There’s some scary rumors doing the rounds tonight. A well known photography website has just noticed that for some people, the minimum Photography Plan price on the Adobe website has gone up from $9.99 to $19.99. As with many click-bait style articles, there’s an element of truth to it, but you have to read the whole article to find it.
The truth is far simpler – Adobe’s marketing department is doing some A/B testing. It’s not new. We’ve been discussing it on the forum here for months! It’s not a market research method I agree with or support, but I don’t think scaremongering is any better either. Let’s cut the drama and stick to the facts.
The official response says this:
Q: I see Creative Cloud Photography Plan (20GB) is not available on Adobe.com. What is happening?
From time to time, we run tests on Adobe.com which cover a range of items, including plan options that may or may not be presented to all visitors to Adobe.com. We are currently running a number of tests on Adobe.com.
Q: Is this plan still available for purchase?
Yes, the plan is still available for purchase from Adobe during this test.Q: How does one buy this plan?
The plan can be purchased at http://www.adobe.com/go/photo18sptst, via phone or via major retailers. [My edit – an incognito browser often does the trick on the normal purchase pages too. That’s what split testing is all about – showing different offers to different people and seeing how many people buy at each price.]Q: Does this mean that (Product name: Lightroom Classic/ Photoshop/Lightroom) is no longer available?
This test has no impact on the availability of any desktop application. Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, and Photoshop desktop apps all continue to be available.
Ok, that’s still marketing speak. So what does this mean in real terms?
It means the marketing guys were allowed to play. Again. And every time they do, they create a mess. I’m as unhappy about that as you are. Thankfully, the team in charge of Lightroom itself is more customer-focused, so while all this chaos goes on in the background, they’re still busy working on improving Lightroom.
Will the pricing change? I hope not. Like every other human, I am incapable of foretelling the future, and they clearly don’t know either, otherwise they wouldn’t be testing it! If it does, it’ll probably only be for new customers, as historically they’ve been good about grandfathering old plans. But you want to tell the marketing guys what you think of their tests? Please do! Here’s the official Feedback forum. Far better to speak directly to them, rather than ranting where they won’t see it, right?
Then, put the kettle on, take a deep breath and go back to playing with Lightroom.
ButchM says
May 3, 2019 at 3:27 amIt would be comforting and reassuring if the brilliant minds of the Adobe marketing department were as concerned about not creating unending confusion as they are at gambling on enhancing the corporate bottom line.
Just once, I would like to see customers on an equal plane with management and investors.
eljay says
May 3, 2019 at 2:14 pmThat’s just not the way capitalism works. Maybe someday we get to Utopia, but that is a long, long, long, long way off.
ButchM says
May 3, 2019 at 6:51 pmMy comment, nor this topic has nothing to do with capitalism. It has to do with the expectation that a marketing plan be balanced and thoughtful in perspective so as not to invoke inadvertent misconceptions that create unnecessary customer doubts. Especially when the corporation is a pseudo monopoly.
eljay says
May 4, 2019 at 2:11 amI’m sorry, but it has everything to do with capitalism. Just once you “would like to see customers on an equal plane with management and investors”. That doesn’t happen, especially as companies get bigger, because they are in business to make money.
Here, Adobe is doing A/B testing to see if enough people will buy the 19.99 package. If they get enough buyers, do you think they won’t continue to sell at that price and drop the cheaper plan?
That’s capitalism 101 – what the market will bear. Customers get the same basic product but pay more for it so management and investors can enjoy more profit.
I agree with you as to how is should be, but that isn’t the reality.
Mark says
May 3, 2019 at 3:47 amDoes their modified test 9.95 plan include PS?
I don’t use LR CC and do not need 1TB of cloud storage.
Nonstarter for me. Will drop LR if it’s implemented without PS at 9.95
Victoria Bampton says
May 3, 2019 at 7:28 amThe $9.99 20GB plan that’s being hidden for some people does include PS.
