Gene51 wrote:
...As far as your objection to software subscription - if I may be blunt....
Some people lease a car. Other people buy one.
Some people rent a home. Other people buy one.
Some people rent tools. Other people buy them.
There are times when buying makes sense and is more practical. But there are also times when renting is the better approach. It depends upon individual situations.
Having used LR and PS for many years (PS since mid-1990s and LR from about a year after introduction), I worked out that doing periodic upgrades to a newer version, though sometimes skipping a version, on average was costing me $325 to $350 every three years. So for me there's very little difference in cost between the perpetual license and the $120 a year subscription.
Back when it was perpetually licensed, PS upgrades were pretty affordable. Usually around $200 to $250. The biggest hit with PS was the initial purchase. It was upwards of $500 for the "full version". The final version (CS6) might have been upwards of $600. You didn't need to buy every version to get the upgrade price.... though in later years upgrades were limited to just the previous two versions.
It was different with LR. It's six versions were only ever offered at a full version price of about $130, except for a well hidden $90 or $100 upgrade to LR6 that LR5 owners could get, if they bought directly from Adobe and knew to look for it. I know I used at least four versions of LR, possibly five. There was at least one, maybe two I skipped.
But my experience is far different than other people's. Someone who previously bought every upgrade would see considerably lower cost now with the subscription model. On the other hand, someone who rarely upgraded previously might find the cost greater now with the subscription. This would especially apply to users of other software, such as Adobe's own Elements. We see it all the time here on UHH, where someone is still using a 5, 6 or 7 year old version of Elements, which cost them $100 and now has averaged out to $20 or less per year. For them, the subscription would be considerably more expensive.
Switching to the subscription model has made Adobe stinking rich, thanks to hordes of new users. Where it was cost-prohibitive to many people to buy and use Photoshop in the past, they now can get it for an initial cost of only $120. Of course, I bet many subscribers end up only using LR, which is much simpler to learn to use... more intuitive... and simply faster to work with. It doesn't have some of the capabilities of PS, but a lot of folks find LR sufficient for their needs.
At some point Adobe's customer base will stop expanding and they won't see the same year-over-year increase in profits, which will make their board of directors and investors unhappy. It will be interesting to see what happens then. Will they increase the cost of subscription? Keep in mind that initially Adobe wanted $30 a month for PS subscription alone. And that was a "special discount price" for the faithful already using CS6. I forget what the "regular" price was, that they cited in their emails trying to sell me on the subscription. Of course I didn't think that a very good deal, and apparently no one else did either. So Adobe lowered the subscription price to $20 a month, yet no one found that price palatable either. Finally they ended up with the $10 a month, and threw in LR to boot, so long as you pre-paid a year's subscription. That's when things really took off.
All good things come to an end. I don't know when or how much, but sooner or later I bet the LR/PS subscription cost will increase. I have to give Adobe props though, for not having done so already. They've resisted getting greedy and it's paid off with record profits. So far.
Adobe LR and PS are tools. I would prefer to have a choice whether to rent or buy, like I do with other things. Then I could opt for the plan that works best for me.
Note: Since almost all software today is being delivered by download, there would be virtually no difference in cost for Adobe. They no longer have the expense of burning a bunch of DVDs, packaging them and putting them into the retailer supply chain.