Photoshop CC & Lightroom 5 for €9.99 per month...12 month contract.

[Simon Garrett]

I am guessing that you are one of our much-valued and respected "transatlantic cousins", Simon. But, here in UK, it is a well-established and frequently proven business principle that the company that carefully researches customer needs - and then sets out to accurately meet those needs - will, in the long term, be the most successful. Unfortunately there are odd exceptions, particularly in oligopolistic situations such as power suppliers, but, generally in a mature economy, paying rather more attention to customers than is currently evident with Adobe does pay dividends (pun intended).

Well, on my side of the Atlantic (the Eastern side) as on the other side, it is usually the case with public corporations that their primary duty is to make a return to their investors.  Some companies - often non-profit companies - have specific aims to provide a particular service (maybe a stated public good) as their primary role, but this is not the case in general with public companies.  That's not venal capitalism, nor is it cynicism, it's the law. 

In order to maximise that return to investors, generally speaking (in a competitive market) companies find that they need to satisfy their customers.  As you say, successful companies are very often the ones that satisfy their customers the most.  But if they lose sight of profits in pursuit of customer satisfaction, they won't be around to provide that customer satisfaction for very long.  Either they go bust, or their shareholders will punish them, possibly replacing the management, or leaving the company open to a take-over by someone that will make profit a higher priority. 

You may think that's cynical, but it's not: it's how business works. 

The issue here is not whether Adobe is putting profit ahead of customer satisfaction: of course they are, and so they should. 

Rather, the issue is whether they're doing it right and providing sufficient customer satisfaction to maximise profit, or are damaging customer satisfaction by mismanagement or overcharging in a way that will not maximise profitability but reduce it. 

I agree with all you say about researching and meeting customer needs.  But making a profit comes first, or you can't meet customer needs for very long. 

[BernardLanguillier]

Totally agree. Paralysis by analysis could quicky make a company obsolete. Sometimes it is much better to make a decision, quickly discover it is not quite right, correct the plan and carry on.

Yes, trial and error can sometimes work but it is a case by case thing.

Always prioritizing quick decision making over reflexion is not a suitable standard policy.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

Either they go bust, or their shareholders will punish them, possibly replacing the management, or leaving the company open to a take-over by someone that will make profit a higher priority.  

Yes, you are of course correct.

One caveat though is that successful companies are typically led by boards who focus on operational leaders whose priority is to maximize the integral of profit over time. With some constraints of course, like never generating loss for too long in the short term, etc...

Subscription models clearly have the potential to achieve this. But this potential will only be converted into business if enough customers of Adobe perceive value for them, which is at best unclear today, not to say the opposite.

Indeed, we live in a world where the perception of customers plays an important role on their purchasing decisions. One increasingly important aspect impacting this is the perception that large corporations are not fair in their dealings, especially in their dealings with smaller customers. This perceived lack of fairness - Adobe would be using its dominant position to lock people in an endless dependency position by forcing them to pay to remain able to work on their IP - may be the most important issue Adobe is facing with their subscription proposal.

And this is issue is IMHO impacting enough that it severly threatens the actual long term business potential of their current offerings.

Each additional discount that they propose only makes the tough situation they have put themselves in more obvious and raises red flags among customers who may not have understood the situation otherwise. It has become a vicious circle already.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Isaac]

This perceived lack of fairness - Adobe would be using its dominant position to lock people in an endless dependency position by forcing them to pay to remain able to work on their IP - may be the most important issue Adobe is facing with their subscription proposal.

I imagine there are smaller customers who have little choice but to use CC because their clients have Enterprise Term-based License Agreements with Adobe and expect to exchange the latest formats. Still, those smaller customers don't blindly put on the golden handcuffs.

The other smaller customers, who are not forced by their clients to use the latest functionality, do have other options -- most obviously using DNG Converter to keep CS6 current with new cameras.

