Lightroom 7 rumor

cayenne

CR Pro
Mar 28, 2012
2,868
796
privatebydesign said:
ashmadux said:
mclaren777 said:
privatebydesign said:
I don't. I want Adobe to go 100% subscription and revert to their early business model of working for professional image makers and creatives. I am fed up of the noisy tail wagging the dog, they should free themselves of the noisy minority (of revenue streams) and focus on actual professionals, if that prices them out of the amateur market so be it, there are plenty of alternatives for those that don't see the value in the products and options Adobe give.

You're the first person I've seen who actually agrees with me on this.

Talk about naive.

Forever subscription....right.

Revert to earlier biz model, support pros...

RIIIIIIIIGHT. That's some good stuff you guys are drinkin'.

People so easily fool themselves...all that sweet revenue thats coming in is not being invested in products...its just to fatten the shareholders. Thier job is to make money for shareholders, not get you the best possible products for your money. And fat chance with your dreams of supporting professionals...like when they tied raw and lens profile updates to app updates...what a great help! Camera raw is still using 2012 process versions..even though its going on 2018. Please tell us how much better adobe raw versions have gotten since they went subscription only?

Continue to cut your nose to spite your faces. What kind of lunatics would want another monthly bill...wtf.

Businesses want monthly bills rather than a one off fee. It is 100% deductible and helps cash flow, it is a massive accounting benefit.

If I buy a $700 lens/software/capital expense it takes me three years for my business to offset that cost, effectively I loan my business money. If I lease that $700 lens/software/capital expense then my monthly payment is 100% deductible that year, I don't have to find the $700 and I don't have to effectively loan myself anything.

From a business standpoint monthly 'lease' payments are very important.

Respectfully, maybe you need to talk to your CPA about this.
I am able and have been able with my S-Corp, to write off those expenses you mentioned in FULL in the same year purchased. <P>
I've bought the canon 11-24 lens, a pretty pricey one at about $2300 for refurb. I wrote that entire amount in that same year of purchase. No problems.

I wish Adobe could manage to support dual abilities (CC and full license purchase)....seems they could get all the potential revenue streams that way....?<P>
But no, you should not just want leased software to write it off, you can fully write it and most other business expenditures off in full.....consult how you have incorporated yourself with your CPA, but I assure you it can be done quite legally.

HTH,

cayenne
 
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cayenne said:
privatebydesign said:
Businesses want monthly bills rather than a one off fee. It is 100% deductible and helps cash flow, it is a massive accounting benefit.

If I buy a $700 lens/software/capital expense it takes me three years for my business to offset that cost, effectively I loan my business money. If I lease that $700 lens/software/capital expense then my monthly payment is 100% deductible that year, I don't have to find the $700 and I don't have to effectively loan myself anything.

From a business standpoint monthly 'lease' payments are very important.

Respectfully, maybe you need to talk to your CPA about this.
I am able and have been able with my S-Corp, to write off those expenses you mentioned in FULL in the same year purchased. <P>
I've bought the canon 11-24 lens, a pretty pricey one at about $2300 for refurb. I wrote that entire amount in that same year of purchase. No problems.

I wish Adobe could manage to support dual abilities (CC and full license purchase)....seems they could get all the potential revenue streams that way....?<P>
But no, you should not just want leased software to write it off, you can fully write it and most other business expenditures off in full.....consult how you have incorporated yourself with your CPA, but I assure you it can be done quite legally.

HTH,

cayenne

Indeed:

Of course, there are always exceptions. Small businesses may be able to deduct the entire cost of a depreciable asset in the year it is placed in service instead of spreading the cost out over the life of the asset. This is known as a Section 179 deduction, after the section of the tax code that authorizes it. It also goes by the alias "expensing," because you get to deduct the full cost at once—just like you do for business expenses—rather than depreciating the capital asset over time.

For assets placed in service in the tax year, you can take a maximum Section 179 deduction of $500,000. The amount you can expense is reduced if you purchase more than $2,000,000 in eligible property during the year.

While the idea of taking a huge deduction right away may sound good to you, be careful, because there is a downside. If you sell an asset, you may have to recapture all or part of the depreciation deductions. (Recapture means reversing all or part of your earlier deductions by adding them back as income.)

From https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Small-Business-Taxes/Taking-Business-Tax-Deductions/INF12043.html#Depreciation

It seems pretty clear that you should be able to deduct that several-thousand-dollar lens in your US Federal taxes. And of course it also applies to $75 software updates. Ask your CPA of course.
 
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privatebydesign said:
4/ I don't care if they get competition, you will though, because any time any company gets close to Adobe they will realize the only way they can balance the books for ever developing software is a subscription model. No company can survive the fickle nature of periodic upgraders who will skip this generation or two because they 'don't see the value'.

There are indeed a lot of companies moving to a subscription model.

