[Paul the Sunman]

I work at Australia's largest university. We have had full access to Adobe software for many years via a site licence (Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes LR and PS as well as Acrobat Pro and many other programs) costing the university some Aus$540k per annum. This year, in the midst of the massive COVID hit that Australian universities suffered as international students disappeared due to border closures, Adobe decided they wanted more. They pushed for a per user fee as well. The university said no, unsurprisingly. Adobe has lost a very large client, but more importantly, it has lost exposure to 74,000 students who all used Adobe software in their studies, and would have taken those software preferences out into their future careers. I do not know if this is being replicated around the country.

Interestingly, the university has sent staff a list of alternative software to replace Adobe. In lieu of LR they suggest the free utilities RAWTherapee and Darktable, or commercial programs including Capture One Pro and ON1 Photo RAW. GIMP and many others are recommended instead of PS.

Although inconvenient, the university will manage perfectly well without. I cannot help but think though that Adobe's greed in this instance will not serve them well.

[alamo5000]

I hope they get burned big time from every angle. I truly hope they go out of business. They will never get another penny of my money. Not one cent.

[StiffLegged]

Sore feet and the stench of gunsmoke. Ouch.

[keos]

not that I condone it, but if college is anything like it was years ago, college kids won't have any trouble finding it for free.

[Cerebum]

Adobe is the standard and it is very good but the price is a bit steep. The trouble is my laptop sucks and adobe is the only one that runs on it. I also need the mobile version. Eventually it may be financially better to buy a new lappy and get capture one. Adobe will continue because enough people don't want to change.

[Gray]

Joseph Cristina has a very helpful series of videos designed to help photographers and videographers choose good alternatives to Adobe products such as Lightroom, Photoshop, Premier and Illustrator. I too, will never rent software from Adobe.

Life After Adobe - Cutting The Adobe Cord (Youtube)

[Cerebum]

Joseph Cristina has a very helpful series of videos designed to help photographers and videographers choose good alternatives to Adobe products such as Lightroom, Photoshop, Premier and Illustrator. I too, will never rent software from Adobe.

Life After Adobe - Cutting The Adobe Cord (Youtube)

Interesting (said in the voice of a master criminal)

[Serkevan]

I work at Australia's largest university. We have had full access to Adobe software for many years via a site licence (Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes LR and PS as well as Acrobat Pro and many other programs) costing the university some Aus$540k per annum. This year, in the midst of the massive COVID hit that Australian universities suffered as international students disappeared due to border closures, Adobe decided they wanted more. They pushed for a per user fee as well. The university said no, unsurprisingly. Adobe has lost a very large client, but more importantly, it has lost exposure to 74,000 students who all used Adobe software in their studies, and would have taken those software preferences out into their future careers. I do not know if this is being replicated around the country.

Interestingly, the university has sent staff a list of alternative software to replace Adobe. In lieu of LR they suggest the free utilities RAWTherapee and Darktable, or commercial programs including Capture One Pro and ON1 Photo RAW. GIMP and many others are recommended instead of PS.

Although inconvenient, the university will manage perfectly well without. I cannot help but think though that Adobe's greed in this instance will not serve them well.

This sounds like the Elsevier debacle in Germany...
They insisted they wanted more and more money for access to their journals. Germany said that their universities and libraries were spending many millions a year already and that not a chance.

Well, guess who uses sci-hub more often now.

[BarryE]

Seems a little perverse of Adobe, but for personal use £10 per month is, I think, excellent value.

I had the CS3 to CS5 master suites (ie everything) which has now left me with a fully working InDesign and Illustrator which I use often enough. These two lifetime apps and £10 a month for all my photo needs doesn't seem too much to me. I could easily spend that on a couple of visits to those overpriced coffee shops. Remember them ...?

[shyrsio]

Thankfully, after decades of Adobe dominance, the market is breathing lately. I still haven't jumped the ship myself, but I've tried several alternatives to PS and LR lately, and I'm blown away, especially from DXO's softwares.

[jersey]

With so many alternatives Adobe just dived straight into aircraft carrier with banzai on their lips. I am not against paying for software, I am paying for my program for photo development (though it is not Adobe), but with anyone in crisis asking for more money for something that is easy to replace? Adobe is not bread or air.

[Belcik]

Indeed kamikadze. Well they are more profit oriented than customer oriented, this works only in the short run.


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[Michail_P]

With so many alternatives Adobe just dived straight into aircraft carrier with banzai on their lips. I am not against paying for software, I am paying for my program for photo development (though it is not Adobe), but with anyone in crisis asking for more money for something that is easy to replace? Adobe is not bread or air.

Αdobe will never stop asking. There are excellent alternatives. Everyone can find something. Asking for a per-person fee was very greedy. It's a shame. I am on the sailing boat the past weeks and I have to admit that there's nothing to miss. ACR is simple and effective, but I wouldn't support a suit financially.

[stevejo]

Although £10 a month seems reasonable given what it gives access to, it isn't for me. I have used GIMP for several years without any difficulty although it is probably a bit harder to get used to, same as Raw Therapee but they work fine. I have recently switched over to Affinity Photo which is very reasonably priced and dead easy to use.

[BigMackCam]

I hope they get burned big time from every angle. I truly hope they go out of business. They will never get another penny of my money. Not one cent.

I'd be concerned if they went out of business... Adobe employs a lot of people, and those jobs are putting food on the table. Plus, a lot of people still depend on their products, hence why they choose to pay up.

That said... more and more, Adobe is starting to come across like Oracle did with its database software licensing in the 2000's. On the one hand, they're a publicly traded company and perfectly entitled - indeed, obligated, one might argue - to maximise revenue and profits therein for the good of shareholders... but they're alienating a lot of customers, big and small, in the process. Their products are absolutely top quality, which is why so many have shifted to the subscription model... but unless you're a heavy and/or very regular user, they don't work out cheap.

A big problem is that open source software is getting so much better. Darktable and RawTherapee are missing some of the convenience and commercial polish we see with Lightroom (for example), but in other respects they offer even more capability. Plus, they're remarkably stable these days, benefiting from high rates and relatively fast turn-around on bug fixing and new development. They're no longer buggy, slow, with poor user interfaces and weird ways of doing things. They work exceptionally well, hence the OP's observation:

Although inconvenient, the university will manage perfectly well without.

A lot of folks will reach that same conclusion with regard to their own relationship with Adobe. I did, when they first moved to its subscription model and I switched to Darktable. It was inconvenient, but I got over that soon enough. I still have Lightroom 6, and it's a great piece of software, but I'm so used to Darktable - and more recently, RawTherapee - that there's little I miss....