Adobe CC

[LesPalenik]

You also have more options as there are different manufacturers.  If you don't like Chevy's leasing or purchase plan, you can pretty much purchase or lease a car from Ford that matches in performance, quality, engineering and features.  Unfortunately in the photo world, Adobe has a better product for the most part so where do you go?  Also, with cars, you don't have to re-learn how to drive when you switch brands.  Who wants to start all over with a new PP program?  And then who wants to convert all those old edits done with PS?   And cataloguing?  These aren't problems with cars.  What someone has to come out with is a "new car smell" atomizer for Photoshop.  Just spray the screen with it and you think you just updated!

Well, that may happen sooner than some think. Apparently, Apple has a team of top-notch software designers working on a Photoshop killer program code-named Photos Pro. The new 3D image editing platform will offer not only a fresh fragrance and sexy interface, but a brand new architecture, designed from the ground up in a powerful and typically intuitive Apple way. Outside developers will be able to use the Swift programming language and software hooks to write their own special functions and filters, callable from the main program, and sell them through the App Store. It's just an unconfirmed rumor at this time. Once Google finds out about it, you can bet, that they will announce their own self-driving Super Picasa fully integrated with new NIKita to enter the post Photoshop universe.

[Simon Garrett]

Well, that may happen sooner than some think. Apparently, Apple has a team of top-notch software designers working on a Photoshop killer program code-named Photos Pro. The new 3D image editing platform will offer not only a fresh fragrance and sexy interface, but a brand new architecture, designed from the ground up in a powerful and typically intuitive Apple way. Outside developers will be able to use the Swift programming language and software hooks to write their own special functions and filters, callable from the main program, and sell them through the App Store. It's just an unconfirmed rumor at this time. Once Google finds out about it, you can bet, that they will announce their own self-driving Super Picasa fully integrated with new NIKita to enter the post Photoshop universe.

I look forward to that.  Are these phone/tablet initiatives?  If so, they won't really impact Photoshop. 

[Chris_Brown]

Unfortunately in the photo world, Adobe has a better product for the most part so where do you go?

Serif Software has placed some very functional programs on the market. I've been toying with Affinity Photo and it is a very capable program. Combined with Iridient Developer and Phase One Media Pro, you have all you need for processing, retouching and cataloging, with no subscription fees.

In the 1990s, QuarkXpress was installed in most publishing houses, design firms, ad agencies and graphics shops. The program was ubiquitous, and was very capable. It utilized Postscript & TrueType fonts, vector graphics and raster graphics seamlessly into its layout engine, and its utilization of RGB, CMYK and Pantone color was cutting edge. At one point 95% of all printed material in North America was produced with the program. That market dominance is gone, and while the program is still alive and functional, Quark essentially lost market share due to their own mistakes (not porting the code to OSX for years being one of them). The majority of designers and production artists now sit in front of InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop. It's a helluva toolset, and only Adobe can ruin it.

[kers]

Apple has a team of top-notch software designers working on a Photoshop killer program code-named Photos Pro. ...

Well Apple just killed Aperture and showed more often that you cannot trust them into making something that has some continuity.
If they think tomorrow some other approach is 'better' they just unplug the old program and start a new from scratch.
They did that with Aperture- final cut pro (X) and they do it  to their operating system every year.
(Even the way they format their harddisks has changed without any notification between different builds of 10.9.5)

[Some Guy]

Well, that may happen sooner than some think. Apparently, Apple has a team of top-notch software designers working on a Photoshop killer program code-named Photos Pro. The new 3D image editing platform will offer not only a fresh fragrance and sexy interface, but a brand new architecture, designed from the ground up in a powerful and typically intuitive Apple way. Outside developers will be able to use the Swift programming language and software hooks to write their own special functions and filters, callable from the main program, and sell them through the App Store. It's just an unconfirmed rumor at this time. Once Google finds out about it, you can bet, that they will announce their own self-driving Super Picasa fully integrated with new NIKita to enter the post Photoshop universe.

I was surprised at how much of the NIK software has ended up in Snapspeed which is in the Android phones.  Pretty remarkable at how fast Google bought it and then is turning it into a powerful cellphone editor.  Might be right on some Super Picasa too.

I got a bad feeling that the major DSLR camera makers and Adobe are going to find themselves in a bit of a snit with these "apps" and their makers.  Some stuff is really good and innovative.  I didn't know until yesterday I could take a "spherical image" (Panorama is passe now?) in minutes by following a dot with my phone and it even processed the image in a few minutes - no external computer or Adobe software needed.  And the app "Google Camera" was free!  I never thought some single device would allow for so many variations of cameras against a DSLR:  HDR camera app. Load it.  Panorama camera. Effects. Editors. etc. all at your fingertips.  Just load the app and you got a whole new camera and methodolgy.

