Do we think this is a good idea or not? Any experiences?

Anyone use their online storage? Is it a good service?

Its Adobe. They’ll price everything, and shove their corporate weight around, to put all the competition out of business, then put the prices through the roof.

As a ground rule, if you don’t have to use them – because for so much now you just have too, because there’s no option – then don’t!

Ok then, alternatives to lightroom?

I got a years free subscription as part of a promotion when I bought a new camera. Photoshop and Lightroom are great products but the price of the subscription wasn’t worth it for the amount of time I use it so bought Affinity Photo instead which covers everything I need for much less.
I didn’t use the online storage as I use iCloud.

Try searching the photography forums for peoples experiences and alternative programs.

Peoples main concern has been finding themselves stranded with a load of unusable personal files if for any reason they can no longer pay the subscription.

Also you can’t really have a stand alone non internet machine as to continue using CC Lightroom or photoshop you have to connect to the internet to keep validating your program or it stops working (things may have moved on from that last one marginally, I no longer follow CC stuff).

Lightroom standalone 6 is still available, but Adobe have gone back on their word. Originally they said they would continue the stand alone version but as soon as they released 6 they said it would be the last non subscription version, then immediately made a big deal of upgrading the CC version of 6 and leaving all the stand alone new purchasers already dumped with their brand new copies. Yes,lets just slap loyal customers in the face.

When my stand alone copies of LR and Photoshop are no longer viable I will be seeking out a new supplier as Adobe are 2 faced. Having said that, many people who are happy to pay a subscription for the rest of their photographic life seem happy with CC, though the automatic upgrades do not always run smoothly.

Also remember Adobe was one of the compnaies who had a major hack last year. They told everyone it was small and harmless then the numbers of hacked accounts went up and up and up, I was one who had to cancel a now possibly unsafe credit card. I will never give them a card number again, not just because of the hacking but because they did ‘damage contol’ by not admitting how really bad it was for weeks…

GIMP (awful name) is a well respected and free photoshop type program.

Forums

Mostly UK
https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums

International
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php?full
http://www.thephotoforum.com

you have to connect to the internet to keep validating your program or it stops working

Hmm, that’s less than ideal.

However, if they are going to stop making standalone software then it’s either cloud or something else. I appreciate GIMP is there but it’s not a substitute for Lightroom. I want (currently need) to process lots of RAW files easily.

Re credit cards – I’d be happier to give my card to a company that HAS been involved in a hacking scandal, I think.

you have to connect to the internet to keep validating your program or it stops working

Hmm, that’s less than ideal.

No shit!

The situation as it stands is that if you want to manipulate photography or illustrate, using a pooter with an internet link, then you pay Adobe a subscription to do so.

You may have already paid Adobe the thick end of 2 grand for their stand alone software, but that is now unsupported without the subscription, and they’ve been sure to make it so the files are as backward incompatible as possible.

So you really only have one option. Pay Adobe £50 a month. I’d put my house on it that within a year that becomes £100 a month.

As you may have picked up… this absolutely boils my piss! I can’t see how its legal for Adobe to have got away with establishing a total monopoly over this area, sometimes by some very dubious means, and then milking this monopoly for all its worth, and effectively now dictating how the whole industry will function…. entirely in their interests

this absolutely boils my piss!

Your piss is so frequently boiled I’m sure your house has to have a special heat-resistant toilet and extractor hood to remove the hot piss vapour before it reaches toxic levels.

So we’re saying there’s no decent alternative to LR then?

So we’re saying there’s no decent alternative to LR then?

Yip. Because the second one emerges, Adobe buys them up, closes them down, and absorbs their technology, to maintain their total monopoly position.

My piss is indeed frequently boiled, but I save a special place for the Tory party and Adobe.

Related: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/your-photo-managementsyncing-system-lightroom-content

My Lightroom trial has ended and now I’m torn between stumping up for a standalone LR licence (no way I’m getting into this subscription bollocks) and making darktable work for me on Linux. LR is clearly better than DT (it bloody should be) but DT is obviously powerful and with a bit of time spent learning my way round, could work.

One thing that boiled my piss while I was trying out LR was that I couldn’t import my old Aperture library without buying a licence. I wanted to try it out properly, which means having a large library of photos in there, which I couldn’t do without buying the bloody thing.

My Lightroom trial has ended and now I’m torn between stumping up for a standalone LR licence (no way I’m getting into this subscription bollocks)

If you buy a standalone copy, then you’ll soon be finding yourself in the same position as all of us who stumped up for CS6. Getting shafted. Adobe said they would continue to support CS6. Then they decided they wouldn’t without a subscription, and they now don’t. Its a subscription or nothing, regardless of whether you’ve already shelled out the total cost of the software already.

You’d have to be mad to stump up an upfront fee for any Adobe software, given their recent track record. They’ve signaled pretty damn clearly the way they want it all to work – on a subscription only basis. And because they have a total monopoly, they get to do whatever they like. So thats the way its inevitably going to be.

