How much do Lightroom and Photoshop subscriptions really cost?

Affinity! One-time purchase, with (off the top of my head) three (!) licenses.

What is that comparable to?

Affinity is comparable to Photoshop. (And now 50% off, I see on their site, 28 euros!)

But isn't it also the case that if you're a student or you have children in school, you can purchase it more cheaply? I don't know exactly how it works, but I understood that it can make quite a big difference.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Sunday 7 February 2021 at 23:37  | reply

Adobe's photography subscription costs 12.09€ per month including VAT. In addition to Photoshop and Lightroom, you also get other software such as Bridge, the cloud version of Lightroom, the mobile version of Lightroom, Premiere Rush, a database of fonts.
I only have a low income as a pensioner and can still afford that 12.09€. Buying a new (full-frame)(mirrorless) camera or a lens from the L series is unaffordable for me. So I make do with what I have.
I find Adobe's package affordable this way, in the past you had to pay more than 1000€ for Photoshop alone. Now it is within reach of virtually every hobby photographer. With the occasional odd job, I can easily earn back that subscription.

Saying that Lightroom is only a RAW converter is really oversimplifying things. You can use it to manage your library in a very efficient way and all the photographic development tools are available in a relatively user-friendly way. It is actually a digital darkroom pur sang. (darkroom)
With Photoshop you can do all this too and much more, but it is considerably more complex. For purely photographic purposes, Lightroom is enough. If you go a level further (stamping out parts, adding sections, etc.) then Photoshop comes into play. In that respect, the LR + PS subscription is a very good and efficient choice by Adobe. Indeed, it costs €12 per month (3 pints of Blauwe Chimay in a not too expensive tavern). If you find that too expensive then there are cheaper ?? alternatives on the market, but for €144 /year you have the most powerful and versatile software in the house. I also very much doubt that the updates provide little added value. In any case, I have seen various new tools appear that I use with pleasure. Everyone has to decide for themselves how and what they use and what they want to spend on it, but I have seen a mountain of criticism of Adobe that I find very unjustified. A company (Adobe) can only exist if it makes a profit. They can only develop new tools if they have sufficient new resources available. I, and I know that a lot of others are together with him, am in any case happy with Adobe's photography subscription and I am quite willing to pay the twelve euros per month.

A number of years ago I already asked whether you could offer a course for Affinity, which was still relatively new at the time, but so far I haven't seen that yet.
More and more people are recommending this program wholeheartedly.
As far as I can see, Affinity is increasingly becoming an alternative to Adobe LR and PS.(which, by the way, I have also had a subscription to for years, to my complete satisfaction).
Perhaps all the reactions above will finally provide the push to also write a course for Affinity, so that we too can try out all the possibilities of this program.

Luminar is a fun little extra with possibilities, but also a great many problems. Moreover, they too have discovered the subscription model AND you have to/may pay for their updates again every year.

In my opinion, Affinity is so far the best AND cheapest alternative/supplement to the Adobe programs.
I too downloaded the latest update again this week, without having to pay any additional costs.

Whether 15€/month is a lot? There are usually still ongoing bills. Per year it gives a different idea. 180€ or in Belgian francs is when you really get a fright. Mobile phone tv rent clothes doctor car newspaper water heating etc. If there were still too much left, the state would come knocking. Regards

I use LR 6.14, NIK, Topaz Sharpen AI, 'bought versions'.
I also have Elements 14 but that program has ended up forgotten because I use Affinity Photo. AP is in my opinion 'at least' as good as PS ... and in the opinion of many even much better and simpler. I have paid less than €40 for AP and have already received about 4 FREE updates.
What do I think about it? Adobe ... money-grabbers. A subscription is fair enough but when you cancel the subscription you are left with nothing apart from a few futile edits. SHAME.

4BYE wrote on Tuesday 9 February 2021 at 15:08  | reply

I understand your story. I also don't always understand skimping on good software or, for example, good filters for lenses. Yet I do understand that people who don't use PS/LR much are relatively expensive off. Or, like me, use many programs interchangeably. Of course it is intended to generate additional revenue because it doesn't stop illegality. And if you stop, you have nothing left.

