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Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

dienliv
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p.2 #1 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

dienliv wrote:
I�m sure you would like to increase your salary�right?

chez wrote:
Adobe subscription numbers:

End of 2013: ~1.4 million
End of 2015: >6 million
End of 2017: 12 million
End of 2021: 26 million
End of 2024: 37 million
End of 2025: ~41 million

I don't believe it's ethical to increase my rate without providing better value. As we get better at our craft, we can take on bigger and better projects. Not just increasing my rate simply because I want more money.

The rate of Adobe's subscriber growth isn't accelerating like it was in the past to command a higher P/E, as many analysts would say is the metric to calculate a stock's price. Like every other publicly traded company that relies on subscriber revenue, they'll just keep increasing the monthly fee and acquire other companies that they see as viable competitors.

Sure Adobe won't grow at a rate that warrants a P/E ratio of 50+ as they reach maturity, but they're not dying. They grew into a P/E in the teens just like every other mature tech company.

We'll see the same pattern with AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. They're going to charge $20/month, build their products, acqui-hire startups, IPO with some crazy valuation, lockup period expires, VCs and C-suite exit, people call it the death of AI, revenue grows at a slower rate, introduce some Pro Plus +++ version, P/E contracts, and they'll still be around for decades to come.

Apr 17, 2026 at 04:04 PM

pete478888
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p.2 #2 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

gdanmitchell wrote:
For the record ��and not everyone realizes this is possible � my entire ACR/PS workflow now uses non-destructive editing.

A few cool things that I don�t think everyone realizes:

1. ACR has been radically updated and expanded to the point that I probably now do the majority of my post-processing right in ACR, with mostly minor stuff in PS. It used to be the other way around.

2. If you open the ACR-converted raw files into Photoshop as smart objects, they retain a live connection to ACR editing, and you can continue to edit and update them in ACR even after opening...Show more →

Juliane Kost has a good Youtube Video about new Camera Raw feature like Depth Range Masking and anamorphic Lens Corrections. I hope depth range masking will find its way into LR soon.

Apr 17, 2026 at 09:16 PM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #3 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

pete478888 wrote:
Juliane Kost has a good Youtube Video about new Camera Raw feature like Depth Range Masking and anamorphic Lens Corrections. I hope depth range masking will find its way into LR soon.

Whoa! I did not know about depth rang emaskgin in ACR. I hadn�t not seen that, but it would be tremendously useful to me. I�m off to the studio to look for it now!

Apr 17, 2026 at 10:28 PM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #4 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

^^^

OK, this feature appears in the very newest version of ACR, which I had to download as an upgrade. It is quite astonishing and will be very useful! (It isn�t perfect, obviously. For example, it is confused by things like tree branches in front of distant mountains. But still�)

Apr 17, 2026 at 11:02 PM

Caleb Williams
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p.2 #5 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

dienliv wrote:
I don't believe it's ethical to increase my rate without providing better value. As we get better at our craft, we can take on bigger and better projects. Not just increasing my rate simply because I want more money.

I do not mean this as an attack on you or your position, but I wonder how a company can or even should evaluate user adoption of new features to determine increased value and use that as a metric to increase prices above the level of inflation. Adobe would say that they have added features all the time, but those new features may not be of use to you.

Should increased pricing only effect certain apps or be across the board? Unlike a service like Netflix that provides content as their sole service, the only increase in features is more or better content to stream.

Or should that even matter? Should users vote with their wallets and unsubscribe if the value proposition is no longer there?

I am genuinely interested in your (and others') thoughts in this topic.

In my case, I was perfectly happy to buy a single time to own a given version of Adobe and then not need to upgrade until there value proposition is there for me. I don't think I use most of the newer features of Photoshop. Content Aware Fill, while not a new feature of recent released, is probably the newest feature I use, and that's only very occasionally.

That said, it appears I will be paying $70.00 month for the privilege of knowing I can use all those new features should I wish.

Apr 18, 2026 at 04:03 PM

Taperwing
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p.2 #6 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Caleb Williams wrote:
That said, it appears I will be paying $70.00 month for the privilege of knowing I can use all those new features should I wish.

Curious where you are getting the $70.00/month number. Prepaid LRC+PS 1TB plan is $239.98/yr (Link to Adobe for this deal)

Cheaper if you only want the 20GB plan.

