amfoto1 wrote:
Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC are sold via subscription only.... $10 a month WHEN YOU PREPAY A YEAR (i.e., $120).
Lightroom 6 is almost identical to Lightroom CC, except LR6 is sold as an outright, perpetual licensed product, for one payment of $142. This license allows a single user to install the s'ware on up to three computers.
Don't know if it's still available, but at one time LR6 was offered for $99 upgrade to licensed users of LR5 or LR4. This was the first time an LR upgrade was offered and supposedly was "single user, single computer" (even though I bought this way, my license shows multiple computers okay).
So, assuming you are only interested in using Lightroom: If you pay $142 for LR6 after 14 months you're using LR6 "for free" from then on. But if you instead subscribe to LR CC, by month 14 you would already have had to make another $120 payment to "rent it" for a second year, so will be $240 out of pocket and will have to pay another $120 every year, ad infinitum (unless Adobe decides to increase the rent).
From my own experience with them for many years, when using both LR and PS and keeping them reasonably up to date with regular upgrades... it works out to cost about the same to subscribe as it did to upgrade every three years (i.e., approx. $360 every 3 years, which is approx. how often I upgraded).... EXCEPT that PS is no longer available other than via subscription! The INITIAL purchase of Photoshop was quite pricey... $500 or so the first time I bought it, which increased over the years to around $650 with the last version (CS6), if memory serves. But after that first purchase, PS UPGRADES were much lower cost... around $200 to $250. I did a number of those over the years, using PS since version 4 in the mid-1990s.
For a lot of people who don't need full blown LR and PS, for only $70 right now (on sale) Adobe Elements 15 makes a lot more sense. It's a lot more geared for non-professionals.
Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC are sold via subscri... (
show quote)
Not entirely true. I've had the photography package for a few years now and I've never had to prepay the entire year. If you cancel before the year is up, then you do have to pay for the remainder of the year.