe simply don’t value your revenue as much as you want them to. 

Personally I’d rather have half the customers paying twice as much than the other way around, but does anybody believe a 100% rise in price will cost them 50% of their customer base? I don’t but I bet their bean counters have a very accurate guide.


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## Mikehit (May 14, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> I share your disagreement with Group 3, and you never read any statement from myself supporting this position.


I never said you did - I was giving a view on different motivations



Rudeofus said:


> a price hike of 100% is not a common thing, and a clear sign of market domination.


Rubbish. Have you ever been involved in product development and marketing?
And even if you are right, there is a world of difference between market domination and corruption of the market - the former is part of life, the latter is an abuse of market power.



Rudeofus said:


> A price hike of 100% is neither a common nor a smart thing, especially from a company already making healthy profits off the product. What Adobe offers in return for the extra cash is apparently something only few people seem to want or need or are willing to pay for. Future will show how this ends.


Or maybe people are misreading why Adobe are considering a price hike?



Rudeofus said:


> If you look at Microsoft, which also had an extremely dominant market position: people still put up with them on laptops and desktops, but flat out rejected their offerings in the smart phone and music player market regardless of merit. Microsoft still earns a lot of money with their server and desktop software, but unwittingly and unintentionally cut themselves off from large future markets.


Fair point. But that is the market in action - which is quite different to comments about abuse of power, monopolies and need for people to be prosecuted.


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## Rudeofus (May 15, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> Rubbish. Have you ever been involved in product development and marketing?


I am a senior engineer, so trust me: I do know poor product expense estimates and unexpected rises in final product cost. But none of this is the case here: Adobe's product line is very mature, there are no hints at significant development risks or cost overruns. Adobe is very profitable, too. If they up their prices by that much, then they do this because "damn you, that's why!".


Mikehit said:


> And even if you are right, there is a world of difference between market domination and corruption of the market - the former is part of life, the latter is an abuse of market power.


Market domination plus share holder valuation considerations ===> market corruption. This is exactly what we see here: a sudden price hike with no increase in perceived product value.


Mikehit said:


> Fair point. But that is the market in action - which is quite different to comments about abuse of power, monopolies and need for people to be prosecuted.


What Adobe does here is abuse of market power, but that does not mean that what they did is illegal.


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## Mikehit (May 15, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> Market domination plus share holder valuation considerations ===> market corruption. This is exactly what we see here: a sudden price hike with no increase in perceived value.


Yet you have already given an example where a dominant company changed their prices and suffered. And that is the point I was referring to. That shows there is no corruption of the market - so it seems you are merely making some ideological point.




Rudeofus said:


> What Adobe does here is abuse of market power, but that does not mean that what they did is illegal.


As above, it is not abuse of power because if people do not like it they will move. That is simply the market in action.
Abuse of power is if they make this move knowing a majority of customers cannot reject it without suffering themselves (but I guess you will invent some way the customer suffers).


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## Rudeofus (May 16, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> Yet you have already given an example where a dominant company changed their prices and suffered. And that is the point I was referring to. That shows there is no corruption of the market - so it seems you are merely making some ideological point.


Microsoft as a company may have suffered from their past decisions, but the decision makers from back then reaped healthy profits and no longer have to deal with the consequences. They also did not have to deal with the fallout from shoddy but ubiquitous software, it was society which suffered from CodeRed, Nimda, ILoveYou all the way to WanaCry and NotPetya.


Mikehit said:


> but I guess you will invent some way the customer suffers).


You conveniently forget, that people using a complex piece of software invest heavily in training. There are costly training courses to make effective use of Photoshop&co, and people to take these courses. Others spend hours of their own time learning new features to become more productive. Telling these people "oh just use something else if PS is too expensive for you" is a bit cynical IMHO.


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## Mikehit (May 16, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> Microsoft as a company may have suffered from their past decisions, but the decision makers from back then reaped healthy profits and no longer have to deal with the consequences. They also did not have to deal with the fallout from shoddy but ubiquitous software, it was society which suffered from CodeRed, Nimda, ILoveYou all the way to WanaCry and NotPetya.


What has that got to do with the discussion? 




Rudeofus said:


> You conveniently forget, that people using a complex piece of software invest heavily in training. There are costly training courses to make effective use of Photoshop&co, and people to take these courses. Others spend hours of their own time learning new features to become more productive. Telling these people "oh just use something else if PS is too expensive for you" is a bit cynical IMHO.