I won't try to convince anyone that is a 'steal' but $240 will buy me only 4, of the 12, ink cartriges for my PRO-1000 printer. It also won't get you very far in purchasing new photo equipment. Heck, I started to dip my toes back into the analog world, and a couple hundred evaporated right before my eyes. YMMV.

Apr 20, 2026 at 09:23 PM

Caleb Williams
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p.2 #7 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Taperwing wrote:
Curious where you are getting the $70.00/month number. Prepaid LRC+PS 1TB plan is $239.98/yr (Link to Adobe for this deal)

Cheaper if you only want the 20GB plan.

I won't try to convince anyone that is a 'steal' but $240 will buy me only 4, of the 12, ink cartriges for my PRO-1000 printer. It also won't get you very far in purchasing new photo equipment. Heck, I started to dip my toes back into the analog world, and a couple hundred evaporated right before my eyes. YMMV.

I have the full suite (Creative Cloud Pro).

Apr 20, 2026 at 10:02 PM

ruthenium
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p.2 #8 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

"Affordable" shouldn't be conflated with "meaningful" or "useful". For an unrelated to photography example, university education can be affordable but too often is neither meaningful nor useful for students (and can do real harm sometimes).
I disagree with the argument that one shouldn't question whether regular payments are meaningful simply because the costs are relatively low, like two cups of coffee, three cups of coffee, two cartridges, etc..
The costs should better be justified in terms of usefulness, e.g. "Adobe products are essential for my photography, and there's no equivalent alternative" or at the very least in terms of being generous, e.g., "I am happy to send monthly donations
to Adobe because I like the company".

Apr 21, 2026 at 07:38 AM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #9 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

I know that no one likes to pay for things they use � hey, free is great, right?

If the value of a particular Creative Cloud license isn�t there for you� don�t buy it.

For my part, the value of having a complete �digital darkroom� that is far more powerful than my old-school analog darkroom was, is well worth the expense. (An expense that also seems not all that large when viewed as a percentage of my total expenses on photography, including equipment, travel, etc.)

There are less powerful, inexpensive (and even free) alternatives is you don�t need the power of the Adobe tools.

Apr 21, 2026 at 08:37 AM

ilkka_nissila
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p.2 #10 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

gdanmitchell wrote:
I know that no one likes to pay for things they use � hey, free is great, right?

If the value of a particular Creative Cloud license isn�t there for you� don�t buy it.

For my part, the value of having a complete �digital darkroom� that is far more powerful than my old-school analog darkroom was, is well worth the expense. (An expense that also seems not all that large when viewed as a percentage of my total expenses on photography, including equipment, travel, etc.)

There are less powerful, inexpensive (and even free) alternatives is you don�t need the power of the Adobe...Show more →

I think it's actually a problem that the LR/PS subscription is so cheap, there is no way competing products can really take significant market share when the market leader offers so much for such little money. The full CC subscription on the other hand may or may not be considered good value, depending on which products you need. The other software makers either have to price their products high or offer a subscription (with far fewer features, less support for lenses and cameras etc.) and one can easily end up paying a lot more and getting a lot less, and still need Adobe software for specific tasks. When Adobe software was only available as permanent licenses I could not afford to buy anything but the most essential and then when I occasionally needed something else it was simply not available without an expensive license. CC subscription can be obtained for just a brief time doing a specific task which makes it in some cases substantially more affordable than the old system. What I don't like about the subscription system is that software makers produce low quality releases that have significant problems and then the user has to act as beta tester and roll back to earlier software if there is a problem they can't work with, and wait for the next bug fix release. It used to be that software was better tested before release and so people didn't have to deal with the hassle of changes to the UI etc. all the time. However, because of the low cost (not in all cases, but for the PS/LR it is) people put up with it, I guess.