I fear PS may be on it's last legs in the next decade at the rate this stuff is evolving.  Maybe even the major DSLR makers as well.  Kodak did the Cloud thing way back in the 90's and that failed, and so did Kodak.  Evolution marches ahead - and at a very brisk rate.

SG

[digitaldog]

Poor Adobe! Losing all that extra revenue stream and facing irregular disruptions in revenue flow.

http://prodesigntools.com/creative-cloud-one-million-paid-members.html
The new figures are 4.6 million subscribers.

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/61605102/mQlaPzs1f3h5k7.pdf
Net new Creative Cloud subscriptions grew by 639 thousand in the quarter to over 4.6 million, and represents 38% year-over-year growth.

[Mark D Segal]

I think hypothesizing about Adobe's demise is premature. And I don't see any of those alternatives providing the kind of integrated processing power we get from LR+PS combined. Not impossible, but not yet. Meanwhile Adobe needs to remain vigilant, on its feet and provide customer satisfaction because nothing and no-one is permanent in this industry.

The current round of releases has indicated there is a serious management problem in the commercial area at Adobe. They need to issue a clear, transparent policy statement to the photographic community about what you get and what you should expect and not expect with each purchasing option, they need to clean-up and improve the visibility of version numbering so users can see in an instant exactly which version they are using, they need to assure non-discriminatory international pricing to the extent different tax regimes and exchange rates allow it, they need to provide a sensible exit strategy for people who need to leave the CC stream and revert to perpetual LR licensing, they need to provide LR tech support 24/7 (It's Monday to Friday now) especially at a time when updates are emerging with semi-transparent documentation and they need to make the process of downloading and selecting updating options up-front - this business of burying the option to retain one's current working version in an Advanced Options menu needs to go. If they were to do all these things, it would clean-up the mess they've gotten themselves into and make customers' lives a lot easier, as well as cut the complaining. Another option, not however precluding some of the above measures, would be to discontinue perpetual licensing of LR. Wouldn't surprise me to see that by next year.

[Some Guy]

http://prodesigntools.com/creative-cloud-one-million-paid-members.html
The new figures are 4.6 million subscribers.

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/61605102/mQlaPzs1f3h5k7.pdf
Net new Creative Cloud subscriptions grew by 639 thousand in the quarter to over 4.6 million, and represents 38% year-over-year growth.

Yes, but their net income has dropped a lot from 2011 too, by nearly half.

https://ycharts.com/companies/ADBE/net_income

and

http://www.alphr.com/news/390835/dark-clouds-for-adobe-as-profits-slide-by-46

I agree with some analysts who think the stock is way overvalued, maybe a $20 stock at best.  They do a lot of insider trading too so I wouldn't rely on what the CEO claims.

Most likely they will have to raise subscription fees soon if their shareholders shout.  How that plays out will be very interesting to watch.  Some of those new subscribers are in for free too with Adobe Acrobat DC Cloud and sync.  No telling on how they are determining their subscriber count:  Are they paying, using Overdrive, shifting, or not?  Large numbers look good, but income is more telling.

This could also be much of the same low sales issues of what the camera makers are going through in lost income as well.  I've seen too many camera stores close up of late.  Tough business these days - and probably will get tougher.

SG

[LesPalenik]

I think hypothesizing about Adobe's demise is premature. And I don't see any of those alternatives providing the kind of integrated processing power we get from LR+PS combined. Not impossible, but not yet. Meanwhile Adobe needs to remain vigilant, on its feet and provide customer satisfaction because nothing and no-one is permanent in this industry.

The current round of releases has indicated there is a serious management problem in the commercial area at Adobe. They need to issue a clear, transparent policy statement to the photographic community about what you get and what you should expect and not expect with each purchasing option, they need to clean-up and improve the visibility of version numbering so users can see in an instant exactly which version they are using, they need to assure non-discriminatory international pricing to the extent different tax regimes and exchange rates allow it, they need to provide a sensible exit strategy for people who need to leave the CC stream and revert to perpetual LR licensing, they need to provide LR tech support 24/7 (It's Monday to Friday now) especially at a time when updates are emerging with semi-transparent documentation and they need to make the process of downloading and selecting updating options up-front - this business of burying the option to retain one's current working version in an Advanced Options menu needs to go. If they were to do all these things, it would clean-up the mess they've gotten themselves into and make customers' lives a lot easier, as well as cut the complaining. Another option, not however precluding some of the above measures, would be to discontinue perpetual licensing of LR. Wouldn't surprise me to see that by next year.

