Shootist Loc: Wyoming

I am still loving GIMP, NIK and RawTerpee, all free. I still use a paid version of PhotoNinja when an image needs its special touches.The GIMP Beta 2.9 is a major step toward a fully functional 16 bit color functionality, NIK has some very nice features and RawTheropee does a really good job on most images.

Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, Colorado

|Ya need to go back and read the previous posts prior to commenting or simply reference to whom I was replying to. Then you just might understand my post.

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

And many of the vendors think that bug fixes are upgrades.

charlie71

This is a photography site. Not a fake news site. Grow up and get a life.

pendennis

It looks like "subscriptions", in whatever form, are the current future, folks. But, the "web" is the ultimate in the free market. Lots of players coming and going, but only the real innovators, and capitalists will be successful.

While Bill Gates, and other venture capitalists, have made a mint in selling their software by the copy, that boat has sailed, and it's not going to be the business model of the future. At the company from which I retired, we were already in talks with Microsoft to start using server-based distribution of of their Office packages by the click. We had a sufficient enough number of employees who had a computer on their desk, but didn't need all the bells and whistles of the Office Suite. If you didn't work on presentations at all, did you need PowerPoint on your desktop? If you weren't an analyst, do you need Excel?. Every time a user clicks on the icon, Microsoft gets paid once daily for that user's access.

More companies are looking at what we referred to as the "thin client". That is, the O/S is installed in the memory, and every application is called as needed. Pay Microsoft a daily license fee based on the number of clicks on the hosting server. As more applications are host-run, there's no need for a hard disk and the attendant space needed; and no just "gig-wise". The profile of the desktop becomes merely monitor-sized. We already have it. Just look at your doctor's exam room. The MD, nurse, etc., is already using the thin client.

This would be impossible without the improvements in band width (remember token ring or modem?). While we used primitive, by today's standards, communications, the applications were nonetheless served. And served applications are nothing new. IBM served office-type applications from mainframes starting in the late 70's.

If someone comes up with a better solution than "subscription" software, just wait a few days. It'll be right along. Until then, it's the current "wave of the future".

traderjohn Loc: New York City

A revenue stream is a benefit to both the company and its employees. One of the benefits would be salaries matching SS and Medicare payments. Also, it allows them to fund their R&D Departments so their whiney pissy a$$ customers can enhance and manipulate a poor product into something that might have passable value. Don't forget the choice is yours. If you don't like you just say.....no.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

where? I've been all over their website and there is nothing about a subscription plan. In fact they boldly say their software is a perptual license. I'm a Plus member with them and none of my emails have said anything about this either.

AzYooper Loc: Sun Lakes AZ (Almost Phoenix)

Cool ! Also cancel your cable, newspaper, phone, electric, gas, mortgage, insurance, etc. and other recurring "subscriptions."

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Why complain about the subscription plans? If you really dislike them that much, no one is forcing you into any of them. All you have to do is go "buy" the software you want and use it.

Ah!! But, I think the software provided by the subscription plans is the exact software desired! So, you are fussing about the company using a business model that ensures they stay in business. At one point, my bet is that there were as many pirated copies of Photoshop installed on PCs as legitimately purchased copies. How fair was that to the company selling it? Guess you don't want to talk about that?

I know that when I migrated to Creative Cloud, it cut my costs of ownership more than half. I can find nothing to complain about in that, especially when they keep my software current for me. And outdated software is useless on my PC. I didn't decide to engage in the craft of digital photography for a week or two, or as long as my software worked. I'll be taking photos as long as I'm living, I guess. That's how long I want current software. And Adobe does that for a measly $10/month. Really??

clint f. Loc: Priest Lake Idaho, Spokane Wa

If you own it you want a return on your investment. Right now about 4 % per year. This represents the $ that’s in excess of expenses over revenue. Expenses are employees and the cost to maintain them... physical offices, heat, lights and taxes and insurance and advertising and... and.. well you get the picture. Revenue is the left over, it is split among the investors who took a risk that the stock would increase in value and pay a small dividend, +\- 4%. Who knows what the government makes as it’s cut but certainly more than 4%. Then the investors pay tax on what they earn again. So everybody gets a piece of the action. Employees work for wages at a salary based upon the guidance of the board of directors. The customer gets a product that costs about the same as a Late’ Win-win. In a nutshell.

clint f. Loc: Priest Lake Idaho, Spokane Wa

Own it means own a part of the company in my rant. Sorry it is unclear.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

If you own shares/stocks you own a piece of a company.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

