I disagree.

Of course that could be the path taken by some software companies, but the quality programs that are subscription based (e.g. Adobe LR/PS) are saving money for some users.

If you are a casual user of editing software and don't care about the latest and greatest stuff, you can get away with using a piece of software for many years, until you update your computer and it no longer supports that software. But even if you don't care about the latest and greatest stuff, improved software comes along fairly regularly that make things that were difficult into things that are easy.

When I first started using Lightroom it cost me a couple hundred dollars. Updates came along every 12-18 months and they extracted another $50-75 for them, more if you skipped an update or two in between. Photoshop was another few hundred dollars for the same sort of schedule. When Adobe started the subscription model I was skeptical at first but finally realized that by paying ~$120 a year I got more regular updates and the total cost of LR and PS was less than I had been paying.

The subscription benefits Adobe, no disagreement there. They can predict their cash flow. The money comes in on a regular basis so they can budget for R&D. Because of that we get regular updates (included in the subscription price). For those reasons I believe the subscription model benefits the user as well.

To any hobby worth its salt, there is a cost. Fishing. Golf. They may not require regular payments but they cost money. Photography is no exception. You have to buy a camera and lenses. You need a computer to store, view, and distribute your photos. The Adobe photography plan is probably the least cost and most cost effective expenditure for many of us.

Before I retired I was a New England farmer. Known for being cheap thrifty. But for the Adobe subscription provides me with value for my money, more so than the myriad impulse purchases I make. Postprocessing is not essential to my life, but it is essential to my enjoyment of photography. I could probably use IrfanView to edit my photos* but (1) they probably wouldn't look as good; (2) would take me longer; and (3) I wouldn't have the organization that allows me to find photos that I even forgot I took.



* I do use IrfanView on my Windows machine but not for editing (other than occasionally cropping or transmogrifying to another image format).

Luminar NEO has become my go-to program for image editing. Over the years, I have used, and still have installed: Perfectly Clear, Corel PaintShop, Portrait Pro, and I find Luminar NEO to be the winner. The only thing I don't like about Skylum & NEO is that they sock-it-to-ya with putting add-in functions into something called "Extensions" which you must buy extra to the base program. It's their way of generating more revenue. Sure wish that these functions would be in the base program!

If you have to have a Photoshop-like clone, there is an open-source option called GIMP.

I had that once upon a time as well but figured that if I was going to invest that kind of time in software, I was going for the real deal, so I bought a copy of Photoshop CS6 and a book called Understanding Photoshop CS6...

When the authentication code didn't work, I contacted Adobe and they told me that I had not purchased the program from an authorized reseller and that there was nothing they could do. Not long after that the marketing geniuses rolled out the subscription service.

It was a revenue generating idea of the highest magnitude but not for this guy either.

The point of the diatribe is that there are options, and ones that won't lighten your bank account on a monthly basis.

That makes two of us Jim.

I have Luminar AI and NEO. Like most things they have their strenghts and weaknesses but if you don't do heavy editing, NEO should suffice.

My biggest issue is that I am running these programs on a laptop that is roughly 6 years old. The short of it is that said computer has an i5 processor with only 2 gb of RAM which is on the bottom of the Luminar barrel. To make a long story short, I don't do a lot of editing because the computer is simply not up to the task.

If you had at least an i7 with 8-16 gb of RAM and a graphics card with its own memory, then you would have no problems.

You could always download the trial version and then buy the key if you like it.