Good summary, Mark
I am not so sure about Adobe being able to drop the perpetual license on LR. They were able to do it for PS, since there is at the moment no real alternative, but when it comes to LR, there are plenty of alternatives, and some are even better in certain aspects than LR. Exiting from LR-CC without some way to access your old LR files would be even more precarious than exiting from PS-CC. I would never put myself into that position.

 

[Mark D Segal]

Yes, but their net income has dropped a lot from 2011 too, by nearly half.

https://ycharts.com/companies/ADBE/net_income

and

http://www.alphr.com/news/390835/dark-clouds-for-adobe-as-profits-slide-by-46

I agree with some analysts who think the stock is way overvalued, maybe a $20 stock at best.  They do a lot of insider trading too so I wouldn't rely on what the CEO claims.

Most likely they will have to raise subscription fees soon if their shareholders shout.  How that plays out will be very interesting to watch.  Some of those new subscribers are in for free too with Adobe Acrobat DC Cloud and sync.  No telling on how they are determining their subscriber count:  Are they paying, using Overdrive, shifting, or not?  Large numbers look good, but income is more telling.

This could also be much of the same low sales issues of what the camera makers are going through in lost income as well.  I've seen too many camera stores close up of late.  Tough business these days - and probably will get tougher.

SG

Are you by ay chance a financial analyst with expertise on the valuation of Adobe stock? In what respect is their stock "over-valued"? You think their investors don't understand the value of what they are buying - i.o.w "irrational: investors? And as for insider trading, I presume you know this is a criminal offense, so if you want to sling arounf those kind of charges best be sure you can substantiate them. The profit slide by the way was predicted in a penultimate 10-K - they aren't into the subscription model for the short-term. It is a long-term play. So far the numbers indicate the uptake is beating their own expectations. But the revenue drop occurs - as they explained to the SEC - because the rash of perpetual license renewals that would have fallen due is being replaced by CC subscriptions which carry lower initial cash flow. Not hard to see of course. Over the long term they may make more money from this - obviously what they are hoping for, but it is a business risk and time will tell. Don't forget the buy-in cost to get into the LR+PS subscription train is VERY low - much less money up-front than the cost of buying licenses to each of LR and PS. So they must be hoping that price elasticity of demand will further increase their market and market share, and the incremental technical value they expect to offer will also entice people to buy into these subscriptions and stay. This is the logic that must be driving this model. If it is, note that it puts both them and their customers on a treadmill: them to keep the value up and us to keep paying. So this is a very interesting development to keep watching. We should prepare to be educated.

[Mark D Segal]

Good summary, Mark
I am not so sure about Adobe being able to drop the perpetual license on LR. They were able to do it for PS, since there is at the moment no real alternative, but when it comes to LR, there are plenty of alternatives, and some are even better in certain aspects than LR. Exiting from LR-CC without some way to access your old LR files would be even more precarious than exiting from PS-CC. I would never put myself into that position.

 

Thanks Les. Yes, one of the alternatives to LR is PS - because the Camera Raw engine delivers the same adjustments that you get in the Develop Module of LR. I think people buying the LR+PS combo are looking at what the total package with its near seamless integration offers and not whether a different raw converter has this or that feature that may be arguably a bit better. To re-iterate, I share your discomfort about the absence of a viable exit strategy from the subscription train.

[Some Guy]

Mark, fyi, insider trading can be both legal and illegal.  I didn't say they were doing it illegally, but most any companies officers who hold stock options do trade within their own company, and a lot if you look at their reports.

The legal version is when corporate insiders, officers, directors, employees and large shareholders, buy and sell stock in their own companies.  Not illegal to do.  If they are transparent to the public, when corporate or insiders trade in their own securities, they must report their trades to the SEC.  Many stock investors and traders then use that information to identify companies with investment potential, and the theory is if the insiders (CEO's, exec. board, etc.) are buying the stock, they must know more about their company than everyone else, so it is a good idea to buy the stock.

Where it gets messy and illegal is where they hide information from the SEC and public and provide tippees confidential information (ala, Martha Stewart.).  Sometimes providing false information to sway public or financial institutions as well.

You can look up most any member on a companies board: CEO, Exec. etc. on the exchange and see how many shares they hold, sell, or buy.  How they disclose it (To the SEC, public or not, or undercover and illegal.) is where it gets iffy.  How they move it is where the market hopes to gain some info under a watchful eye.

No doubt a lot of 'questionable' trading goes on too and open to debate over legality.  Cattle futures in Arkansas anyone? 