Johnny says
May 13, 2019 at 3:58 amAgreed, and one can call it what they want as “marketing” but I see it as borderline deceitful.
Marcin says
May 3, 2019 at 12:03 pmThis is a deeply unsettling move by Adobe. Even if they back off now, it doesn’t bode well for the future of Photography Plan 🙁 Please, don’t play it down, I’m sure you can afford the double rate but for countless users around the world that would be a deal breaker.
Victoria Bampton says
May 3, 2019 at 12:25 pmYes, it would, which is why I’m telling you (and everyone else) to direct your comments to the right people.
But it’s not the breaking news that some sites are making it out to be. It’s a market research method that’s been happening for months.
Eric Begbie says
May 4, 2019 at 9:39 pmBack in the early 90s I was a great fan of Serif. I used their PagePlus DTP software professionally as a much less expensive alternative to Adobe Pagemaker. Apart from the fact that they were British, I worked for an organisation that simply did not like spending money on “new technology”. When I “went digital” with my photography, around 2008, Lightroom had just been released and it was so hugely more intuitive to an ex-darkroom photographer than anything else on the market at the time, including Serif’s PhotoPlus and Corel’s PhotoPaint. At that time Photoshop was still poorly adapted from its original graphic design purpose to photography applications. So, in that sense, my digital photography “grew up” with Lightroom.. I am now so embedded in it that it would take a really violent shove to move me to anything else – partly because of the learning curve involved in adapting to anything else, and partly because of the time I would have to spend moving many tens of thousands of photo files to a new cataloguing system. But one thing is sure – if I was advising anyone starting from scratch today, my advice would be to look very closely at Serif’s Affinity Photo. I sometimes wonder whether Adobe really appreciate how much they are now dependent upon their established customer base as they are doing nothing to attract new users.
Victoria Bampton says
May 4, 2019 at 9:56 pmThat’s a really interesting take on it Eric, thanks for sharing. I suspect Adobe’s looking a few years down the line for new customers, in view of their direction with the cloud-native CC app.
I was looking at Affinity Photo earlier today, and it looks from their promo pages that they’re competing more with Photoshop than Lightroom, but I do need to investigate further. There may be more that their promo stuff isn’t showing.
Gerrit vanEck says
May 5, 2019 at 11:31 amThere is no fear mongering, and no clickbait either. They are reporting what the reality: Adobe wants to double the price of the photography plan for many people and they’re testing the waters.
Adobe is a company that has proven over and over again that it cannot be trusted. And sorry to break it to you, but the company IS being run by the marketing/finance guys, not the ‘good old friendly’ product guys. I have a lot of respect for the product people at Adobe, they have been doing great work on the new product but with bad guidance from their marketing department it all goes to waste. Every decision this company makes is disastrous and they have indeed only one ultimate customer: their shareholders.
I have two simple predictions:
– Adobe Lightroom Classic will be axed within the next 3 years
– Adobe’s Photography Plan will go up in price this year
I will check back later to see if my predictions where true. The perpetual license was also not going a way, and look what happened to it.
Look at the Creative Cloud site: their Photography plan is extremely cheap compared to all the other plans, which are $20/month for a single application. The fact that Adobe’s marketing team is testing it is because they want to implement it, simple as that.
Over the last year, I have been paying $10/month for a product that is unfinished, and practically useless since it doesn’t give me industry-standard export settings so all my edits are ruined by low-quality JPEG compression. I therefore decided to purchase an update to my 5-year old Capture One Sony license which now works with all my cameras from different brands.
The only people getting a good deal from Adobe are (freelance) professionals that make a living from Adobe software and hence for them it is all a business expense. As you can see from the comments here https://www.dpreview.com/news/6541727532/adobe-test-replaces-10-month-photography-plan-with-1tb-20-month-option, even Adobe’s apologists are running out of arguments.
Some people are joking that they bought Adobe stock, since their dividend payouts are now paying for their subscription. This is indeed the sad state of the world we live in. I am done with subscriptions – since I am basically paying companies to train their AI with my work.