Many (even most) of them, however, do it in a much more consumer-friendly manner than Adobe. For instance, in my day job I use a software development environment with a fairly hefty yearly subscription fee (around $700/year if I recall). The license terms there are that once you have paid the subscription for a year straight, you have a "perpetual license" for any major version (including later bug fixes) released until you end your subscription. Doing this keeps the company offering the software in the game of providing continual innovation and updates, because otherwise their users will stop paying and just use the software they already have a perpetual license for, and it keeps users paying because you don't get that perpetual license until you have paid a year's worth of subscription fees. That company is doing great business on this model, and has been doing so longer than Adobe has been running the CS program.

So, yeah, other companies may well switch to subscription model to have a constant stream of revenue coming in rather than post-release mass influxes which need to carry the company through the next big development cycle. That said, it is not at all a given that they will do so (up-front-purchase software thrived for a really long time before subscription models started being bandied about), and it is certainly not a given that the model chosen by any one company will be as user-hostile as Adobe's "stop paying and everything stops working" extortion model.
 
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TomDibble said:
privatebydesign said:
4/ I don't care if they get competition, you will though, because any time any company gets close to Adobe they will realize the only way they can balance the books for ever developing software is a subscription model. No company can survive the fickle nature of periodic upgraders who will skip this generation or two because they 'don't see the value'.

There are indeed a lot of companies moving to a subscription model.

Many (even most) of them, however, do it in a much more consumer-friendly manner than Adobe. For instance, in my day job I use a software development environment with a fairly hefty yearly subscription fee (around $700/year if I recall). The license terms there are that once you have paid the subscription for a year straight, you have a "perpetual license" for any major version (including later bug fixes) released until you end your subscription. Doing this keeps the company offering the software in the game of providing continual innovation and updates, because otherwise their users will stop paying and just use the software they already have a perpetual license for, and it keeps users paying because you don't get that perpetual license until you have paid a year's worth of subscription fees. That company is doing great business on this model, and has been doing so longer than Adobe has been running the CS program.

So, yeah, other companies may well switch to subscription model to have a constant stream of revenue coming in rather than post-release mass influxes which need to carry the company through the next big development cycle. That said, it is not at all a given that they will do so (up-front-purchase software thrived for a really long time before subscription models started being bandied about), and it is certainly not a given that the model chosen by any one company will be as user-hostile as Adobe's "stop paying and everything stops working" extortion model.

This is the crux of it. Autodesk has a similar system where you lease software and own where you left off.

Adobe takes the propesteous step of affecting your IP after you discontinue a subscription. With Lightroom, they gimp your software. With Photoshop, Illustrator, or any other software try kick you out of it entirely.

It’s extortion. Give us money or you can’t access your IP.

ADObe can take a piss. I’d lease if I could own the last version I paid for, but until they do that I’m out.
 
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TomDibble said:
cayenne said:
privatebydesign said:
Businesses want monthly bills rather than a one off fee. It is 100% deductible and helps cash flow, it is a massive accounting benefit.

If I buy a $700 lens/software/capital expense it takes me three years for my business to offset that cost, effectively I loan my business money. If I lease that $700 lens/software/capital expense then my monthly payment is 100% deductible that year, I don't have to find the $700 and I don't have to effectively loan myself anything.

From a business standpoint monthly 'lease' payments are very important.

Respectfully, maybe you need to talk to your CPA about this.
I am able and have been able with my S-Corp, to write off those expenses you mentioned in FULL in the same year purchased. <P>
I've bought the canon 11-24 lens, a pretty pricey one at about $2300 for refurb. I wrote that entire amount in that same year of purchase. No problems.

I wish Adobe could manage to support dual abilities (CC and full license purchase)....seems they could get all the potential revenue streams that way....?<P>
But no, you should not just want leased software to write it off, you can fully write it and most other business expenditures off in full.....consult how you have incorporated yourself with your CPA, but I assure you it can be done quite legally.

HTH,

cayenne

Indeed:

Of course, there are always exceptions. Small businesses may be able to deduct the entire cost of a depreciable asset in the year it is placed in service instead of spreading the cost out over the life of the asset. This is known as a Section 179 deduction, after the section of the tax code that authorizes it. It also goes by the alias "expensing," because you get to deduct the full cost at once—just like you do for business expenses—rather than depreciating the capital asset over time.

For assets placed in service in the tax year, you can take a maximum Section 179 deduction of $500,000. The amount you can expense is reduced if you purchase more than $2,000,000 in eligible property during the year.

While the idea of taking a huge deduction right away may sound good to you, be careful, because there is a downside. If you sell an asset, you may have to recapture all or part of the depreciation deductions. (Recapture means reversing all or part of your earlier deductions by adding them back as income.)

