A-dough-be: Photoshop flinger pumps profits 50 per cent

Financialization is an economic hack to buoy up profits in the short term. When this bubble explodes it's going to be glorious.

Is this all about moving customers to a subscription (rental) model and off of perpetual licenses?

"Our leadership in cloud-based content and data platforms make us a mission critical partner to the world's biggest brands as they transform how they engage with their customers," Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said.

Nope, unless it's also 'disruptive', no sale.

Given a capative market..

It's hardly surprising.

You make stuff on computers creatively, there is little option but to go Adobe, after all, whats the point in using an alternative (as if there are any real alternatives) if once you have sent your files elsewhere they come back and say half of it doesn't work?

I will stick with CS6 as I can't afford the subscription fees, it does everything I want.

The Extra Cost

People always tell me that the subscription price is great value. However to me it feels like those higher purchase deals where the monthly cost looks so affordable, until you add up the lifetime costs. Also once you stop paying, you lose access, so it is difficult to ever leave.

Of course the other argument is that you get lifetime updates.

There is some benefit in this, but no one ever seems to question whether the updates have any value. The truth is when PS went subscription it was a mature product. There has be nothing revolutionary in photo-processing since CS6. There has been a few tweaks, and UI improvements, but nothing that stands out. Also do not underestimate that a lot of the power of PS comes not from the product itself, but the 3rd part add-ons such as Topaz and NIK. Take those away and it would be like nn iphone without an app store.

And that is the big problem with the subscription model. It makes the supplier lazy. There is the old Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert is rotating his hands and says to Wally, "we are getting paid for this". If Adobe never did another update, they would still rake in the cash from their existing subscription base. It makes companies lazy and inhibits innovation. The only way Adobe have got away with it for now is because of their gorilla position in the market. If someting comes along with 90% of the features, but at a non-subscription price, they may find they have lost the ability to react

Adobe's model works for amateur photographers like me; I would have never paid the kind of money they used to ask for Photoshop, Lightroom etc but have subscribed to CC. I can see how trying to manage the "Cloud" side of things would be a royal pain in the arse for people administering the systems that have the Adobe products in.

I'd be happier to see...

figures relating to the installed customer base and customer satisfaction figures but of course money talks, and that's all investors are worried about. This might just be the extra drippings you get when you squeeze something dry. I hope their revenue stream falls off as people switch to software and companies that display less of the "fucking you in the arse and telling you that you love it" attitude.

Complain all you want but it's a no brainer for people like me. I get the full master collection for $50 a month instead of a $5000 one time purchase (that reaches EOL after a few years). I would never have been able to afford that in one go. If I had taken a loan to get it, then I would have paid interest on top.

And saying there is no innovation and new features is just plain ignorance. They are constantly adding new stuff. Maybe it's not useful to you but doesn't mean they are just sitting on their hands. One of the new features I've liked is preview mode for InDesign where you can share interactive documents in the browser with just an URL. Great for clients to share their brochures or catalogues online with customers.

I think it was around 2009 that I started talking with a mate about Adobe and how they should add a subscription model. Very glad they did. If you don't like it then use the legacy CS6 or find other alternatives.

I said this in 2013:

For me at least. As a hobbyist user of Photoshop I've been an Adobe customer since for ever and, to save money, bought only every other release these last few.

However what will make the difference will be the take-up by corporate customers. That I cannot guess about. So far it doesn't look good but corps. are notoriously slow so maybe Adobe will keep them as CS6 becomes too old to use.

I guess we've now seen.

A while back I discovered that a new camera needed a new RAW plugin that needed a newer version of CS. Seems that Photoshop is now, after 25 years, no longer useful to me.