Adobe shambles - Why subscription software should be illegal

[jgharding]

I abandoned Premiere when i realised i'd been paying for years and it had gotten steadily worse, meanwhile Resolve was getting better.

Every software company now wants the right to constantly dip their hand in your bank account, and renew entire years at a time, and yes I think it's absurd.

You pay and pay and pay for software and they hold your files effectively to ransom. Back when you could buy a version you can keep it indefinitely. But now as soon as you stop paying that's it, you can't open your old projects. I find the whole "model" a bit poor for consumers.

[newfoundmass]

5 hours ago, GreekBeast said:

Whats with the anti-premiere topics lately? If you don't like the product don't use it. Premiere has it's flaws like all the video editing programs but it's still reliable and has been solid for me tbh

You really don't understand why people complain about Premiere? 

------

I've ditched Adobe completely. The only thing that is causing me issues is the lack of After Effects competitor. Fusion just isn't clicking with me, it goes against how my brain works. I've tried and tried, to no avail. 

I really, really hope something comes along soon. 

[SiPiCreative]

Switch to Affinity, one off fee and fantastic!

[Wild Ranger]

A have switched to Resolve already, I still use After Effects tho . The amount of user migrating to Resolve is getting bigger and bigger, Adobe is gonna have to put some effort to not lose it all.

[ThadG]

There’s plenty of video and photo editing software competition, you can’t blame Adobe if you just don’t WANT to learn new software. It’s not as though they’ve locked down all photo and video file types with Adobe patents so you can only use their software. That would be monopolistic. People complain and complain online about Adobe’s subscription service, but unless you walk away with your money, you aren’t making a statement and nothing will change.

I personally think Creative Cloud is a good value if you always want the latest and truly take advantage of the variety of programs available to you. In the old days of the boxed Master Collection (the Creative Cloud equivalent in terms of software titles), you’d be paying $2500 initially and then $500-$600 a year to upgrade. People complained then too. Adobe has always been expensive.

Also, the notion that they don’t have software development teams dedicated to these products is petty nonsense. If you know anything about software development, you know even the minor updates they provide every year require a small army of engineers tinkering among millions of lines of code. A lame “documentary” from a blog is hardly insider knowledge of the extent of Adobe’s engineering team, many of whom are probably in other countries. 

[graphicnatured]

11 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

The Resolve dongle that came with the first BMCC in 2013 still works with Resolve 16 Studio for me

Incredible. This was a free dongle with a camera.

But no matter how good the competition is, coming off Premiere is like trying to stop smoking. Not easy due to the years of muscle memory.

As much as I continue to add Resolve more and more to my workflow, there are times when Adobe is just plain easier and I hate that. My hope is it's me and I'll improve.

[Drew]

I would leave Adobe but my company has an enterprise license with them. I don't really need anything they offer now except After Effects. I could get away with Affinity Photo and my old FCPX license. Affinity has an inDesign competitor coming soon too. 

After Effects just doesn't have a good alternative yet. A company called MainFrame has a more modern, properly procedural  motion graphics app called Cavalry coming out eventually. Until it's out though I'm stuck with AE. 

FYI if you didn't know, Adobe bought Allegorithmic. If you want a perpetual license to that $300 still gets you the 12 month sub and the upgrade to perpetual. Substance is definitely worth having if you plan on doing any bit of 3D and $300 for 3 applications and a year of access to their online content is a steal.

[crunchgmbh]

I'm with you all the way, Andrew. I run a production company and luckily for us, those subscription costs don't hurt too much, especially if you compare them to our other costs like decent Paychecks, rent, gear etc... That's exactly why adobe will be able to continue this game for a long time. They ARE the industry standard, and even if things change radically in the next 5-10 years, we'll still need at least one licence in our studio to be able to open older projects. I understand that this is a totally different game if you edit for pleasure and small projects on your own.

Our Studio did make a change to Resolve in this year, but even as a smaller production company with 8-10 seats, it takes alot more time to switch than one might think. There's a big learning curve to go from a Premiere/AE/Photoshop/Illustrator-Workflow to Resolve/Fusion/???/??? it's not as easy if you have to change your complete workflow. I LOVE Resolve... and i love the pace they are moving forward. that's what gets me exited about BMD. They REALLY get it. They have singlehandedly beaten Adobe, RED and other companies at their OWN game... 4K compressed RAW for 4K? that was once a big vision from RED, but who delivererd it? BMD. a complete 4K compressed RAW workflow for 1400$. that is completely insane. have you ever tried RED cineX? a nightmare in usability and performance.

One thing that still keeps me glued to Premiere? the pretty good 360° VR Workflow. Premiere went out of their way to become the defacto standard in that field as well. Resolve can't handle 360° footage. YET...

All in all. i'm exited to see that there is a company in the game that actually CARES about what professionals want, and give it to them. Grant is a visionary and as long as they keep their philosophy i'm eager to see them dominate the market and force everyone else to follow. TOTAL VERTICAL INTEGRATION. great job guys.
 

[CSolo]

If it wasn't for After Effects, I would completely give up and move to Resolve.  But trying to replace AE with Fusion is a much harder process than replacing Premiere.  

[KirkTuck]

Um....Final Cut Pro X? One purchase price. Endless free upgrades. That's what I'm using...

[Michael Steiner]

Completely agree that Adobe abuses it's position as a near monopolist. Had to finish an edit someone else started in Premiere and paid 35€ to use that single app for a month (no PS, AE etc.). Got impatient in short time so exported an XML to FCPX and finished it there. 

Move away from Adobe, it's possible. We got used to shoot with many different cameras so that should be doable with software too. 