"This performance was driven by continued strong adoption of Creative Cloud for individuals, and from Creative Cloud for team subscriptions – which grew 62% quarter-over quarter. The special Photography offer launched in September helped drive new customer acquisition.
...
In the year we closed more than 1,000 Creative ETLA contracts of greater than $100,000, with more than 80 contracts over $1 million. As a reminder, ETLAs are generally 3 year contracts."

pdf Adobe Q4 and FY2013 Earnings Call Script

[Alan Klein]

As an aside, what happens when new cameras come put and Adobe has to update LR5 and CS6 to see RAW?  If they only update the CC version, that's going to put more pressure on the "perpetual" users.  You won't be able to update your camera to a newer model.  That will also hurt camera manufacturer sales to a degree.  No?

[Isaac]

As far as I understand, Adobe plan to continue providing bug-fix updates for CS6 but plan not to provide new functionality or new camera updates for CS6 (because CS6 can use DNG, and Adobe do plan to provide new camera updates for the free Adobe RAW to DNG Converter).

So there isn't more pressure on the "perpetual" users, and you will be able to update your camera to a newer model, and it won't hurt camera manufacturer sales to a degree.

[Farmer]

In that respect, it's no different than it's always been with regard to support for previous versions and ACR updates.

[Alan Klein]

What about Lightroom?

[Isaac]

What about LR?

As far as I understand, LR will continue to have update releases -- bug fixes, functionality and new cameras.

Furthermore -- Q: Are there any features of Lightroom available exclusively to Creative Cloud members? A: No.

[Some Guy]

As an aside, what happens when new cameras come put and Adobe has to update LR5 and CS6 to see RAW?  If they only update the CC version, that's going to put more pressure on the "perpetual" users.  You won't be able to update your camera to a newer model.  That will also hurt camera manufacturer sales to a degree.  No?

Shouldn't be an issue if one uses the proprietary RAW image converters of the companies to make the images a TIFF (i.e Canon's "Digital Photo Professional Version," or Nikon's "View NX2" or "Capture NX2") which do a far better job than Adobe's ACR since both of those also use the camera's RGB profile and their internal photo settings that Adobe does not use on importing.

I prefer Capture NX2 as the import engine for Nikon since it reads the camera's settings, and uses the NIK "Control Points" that Adobe does not use which can correct for a lot of color imbalances.  Even their make-up brush tool seems to be better than Adobe's which makes the spotted area plastic like (too clean) where the Nikon spot looks to have a bit of texture remaining.

Using the above manufacturer's RAW converters, one could probably go back to Photoshop version 1 and keep using that.  Just keep using PS as an editor and not a converter.

SG

[cottagehunter]

I would like to see adobe fix photoshop so that it uses more than one core of a processor. I recently did a pano and was using 18 gb of Ram and only 10 % of the cpu on one processor out of eight can't they fix this and make it use more of the cpu functions?

Pierre

[dds]

Adobe has extended the $9.99 a month CC & Lightroom offer until February 28, 2014 for existing Photoshop licensees. I was waiting until the end of the year to decide what to do; now I have a couple of more months....

[Phil Indeblanc]

For me, I'll switch to Corel Paint(or the like) which supports PSD files before having to go CC.
With rentals, First it's $10, then next year MAYBE the same, and then an increase, and another, etc. Sounds like the Cable or phone business. They rope you in for a year or two then gradually raise it up...after you're locked in, its hard to get out. Its like HOA fees.

I do wish the majority of users were against this so the concept wouldn't even take off. But of course there are plenty of those that can't see themselves paying so much for software up front. And other reasons, so I can see it tempt and make sense for some. So it is a oportunity for them, and great way to have Adobe push everyone else with them. Adobe is more and more getting into the security business, locking more and more things up in their vaults :-)

[Morris Taub]

Adobe has extended the $9.99 a month CC & Lightroom offer until February 28, 2014 for existing Photoshop licensees. I was waiting until the end of the year to decide what to do; now I have a couple of more months....

do you have a link to this info?...i'm not seeing it on the adobe site...

thanks...

[chez]

For me, I'll switch to Corel Paint(or the like) which supports PSD files before having to go CC.
With rentals, First it's $10, then next year MAYBE the same, and then an increase, and another, etc. Sounds like the Cable or phone business. They rope you in for a year or two then gradually raise it up...after you're locked in, its hard to get out. Its like HOA fees.

