Adobe Reports Record Revenue in the Third Quarter

[Diko]

This type of thing makes me very annoyed. Where is the incentive for Adobe to improve their products or even make them work properly when they are raking in this much money?

What makes you thing they don't that the very minute we are discussing it here ;-)

What bulls!t. If a creative professional can't afford $7.99 a month then they aren't very creative. If they are creative they can afford the fees which are a lot easier to find than a one off license fee many times that amount, PS as a standalone was generally in the $600-700 range.

And I do recall times when it all was above the $3k border... ;-)

Well I have had enough - what are the other options? Is Capture One the only realistic alternative to Lightroom?

It may not be the only alternative, but it is SOOOOOOOOOO much better than lightroom.  Download the 30 day trial, you'll be blown away.

Nope... Actually there's a bunch of others ;-)

I think they've run out of ideas. Piracy will become a bigger issue for them if they don't start improving them. If one of the other companies could get very smart on selection tools and making composites easy I'd stop with Adobe. Affinity is quite good.

   I think and I believe NOT. Adobe is smarter than that, though there are no indication on that. ;-) I want to go shooting and upload them photos in the cloud and let someone in the other side of the world to who's passionate about it make amazing post production then I want my customer to log in in the URL and account I've provided and make their decisions. And all that in all-in-one.

I have no damn idea if Adobe can pull that off, but they have all they need. I don't want to pay to five different providers for five different services in order to offer the best to my customers.  Adobe has the potential thanks to CC like no other else!

Perpetual license?
In the age of internet.... where no more diskettes are required for installation...?
In the age of piracy - where one single program is shared in a nick of time - Adobe are and should be smarter than that.

No one is selling product. Everyone is going for service.

Like it or not, they are now a cheap commodity, and are plentiful.  The money goes to those very few and rare individuals with a vision for creating new features and products that people will plunk their money down for.  They define the software parameters and how it will work.

That's why more and more recent software is plain rubbish. Skilled and competent developers are not a commodity, especially for sophisticated software like PS or LR. Just like anybody able to operate a camera is not a "photographer".

You may have a vision, but if you lack the proper skills and experience to turn it into something tangible and working flawlessly, that's useless.

Time will tell if Adobe is going to invest that huge pile of money into product R&D, or it will become complacent and will just remunerate more executives and stockholder - it would be not the first one to follow the second path, especially when there's not enough competition pressure. Many of them got into troubles later.

True being told - I feel like not really original ideas come now and then.... I feel like everyone think the same way in the internet age.... I feel like people are afraid to say NO - we need it the other way around.

It's not the devs - it's the users that lack the imagination ;-)

[daphins]

This type of thing makes me very annoyed. Where is the incentive for Adobe to improve their products or even make them work properly when they are raking in this much money? I can't believe so many people have bought into this vision of a world where everyone pays up whether the products are being developed or not.
At least when we paid to upgrade then Adobe had to put some interesting new features in each version or their revenue would dry up. Now the money keeps coming in regardless.
Well I have had enough - what are the other options? Is Capture One the only realistic alternative to Lightroom?

Ugh, I'm with you man. I've moved off of the entire suite (I have CS6), though I still use LR Stand-alone. IF they improve LR, and offer a stand-alone license I'll consider buying it. However, if I find a better alternative I'll move from Adobe in a heart beat.

I hate what they've done to creative professionals, with the holding of tools hostage.

What bulls!t. If a creative professional can't afford $7.99 a month then they aren't very creative. If they are creative they can afford the fees which are a lot easier to find than a one off license fee many times that amount, PS as a standalone was generally in the $600-700 range.

If they are at school/college/university they can get a crazy good 'educational discount'. If they have half a brain and want to 'stick it to the man' they can get a pirated fully functional copy of CC for nothing but the 30 mins it takes to install. Nobody is holding tools hostage.

As for the development, there have been many improvements to LR and PS over the last three years, the thing is they go unnoticed and unappreciated by those who have taken a stand against the corporate evil. Now we don't have the big new releases people don't add up the various changes and improvements that have been introduced.

I can understand people who say I am not comfortable paying monthly for a product, I can understand people who want a 'perpetual' license. But I can't understand this constant Adobe bashing, they said what they are going to do, they said why they had to do it (and they did have to do it as they were going bankrupt) and they did it, you have the choice, accept their decision to not go bankrupt and get either buy their products or not. Saying you hate them is ridiculous.

Who’s said anything about “able to afford”? I’m a successful professional with the ability to purchase whatever software I need. I have however made a personal CHOICE to not “rent software” that gives a private company power over my intellectual property. As it is, LR is the  only Adobe software left where if young quit paying rent rent, you can still access your personal art.

