Fearful of Relying on the Monthly Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Subscription Plan?

[Asher Kelman]

Adobe has introduced some important and reassuring modifications to it's monthly Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom package. Until now, if you cease paying the monthly ransom, you had the risk of no further access to your Lightroom files. Such a "lockout" with loss of catalog access with all the work done with metadata sorting and the like, would be a disaster to most of us.

Well now, if you stop paying the subscription, you mainly just lose the "develop" module but can apply presets to existing files in your Lightroom catalogs.

I'm not clear as to whether one might be able to otherwise modify the existing catalogs, for example, import more images.

A full report is found here.

Asher

[Robert Watcher]

I never even considered that possibility of not being able to access catalogues or other files once a subscription expired. That would be dire for me. I currently own both programs but at some time probably would consider switching to subscription (more than likely forced to if I wish to move on to newer versions). This is valuable info Asher.

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[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Asher,

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Adobe has introduced some important and reassuring modifications to it's monthly Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom package. Until now, if you cease paying the monthly ransom, you had the risk of no further access to your Lightroom files. Such a "lockout" with loss of catalog access with all the work done with metadata sorting and the like, would be a disaster to most of us.

Well now, if you stop paying the subscription, you mainly just lose the "develop" module but can apply presets to existing files in your Lightroom catalogs.

Very interesting. For now.

A full report is found here.

That essay only says that (as of that writing) the "relief" applied to LR CC, not yet PS CC. Has Adobe in fact announced the new "relief" for PS CC?

Best regards,

Doug

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by Doug Kerr

Hi, Asher,



Very interesting. For now.



That essay only says that (as of that writing) the "relief" applied to LR CC, not yet PS CC. Has Adobe in fact announced the new "relief" for PS CC?

Doug

No such need for PS. Only risk for stopping subscription would be catalogs in LR where one could be locked out!

Asher

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

No such need for PS.

Hi Asher,

That is not exactly the case. It depends on what type of layers one has used in a file. The TIFF that one saves usually contains a flattened version of the composited layers. But without Photoshop, one is no longer able to access those layers, in particular the layers that have proprietary Adobe functionality (e.g. Smart Objects).

So anybody who extensively uses layers to composite a final image, will need to start all over from scratch if Photoshop is not enabled, or the subscription has expired (even if that is not really the case). A while ago people with a Cloud Subscription could not access their work in progress files on their own computers, because Photoshop failed to open. The outage lasted something like a full day, not nice if you are faced with a deadline.

I do not favor such subscription software for (time) critical work. I have at least a perpetual license Photoshop CS6 that will work as long as my operating system supports it. In addition I have other fall-back options.

Cheers,
Bart

[Asher Kelman]

Bart,

I was thinking that I could use CS5 to open the files or else it might be that some version of Painter would do that. I need to get a full version of CS 6. Is that still possible?

Asher

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Bart,

I was thinking that I could use CS5 to open the files or else it might be that some version of Painter would do that. I need to get a full version of CS 6. Is that still possible?

Hi Asher,

You only need a newer version if your edited layers are specific to that newer version. So, the new features of Photoshop CC subscription version, require that version to edit those files that use these features. AFAIK, if only older type layers are used in CC / CC 2014 then they should be editable in older Photoshop versions.

Adobe stopped distributing CS6 perpetual license versions at the end of May 2014, so it will be increasingly difficult to find those copies still in the market. As long as your files/layers are made with an older version, those files would remain editable with that version (until the OS stops supporting it). CS6 might survive a bit longer because it already started making use of the GPU of modern graphic display cards.

Cheers,
Bart

[James Lemon]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Adobe has introduced some important and reassuring modifications to it's monthly Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom package. Until now, if you cease paying the monthly ransom, you had the risk of no further access to your Lightroom files. Such a "lockout" with loss of catalog access with all the work done with metadata sorting and the like, would be a disaster to most of us.

Well now, if you stop paying the subscription, you mainly just lose the "develop" module but can apply presets to existing files in your Lightroom catalogs.

I'm not clear as to whether one might be able to otherwise modify the existing catalogs, for example, import more images.

A full report is found here.

Asher

Asher you really need to re-evaluate how you are using light room this is not a program to organize or store your images! This is real time editing! The point is that Lightroom is a workflow software for selecting which images of a series you want to use and then finalizing the look of them and then export the images to an archive of final images. (as high resolution jpgs) I can not speak about photoshop. Lightroom is all I need or use.

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by James Lemon

Asher you really need to re-evaluate how you are using light room this is not a program to organize or store your images! This is real time editing! The point is that Lightroom is a workflow software for selecting which images of a series you want to use and then finalizing the look of them and then export the images to an archive of final images. (as high resolution jpgs) I can not speak about photoshop. Lightroom is all I need or use.

James,

I must admit that Lightroom is one of those programs I have, but have not discovered a need for. As it is, Capture One and Photoshop already take care of my needs pretty well and with NIK and Topaz plugins, there's already more than good for me capability.

For catalogs, Media Pro works and Capture One sort of!

So what is so special about LR that it would displace Capture One?

Asher

[James Lemon]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

James,

I must admit that Lightroom is one of those programs I have, but have not discovered a need for. As it is, Capture One and Photoshop already take cAre of my needs pretty well and with NIK and Topaz plugins, there's already more than good for me capability.

For catalogs, Media Pro works and Capture One sort of!

So what is so special about LR that it would displace Capture One?

Asher

I can't say. I don't know anything about capture one or any of the others mentioned but Lightroom is all I need for selecting and finalizing images.

[Murray Foote]

Asher

You can still buy Lightroom as stand alone. Also, there is no check on number of versions you have with Lightroom, so I presume you would still have Lightroom if you opted out of CC. If not, you could always export the catalog metadata as sidekick files.

[Andrew Stannard]

Hi,

Thanks for posting this Asher - gives some reassurance at least. Without this change there is a real danger that users can get sucked into paying more and more for their monthly subscription without any way out. Jumping to a new program ought to be easier now, if required.


Andrew.