Photoshop CC and Lightroom monthly offer

[KmH]

The $9.99 a month Photography Program subscription started out as a limited time offer.
Adobe had to keep extending the offer to get people to sign up and finally dropped the time limit entirely.

I suspect Adobe wound up with significantly fewer sign ups than they anticipated.

There are 3 big reasons for subscription based software:
1. More timely updates
2. Eliminates discs, boxes, shipping costs, etc.
3. Significantly reduces the pirating of software.

At one point Adobe stated 1/3 of all their software out in the world was pirated.

Imagine a world with no paid software.
What development incentives would there be?

Please explain how we would be better off without paid software.

 

[qleak]

Imagine a world with no paid software.
What development incentives would there be?

People already develop free software. Most are unpaid volunteers who have an interest in having a piece of software just work. So their incentive is they use it.

Others are paid by large companies like IBM to develop the software. The typical model is you make your money in support and hardware. So there is a money incentive too, but typically the people in these paid positions already have developed for free for years.

There seems to be a strong psychological bias towards believing things that you pay for are better than free things. My musician friends who give away demos have better luck selling them for a dollar. The same applies to lens purchasing and camera purchasing. Spending more money will not make my pictures better.

Admittedly, photoshop and lightroom do have a technical advantage over the stable versions of gimp / darkroom at the moment. But it's not that large of an advantage especially if you are a jpeg shooter.

Anyway, I just wanted put my info out there for others who are in the same boat is me. Use whatever tools you prefer

 

[KmH]

I would suggest that there would be way lots less software, on top of way lots less GOOD software if software developers did not get legal protection for their intellectual property and payment for their efforts.

 

[qleak]

I would suggest that there would be way lots less software, on top of way lots less GOOD software if software developers did not get legal protection for their intellectual property and payment for their efforts.

?!?!?

Did I ever suggest that software developers do not get credit for their intellectual property?

Free software relies on such protection as well. They GPL simply gives people the right to redistribute and modify and even redistribute modifications as long as the modifications are under the same license.

Software programmers can choose whatever license they like.

 

[Derrel]

Soooo many Adobe apologists around, making excuses for a company that cannot even keep its customers' password and account information safe from being hacked. Adobe announced out of the blue one day that they would soon be demanding a $50 a month tithe...and the uproar was DEAFENING and immediate. Then...they got hacked and millions and millions of users' account and billing information was compromised...the $9.99 a month thing came out not long after their strong-armed, life-long taxation attempt was repudiated by the users and right after the hacking incident went public in the media...

See....at $50/month, or $600 a year, over a decade, I would have pissed away $6,000 on a software application that I could BUY outright, for $459--or LESS, as an upgrade. How people can sit here and defend Adobe on this board for their prior attempts is beyond me...unless they happen to be payed shills for Adobe...and I honestly wonder about the payed shill thing.

 

[Buckster]

I love watching Apple fanbois bash Photoshop users as "Adobe apologists" who are "payed (sic) shills for Adobe", especially when they try to make their case using BS numbers.

 

[pixmedic]

i wasn't paying $50 a month for CC, but at $10...its not a bad deal.

 

[ValerieGoettsch]

At $10/mo it's not a bad deal to always have the latest upgrade for something I use daily. And since I was using a much older version of PS, CS5 I think, before I got the Cloud subscription, it was a great deal for me. Think about the size of your monthly internet bill in comparison, which for me is about 6 times the cost of the PS/LR subscription. Now that's a racket.

 

[dennybeall]

A "friend" had bootleg CS6 and loved it. The LR PS deal is a good deal for the "friend". The subscription keeps CS6, LR and PS CC(14) all up to date and current while providing challenge, fun and occasional work related income.
A good deal and absolutely nothing to do with being a shill for any company or any off the wall new age style thinking.