Adobe can take a piss. I have liabilities for years beyond when a contract ends that requires me to bro able to access my art. I refuse to purchase th CC from  Adobe as long as  their current policy stands.

[Orangutan]

This type of thing makes me very annoyed. Where is the incentive for Adobe to improve their products or even make them work properly when they are raking in this much money? I can't believe so many people have bought into this vision of a world where everyone pays up whether the products are being developed or not.
At least when we paid to upgrade then Adobe had to put some interesting new features in each version or their revenue would dry up. Now the money keeps coming in regardless.
Well I have had enough - what are the other options? Is Capture One the only realistic alternative to Lightroom?

Ugh, I'm with you man. I've moved off of the entire suite (I have CS6), though I still use LR Stand-alone. IF they improve LR, and offer a stand-alone license I'll consider buying it. However, if I find a better alternative I'll move from Adobe in a heart beat.

I hate what they've done to creative professionals, with the holding of tools hostage.

What bulls!t. If a creative professional can't afford $7.99 a month then they aren't very creative. If they are creative they can afford the fees which are a lot easier to find than a one off license fee many times that amount, PS as a standalone was generally in the $600-700 range.

If they are at school/college/university they can get a crazy good 'educational discount'. If they have half a brain and want to 'stick it to the man' they can get a pirated fully functional copy of CC for nothing but the 30 mins it takes to install. Nobody is holding tools hostage.

As for the development, there have been many improvements to LR and PS over the last three years, the thing is they go unnoticed and unappreciated by those who have taken a stand against the corporate evil. Now we don't have the big new releases people don't add up the various changes and improvements that have been introduced.

I can understand people who say I am not comfortable paying monthly for a product, I can understand people who want a 'perpetual' license. But I can't understand this constant Adobe bashing, they said what they are going to do, they said why they had to do it (and they did have to do it as they were going bankrupt) and they did it, you have the choice, accept their decision to not go bankrupt and get either buy their products or not. Saying you hate them is ridiculous.

Who’s said anything about “able to afford”? I’m a successful professional with the ability to purchase whatever software I need. I have however made a personal CHOICE to not “rent software” that gives a private company power over my intellectual property. As it is, LR is the  only Adobe software left where if young quit paying rent rent, you can still access your personal art.

Adobe can take a piss. I have liabilities for years beyond when a contract ends that requires me to bro able to access my art. I refuse to purchase th CC from  Adobe as long as  their current policy stands.

FYI: While I agree with you entirely on the rent vs. own question, LR will continue to have limited function after expiration. 

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2014/07/what-happens-to-lightroom-after-my-membership-ends.html

[Talys]

Relatively cheap subscription have proven to be extremely successful for highly pirated software like Office and Photoshop, because the overwhelming sentiment from people who like the software and used to pirate it is, "I'd pay for it if it were fairly priced."

What's fairly priced?  Look at the price tags for O365 Home/Enterprise and Adobe PS+LR/CC, and you have an idea of what a whole lot of market study has yielded.

Personally, for Lightroom/Photoshop, I think it's a great bundle that is affordable even to hobbyists, and that Adobe hasn't added in some "not for commercial use" clause in it makes me like them more.

[daphins]

This type of thing makes me very annoyed. Where is the incentive for Adobe to improve their products or even make them work properly when they are raking in this much money? I can't believe so many people have bought into this vision of a world where everyone pays up whether the products are being developed or not.
At least when we paid to upgrade then Adobe had to put some interesting new features in each version or their revenue would dry up. Now the money keeps coming in regardless.
Well I have had enough - what are the other options? Is Capture One the only realistic alternative to Lightroom?

Ugh, I'm with you man. I've moved off of the entire suite (I have CS6), though I still use LR Stand-alone. IF they improve LR, and offer a stand-alone license I'll consider buying it. However, if I find a better alternative I'll move from Adobe in a heart beat.

I hate what they've done to creative professionals, with the holding of tools hostage.

What bulls!t. If a creative professional can't afford $7.99 a month then they aren't very creative. If they are creative they can afford the fees which are a lot easier to find than a one off license fee many times that amount, PS as a standalone was generally in the $600-700 range.

If they are at school/college/university they can get a crazy good 'educational discount'. If they have half a brain and want to 'stick it to the man' they can get a pirated fully functional copy of CC for nothing but the 30 mins it takes to install. Nobody is holding tools hostage.

As for the development, there have been many improvements to LR and PS over the last three years, the thing is they go unnoticed and unappreciated by those who have taken a stand against the corporate evil. Now we don't have the big new releases people don't add up the various changes and improvements that have been introduced.