I do wish the majority of users were against this so the concept wouldn't even take off. But of course there are plenty of those that can't see themselves paying so much for software up front. And other reasons, so I can see it tempt and make sense for some. So it is a oportunity for them, and great way to have Adobe push everyone else with them. Adobe is more and more getting into the security business, locking more and more things up in their vaults :-)

One thing you are forgetting is there really is no alternative to PS thst provides all the functionality. Corel is still a wannabe and until it gets serious, PS is really the only choice unless you want to go backwards in your post processing. For me, I don't want to wade into the less powerful, unknown applications when I have the best at $10/ month. Just does not make any sense to look elsewhere.

[Phil Indeblanc]

What tools do you find in PS that Corel doesn't have?  I have used Corel decades ago, and I know it to be rather powerful and with some tool sets original from PS.
Usually we don't want to work outside of a program that we have grown so accustomed too, but I think its worth it if you don't want Cloud software.
I think it takes a bit of effort on user part to not accept cloud software. It is worth my efforts if you care not to support such programs.  We give up so many rights, and I just can't see this being a good thing in the long run. Once you are renting, you give up all control how you use it. That's my personal reason.

If Corel is a wanna be, Like it really is in Aftershot raw dev... it wont take long for them to see the potential and market against.

There are other Photo editors that are very good, and the more reason for them to further develop the programs. I can't see why other editors can't duplicate a lot of the old Adobe features.

[LKaven]

There are other Photo editors that are very good, and the more reason for them to further develop the programs. I can't see why other editors can't duplicate a lot of the old Adobe features.

I think Gimp, as it approaches Gimp 3 with full GEGL integration, is moving up in the world.  It promises to be able to do things that Photoshop never thought of.  Whether it will withstand the demands of commercial production use is something we will have to see. 

[dds]

Quote from: dds on December 22, 2013, 11:46:45 PM
Adobe has extended the $9.99 a month CC & Lightroom offer until February 28, 2014 for existing Photoshop licensees. I was waiting until the end of the year to decide what to do; now I have a couple of more months....

do you have a link to this info?...i'm not seeing it on the adobe site...

thanks...

Morris, I got an email from Adobe with this offer on the 19th. It looks just like the one I got before (that ended December 31). However, in the fine print, the new email says that the offer ends Feb. 28, 2014. Interesting, no? There is a link to the "Join CC" site that seems to have a tracking number associated with it. And they also give a phone number: 800-585-0774.

--David

[Phil Indeblanc]

I have heard great things about GIMP, just not familiar with it , YET.

But I know Corel was very powerful with direct PSD support!  I remember it having powerful "nozzle" feature of painting textures and samples in random order to fill in grass, and such.. Color correction tools were also good from what I used it for back then. I have the current version as I already do yearly subscription with most of my SW :-) I should give it a go. But as of now I am capping up space on my 240GB SSD and need to do something about that. Cheers!

[digitaldog]

But I know Corel was very powerful with direct PSD support! 

Depends on what your idea of 'support' is. I tried a demo a few days ago for grins, didn't take but a few minutes to see it's limited depending on what you desire from legacy PS files with layers (doesn't matter if they are PSD or TIFFs). The product opens a PSD with layers but there's a lot more to the story than that! What I did in Photoshop is make a PSD with two layers. Both had blending modes. This is proprietary Adobe processing. The layered file opens in CP but for all practical (many) purposes, might as well be flattened. I can click on the individual layers but one should consider them 'baked', you can't for example revert the blending mode (CP see's them as Normal which makes sense). Layered files with pixels that have some edits will migrate OK, you can continue to retouch them. But any blening modes are simply uneditiable as they were in Photoshop. Take a layer in Photoshop, set the blend to Overlay. Open that file a year later, reset it back to Normal or update that to any other blend mode. Back to square 1. Not the same in Corel! Path's in Photoshop? Forget about em in Corel, they don't show up. Not sure about Alpha channels, didn't try that. Because frankly, jumping ship is going to hurt big time assuming you are using Photoshop to even half it's capability, those capabilities are largely proprietary. They were the day you started using Photshop just like the Reports you can build in Quicken is proprietary to that product.