From https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Small-Business-Taxes/Taking-Business-Tax-Deductions/INF12043.html#Depreciation

It seems pretty clear that you should be able to deduct that several-thousand-dollar lens in your US Federal taxes. And of course it also applies to $75 software updates. Ask your CPA of course.

Haha, I was going to post the same article. Unless you're spending more than half a million per year on photo gear, you should be able to expense it all the same year.
 
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Would LR speed improvements and just the features already available in LR CC, but not in LR6 (see link below) be enough to persuade you to upgrade to LR7 or switch from the Adobe CC Photography Plan to LR7 ?

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop-lightroom/features.html

If that's the case I'm planning to do the latter, and will then be keeping my fingers crossed that there won't be any must have features added to LR CC, before I have recouped the price of the perpetual licence.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
1,763
293
bitm2007 said:
Would LR speed improvements and just the features already available in LR CC, but not in LR6 (see link below) be enough to persuade you to upgrade to LR7 or switch from the Adobe CC Photography Plan to LR7 ?

The "performance improvements" you see in the link are those GPU-related introduced in both LR CC and LR 6 - which gave and are giving a lot of headaches to many users. Features available in CC only are those from 2015.1 onward (although cloud/web features may be available for CC only, IIRC).

I guess many hope LR7 will bring true and reliable performance improvements.

Till now, the only true new LR feature not available in LR 6 is the haze adjustment, and a few little improvements to filters. Nice to have, but not exactly killer features. Let's what will be added in LR7. CC subscribers will get LR7 as part of their subscription (the real question is if it will be still available standalone), they have no reason to switch to the standalone version.

Most of the development efforts looks to be have been aimed at LR mobile (which I have no use for since my "tablet" is a Surface Pro which runs the full LR).

Anyway there may be other reason to upgrade - LR6 will be no longer supported and will receive no bug fixes no new camera/lens profiles.
 
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'Haze adjustment filter'. - it's taken a long time to add this feature to Photoshop/Lightroom. The renowned Bruce Fraser developed this as an action back in 2007, he called it a 'haze cutting brush' as he painted in the effect on a black mask. Good to have this feature built in I suppose, but something a little more original would be good as well.
His book on 'Image Sharpening' is very interesting......if you're into that depth I suppose.
 
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Hector1970 said:
I don't mind the subscription model as such but it just shows what happens to innovation when it exists. There has been little or no significant improvement in Lightroom or Photoshop in 2 years. Photoshop has a terrible user interface and simple things are overly complex. They should at this stage be one unified pieces of software. Instead they are a mix of each other. Lightroom is very slow for what it does. Both are very bloated pieces of software. There is no business incentive to improve it as it's a cash cow. They've probably moved their developers to other software. Either that or they've run out of ideas on how to improve them.

Agreed. Improvements have been infrequent & minor since the subscription model started. Partly this may be because LR and PS are relatively mature products. Preserving revenue (as well as smoothing it) undoubtedly motivated Adobe to make the change since users would be more and more motivated to skip releases. This was almost unthinkable in the early days when there were major improvements even with "point" releases.

I also find the subscription cost very managable, given my level of usage (but not frustration).
The main thing (actually the main 5 things) they could do is improve performance. I finally gave up several years ago and now use Photo Mechanic for initial grading and LR mainly for Develop (where I put up with the seconds it often takes to move between images). Overclocked quad core, 24 GB RAM, multiple SSDs, etc. were no real help. PM uses the embedded jpeg (I'm told) to do things so fast. I'm sure LR could do the same; I suspect they just don't bother because...hey, they don't have to.

Importing is not a problem because I use a card reader and Windows explorer to copy images off the card(s); then importing into LR goes much faster. I build minimal previews on import, then build 1-1s only for the select images (which, like everything in LR, takes a while---I usually go make dinner). If I move folders around, I do it in Explorer, then browse for the missing folders in LR. You can see the theme---whenever possible, do things outside LR. Eventually, I may find a way to replace it entirely.
 
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privatebydesign said:
Orangutan said:
To be clear: I want LR to remain standalone, and to take on some additional PS features

I don't. I want Adobe to go 100% subscription and revert to their early business model of working for professional image makers and creatives. I am fed up of the noisy tail wagging the dog, they should free themselves of the noisy minority (of revenue streams) and focus on actual professionals, if that prices them out of the amateur market so be it, there are plenty of alternatives for those that don't see the value in the products and options Adobe give.

I guess it's true what they say......"There's a sucker born every minute"
 
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daphins said:
privatebydesign said:
Orangutan said:
To be clear: I want LR to remain standalone, and to take on some additional PS features

I don't. I want Adobe to go 100% subscription and revert to their early business model of working for professional image makers and creatives. I am fed up of the noisy tail wagging the dog, they should free themselves of the noisy minority (of revenue streams) and focus on actual professionals, if that prices them out of the amateur market so be it, there are plenty of alternatives for those that don't see the value in the products and options Adobe give.