- Instead of Premiere use FCPX or Resolve. I use FCPX since it launched 8 years ago, I'd say we had around 20 updates so far for which they have never charged anything. Paid 300$ (400$ with motion and compressor) and that's it. 

- Instead of Ligthroom/Photoshop use Capture One for organizing and RAW-conversions. Add Pixelmator or even better Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer if necessary. C1 costs around 300$ (upgrades around 120$). The Affinity apps are 40$ each and well worth that price.

There's no doubt you'll save money in the long term if you avoid Adobe. 

And if the world would stopp using that damn Microsoft Office I'd be completely subscription free ?  

 

  

[Gandulf]

Glad I use final cut.  Cost me less than 3 months of CC, and doesn't crash. Premiere seems to be adding new bugs every update. 

[Robert Collins]

The issue really isnt 'subscription software' per se. I am sure this payment model suits many people - well me at least!! Banning subscriptions software makes little sense.

The real issue - which is anti-competitive by nature is that Adobe has 'taken away' the 'one payment stand alone' option. The 'subscription only' model means that Adobe has 'virtually no incentive' to innovate or improve its product - at least while its software maintains its near monopoly/industry standard status. People have to pay to use it whether it improves or not. 

If they had 'competing' payment offerings consumers would at least have a choice (of sorts). If Adobe's offerings were not consistently improving most people would vote with their wallet, buy the stand alone product and then not upgrade.

It would make sense to only 'allow' software companies to offer subscription services if they also offered a 'stand alone' alternative.

[xiaoen]

It's not just photography, film, and graphic artists... the whole "printing" industry relies on Adobe software... magazines, packaging, trading cards, playing cards, games... you name it... If it has nice designs on it in more than 2 colors... odds are it passed thru Adobe software on the way to the press.

And I doubt any other software company is going to break into that market with 100% needed features for the printing business anywhere in the next 10 years. 

Don't believe me?  They killed Flash in 2011 caving to Steve Jobs and his Fanboys... and in 8 years no one has come close to building an equivalent tool as the Flash / Animate product, even though it would be helpful in both web and game development.

Animate/Flash is still the best at what it did... Whether you want Flash animations, or HTML5 garbage animations, or easily made games, or other stuff.

Adobe does need to accept responsibility for insuring their software provides all these markets the tools needed.  Your markets didn't force Adobe to monopolize... But you helped by your choices.

(Like every one shopping at Wal-Mart and then Amazon helped kill off mom-and-pop and brick-and-mortar.)

Adobe needs to realize they need to stay in business and maintain all this software for DECADES!  These markets NEED their software to do business.

But they are pretty good at making poor business decisions though which is what's scary.

Like devoting HOW MANY people and labor hours to try and copy what Flash could do using only JavaScript... And they STILL haven't finished reinventing that wheel!  (And they can't.)

They should have pushed Flash and their other products for building Internet Apps... which people want... and also worked to kill off HTML+CSS+JavaScript which has been a Frankenstein nightmare from HTML 3.2 thru HTML 5+.

BUT NO they kill off their own products, and the internet is no better than it was in 2011... worse actually... 

Oh by the way... If you threaten to cancel your CC subscription... They might give you a year at $35 per month to keep you.

Demand they do better.  But don't expect to find any better software anytime soon.

[aslanua]

The real reason for subscription models is so companies can predict profits to share holders and increase profits when desired. Just put up the price, knowing everyone will stay a user and bingo the projected profits miracouksly hit projection targets to the cent, brilliant. I hate adobe with a passion for this, I wish black magic would do to adobe, what adobe did to quark in the design world (they created indesign to compete with quark, and gave users ability to import legacy quark projects into indesign, again brilliant) could BMD give resolve the ability to import premier projects or can this already be done easily?

[batvink]

Affinity photo and Affinity design are perfectly acceptable replacements for Photoshop and illustrator for 95% of users. They are less than £50, one off payment, no subscription. The interface is very similar to Adobe, the functionality is almost identical, with just a few of the more obscure features not yet in place. With the introduction of Affinity publish, you can now work seamlessly across all the apps in one environment. Switch persona and the tools change, but the document remains on screen. 

[GregAllan]

Lols a Adobe's model was born out of negating piracy and if you are complaining about perfomance and you are still using a mac maybe you should bin the Mac and move to pc, mac shifted all it's rescource from developing professional products to consumer products, it's damnd credit card is indicative of this. Their work stations as a result are overpriced and underpowered...seriously £1000 for a screen stand and you complain about a subscription that cost about as much as a gym membership yet is tax deductable. 

[Robert Collins]

37 minutes ago, aslanua said:

The real reason for subscription models is so companies can predict profits to share holders and increase profits when desired. Just put up the price, knowing everyone will stay a user and bingo the projected profits miracouksly hit projection targets to the cent, brilliant. I hate adobe with a passion for this, I wish black magic would do to adobe, what adobe did to quark in the design world (they created indesign to compete with quark, and gave users ability to import legacy quark projects into indesign, again brilliant) could BMD give resolve the ability to import premier projects or can this already be done easily?

Oh... there is no doubting it is a cash grab. Nice work if you can get it.

[Pussycat]

For video editing, ppl can easily go to another tool. For Photoshop users...I don't think so.

Adobe spent so many years and money to climb to the top, then they start to harvest, that's simple.

 

I'm working in software industry, I have to say subscription model brings much more money than perpetual model......if your product is good enough!

[colepat]

I have already switched to FCPX. Absolutely love it. I haven't tried Affinity for my photos yet, but I'm tempted. I think that might be my next move.

I'll just echo everyone and say we still need a good After Effect replacement. Honestly my After Effects work (mostly motion graphics and some VFX) is my big income. I'll have to look into what Main Frame is doing I guess.