Adobe Photoshop CC Price Increase

[Ryderscope]

I've just received an email from Adobe advising that my Photoshop subscription is increasing at my next annual renewal (Feb. 2025). The price is increasing from A$14.29/month to A$23.99/month. That is an increase of more than 50%.

I have to admit that I'm finding it very hard to justify the continuation of this product. I do 90+% of my image processing in Pixinsight and only drop into PS for minor tweaks and fixing small artefacts. I find PS handy for some terrestrial and bird photo enhancements but certainly nothing that really exercises the full capability of PS.

Have others seen this price increase? I'm wondering what other product might by available either free or at a lower price. I do have a copy of GIMP which I haven't really exercised. Are there other options? I would be interested to hear what others have to say.

CS,
Rodney

[Drac0]

Hi Rodney,

Haven't received a notice of a price increase yet - maybe I was lucky that my subscription year renewed in late October so will stay fixed until October this year. But if the increase is that much I will also be looking for alternatives.

As I use PS & LR for much more than astro, simply switching to something like PI or Siril for what I do isn't really an optimum solution for me as I need to have replacements for my regular photography.

Personally I didn't mind the monthly subscription as it worked out cheaper for me than what I was paying every year or two to get the latest versions of what I was using. This increase will change that situation, but at least it will give me time to look closer at the alternatives.

Thanks for the heads up.

Cheers,
Mark

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Mark, as I am fine with my astro processing using PI, I guess I will be looking at alternatives for terrestrial photography. I will explore further the capabilities of GIMP and see what other options are around.

[Ryderscope]

Further information comes to light. It turns out that Adobe are keeping the price the same if you pay annually rather than monthly. See attached screenshot of announcement. Still makes me ponder about other options though I have to say.

[Drac0]

So an extra US$60 just because you want to pay monthly - what a rip-off. Been looking around and could go for something like Affinity Photo 2 for under AU$100 outright, or maybe ON1 Photo RAW which has been on special for under AU$100 too & looks like a decent replacement for both Photoshop & Lightroom.

I've had GIMP on my system for ages but haven't looked at the latest releases - re-instlled it a few month ago but never actually used it. Must be 10 years or more since I used it & it was very clunky back then. Will look again with the latest version.

Cheers,
Mark

[Nikolas]

What if you don't want to cloud bit just photoshop?

[AnakChan]

I ditched Adobe after ~10 yrs of cloud with them mid last year. For Photoshop, I've had Affinity Photo for the past 5 yrs or longer? But for DAM, I'm stuck on Lightroom.

Having said that, I don't really use all the fancy features of LR, so the "free" LR is sufficient for my DAM purposes.

Would be nice to find a DAM replacement though.

[Crater101]

I'm still using Photoshop CS 6 - the last iteration before they stared charging. It's fine for the adjustments I need to make.

Years ago, before I went to the Dark Side and purchased Photoshop, I used to used Paint Shop Pro. I haven't used it for a couple of years but - while it's not as fully featured as Photoshop - it gets a little better with every release, and there's a Pro and an Ultimate version that are available with monthly payments (which gets you regular updates) or as a one-off-forever payment (without updates).

Just a thought. Haven't used Paint Shop in years, but I do hear good things about it if you don't need the high end processing of Photoshop.

[Leo.G]

Companies wonder why it happens???
I use old pre subscriptions for all of my software. While I like many of the new features I don't like the pay to use licensing and find it alarming it's even used for corporate accounting software where they promote "don't pay for the months you don't want to use".
I wonder if the ATO accepts that as an official reason for no taxes during 7 of the past 12 months?


There are some mobs who produce imaging software I use where I got cheap licensing in bundles, Aurora HDR is one such program and now they have the newer Luminosity (Skylum I think, Luminar Neo is the latest). I get emails from Humble Bundles where bundle deals for a range of software and education stuff are often packaged in cheap, legal deals, I have a lot of image processing software very cheap because of the deals and it's all one time licensing. Most of these packages have the same level of adjustment as photoshop and there are several good ones out there, some free (without the support (supposed) of PS).

[dugnsuz]

As I get more experienced with PI, the sidetrips to PS for tweaking get less and less.


I pay monthly, and every time I get a debit notification I wonder if it's worth it?


Not had a price hike notification yet either...hmmmm!?

[Ryderscope]

With the current plans Nik, there isn’t an option for a non cloud subscription.

[Ryderscope]

I am assuming that the price increase notification will arrive when the subscription is due to roll over into the next year. Mine is in February. That said, I keep asking myself the same question given the number of time that I am using PS these days.

[AstroViking]

Hi all,

Another vote for Affinity Photo from me. It does everything PS does (even being ble to run some of the PS plugins) at a fraction of the price. Add in James Ritson's Astro Macro library and you're laughing.

As for DAM (took me a while to figure out that acronym) there is an open-source product called 'darktable' that appears to do the same functionality. There are others, but they seem to be aimed at businesses / graphic design workshops (and are priced accordingly).

Cheers,
V.

[AnakChan]

Cheers. I have tried Darktable too. It's somewhat clunky - as such I don't use it. It also generates a bunch of xmp files for each photo for keeping track of edits. I kinda prefer the LR or Apple Photos approach that maintains the edit in a database. So for now it's just still the free LR with basic editing (but no AI extrras).

[Drac0]

Hi Steve,

Just been looking at JR's macros & wow, they look good. Pretty much got me set on Affinity Photo now.

Cheers,
Mark

[dugnsuz]

Checked mine Jan 24 is rollover date, so I'll be hearing from Adobe soon no doubt!? :mad2:

[Drac0]

Well I decided to give Affinity Photo a go & installed JR's Astro macros and have only done a quick test -and I'm impressed. To get something that can do my "normal" image processing yet has the ability to handle astro processing built in - no more having to convert files from FITS to work with it, stacking seems very good and have only dipped my toe into the macro packs abilities. And all for less than 1 year of Adobe.

Did a quick test on a little bit M42 of data from last night, and really haven't done any real processing but what a couple of the macros can do. It has so far produced this HOO image. Quite happy so far...

Cheers,
Mark

[AstroViking]

For a "quick test", Mark, that is one very good looking image!

[Drac0]

Thanks Steve.

I'm less than a quarter of the way through his first tutorial, so quite pleased with it. Here's a HO image with a composite green channel using John's macros. And this is from less than one hour of data!

Cheers,
Mark

[g__day]

Shift to Affinity Photo and for a small once off purchase fee you can pretty much do anything you want without having the pay the monthly Adobe tax...

[The_bluester]

I got the same email from Adobe and the price rise is just shy of 70%. If you dig deep enough via google you will find a recycled page from a couple of years ago explaining price rises as being due mostly to exchange rate "Fluctuations" which begs the question of the AUD recovers, the sub goes down again right? And does not explain why the pay annually price has not changed. If you cancel in the last month, you cannot even buy the paid annually plan until the monthly paid one expires, yet to be seen if the paid annually one goes up before the end of my last month.

I cancelled mine out of irritation then worked out that the plugins I use most often in PS (I am also moving more and more of my workflow into PI) work in Affinity, so I am about to buy that.

[Drac0]

And you only need to pay again if you WANT to upgrade to the latest full version. And between v1 & v2 of AP was 6 or 7 years. If you don't want to upgrade you can just keep on using the old version as long as you like - you paid for it so it's yours.