May 7

May 7 An Unpopular View on Adobe’s Recent “Price Hike”

If you’re into photography at all, unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock (or stayed off the internet) you can’t help but have read about the recent “price hike” on Adobe’s Photography plan. Site after site reported that Adobe had “doubled” the price of its photography plan, which lead to cries and consternation from all corners of the internet. I was really in two minds as to whether to write about this or not, because I know this will be unpopular, and I will get lots of hate mail because of this. I was really angry and annoyed about this news. Not because of what Adobe did, but because of the way it was reported and the crazy carry on afterwards.

First of all, Adobe did not double the price of its photography plan. It issued a statement saying that it was carrying out a pricing test for some users on its website to gauge reaction to a different price point, but that the old price was still there. I would estimate that a good 50% of the websites that initially reported on this story failed to add the correction. To be fair, quite a few did correct it, but some didn’t, or tried to spin the correction to support the narrative they had already gone with. I’ve seen quite a few commentators cry foul on this with some ridiculous blog headlines, but this kind of thing isn’t out of the ordinary. Companies do this all the time. It’s called A/B testing. Even in my small little store, I have the tools to do this. I would be willing to bet that something similar to this has happened before and no one noticed.

It should also be noted too that this was never just Adobe doubling the price in the first place. They were offering a different plan altogether. The $9.99 plan only offered 20GB of storage, which is basically useless. The $20 plan that was being trialled offered 1TB of storage. Considering Apple charges €10 for its 1tb plan for iCloud, this isn’t a bad deal. But again, lots of people were complaining, saying that they don’t use the online storage, so why should they care. I can understand this, but I can also see the point of view, that a lot of people don’t use the storage because at 20GB it’s basically useless. I also suspect that Adobe realises this, and this is part of their reason for this testing of a new plan. I also suspect that in the future, as cloud services become more and more entrenched there will be a push to use these services even more.

What really ticked me off though was that several sites used this “news” to try to sell their affiliate links for competing software. I saw at least three sites that I won’t name post a story that Adobe was doubling the price of creative cloud and you should buy Capture One or Luminar instead, with their affiliate links proud and central. In the initial posting of some of these “offers,” there was no mention that of Adobes statement or even that the cost included a much higher storage tier. This was a really disingenuous and cheap move on the part of the sites that did this. If you’re going to promote alternative options, do it on the merits of those options, not because of some botched PR move by Adobe and a misreporting of the story.

The virtual “piling on” was so massive after this story, that you’re almost afraid to post a dissenting opinion. The negative and angry emotions around this, being capitalised on and sensationalised by writers, bloggers etc for clicks and affiliate sales is really disappointing, but as I mentioned in a previous editorial, this seems to be the "in-thing" when reporting on the photography industry now. It’s actually leaving a sour taste in my mouth about the whole industry. Surely there’s enough anger and hate in the world without getting this worked up over software and camera gear.

Don’t get me wrong, this was a massive PR mistake on Adobe’s part. They allowed the story to get away from them, and they should have been more transparent on their website in the first place. A simple link to say alternative plans on the pricing page could have solved this problem, or even roll out the $20 plan in addition to the $10 and test it that way. I don’t think they were wrong to test a different plan though, because as I said, companies do this all the time, they just did it in a poorly handled way.

I get a lot of people don’t like the whole subscription thing. I really do, but it’s the way it is and it’s not going to change. If you don’t want to pay for a subscription on ideological grounds, then that’s fine, but then if that is the case this was never going to affect you anyway.

However, I still see lots of misinformation about the whole subscription thing, even though it’s years later since this was first introduced.

First of all, the value proposition. On the Photography plan, the existing $10 a month is a steal. A year's worth of this plan is a little more than the cost of Photoshop elements and for that, you’re getting two professional applications. Even at $20 a month it’s really good value. For that price, you’re getting Photoshop and Lightroom and Online Storage. Even without the storage, it's still really good value. $20 a month is $240 a year. Photoshop used to cost $650 and Lightroom cost around $160 depending on the offers (On Amazon UK, I saw that one place is still selling Lightroom 6 for over £200.) Considering software was usually updated every 18 months or so, you’re still getting the software at a very reasonable price.

But I get it, not everyone can afford $10 or $20 a month, and that's fine. But if you can’t afford that, were you going to pay $700 - $800 on the full price of the software anyway? If you don’t need Photoshop and only need Lightroom, you can still get the single App pricing on this anyway, and it's still roughly around the same as what you would have paid for Lightroom over the course of a year. It probably is more expensive in the long run, over the course of multiple years so I can understand a degree of frustration here, but it's still a cheaper way to get into the software than forking out the price for a full application in the first place.

The second is the whole thing about “owning” vs “renting” the software. This is a bit of a misnomer though, because even for software that you “buy” you still don’t technically own it. What you pay for is a licence to use the software. You don’t actually own it in the same way that you own a physical product. The people that do own the software, are the people who develop it. They are the ones that actually “own” it, and they are selling you a licence to use it. This may seem like a semantic difference, but I suspect a lot of people don’t actually realise that there is a difference. Most licences come with lots of terms and conditions that people never read, and in there you will see lots of reasons that a licence can be revoked, unlike a physical product. Again, I know this may seem like a semantic difference, but you don’t own software, you buy a licence to use it.

Incidentally, the Verge had a good video explaining why companies are switching to the subscription model, and its worth a watch.

As I said earlier, I have no objection to people who have an ideological objection to the subscription model, and I can understand why. What I do object to though, is people who don’t like the subscription model, who think that no one should support it and attacks anyone that even mentions the software. I regularly get hate mail from people when I post anything about Lightroom or any Adobe product telling me I shouldn’t be supporting the “evil” company. I’m frankly sick of it. Adobe is no eviler than Microsoft or Apple or Autodesk. They’re a large company beholden to their shareholders like any other, and they make tools that a lot of us couldn’t create what we do without them. If you don’t like it, fine, but please stop with the Adobe is evil nonsense.

I happen to have no problem with the subscription model personally, in fact, I happen to think its a good idea. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if it wasn’t for Adobe’s switch to the subscription plans. I left a permanent job doing motion graphics and design several years ago to work freelance, and when I did so, I relied on Adobe’s software, specifically Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects. I could never have afforded the complete suite of Applications at the time which was over €2000 to buy the licence up front, much less the regular upgrade fees. I would never have been able to leave my job and do what I do now if it wasn’t for the creative cloud subscription. I’m pretty sure I’m probably not alone in that either.

I recognise that this is going to be an unpopular post, but this is how I feel and it’s my opinion on the matter. You are free to respectfully disagree, but if you do, be aware that I also have the right to disagree with your disagreeing. Please keep the discussion civil, and read the comment policy before posting!

Cover image by Mikaela Shannon via Unsplash

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