4 ms·

Every time I see one of these HN threads, I am actually amazed with what Adobe was able to pull off. I'm not surprised that they could do this to pros who were

Every time I see one of these HN threads, I am actually amazed with what Adobe was able to pull off. I'm not surprised that they could do this to pros who were used to a particular workflow. In fact, for some businesses, a subscription may have some benefits. You were probably upgrading regularly anyway, and the only downside is that it's an expense you can't cut back on in a lean year. But there are so many hobbyists, including here HN, who just went with it and have given Adobe thousands of dollars over the past decade just to keep using Lightroom or Photoshop! It just boggles my mind. There was a brief period where you had no good alternatives - GIMP wasn't it - but for almost all hobby needs, you now have very good pay-once options (e.g., Capture One instead of Lightroom). It's basically a monthly fee you pay for not having to think about the problem, and people are willing to pay it for many years. Makes me think I should be doing more bait-and-switch...

j45 6mo ago
Hobbyists and professionals have discovered tools like Affinity. Well, the non-subscription version of it anyways.'
teamonkey 6mo ago
I don’t think it’s that surprising. People will pay for software that has better usability and better functionality.
- croes 6mo ago
  Mostly people stick to what they know even if better alternatives exist
  - Arcanum-XIII 6mo ago
    I've tried the alternative for Photoshop and came out unimpressed. It's even worse for Illustrator, and I hate this software. They're not perfect. I don't like the pricing either or their attitude. Still, After Effect, Illustrator, Indesign are very good. I'm not ripped off with the suite at the end... I have the same issue with Maxon and Zbrush: nothing is close, but it's still the best at what it does. We have an even worse company around: Autodesk. And they have competition in the CAD, 3D creation world (that they tried to destroy, but Blender changed the game and Houdini is another world)... but not so much around Revit. Architect would destroy them if they could. But no alternative works. So let's not insult user here: people tries the alternative. They're not good enough. They're worse.
    - frollogaston 6mo ago
      Yeah a bunch of people promised me GIMP is just as good as Photoshop. Look I'm glad GIMP exists and thankful for the free software, but it's not even close to equal.
    - croes 6mo ago
      > So let's not insult user here: people tries the alternative. They're not good enough. They're worse. You mean you tried and thesy didn't suit your usecase. That's ok. But there are many others where alternatives would be suitable. Best example: MS Word
raincole 6mo ago
Because it's objectively non-expensive, compared to the hardware you want (not need) for photography.
matwood 6mo ago
I'm not sure how many occasional LR users there were/are. Either it's software someone needs to manage their non-phone photo library plus editing or not. Those type of people are also likely to upgrade every year. So if you compare pricing you need to compare to also upgrading every year. In that case the subscription was pretty close in price. As far as competitors, there are certainly other editing options. The number of real competitors quickly shrinks if you include DAM + editing. And LR's editing has made huge strides on top of something that was already top notch.
socalgal2 6mo ago
It boggles the mind how many people will go and use an inferior solution to avoid spending the price of 2 coffees a month.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- chromacity 6mo ago
  I think that's a goofy take. It's two coffees everywhere. Every other software vendor is trying to move to the subscription model. If you add up all the licenses you need to do work, have hobbies, or procrastinate (Netflix, Spotify, etc), is it still two coffees a month? I know many folks who make $500k+ a year in the SF Bay Area and complain about affordability, and to a large extent, it's stuff like that that makes them poorer. Also, my point is that there's nothing inferior about solutions such as Capture One, at least not as far as hobby workflows go.
  - dabinat 6mo ago
    People on $500k salaries struggle to afford things because of the Bay Area’s outrageous property prices, not subscription software.
  - computably 6mo ago
    > I know many folks who make $500k+ a year in the SF Bay Area and complain about affordability, and to a large extent, it's stuff like that that makes them poorer. You don't have to make absurd extrapolations to make your point. Even with 20 subscriptions at $20/mo, that's $400/mo or $4800/yr, about 2% of net income.
  - prewett 6mo ago
    If "make $500k+/year" means $200k in cash and the rest in options, their cash flow situation might be more strained than their paper net worth suggests. Also, high income does not necessarily correlate with frugality. Or they may be spending it on private schools for two kids. And people complain about prices, but that does not necessarily mean that it really affects them, or even that they think it materially affects them. Being nickled and dimed for software all the time is just as annoying if you are Warren Buffet or just graduated, and both with kvetch about it. Warren could gift me 100 A-shares, and I'd still kvetch about subscription prices (while knowing full-well it would have no material effect).
maplethorpe 6mo ago
There isn't really a good alternative for After Effects, despite its flaws. There are other motion graphics tools, but they're usually missing enough functionality that you eventually go crawling back to Adobe. Now that software development is apparently solved, can someone please build a GPU-accelerated version of After Effects? Every motion designer in the world would make the switch over night.
- kranke155 6mo ago
  Maxon literally just launched one last week.
- richardfulop 6mo ago
  Cavalry just become free thanks to Canva
port11 6mo ago
I’ve used their software during my Multimedia studies and continued paying for some of it because it was just very, very good. I despise Adobe’s pricing and the many things they are known for. But let’s not pretend that “competitor gives their product away for free” is a positive for the industry. Media work was already being stolen, copied, trained upon; all the companies making free creativity tools gotta profit off this somehow. It’s bait-and-switch as well. If anything, it seems that the buy-once-and-keep-it model is what people liked. Adobe’s subscriptions and the competitors’ “you and your data are the product” are both a shitty replacement for software ownership.
ratmeadow 6mo ago
The thing is, Lightroom is simply very good at what it does. There are infinite photo editing apps out there and many of them don't fit my workflow. I want: RAW input, light/tone controls, colour grading, detail controls, lens corrections, basic masking, nondestructive adjustments, library management, and a tone curve that doesn't look like dog shit. I do NOT want: complex layered editing, paintbrushes, preset styling junk, complex geometric transformations, a million menus, video editing, etc. The more features you add, the more you detract from the core workflow. And all these other editors have watered down their core workflow too much for me, sadly. Lightroom might be corporate junk but at least it does the basics well and mostly gets out of my way. Capture One is a new name for though, I might give that a try. It looks pretty promising.