I can understand people who say I am not comfortable paying monthly for a product, I can understand people who want a 'perpetual' license. But I can't understand this constant Adobe bashing, they said what they are going to do, they said why they had to do it (and they did have to do it as they were going bankrupt) and they did it, you have the choice, accept their decision to not go bankrupt and get either buy their products or not. Saying you hate them is ridiculous.

Who’s said anything about “able to afford”? I’m a successful professional with the ability to purchase whatever software I need. I have however made a personal CHOICE to not “rent software” that gives a private company power over my intellectual property. As it is, LR is the  only Adobe software left where if young quit paying rent rent, you can still access your personal art.

Adobe can take a piss. I have liabilities for years beyond when a contract ends that requires me to bro able to access my art. I refuse to purchase th CC from  Adobe as long as  their current policy stands.

FYI: While I agree with you entirely on the rent vs. own question, LR will continue to have limited function after expiration. 

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2014/07/what-happens-to-lightroom-after-my-membership-ends.html

Yep, LR does, but PS, AI, and AE don’t. To my knowledge, LR is the only one that still does, and I honestly don’t trust Adobe to keep it that way.

[unfocused]

Can't people take 15 seconds to do a google search before spouting off?

There are tons of programs and advice on opening and converting PSD files if you just type it in. Plus, you can always convert files to a .tif or .jpg. Alternatively, you can spend about $50 and pick up Photoshop elements to open the files. And, just like in the analog era, you always have your negative (now we call it a a raw file.) So, just as we used to do in the darkroom days, you can reprint the negative.

Anytime you use a proprietary file type to store a document you run the risk of not being able to open it if you dump the program it was created in. That's not unique to Adobe. But as with any other program, there are usually programs available to read or convert those files.

[Talys]

Does anyone remember how much Photoshop USED to cost, by itself?  Or lightroom?  PS was like $700, and extended version was about $1k.  Plus $150 for Lightroom.

That's $750-$1150.  Versus $10 / month. 

 

Now, if Adobe were clever, they would throw in Illustrator at an extra $10 / month, and a bunch of people who barely use Illustrator would pay twice a much.

[AlanF]

Does anyone remember how much Photoshop USED to cost, by itself?  Or lightroom?  PS was like $700, and extended version was about $1k.  Plus $150 for Lightroom.

That's $750-$1150.  Versus $10 / month. 

 

Now, if Adobe were clever, they would throw in Illustrator at an extra $10 / month, and a bunch of people who barely use Illustrator would pay twice a much.

They do throw it in plus everything else Adobe for $10/month for teachers and students. Just enrol as a student somewhere.
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/buy/students.html?promoid=61PM819L&mv=other

[Orangutan]

Does anyone remember how much Photoshop USED to cost, by itself?  Or lightroom?  PS was like $700, and extended version was about $1k.  Plus $150 for Lightroom.

That's $750-$1150.  Versus $10 / month.

First, back in those days you didn't need an ongoing relationship with the vendor; once you buy you're done.  When/if you upgrade, you can give your old version to your cousin who might want to play with it.

Second, remember back in those days where every release was a large advance over the previous one?  That's because we could hold onto our money until Adobe gave us a product worth buying.  Now, while there is some advancement, it is very very slow.

I will say it again: the subscription model is fine for pros who make their living from it, but it's an insult to amateurs.  Also, there is no reason Adobe cannot offer both a subscription for those who want it, and perpetual license (without major upgrades) for those who prefer that.

It's fine to make the case that subscription works for you, but don't extrapolate that to everyone.

[LDS]

First, back in those days you didn't need an ongoing relationship with the vendor; once you buy you're done.  When/if you upgrade, you can give your old version to your cousin who might want to play with it.

No, you couldn't - legally, unless you bought a new full license, and not an upgrade. A software upgrade is part of the actual license.

These behaviors telss that Adobe, after all, could be right.... 

[Orangutan]

First, back in those days you didn't need an ongoing relationship with the vendor; once you buy you're done.  When/if you upgrade, you can give your old version to your cousin who might want to play with it.

No, you couldn't - legally, unless you bought a new full license, and not an upgrade. A software upgrade is part of the actual license.

These behaviors telss that Adobe, after all, could be right.... 

For an upgrade you're correct.  How much did an upgrade cost back then?

Adobe was definitely "right" in the business sense.  It doesn't mean I have to like it.

[daphins]

Can't people take 15 seconds to do a google search before spouting off?

There are tons of programs and advice on opening and converting PSD files if you just type it in. Plus, you can always convert files to a .tif or .jpg. Alternatively, you can spend about $50 and pick up Photoshop elements to open the files. And, just like in the analog era, you always have your negative (now we call it a a raw file.) So, just as we used to do in the darkroom days, you can reprint the negative.

