3 ms·

If you can afford it, that is wonderful. For those who either cannot afford it or who don't need its features, then be happy that the competition is stepping up

by II2II 6mo ago

If you can afford it, that is wonderful. For those who either cannot afford it or who don't need its features, then be happy that the competition is stepping up. They get the software they need. You get the software you need. I've never really understood why people insist that there can be only one or two products per software category, particularly when the category has a large enough customer base to support multiple products from multiple vendors.

socalgal2 6mo ago
no one is insisting there are can only be one or two products per category. Rahter, at some point in your life, $120 a year is not that much. It's $10 a month, that's two coffees, A MONTH! I bought Affinity Photo at one point, when it was $50. Then I tried to use it for a work project where I needed to do a minor edit to 150 photos. I figured out how to do it but it's workflow was tedious. At 3 mins per photo it would have taken me 7.5 hours. I paid Adobe the $120 and got it done in 1.5hrs. Those 5 hours of my life were worth far more than the $120 I paid to Adobe. I'm not saying you should buy Photoshop or Lightroom. Rather, I'm just making the point that spending money on a good solution should not be seen as a failure. Lightroom is designed around editing lots of photos. It has tons of batch processing features and it's UI is designed to make it easy to edit lots of photos in minimal time. I'm not saying there isn't a better design, maybe there is, but so far I haven't personally run into it so I stick with Lightroom because it gives me my life back. All for the price of 2 coffees a month
- hungryhobbit 6mo ago
  I disagree. For a long time, Adobe insisted it was the only product in the category: that's how we got here.
  - CWuestefeld 6mo ago
    I'm not sure how what Adobe insists on is at all relevant. Reality informs us that there have always been competitors in the field: GIMP, DarkTable, ACDSee, Luminar, and many others. It's surely true that their existence has been pushing Adobe to improve. And the good news for everyone is that they have: Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are improved products now, and so are those other competitors.
    - jasomill 6mo ago
      Inertia, wide use across various industries, and specific features not available in other products. Basically, it's the Microsoft Office of print and visual media.
      - frollogaston 6mo ago
        So what was Adobe supposed to do, make a worse product to give the other ones a chance?
- ThunderSizzle 6mo ago
  I don't pay for $5 coffee. I make my coffee at home, from my own grind, with just some half and half. Sure, I splurged and paid for maybe a $100 grinder or something, but that is being used for years, meaning the cost per cup is abysmal. It seems very odd we normalize coffee being $5.
  - jasomill 6mo ago
    I agree. It's up there with prices as high as $100 being described as "less than the price of a good meal".
    - doubled112 6mo ago
      It is getting pretty hard for my family of four to go out and eat for less than $100, but we have food at home.
  - zargon 6mo ago
    And I don't drink coffee, just water. Since software is priced as beverage equivalence, logically that means I should get software for free.
  - majormajor 6mo ago
    > It seems very odd we normalize coffee being $5. What does this mean, exactly? "We" didn't normalize it. People sold it for that - because they also have to pay rent, labor, etc - and people said "sure, that works for me, especially since I like the coffee you're making, I'll likely hang out here a while vs getting something cheaper elsewhere." You can still get cheaper elsewhere. Nobody "normalized" that, it just happened. You could say it's weird that people didn't complain, but... well, they did? It's a cliche at this point. But for a lot of people it's cheap enough to be fine ($5 is not a life-changing amount to add into your savings even if you're avoiding it once a day). If you really think it's a ripoff and nonsensically high, open your own coffee shop to make a killing? Hell, if someone comes out with a super-amazing Lightroom replacement I'd be more likely to move to that than I would be to start avoiding coffee shops. Even though I spend more money on the coffee than on Lightroom. But the most viable option I ever saw has been abandoned for over a decade and only ran on Macs in the first place.
- moregrist 6mo ago
  It’s not the $10/mo that bothers me. It’s the nature of essentially leasing the software. Before it was a subscription, you bought a version and could use _that version_ in perpetuity, possibly with some number of well-defined upgrades. If you didn’t want to upgrade, your software still worked. The value proposition of the software was clear. Now I need to decide whether paying the subscription, possibly forever, is worth the value. This just feels bad.
  - frollogaston 6mo ago
    Doesn't seem any worse than deciding whether paying a huge sum upfront is worth the value in the long run. The old way wasn't like that though, it was 90% of users pirating Adobe.
- II2II 6mo ago
  > no one is insisting there are can only be one or two products per category. Then maybe people are trying to convince themselves. All that I can really say is that a lot of people pipe up to defend the titans when alternatives are suggested. > at some point in your life, $120 a year is not that much. It's $10 a month For some people $10 is nothing. For other people, it is significant. Even for those who can afford $10/month, all of those fees add up when you consider all of the software someone may want to use.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