I guess it's true what they say......"There's a sucker born every minute"

I guess it's true what they say... "Cost of doing business"

10 minutes into the first paid gig of the year, and I've paid for the entire year of the CC photography plan. You go ahead and keep crying about a monthly expense that costs less than a really cheap lunch, and I'll keep laughing at you.
 
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bvukich said:
daphins said:
privatebydesign said:
Orangutan said:
To be clear: I want LR to remain standalone, and to take on some additional PS features

I don't. I want Adobe to go 100% subscription and revert to their early business model of working for professional image makers and creatives. I am fed up of the noisy tail wagging the dog, they should free themselves of the noisy minority (of revenue streams) and focus on actual professionals, if that prices them out of the amateur market so be it, there are plenty of alternatives for those that don't see the value in the products and options Adobe give.

I guess it's true what they say......"There's a sucker born every minute"

I guess it's true what they say... "Cost of doing business"

10 minutes into the first paid gig of the year, and I've paid for the entire year of the CC photography plan. You go ahead and keep crying about a monthly expense that costs less than a really cheap lunch, and I'll keep laughing at you.

You can keep raving about the benefits of paying more for a product in perpetuity that's seen little to no development over the last 4 years and I'll keep laughing at you.
 
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daphins said:
bvukich said:
daphins said:
privatebydesign said:
Orangutan said:
To be clear: I want LR to remain standalone, and to take on some additional PS features

I don't. I want Adobe to go 100% subscription and revert to their early business model of working for professional image makers and creatives. I am fed up of the noisy tail wagging the dog, they should free themselves of the noisy minority (of revenue streams) and focus on actual professionals, if that prices them out of the amateur market so be it, there are plenty of alternatives for those that don't see the value in the products and options Adobe give.

I guess it's true what they say......"There's a sucker born every minute"

I guess it's true what they say... "Cost of doing business"

10 minutes into the first paid gig of the year, and I've paid for the entire year of the CC photography plan. You go ahead and keep crying about a monthly expense that costs less than a really cheap lunch, and I'll keep laughing at you.

You can keep raving about the benefits of paying more for a product in perpetuity that's seen little to no development over the last 4 years and I'll keep laughing at you.

Pay more? Lightroom + Photoshop for ~$100/yr. Unless you only upgrade every 8+ years, it's LESS expensive to do the subscription.
 
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Nov 4, 2011
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bvukich said:
Pay more? Lightroom + Photoshop for ~$100/yr. Unless you only upgrade every 8+ years, it's LESS expensive to do the subscription.

well, my last Lightroom license [LR 5] cost me 75 €. I generally update every 2nd major version [meaning change in 1st digit of app version].

I neither need nor want Photoshop. Absolutely hate its age-old User Interface and the keyboard shortcuts I can never remember ... just make me puke. ::)

I want LR 7 "LITE" *without catalogue database* but with everything in it needed to work on stills images. Nothing more, nothing less. As a perpetual license to serve me the next 4-5 years. Would be willing to pay up to 99 €/USD for it.
 
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AvTvM said:
bvukich said:
Pay more? Lightroom + Photoshop for ~$100/yr. Unless you only upgrade every 8+ years, it's LESS expensive to do the subscription.

well, my last Lightroom license [LR 5] cost me 75 €. I generally update every 2nd major version [meaning change in 1st digit of app version].

I neither need nor want Photoshop. Absolutely hate its age-old User Interface and as a casula, not daily user keyboard shortcuts I can never remember just make me puke. ::)

I want LR 7 "LITE" *without catalogue database* but with everything in it needed to work on stills images. Nothing more, nothing less. As a perpetual license to serve me the next 4-5 years. Would be willing to pay up to 99 €/USD for it.

That's an argument I can sympathize with. If all you want/use/need is LR, then you're essentially re-buying it every year with CC, which is crappy. And hopefully if they ever were to remove the perpetual licensing option for LR, they would compensate with a LR only CC option. But even as I sympathize, I can't help but thank it's such a tiny cost already, that I don't understand the level of outrage that presents itself every time the subject comes up.
 
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I'm content with the software I use, but out of curiosity I've been reading a little about ACDSee Ultimate. It's classed as an all in one solution, Lightroom and Photoshop in one package, and is said to be as fast as Photo Mechanic for viewing. FStoppers seemed impressed with it overall. It has a 30 day free trial.
Priced competitively with Lightroom ($149 for perpetual licence), but not available on Mac.
 
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jolyonralph

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AvTvM said:
I want LR 7 "LITE" *without catalogue database* but with everything in it needed to work on stills images. Nothing more, nothing less. As a perpetual license to serve me the next 4-5 years. Would be willing to pay up to 99 €/USD for it.

A combination of Adobe Camera Raw software and GIMP may give you all that you need, for free.
 
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