j45 6mo ago

Hobbyists and professionals have discovered tools like Affinity. Well, the non-subscription version of it anyways.'

teamonkey 6mo ago

I don’t think it’s that surprising. People will pay for software that has better usability and better functionality.

croes 6mo ago
Mostly people stick to what they know even if better alternatives exist
- Arcanum-XIII 6mo ago
  I've tried the alternative for Photoshop and came out unimpressed. It's even worse for Illustrator, and I hate this software. They're not perfect. I don't like the pricing either or their attitude. Still, After Effect, Illustrator, Indesign are very good. I'm not ripped off with the suite at the end... I have the same issue with Maxon and Zbrush: nothing is close, but it's still the best at what it does. We have an even worse company around: Autodesk. And they have competition in the CAD, 3D creation world (that they tried to destroy, but Blender changed the game and Houdini is another world)... but not so much around Revit. Architect would destroy them if they could. But no alternative works. So let's not insult user here: people tries the alternative. They're not good enough. They're worse.
  - frollogaston 6mo ago
    Yeah a bunch of people promised me GIMP is just as good as Photoshop. Look I'm glad GIMP exists and thankful for the free software, but it's not even close to equal.
  - croes 6mo ago
    > So let's not insult user here: people tries the alternative. They're not good enough. They're worse. You mean you tried and thesy didn't suit your usecase. That's ok. But there are many others where alternatives would be suitable. Best example: MS Word

raincole 6mo ago

Because it's objectively non-expensive, compared to the hardware you want (not need) for photography.

matwood 6mo ago

I'm not sure how many occasional LR users there were/are. Either it's software someone needs to manage their non-phone photo library plus editing or not. Those type of people are also likely to upgrade every year. So if you compare pricing you need to compare to also upgrading every year. In that case the subscription was pretty close in price. As far as competitors, there are certainly other editing options. The number of real competitors quickly shrinks if you include DAM + editing. And LR's editing has made huge strides on top of something that was already top notch.

socalgal2 6mo ago

It boggles the mind how many people will go and use an inferior solution to avoid spending the price of 2 coffees a month.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
chromacity 6mo ago
I think that's a goofy take. It's two coffees everywhere. Every other software vendor is trying to move to the subscription model. If you add up all the licenses you need to do work, have hobbies, or procrastinate (Netflix, Spotify, etc), is it still two coffees a month? I know many folks who make $500k+ a year in the SF Bay Area and complain about affordability, and to a large extent, it's stuff like that that makes them poorer. Also, my point is that there's nothing inferior about solutions such as Capture One, at least not as far as hobby workflows go.
- dabinat 6mo ago
  People on $500k salaries struggle to afford things because of the Bay Area’s outrageous property prices, not subscription software.
- computably 6mo ago
  > I know many folks who make $500k+ a year in the SF Bay Area and complain about affordability, and to a large extent, it's stuff like that that makes them poorer. You don't have to make absurd extrapolations to make your point. Even with 20 subscriptions at $20/mo, that's $400/mo or $4800/yr, about 2% of net income.
- prewett 6mo ago
  If "make $500k+/year" means $200k in cash and the rest in options, their cash flow situation might be more strained than their paper net worth suggests. Also, high income does not necessarily correlate with frugality. Or they may be spending it on private schools for two kids. And people complain about prices, but that does not necessarily mean that it really affects them, or even that they think it materially affects them. Being nickled and dimed for software all the time is just as annoying if you are Warren Buffet or just graduated, and both with kvetch about it. Warren could gift me 100 A-shares, and I'd still kvetch about subscription prices (while knowing full-well it would have no material effect).

maplethorpe 6mo ago

There isn't really a good alternative for After Effects, despite its flaws. There are other motion graphics tools, but they're usually missing enough functionality that you eventually go crawling back to Adobe. Now that software development is apparently solved, can someone please build a GPU-accelerated version of After Effects? Every motion designer in the world would make the switch over night.

kranke155 6mo ago
Maxon literally just launched one last week.
richardfulop 6mo ago
Cavalry just become free thanks to Canva

port11 6mo ago

I’ve used their software during my Multimedia studies and continued paying for some of it because it was just very, very good. I despise Adobe’s pricing and the many things they are known for. But let’s not pretend that “competitor gives their product away for free” is a positive for the industry. Media work was already being stolen, copied, trained upon; all the companies making free creativity tools gotta profit off this somehow. It’s bait-and-switch as well. If anything, it seems that the buy-once-and-keep-it model is what people liked. Adobe’s subscriptions and the competitors’ “you and your data are the product” are both a shitty replacement for software ownership.

ratmeadow 6mo ago

The thing is, Lightroom is simply very good at what it does. There are infinite photo editing apps out there and many of them don't fit my workflow. I want: RAW input, light/tone controls, colour grading, detail controls, lens corrections, basic masking, nondestructive adjustments, library management, and a tone curve that doesn't look like dog shit. I do NOT want: complex layered editing, paintbrushes, preset styling junk, complex geometric transformations, a million menus, video editing, etc. The more features you add, the more you detract from the core workflow. And all these other editors have watered down their core workflow too much for me, sadly. Lightroom might be corporate junk but at least it does the basics well and mostly gets out of my way. Capture One is a new name for though, I might give that a try. It looks pretty promising.