Don’t take it personal Victoria…. I love your work and dedication, but I don’t think Adobe deserves people like you.
p.s. Affinity Photo is indeed a photoshop competitor, not a Lightroom competitor.
Victoria Bampton says
May 5, 2019 at 12:02 pmWe agree on many many points there Gerrit. The marketing guys have FAR too much control. I was already looking at diversifying the applications I write about, and this only confirms that it will be the right decision.
However, many of the articles and headlines were written using language designed to spark panic and drive traffic. They implied that this was a “done deal” (although many have since toned down their language) and that it would affect existing users. We reality is that we just don’t know. There are definitely some at Adobe who would like to increase the prices, but the decision hasn’t been made.
There is a good chance that the prices will go up at some point. It’s been set at $9.99 since 2013, and inflation is a reality of life today. Whether it will double is clearly still up for debate, and they’ve had a taste of the repercussions.
Gerrit vanEck says
May 6, 2019 at 11:35 pmThanks, and I would love to see you cover more applications, starting with Capture One (which happens to be the most Aperture like of the modern pack of applications). Please don’t become a Luminar ambassador since that company is too much hype over substance and I haven’t seen them deliver yet.
With regards to Adobe, my analysis is as follows: The Lightroom + Photoshop combo for $9.99 was never sustainable, and just a lure for photographers to get locked in the eco system, thrown at them at the moment Apple EOL-ed Aperture.
How else do you explain that every other Adobe application costs $20/month as a single application. Adobe new very well that 90% of amateur photographers wouldn’t shell out $20/month for Lightroom, another $20/month for Photoshop or $60/month for the full pack.
So they had no other choice then to offer it for $9.99 (which is a good inclusive price that most photographers can afford, if you take into account the previous purchase +upgrades situation).
This gets you Lightroom Classic + Photoshop + in my opinion two freebies thrown in so you can taste the future: Lightroom CC + 20GB of cloud storage.
If you want to upgrade that storage to 1TB, you pay $19.99. This storage is more or less useless with Lightroom Classic, so it is already anticipating a Lightroom CC future.
But Adobe sees it future as cloud-only (in particular document storage). Lightroom now has to become a cloud service… and Lightroom CC (the new version /s) was designed to be just that, with parity between desktop and mobile. However, this only works when you have plenty of storage… like 1TB but perhaps even more for many amateurs and professionals. Offering 2 applications + 1TB of cloud storage for $9.99 is never going to fly at Adobe.
Something data points we have:
– Lightroom CC is not ready to replace Classic for most people
– Photoshop is coming to the cloud but not yet available
– All new/modern cloud powered CC apps are $10/month (Adobe XD, Premiere Rush, Lightroom CC)
It is quite easy to calculate that the future price will be $10/month (the new Lightroom CC + 1TB of storage) + $10/month (the new Photoshop CC + most likely 100GB of storage) = $ 20/month.
While everyone is suddenly upset about the ‘price hike’, the new plan isn’t actually a price hike: the current Photography plan with 1TB storage has always been $20/month. The only thing that will change is that the $9.99 (Lightroom CC + 1TB of cloud storage) plan won’t come with the Photoshop freebie anymore which I directly link to the new Photoshop CC coming out soon as one of the new cloud-powered $10/month apps (my expectation).
TLDR: Lightroom + 1TB will stay at $9.99/month (but might indeed get a small price hike together with all the new modernized Adobe cloud apps), but Photoshop will be a separate $10/month subscription. So the biggest winner might be Affinity Photo (if Lightroom CC manages to convince people as a worthy Lightroom Classic replacement).
Zenon says
May 8, 2019 at 6:38 pmI don’t normally do this bit I wouldn’t go near C1. $300 up front and then $150 for the annual upgrade money grabbing scheme. I can tell you which day V13 will come out this year. Also if someone buys V12 in the fall after V13 comes several weeks later they stop getting updates. $450 in a 12 month span comes out to 3.75 years of the plan not to mention the free integrated website the comes with it.