Having never used Lightroom I don’t know what it’s like, but I’ve been using RawTherapee for my raw photo development at work.

http://rawtherapee.com/

Pay Adobe £50 a month

Well, 8 quid or thereabouts for LR+PS

Raw Therapy (I refuse to use that stupid spelling) looks decent, but it looks complex for a n00b, open source software often doesn’t manage to spend the time on user friendliness or tutorials and the like.

I’ll try it out though.

I’ve never used the cloud as yet, but what does CC give that CS6 doesn’t?

If you buy a standalone copy, then you’ll soon be finding yourself in the same position as all of us who stumped up for CS6.

Agreed, to an extent. As in, if you expect to get a piece of software which will be supported forever more. But if you can accept that you get the software as it is now, and it will work exactly the same for as long as you want it to (i.e. how software used to work before the days of daily updates) then you’ve got what you paid for. Adobe aren’t going to break into my computer and steal it back are they? (Are they? 😯 )

Hadn’t heard of Affinity – looks good but Mac only.

Support for new cameras, compatibility w new operating systems, shiny buttons.

Ok then, alternatives to lightroom?

Why don’t you just buy the full version ?

Support for new cameras, compatibility w new operating systems, shiny buttons.

First point wouldn’t worry me, RAW formats are standard (maybe things are different at the professional end of the market, but that end is going to be paying for their software whatever). Second point I take, but my original point still stands. Third point… well this is STW. Does CS6 support 29+?!

First point wouldn’t worry me, RAW formats are standard

Yes and no. If PS doesn’t support your camera, it won’t look at your photos. There is a workaround but it’s a kludge.

Yip. Because the second one emerges, Adobe buys them up, closes them down, and absorbs their technology, to maintain their total monopoly position.

Or they do it to use the technology in their own product, thus making it better. Which is true – some programs just add bloat/crap with new releases but Photoshop/Illustrator (don’t use the others) really do get better with each iteration.

So you really only have one option. Pay Adobe £50 a month. I’d put my house on it that within a year that becomes £100 a month.

It’s grim up north, otherwise I’d take that bet 🙂 . But seriously, Adobe has always been aimed at professionals, not hobbyists. The programs are amazing tools and if you can’t justify the expenditure by what you earn using the programs, you’re probably in the wrong business.

First point wouldn’t worry me, RAW formats are standard (maybe things are different at the professional end of the market, but that end is going to be paying for their software whatever). Second point I take, but my original point still stands. Third point… well this is STW. Does CS6 support 29+?!

Erm, no they are not, I had to upgrade from LR3 to LR6 to get RAW support for an Olympus OMD E-M10

Not an Adobe fan are you binners! 😀

Adobe is dirt cheap when you look at the price of Autocad.

And to be honest if a designer/printer can’t cover £40/£50 a month on this Adobe overhead they should be in another trade. And it is professional software, not targeted at the home user, and when used to it’s fullest extent it’s pretty awesome.

I’m not disputing that MM. Its great software. And, at the moment, the price is reasonable. We’ll see how long that lasts once they’ve moved everyone over to the subscription model. Not long, is my guess.

But my point is that if you went and bought a car, and paid cash for it, then its yours. You own it.

Now say a month later the garage that sold you the car sent you a letter telling you that, from next month, you will have to pay them a monthly subscription to continue to drive it. Failure to do so would mean that, in practical terms, it would progressively disable itself, until you could no longer use it.

How would you feel about that set up? Because that’s exactly what Adobe have done. They’ve not so much moved the goalposts, as dug up the pitch and moved it to another location.

They’re using their monopoly position to make everyone pay for it twice. Nice work if you can get it!

If PS doesn’t support your camera, it won’t look at your photos.

Erm, no they are not, I had to upgrade from LR3 to LR6 to get RAW support for an Olympus OMD E-M10

That’s not my experience, but my experience is pretty limited. Take photos in RAW, plug camera in, PC recognises as mass storage, software sees RAW files in filesystem and pulls them in. I assume from these comments that it doesn’t always work this way, but I don’t see why it can’t.

I’ve always used Pentax’s native RAW format, but even that’s never caused me a problem.

Now say a month later the garage that sold you the car sent you a letter telling you that, from next month, you will have to pay them a monthly subscription to continue to drive it. Failure to do so would mean that, in practical terms, it would progressively disable itself, until you could no longer use it.

How would you feel about that set up? Because that’s exactly what Adobe have done. They’ve not so much moved the goalposts, as dug up the pitch and moved it to another location.

I’m not sure why I feel the need to defend Adobe here, but, just playing devil’s advocate for a second…

Isn’t it more like: you’ve bought a car, but then some new shiny cars are released but you can’t have them unless you buy them. You have the same old car, which gradually gets dinged, scratched dirty, less efficient and generally a bit outdated, particularly in comparison to the new shiny cars. In the car analogy, you can continually lease and get a new car every year, but it’ll cost you.