And that is what happens when any company increases prices - the clients have to weigh up the cost of staying with the provider or whether to change providers. It is not unique to Adobe nor is it unique to software nor is it unique to the subscription model - did they this level of complaint when they raised prices of CS5 or CS6? Nope, because people realised they had a choice of whether to stay with Adobe or retrain people on a new program. 

You raise reasonable points but are using them to build an unsustainable and unrelated case against Adobe.


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## Rudeofus (May 16, 2019)

Mikehit said:


> What has that got to do with the discussion?


It is a classic example of where the people affected by a poor decision are not the people responsible for the decision. Microsoft destroyed their reputation as a trustworthy corporate partner two decades ago while reaping in massive profits. The folks making the decision became filthy rich in the process, while everyone else, including Microsoft, had to bear the consequences.

It will be the same with Adobe: those who jacked up the price will be rewarded for massively increased short term profits, whereas photographers will pay the bill now, and Adobe will suffer from this breach of trust in the oncoming decades. And yes, the unspoken deal "I get a powerful photo editing tool for a reasonable and predictable monthly fee" was essentially broken by Adobe here. It's up to anyone now, whether one would invest in Adobe products again, but regardless of what the customer base decide in the long term, current decision makers at Adobe will reap in hefty rewards.

It was this type of moral hazard, which not only took down Microsoft in all current growth markets, it is also responsible for the financial crisis of 2007, the one we still all pay for.


Mikehit said:


> And that is what happens when any company increases prices - the clients have to weigh up the cost of staying with the provider or whether to change providers. It is not unique to Adobe nor is it unique to software nor is it unique to the subscription model - did they this level of complaint when they raised prices of CS5 or CS6? Nope, because people realised they had a choice of whether to stay with Adobe or retrain people on a new program.


Was CS6 twice as expensive as CS5? Would CS5 quit working at once just because you didn't immediately upgrade to CS6? That option "I'll delay that upgrade for a year" has been taken from us with this subscription model.


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## stevelee (May 16, 2019)

I definitely skipped a version of Illustrator. The head of that development team announced that they had done a lousy job with the Mac version, and we should all run out and buy the Windows version. That didn't inspire a lot of confidence in buying either one.


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## unfocused (May 16, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> ... the unspoken deal "I get a powerful photo editing tool for a reasonable and predictable monthly fee" was essentially broken by Adobe here...



Huh? Your interpretation of this "unspoken deal" is "I get a powerful photo editing tool *for the same price forever*." 

Companies introduce products at a low promotional price all the time. Once the promotion period is over, the price goes up. No company ever promises to never raise prices. 

Adobe has not even raised the price yet, but if they do, you will still get a powerful photo editing tool for a reasonable monthly fee. Let's be honest, the only reason $20 a month sounds expensive is because we've been spoiled by the $10 a month bargain rate.


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## Rudeofus (May 16, 2019)

As far as I know, Adobe CC pricing was never marketed as "promotional", so I guess most people rightly assumed, that US$10/month for a mature and well established product was a sustainable price, which would not increase much beyond adjustments to inflation rate.

You may consider US$20/month still very little, so let's wait and see whether the market agrees with your view on this.


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## Mikehit (May 16, 2019)

Rudeofus said:


> Was CS6 twice as expensive as CS5?


Nope - but that is not the comparison. You need to look at the price difference between CS versions and how that broke down over a typical version period. 
An increase of $10 per month over 2-3 years is not unreasonable for the cost of CS.




Rudeofus said:


> Would CS5 quit working at once just because you didn't immediately upgrade to CS6? That option "I'll delay that upgrade for a year" has been taken from us with this subscription model.


Nope but CS was always aimed at professionals who would generally (maybe not you) take each upgrade to improve their workflow.

Look - I get it. You don't like the subscription model and you think it is overpriced. But as I said before that is miles away from claiming they are abusing market dominance and distorting the market - and that is where my comments started but you are moving the goalposts every time I counter your complaints.


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## Mikehit (May 16, 2019)

unfocused said:


> Adobe has not even raised the price yet, but if they do, you will still get a powerful photo editing tool for a reasonable monthly fee. Let's be honest, the only reason $20 a month sounds expensive is because we've been spoiled by the $10 a month bargain rate.



Yep. IIRC correctly the cost at launch all those year ago was $15-$20. They dropped pretty quickly to $10 and never increased it despite all the rumours that they would.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (May 17, 2019)

Here is a good article discussing the issue by someone who knows.





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Lightroom in the news - is it as bad as it sounds?






mailchi.mp


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