Fstoppers: Someone Please Save Us Photographers From All These Subscriptions

Lounge
41

Frankly, I find the premise of the article ridiculous. Lightroom used to cost $800, a recurrent cost every few years. Nowadays you can get Lightroom and Photoshop for €85/year (discounted at least every other month). That is a reasonable price.

Windows and macOS used to charge money for new OS versions. Now they’re free. Even Dropbox and OneDrive offer generous free plans.

Software has never been as cheap as it is now. And that’s not even taking into account the availability of free FOSS alternatives.

The one thing I find annoying about Lightroom’s subscription model in particular is that it’s only available yearly. Netflix or Apple TV (and their ilk) can be rented for a single month, which is enough to watch a TV show, and then canceled the next month. That’s something I do regularly, and it’s cheaper than TV shows ever were. But Lightroom is only available yearly. So if I needed, say, Photoshop for just one project, they don’t give me that option.

But then again, free alternatives do exist, and I can’t fault a commercial company for wanting to earn money.

6 Likes
42

The other side of that deal is that M$ and Apple have realized that harvesting and monetizing people’s info is more lucrative than selling operating systems.

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43

Hi. I use PSP (Paintshop Pro) it’s excellent and purchasable

44

Here the price is 141,94 € / year minimum at the moment. And the software is not even running on my computers (Archlinux) :wink:. That’s not reasonable for me. But you are right, software is cheaper than it was.

45

makes sense, if frightfully expensive software didn’t exist the website probably wouldn’t either.

1 Like
46

I don’t have as much of a problem with subscription services as long as they continue to add or improve useful features. That’s somewhat subjective, but for me there’s too much emphasis on adding AI in the wrong areas with programs attempting to autogenerate creative edits instead of fixing other pre-existing issues with the software.

4 Likes