Anytime you use a proprietary file type to store a document you run the risk of not being able to open it if you dump the program it was created in. That's not unique to Adobe. But as with any other program, there are usually programs available to read or convert those files.

Adobe is absolutely unique in when you quit paying a month fee, you lose access to your IP in Photoshop, Illlustrator, or AE. Autodesk still lets you use autocad, Revit and 3DS max, Maxon let’s you use C4D, Skethcup let’s you sketchupC and on and on and on.

No S____ there’s other ways around it, but WHY would I want to go dig up some 3rd party software for my professionally created work when I’ve paid thousands now of dollars in Software costs over the last decade? It’s absolute nonesense that adobe does this. Paying an extortion fee may work for you, it doesn’t work for me and thousands now of others. I’m not going to let Adobe hold me by the balls to access my art.

[Talys]

Adobe is absolutely unique in when you quit paying a month fee, you lose access to your IP in Photoshop, Illlustrator, or AE. Autodesk still lets you use autocad, Revit and 3DS max, Maxon let’s you use C4D, Skethcup let’s you sketchupC and on and on and on.

No S____ there’s other ways around it, but WHY would I want to go dig up some 3rd party software for my professionally created work when I’ve paid thousands now of dollars in Software costs over the last decade? It’s absolute nonesense that adobe does this. Paying an extortion fee may work for you, it doesn’t work for me and thousands now of others. I’m not going to let Adobe hold me by the balls to access my art.

I get why some people don't like subscription software, but what you're saying is untrue.

1. There are MANY companies with subscription software.  On most of them, you have reduced or zero functionality if you cease your subscription.  Examples:

- Microsoft Office 365
- Fonts.com (when you stop subscribing, SkyFonts removes all your fonts)
- Many accounting packages have a subscription version, from QuickBooks to Dynamics
- Cloud-based, Hosted Email
- MSDN/Visual Studio subscriptions
- Services like DropBox, OneDrive and iCloud beyond the free storage limits turn read-only when your subscription expires


2. There are programs other than Photoshop that can open PSDs, as has been previously posted.

3. There are programs other than Lightroom/Photoshop which aren't subscriber, that can open DNGs.  If it's important to have continuity post-subscription, work in DNGs or TIFFs instead of CR2s.  And you can still open your (original) CR2s, TIFFs and all that anyhow, PLUS you can view and print your LR modified RAWs.

4. Nobody is blackmailing you.  If you're a user of an old version of Photoshop/Lightroom, it hasn't stopped working, and if you aren't, nobody is forcing to use PS/LR.  Extortion would be if Adobe said, "Give us money every month or your fully licensed PS/LR will stop working!"

5. The irony is, at the price that PS/LR cost now as a subscription product, it no longer costs thousands of dollars a decade.  In fact, you get TWO copies of each, with all the new versions, for just $1,200 in 10 years.  In buy-it-and-own-it model, you got 1 copy of photoshop for $600, and you'd be forced to upgrade if you wanted it to work properly in a new operating system, with 64-bit, new plugins, or whatever. 

[AlanF]

1. There are MANY companies with subscription software.  On most of them, you have reduced or zero functionality if you cease your subscription.  Examples:

- Microsoft Office 365
- Fonts.com (when you stop subscribing, SkyFonts removes all your fonts)
- Many accounting packages have a subscription version, from QuickBooks to Dynamics
- Cloud-based, Hosted Email
- MSDN/Visual Studio subscriptions
- Services like DropBox, OneDrive and iCloud beyond the free storage limits turn read-only when your subscription expires

There are crucial differences that render your argument by analogy dubious - in some of those examples cloud access is an essential feature without which the product could not work, in others you have the option of downloading to local-based software, but with Adobe the cloud it is an unnecessary imposition to force you to use it.  DropBox, OneDrive and iCloud have to provide continuous cloud service so you can upload and access your files anywhere and they have to maintain their huge servers. With most Office 365 plans, you're able to download and install full versions of Microsoft Office programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on your PC, Mac, or mobile device. I don't know every e-mail package, but all the cloud ones I use download to my laptop and desktops. Adobe could provide a downloadable version, as in the past, that you can use without being connected to the internet and not require any storage on the cloud.
 

[unfocused]

...Adobe could provide a downloadable version, as in the past, that you can use without being connected to the internet and not require any storage on the cloud.

How do you think Adobe CC works? You download it and it resides on your computer. You need to connect to the internet occasionally, but that's only so they can renew the subscription, same as any other subscription software. Adobe throws in some free cloud storage but you don't have to use it.