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by i_am_jl 918 days ago
That's the worst part, the products are great. $20/month is reasonable for PS/LR considering that yearly releases were retailing for $500+ in the CS6 era. Cloud storage and generative AI credits are rolled into those costs. New features are showing up again. Regarding Photoshop, there are no real alternatives.

It's not that Adobe's depending on subscription engineering, it's creative pros 100% dependent on Adobe products being willing to put up with this shit because they have quality products with no alternatives.

2 comments

> Regarding Photoshop, there are no real alternatives.

Unfortunately, the same is true for Illustrator. There are competitors that have 95% of the features, but that remaining 5% is critical for serious professionals.

Exactly. The downside of subscription software is that companies like Adobe become life insurance companies that produce software. Their enterprise value is defined by churn rates and there's a strong incentive to lock customers down to reduce that risk.

I work for a huge org, and we tell companies like this to go fuck off with terms like this. The real scam of Adobe is that there is no way to assess engagement rates with their tools. The only way to get this data is by metering PCs or datamining your IdP.