LR upgrade policy

[jeremyrh]

I want to buy LR but I'm reluctant to do so if I will have to shell out big money for an upgrade to LR3 in the very near future.

Any clues, based on previous history?

[Josh-H]

I want to buy LR but I'm reluctant to do so if I will have to shell out big money for an upgrade to LR3 in the very near future.

Any clues, based on previous history?

An upgrade always costs less than a full new version. So therefore, you are only paying the difference if you purchase now, when it comes time to upgrading. Eg. Buy Lightroom 2.0 now for $500 and then pay $150 upgrade, vs.. waiting and paying $500 for Lightroom 3.0. Net difference to your pocket $150 and a few months.

The question is - 'Is that difference worth it to you to use the program now?' Or, would you rather wait?'

Lightroom 3.0 will not ship before 2010 - and the exact month is TBA; but I would wager not before February at the earliest.

[howardm]

usually they have some number of months grace period in purchasing the previous version but since we dont know when LR3 might actually see light of day and/or how many more beta releases there will be (folks in the know indicate that we have *not* seen a feature complete beta yet), it'd be hard to say if you'd fall on the right side of the purchase date.  Also, LR goes on sale every now and then to something like $200 or if you know anyone in school, an ed. discount could work.

[dmward]

If you take the time to read the Adobe SLA it says that only students, faculty and others associated with an educational institution may use software licensed as educational.

It also states that a SL can not be transferred. Which would address those who "get" educationally licensed software and upgrade to a "full"version.

My only reason for pointing this out is to suggest that ethics does enter into licensing and using software.

It is amusing to me that photographers, as a group, are concerned about protecting the © on their images yet it is common on photo fora to read suggestions about how to circumvent the software license, Intellectual Property and copy rights of others.

[NikoJorj]

I want to buy LR but I'm reluctant to do so if I will have to shell out big money for an upgrade to LR3 in the very near future.

The simplest might be to work with LR3 beta now, and put the money in the piggy bank until final release : I didn't heard about any significant bug, for now.
There is still the little question mark about LR3b>LR3 catalog migration though, but I'd be astonished if that were not possible one way or the other and even in the worst case, with the metadata in XMP, you don't lose so much.

[jeremyrh]

The simplest might be to work with LR3 beta now, and put the money in the piggy bank until final release : I didn't heard about any significant bug, for now.
There is still the little question mark about LR3b>LR3 catalog migration though, but I'd be astonished if that were not possible one way or the other and even in the worst case, with the metadata in XMP, you don't lose so much.

Thanks for the replies, folks. I will try to be patient (not my strong point!) and wait till LR3 comes out. As you say, using the beta might be best for now.

[KeithR]

If you take the time to read the Adobe SLA it says that only students, faculty and others associated with an educational institution may use software licensed as educational.

It also states that a SL can not be transferred. Which would address those who "get" educationally licensed software and upgrade to a "full"version.

My only reason for pointing this out is to suggest that ethics does enter into licensing and using software.

It is amusing to me that photographers, as a group, are concerned about protecting the © on their images yet it is common on photo fora to read suggestions about how to circumvent the software license, Intellectual Property and copy rights of others.

A lot of "students" graduate or move on and I'll bet that Adobe counts on this in that those "students" will continue to use their products. And as such, allow the educational versions to be updated to the full version at the update price. I purchased PSCS while taking some classes at a local school and when CS2 came out, I called Adobe to see if I could update and was told I could. Unfortunatly, I had the full suite(it was the only option available to me at the time), and hadn't used any of the other programs and only wished to update PS, but that wasn't an option, so I ended up purchasing just CS2. So upgrading LR from an educational version would most likely be allowed by Adobe, and even encouraged to keep the user "in the family".

[Scott O.]

www.academicsuperstore.com sells the full version of LR only...$99.99.  Adobe's official upgrade price is $99.99 also.  But whatever it is, as someone pointed out, if you buy the full version now then you must buy the upgrade when it is released, which might not be until April.  Who knows?  My suggestion would be to use the beta version until 3.0 is released and then buy it.  3.0 has worked flawlessly for me, although I will continue to use 2.x for my post processing until 3.0 is released.