I have heard that “you have a choice” line many times but I read quite a few forums and I believe most upgrade. They C1 depends on that revenue. The members on another site that covers all software could hardly wait for V12 last year. When it comes to the Adobe plan I had a choice before going in not do so and I can choose to cancel it any time I want to.
Adobe always get the hardest time out there. Time to spread the wealth.
Gerrit vanEck says
May 12, 2019 at 8:51 pmI already owned v9 Sony and upgrade for $199. If I had a v9 general camera I would have paid $149. The total I spent was $300… that equals $100/year for me. Similar to what Adobe offers. But I own this software, and which Adobe if I stop paying the subscription I cannot edit my photos anymore, or chance my edits.
I do think that Capture One is expensive (since they target professionals) and there should be a better Lightroom alternative for amateur/hobbyists. Luminar and ON1 are good candidates but both are not there yet in terms of color science and workflow. But I would give them 1-2 years to catch up.
Ultimately, it isn’t only about price… it’s also about business practices and Adobe isn’t listening to its most loyal customers while the other companies are only listening to customers (which could become problematic down the line).
With Capture One, ON1, Luminar and DxO PhotoLab there is already quite some competition on the professional side, and with Serif there is a formidable Adobe competitor challenging Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design and soon Bridge and maybe even Lightroom. My bet is on that company.
russ_tomanek says
May 17, 2019 at 12:31 pmFrankly, I think that Adobe would be smart to raise the basic $9.95 price to something like $12.95/mo. If they were to do their price increases in somewhat small increments, then they will be in a better place to avoid large, and unacceptable, price increases in the future. However, Adobe has a history of doing things which make you shake you head and wonder what were they thinking. Remember their name change from LR to LR Classic?
Victoria Bampton says
May 17, 2019 at 12:32 pmYep!!!
Jeremy Moore says
May 17, 2019 at 6:30 pmVictoria,
Your newsletter today included a link to the Adobe website showing where we could download LR6.14. As I already use LR6.14 I wasn’t particularly interested but I know a lot of people are still keen on avoiding the Adobe subscription model, whatever the price is. So I investigated and found that yes there is a download link there but It does not appear that you can actually use it unless you have a product key. Would I be correct?
The other link took us to a “special, time limited offer” of £8.32 p.m for the Photography Plan. Still a good deal for those that also use Photoshop, but I note that it is time limited. On the same page there’s a Lightroom Plan for £9.89 a month. That’s £118.68 per annum. Now I haven’t seen that before; could you clarify what is going on here? Is it more Adobe price-trialling or is the cost of Lightroom now roughly the same for one year as the full product was for outright purchase just a couple of years ago?
jerry
Victoria Bampton says
May 17, 2019 at 6:39 pmAh yes, the 6.14 link was for people who already own it and need to reinstall, perhaps because they bought a new computer.
The Photography Plan with 20GB of space is usually £9.89 a month, but there’s a time limited special discount at the moment, bringing it down to £8.32 in the UK. They’re nice to us now and again! That’s for the new cloudy Lightroom + Lightroom Classic + Photoshop + 20GB of cloud space.
Then the Lightroom Plan for £9.89 is the new cloudy Lightroom plus 1TB of space.
Joan says
May 23, 2019 at 4:27 pmHi, I have the £9.98 plan which is due to renew in August. Is it possible to take advantage of the £8.32 offer now, what is the best way to swap please ?
Joan
Paul McFarlane says
May 23, 2019 at 4:29 pmHi Joan
My understanding is that the £8.32 offer is for new contracts only. I’m sure Victoria will clarify once available.
Victoria Bampton says
May 23, 2019 at 5:32 pmYes, most Adobe offers are just for new customers. Look out for me posting Amazon special offers on social media, especially around November, as those prepaid cards can be used to extend an existing subscription.