by II2II 6mo ago

socalgal2 6mo ago

no one is insisting there are can only be one or two products per category. Rahter, at some point in your life, $120 a year is not that much. It's $10 a month, that's two coffees, A MONTH! I bought Affinity Photo at one point, when it was $50. Then I tried to use it for a work project where I needed to do a minor edit to 150 photos. I figured out how to do it but it's workflow was tedious. At 3 mins per photo it would have taken me 7.5 hours. I paid Adobe the $120 and got it done in 1.5hrs. Those 5 hours of my life were worth far more than the $120 I paid to Adobe. I'm not saying you should buy Photoshop or Lightroom. Rather, I'm just making the point that spending money on a good solution should not be seen as a failure. Lightroom is designed around editing lots of photos. It has tons of batch processing features and it's UI is designed to make it easy to edit lots of photos in minimal time. I'm not saying there isn't a better design, maybe there is, but so far I haven't personally run into it so I stick with Lightroom because it gives me my life back. All for the price of 2 coffees a month

hungryhobbit 6mo ago
I disagree. For a long time, Adobe insisted it was the only product in the category: that's how we got here.
- CWuestefeld 6mo ago
  I'm not sure how what Adobe insists on is at all relevant. Reality informs us that there have always been competitors in the field: GIMP, DarkTable, ACDSee, Luminar, and many others. It's surely true that their existence has been pushing Adobe to improve. And the good news for everyone is that they have: Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are improved products now, and so are those other competitors.
  - jasomill 6mo ago
    Inertia, wide use across various industries, and specific features not available in other products. Basically, it's the Microsoft Office of print and visual media.
    - frollogaston 6mo ago
      So what was Adobe supposed to do, make a worse product to give the other ones a chance?
ThunderSizzle 6mo ago
I don't pay for $5 coffee. I make my coffee at home, from my own grind, with just some half and half. Sure, I splurged and paid for maybe a $100 grinder or something, but that is being used for years, meaning the cost per cup is abysmal. It seems very odd we normalize coffee being $5.
- jasomill 6mo ago
  I agree. It's up there with prices as high as $100 being described as "less than the price of a good meal".
  - doubled112 6mo ago
    It is getting pretty hard for my family of four to go out and eat for less than $100, but we have food at home.
- zargon 6mo ago
  And I don't drink coffee, just water. Since software is priced as beverage equivalence, logically that means I should get software for free.
- majormajor 6mo ago
  > It seems very odd we normalize coffee being $5. What does this mean, exactly? "We" didn't normalize it. People sold it for that - because they also have to pay rent, labor, etc - and people said "sure, that works for me, especially since I like the coffee you're making, I'll likely hang out here a while vs getting something cheaper elsewhere." You can still get cheaper elsewhere. Nobody "normalized" that, it just happened. You could say it's weird that people didn't complain, but... well, they did? It's a cliche at this point. But for a lot of people it's cheap enough to be fine ($5 is not a life-changing amount to add into your savings even if you're avoiding it once a day). If you really think it's a ripoff and nonsensically high, open your own coffee shop to make a killing? Hell, if someone comes out with a super-amazing Lightroom replacement I'd be more likely to move to that than I would be to start avoiding coffee shops. Even though I spend more money on the coffee than on Lightroom. But the most viable option I ever saw has been abandoned for over a decade and only ran on Macs in the first place.
moregrist 6mo ago
It’s not the $10/mo that bothers me. It’s the nature of essentially leasing the software. Before it was a subscription, you bought a version and could use _that version_ in perpetuity, possibly with some number of well-defined upgrades. If you didn’t want to upgrade, your software still worked. The value proposition of the software was clear. Now I need to decide whether paying the subscription, possibly forever, is worth the value. This just feels bad.
- frollogaston 6mo ago
  Doesn't seem any worse than deciding whether paying a huge sum upfront is worth the value in the long run. The old way wasn't like that though, it was 90% of users pirating Adobe.
II2II 6mo ago
> no one is insisting there are can only be one or two products per category. Then maybe people are trying to convince themselves. All that I can really say is that a lot of people pipe up to defend the titans when alternatives are suggested. > at some point in your life, $120 a year is not that much. It's $10 a month For some people $10 is nothing. For other people, it is significant. Even for those who can afford $10/month, all of those fees add up when you consider all of the software someone may want to use.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]