I've been working with DxO PhotoLab again for quite some time (currently version 4). When I compared various things, I liked it more than other programs, including Lightroom. Because Corel PhotoPaint has barely kept up with new developments for a long time, I stopped using it. (I used the CorelSuite versions for my business at one point, and PhotoPaint was included.) Although PhotoShop is of course a good alternative, I use PTGui for stitching and Helicon Pro for stacking. They generally do that better, which makes sense given the more extensive specialist options. I've also had ACDSEE for a very long time and actually use it exclusively for browsing, adding keywords and comparing my photos. This does mean that I need PhotoShop much less, given my other programs. On top of that, I don't need Lightroom either. Obviously, they won't offer PhotoShop on its own at that price. I pay 69.00 euros for an upgrade to DxO PhotoLab, about once a year. So a subscription to PhotoShop is relatively expensive for an amateur who doesn't edit photos every week. Moreover, you can't do anything with it anymore if you stop. I once bought a complete AdobeSuite for Dreamweaver (html/websites) and I can still do everything with it now. For the few times I have to adjust a website for an association, that would become a very expensive joke if I had to take out a subscription (24.00 per month).
I have also been using Luminar AI since it came out to play around a bit and make more "art-like" pictures. For that money, I have a nice extra program. There are also some plugins that I use occasionally.

Suddenly Adobe decided to stop selling standalone Lightroom 6.14 (and updates). Why on earth??? The choice between standalone or subscription simply abolished unilaterally. The only possible standalone alternative is Elements, a lukewarm clone of LRxPS. The simple answer is money. Standalone yields too little profit, even if updates have to be paid for (which I find quite normal). Of course, every company has the choice to change course. Which course is now clear: freedom of choice gone and money comes first.

A H M Kerkhoff wrote on Saturday 13 February 2021 at 11:50  | reply

Are we supposed to read the piece as a cynical joke, or has Nando converted to the false religion of market thinking? In short, that means that the world consists of buyers and sellers and that the latter have as the highest goal in their lives to force as many goods and services as possible down the throats of the former. To achieve that goal, they try to get their victims as completely as possible under their control. The number of means employed for this purpose cannot be counted on one hand. Search the internet for a ball head, TTL flash or new camera and bam! The advertisements explode across the screen, in bright colours mixed with advertisements for cars, bicycles, watches, whores and mortgages. If you then click on the article you were looking for, you first have to approve that the seller sends you some more cookies that enable him to penetrate even deeper into your private domain. You don't have to, you can refuse, but the button intended for that is usually impossible to find. Covert terror, then. Another example: with my new Fuji I was offered Capture One Pro for free. Nice, but as always in advertising, too good to be true. Certain functions of the real Pro were not included. You have to buy those separately. And so every time I open my programme now I get the urgent message to go to the Capture One site immediately.

It is in the photo world just like when I try to watch a video on a commercial TV channel. That thing is chopped up into 15-minute pieces and there are always 10-minute commercial breaks in between. You would like to fast-forward, but you can't. Recording a video and then fast-forwarding through the commercials usually isn't possible either.

I get very angry about that. Or scared, actually, because I feel trapped, caught in a gigantic spider(n)web, stretched by market devotees who spare nothing and no one. In that web, sellers have now added another new thread: they no longer sell their editing programmes, but rent them out. Nando doesn't think it's a bad idea, but in my opinion he is following the wrong trail. The marketers keep going further and further. After the web come the straitjackets, the handcuffs and eventually the clubs.
Toon Kerkhoff

smartzine wrote on Saturday 13 February 2021 at 22:22  | reply

I do understand the author's sigh. There is another factor at play in this story as well. The Netherlands once ranked high on the list of countries where the use of illegal software was more or less commonplace. Half of the Netherlands used illegal versions of Photoshop, Word, fonts, music, books, etc. I was once asked if I was interested in a digital file containing more than 1,000 novels. Ideal for a holiday! I don't want to play the moralist, but with that kind of mentality, you're screwing today's creators out of money. The developers, interface designers, type designers, writers, composers, illustrators, photographers... Good stuff costs money. And that also applies to everything digital, only many people have trouble making that mental transition and reaching for their wallets just as quickly as they would for physical products. Something physical is apparently allowed to cost money, but digital isn't.