LAUGHS.. Most of this profit is not from software or software subscriptions you would buy. It is from enterprise marketing software and cloud based storage. Go read their annual report and understand how software is being sold by big companies. I'm retired from IBM, Oracle and other multi-billion revenue companies. The model for years in that space is buying a perpetual license for a lot of money then paying a support fee yearly for updates and maintenance. My sales averaged over $850K per transaction with a 22% annual maintenance fee. One of the big issues for enterprise companies buying perpetual licenses was that maintenance continued even for products you didnt use (shelf-ware). At Oracle Safra Catz the co-CEO once said in a earnings call that Oracle could stop selling everything and still be profitable for over 12 years. This was in 2013. It is not true now. Other companies have been pushing the subscription based pricing model which has been successful two reasons - one is you can put those purchases to reduce capex (capital expenditures) which are handled tax-wise with depreciations etc. A subscription based license isn't because they never own the software (only renting it). The second is it a limited time contract (usually 1 to 3 years). In theory if you dont like the software you can stop your contract at the end of it (you owe all the money of the contract regardless if you use it or not) and switch to another product. This is bullshit because the implementation cost of a major software program is 5x the cost of software if it is perpetual and 50x if it is subscription. That is because if my average sale was $850k for a perpetual license it was more like 1/10 that for a subscription per year. So a company isn't going to changes its accounting system (called ERP), marketing, etc without a great deal of thought. For example when Disney decided to go to a single ERP program for the 63 divisions and companies it owned the software cost was $550M. The implementation cost for just the 1st phase (getting the basics out there) was $2.5B.. There were over 450 very highly paid consultants working at a building on Flower street in Burbank who work on a 24/7 schedule for 18 months to deliver phase 1. So the total cost was over $3B. Some of these functions are now done thru subscription based solutions but there is no way they are going to spend billions to change all of it.

All of these same thoughts apply to consumer software. You can either sell a perpetual license (but almost never with support fee) that when you put out a major release you will offer old users an upgrade price and for new users it is a new purchase. Companies like On1 Raw 2018 have further added to their maintenance stream by offering 'plus' models where you get the software updates as part of the fee plus lots of extras like classes, pre-sets, etc. Where this model has been at issue with lots of photographers is when the major releases happen too often. This is especially true if the software is deemed not ready for release by the users. Both On1 Raw 2018 and Luminar ran into this where people felt they were getting the value they had paid for and werent ready to purchase it again. On1 Raw 2018 has successfully managed to get them out of the quagmire in my opinion by opening admitting to issues then fixing them. Luminar didn't but has gotten the 2018 release out which works for Macs at least. But they have lost my faith in them by some pretty questionable acts on their FaceBook groups.

The other side of the coin is subscription based license with Adobe being in the forefront. Someone said they are making more money this way but from their fiscal reports that certainly is not true yet. A couple of reasons for that are if perpetual licenses are priced correctly they should be about 10x higher than a subscription product. If you could still purchase LightRoom and PhotoShop as perpetual licenses you would have had a cost of about $800. Those products released new major versions on a 18 to 24 month schedule so the cost if you were looking at 5 years of TCO (Total cost of Ownership) with 18 month schedules it would cost you about $1600 ($800 initial, and 2 upgrades at 50% of List or $400 each). For subscription you would pay 5x$120 or $600. Adobe makes less revenue selling subscription per license so it has to increase volume. Thus CC.. aimed at a market not shared by the members of this forum - casual photographers using cell phones. Honestly I dont see this working as there are too many choices at much better pricing than $120 like Affinity etc. Plus i feel LightRoom and PhotoShop are way to complex for most casual users. They might try it but quickly decide it is too difficult to use. So what have they done - alienated a number of users like me by their pricing. I dont use PhotoShop and $120 a year is too high for LightRoom in my mind. So I moved away and initially have spent that money on On1 Raw 2018 and Luminar. And while the professional users here might be willing to spend big bucks that market is so small it means almost nothing to a company like Adobe. On1 Raw 2018, MacPhun and the other independent companies have to succeed with that market or they will be toast like Nik and Aperature as there is NO pricing model that works unless they gather a larger market. MacPhun may do this because I feel it is a bit more user-friendly than other apps but has to get its support and R&D under control. On1 Raw 2018 in my mind is the best replacement for LightRoom but honestly if Adobe offered a subscription plan for just LightRoom I would probably go back to it and use the others as plugins for specific functions. Subscription pricing will not work for the smaller companies as there isn't enough revenue to support it unless they owned a large share of the users out their like 25% or higher. Pretty much impossible when there are apps like PhotoShop elements, Corel, Affinity, etc with market shares already.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I made a living with my photo expertise - taking pictures for clients, teaching, and selling my fine art work to interested parties and galleries.

The lousy $10/mo I pay for the license to use great, up-to-date software is pocket change which I make back 10-100X over each time I make a sale.

Not to be disparaging to the amateur/enthusiasts members - if $10/mo is an obscenely unreasonable amount of money to pay for a good set of tools - I am totally speechless . . . 😧

anotherview Loc: California

To each his own.