It can’t because (AIUI) the RAW file has a header that says “I am a Pentax XYZ” and then PS (well, ACR) knows that to decode the file it needs to look in byte 12 for the first RED value, 16 for the first GREEN, or whatever (I just made that up).

If the Pentax ZZZ is a newer camera, ACR doesn’t know where to look for the data. Maybe (speculation) it will guess that ZZZ is the same as XYZ, but you aren’t guaranteed of that.

The analogy might work if the CC software was any improvement on CS6. It isn’t. Its exactly the same. The only thing that’s changed is the way you pay for it.

If you bought CS6 for 2 grand, like I and a lot of other people did, on the proviso that it would remain suported as a standalone product, then you’d surely be a bit miffed to be told, immediately afterwards that that isn’t actually the case, and you now need to pay the subscription, in addition to the fee you’ve already paid.

To use your analogy: it would be paying for a car cash, then still having to pay the fees to lease it

It isn’t. Its exactly the same.

Why don’t you just stay on CS6 for a few year and save yourself a few K?

The analogy might work if the CC software was any improvement over CS6. It isn’t. Its exactly the same.

CC2015 is a massive improvement over CS6 (Illustrator, at least, which is what I use most) – although of course you can still use CS6 if you choose. Exactly how has Adobe “forced” you to subscribe to CC?

In practical terms, you can’t. Once other people move over and they’re batting files about. You can’t open CC files in CS6. So unless you want to make like difficult for yourself, then you have to upgrade onto CC.

It just really annoys me that Adobe have engineered this to maximise their profits by exploiting their monopoly position, and shafting the people who have supported them by buying their software for over 20 years. As business models go, its about as cynical as it gets.

And at the moment its £50 a month. Which is fine. How long do you think it’ll stay at that level once everyone has been forced to move over to CC?

If Adobe’s previous track record is anything to go by, it’ll get ratcheted up at a rate of knots to whatever they demand, and an entire industry will have no option but to pay it

binners – Member
In practical terms, you can’t.

I’m know the exact mechanics, I’m still working on CS3 and i manage. It’s easy enough!

CC2015 is a massive improvement over CS6

Examples of notable improvements please?

It can’t because (AIUI) the RAW file has a header that says “I am a Pentax XYZ” and then PS (well, ACR) knows that to decode the file it needs to look in byte 12 for the first RED value, 16 for the first GREEN, or whatever (I just made that up).

If the Pentax ZZZ is a newer camera, ACR doesn’t know where to look for the data. Maybe (speculation) it will guess that ZZZ is the same as XYZ, but you aren’t guaranteed of that.

Exactly, Olympus RAW (ORF) out of the EM-10 were not supported in LR3, they are in LR6, it imports these and converts to native LR format for editing.

You can check support here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/kb/camera-raw-plug-supported-cameras.html

That Affinity Photo looks pretty impressive, might need to give that a whirl.

I’m know the exact mechanics, I’m still working on CS3 and i manage. It’s easy enough!

Do you use it on a daily basis seosamh77?

Because if I sent you any of the files I’ve worked on in the last 12 months, you couldn’t even open them. I don’t really see how that can be regarded as ‘easy enough’

In practical terms, you can’t. Once other people move over and they’re batting files about. You can’t open CC files in CS6. So unless you want to make like difficult for yourself, then you have to upgrade onto CC.

The really simple solution to this is just have people send you files as PDF/TIFF. Not an unusual requirement in the biz.

Examples of notable improvements please?

Just off the top of my head:

😀 Retina resolution, hardware acceleration & the dynamic zoom thing make it nicer to use & make me more productive.
😀 Autosave is handy (why did they never have this before?!) although to be fair I think Illustrator has only fallen over once since I moved to CC & got 32Gb RAM
😀 The thing that lets you round corners off really quick
😀 curvature tool is awesome
😀 pixel preview is good if you like messing around with pixel art
😀 file packaging & unembedding – not essential but nice to have

There may be others that I’ve got so used to using my brain just remembers them as always being there and I’m sure there are loads I don’t even know about – I learn new stuff about Illustrator regularly & I’ve been using it professionally for well over 10 years

@binners…

How come you paid £2k for CS6? I can’t recall upgrades ever being that much, or did you have to buy a full version from scratch?

To be fair the only reason I upgraded from CS4 is because all the stock vector graphics were being done in later versions of Illustrator and I couldn’t open them properly.

And re pricing – I think Affinity (Serif) will keep them honest now. They really seem to have chucked some major development at their new software, with more to come. Perhaps they can smell-out loads of peeved Adobe customers.

The really simple solution to this is just have people send you files as PDF/TIFF. Not an unusual requirement in the biz.

And how do you edit those then? If I can’t open and edit a file its no use to me. So how does supplying me with a PDF help me, if I need print ready indesign files to work on?

I use it

recommend it

Was very easy process, few details (if you already have an adobe account you just log in and give them your card details), click download + install it. Their updater keeps you on the newest version

You can just write it off against tax if you’re a sole trader