SG

[aderickson]

I use Photoshop Elements for my scanned image post processing. It includes Camera Raw and I believe it is the exact same ACR engine included with LR and PS. The only difference is the UI is simplified which makes some features unavailable. You can buy, at very low cost, plugins which enable some of these features. I use Elements+ which allows use of lens profiles, curves, channels, scripts and softproofing for instance. Plugins such as Neat Image and Focus Magic work just fine with it. You can find all sorts of free actions on the web which will work with it. There is a workaround to make a layer on a 16 bit file (not inside an action, unfortunately). It will work with large color spaces such as Prophoto and AdobeWide (but you can only convert to Adobe RGB or sRGB within the program).

I usually only update it on even-numbered versions but the latest, PSE 13, was the first 64 bit version and I wanted to try that. The first release froze up on me often. Adobe came out with 13.1 in a short while which seems to fix it. ACR has also been updated to 9.0. I wonder why Adobe is having problems getting bug-free initial releases?

So there is one more Adobe alternative to Lightroom on a perpetual license. I'm still using Capture NX2 for the little digital work I do.

Allan

[Mark D Segal]

Mark, fyi, insider trading can be both legal and illegal.  I didn't say they were doing it illegally, but most any companies officers who hold stock options do trade within their own company, and a lot if you look at their reports.

The legal version is when corporate insiders, officers, directors, employees and large shareholders, buy and sell stock in their own companies.  Not illegal to do.  If they are transparent to the public, when corporate or insiders trade in their own securities, they must report their trades to the SEC.  Many stock investors and traders then use that information to identify companies with investment potential, and the theory is if the insiders (CEO's, exec. board, etc.) are buying the stock, they must know more about their company than everyone else, so it is a good idea to buy the stock.

Where it gets messy and illegal is where they hide information from the SEC and public and provide tippees confidential information (ala, Martha Stewart.).  Sometimes providing false information to sway public or financial institutions as well.

You can look up most any member on a companies board: CEO, Exec. etc. on the exchange and see how many shares they hold, sell, or buy.  How they disclose it (To the SEC, public or not, or undercover and illegal.) is where it gets iffy.  How they move it is where the market hopes to gain some info under a watchful eye.

No doubt a lot of 'questionable' trading goes on too and open to debate over legality.  Cattle futures in Arkansas anyone? 

SG

Yes true, but the language "stock options" has a different connotation than "insider trading", most people usually associating legality with the former and illegality with the latter, especially when used in a context suggesting that it is inordinately skewing the value of the shares.

[BernardLanguillier]

Yes true, but the language "stock options" has a different connotation than "insider trading", most people usually associating legality with the former and illegality with the latter, especially when used in a context suggesting that it is inordinately skewing the value of the shares.

I have to agree with Mark. Adobe must be under a lot of attention from the regulators, and we can be certain that those employees lucky enough to be granted shares are very careful to only trade them outside quiet periods and with enough advanced notice that they cannot be suspected to be timing the sell of stocks based on non publicly available information.

Those insinuations are out of line.

Cheers,
Bernard

[stamper]

I am very surprised that the Moderator hasn't stepped in to close this thread?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I am very surprised that the Moderator hasn't stepped in to close this thread?

Why? Foul language? Ad Hominems?

People are at liberty to say stupid (in the mind of some) things, without violating the TOS, aren't they? Whether the thread has interesting enough content to respond to is another matter, and is usually not moderated for lack of substance.

Cheers,
Bart

[Mark D Segal]

I am very surprised that the Moderator hasn't stepped in to close this thread?

Well, I think this thread has pretty much exhausted the "photographic" content of the issue (much as it did some time back when CC was first introduced), and to some extent, because of its inherently close linkage to the commercial side of things it has kind of wobbled a bit "OT", but I agree with Bart that we haven't unambiguously violated the ToS and irrelevant commentary isn't a reason to lock a thread. In fact, I would recommend the future usefulness of such a thread for members to discuss their upgrading experience, because there have been some substantial issues with the commercial and technical functioning of the recent round and the more information about these problems that surfaces, the more useful it will be for Adobe and the rest of us to take corrective action.

[stamper]

Why? Foul language? Ad Hominems?

People are at liberty to say stupid (in the mind of some) things, without violating the TOS, aren't they? Whether the thread has interesting enough content to respond to is another matter, and is usually not moderated for lack of substance.

Cheers,
Bart

Getting very close to possibly defaming Adobe with digs about insider dealings? I am not American but know enough to realize the thread is going in the wrong direction. Bernard summed it up in Reply#54.

Those insinuations are out of line.

[Mark D Segal]

I think that matter is clarified and now behind us. Let us preserve the thread for what I suggested above: discussion of upgrading issues.