Another problem which I don't like is the loss of support for older operating systems due to security updates being ended; this can also mean older versions of application software might not work with the new OS and an upgrade license is needed anyway, so there are recurring costs in any case and a subscription is just one way to even out the cost over a longer time period. I would think security could be built into the OS in a way that it doesn't need updates, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

Apr 21, 2026 at 09:23 AM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #11 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

ilkka_nissila wrote:
I think it's actually a problem that the LR/PS subscription is so cheap, there is no way competing products can really take significant market share when the market leader offers so much for such little money. The full CC subscription on the other hand may or may not be considered good value, depending on which products you need. The other software makers either have to price their products high or offer a subscription (with far fewer features, less support for lenses and cameras etc.) and one can easily end up paying a lot more and getting a lot less, and...Show more →

When Adobe first rolled out the subscription model I was anything but a fan. In fact, I was one of those �I�ll NEVER subscribe� people, and I encouraged others to resist, too. My fears were that�

1. Adobe would hook us on a cheap subscription and only then start jacking up the monthly cost once we were unable to say �no.� That did not happen. After some quick pricing adjustments very early on (including the introduction of the less expensive photography subscription) Adobe did not raise prices at all for over a decade! (Even now, some of us who stuck with our photography plan and who switched from paying monthly to paying annually get the same rate of about $10/month!)

2. Given that they would no longer have the incentive to upgrade the products every few years in order to get consumers to shell out for the next upgrade�s new features, I feared that Adobe would slow the rate of innovation and new features. That also did not happen, and now new features and upgrades are rolled out continuously via the regular updates. And some of those new features are extremely powerful. Just this week, for example, several were added that are super useful in my work.

Some of you are perhaps spending something like $20/month for the photography software, right? I�ll bet that most of you spend that much a week on fast food, stops for coffee, and more � things that are far less critical to your work than these Adobe tools.

Do I think Adobe is above criticism? No, not at all. For example, I�m very much NOT a fan of their attempts to get is to buy into their cloud storage products� when most of us already have access to other cloud storage. I�m also a bit leery of where they are going with add-on costs for certain AI-based tools.

But has the subscription arrangement worked out well for me and provided good value? Yes.

Apr 21, 2026 at 10:09 AM

Camperjim
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p.2 #12 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

gdanmitchell wrote:
Some of you are perhaps spending something like $20/month for the photography software, right? I�ll bet that most of you spend that much a week on fast food, stops for coffee, and more � things that are far less critical to your work than these Adobe tools.
.......

Not really. I don't do massive amounts of post processing adjustments. I don't need AI tools. I have no idea about most of the added on Ps/Lr tools. I open raws with free Canon DPP4 software and my final adjustments (dodge/burn, level, saturation, contrast, etc) are with a endless 2019 Elements app.

I rarely buy fast food and when I do I use a coupon which knocks about 1/3 off the price. I tried Starbucks once and got burnt coffee with a lot of sugar and cream.

Lots and lots of us, even enthusiastic photographers, are not shooting, processing and printing daily or weekly. I might process a half dozen images a month, sometimes considerably more, and often also less. I don't need to spend several dollars a file for the straight photography approach I prefer.

Apr 21, 2026 at 10:48 AM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #13 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Camperjim wrote:
Not really. I don't do massive amounts of post processing adjustments. I don't need AI tools. I have no idea about most of the added on Ps/Lr tools. I open raws with free Canon DPP4 software and my final adjustments (dodge/burn, level, saturation, contrast, etc) are with a endless 2019 Elements app.

I rarely buy fast food and when I do I use a coupon which knocks about 1/3 off the price. I tried Starbucks once and got burnt coffee with a lot of sugar and cream.

Lots and lots of us, even enthusiastic photographers, are not shooting, processing and...Show more →

OK, different analogies then. The monthly cost is about the same as a couple of gallons of gas in California...

And, still, by comparison to the costs of cameras and lenses and tripods and travel to make photographs and printing... the cost of this software is, in all honesty, a good bargain.

If you don't need the features that the Adobe tools offer ��which I think is what you are saying pretty clearly � then you can use a different option that costs less from a competitor, or just use DPP if that works for you.

Apr 21, 2026 at 02:14 PM

chez
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p.2 #14 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Camperjim wrote:
Not really. I don't do massive amounts of post processing adjustments. I don't need AI tools. I have no idea about most of the added on Ps/Lr tools. I open raws with free Canon DPP4 software and my final adjustments (dodge/burn, level, saturation, contrast, etc) are with a endless 2019 Elements app.

I rarely buy fast food and when I do I use a coupon which knocks about 1/3 off the price. I tried Starbucks once and got burnt coffee with a lot of sugar and cream.

Lots and lots of us, even enthusiastic photographers, are not shooting, processing and...Show more →

So you then don�t need PS / LR and you would not need it even if the license was perpetual. Some of us that subscribe to the photographers package do use many of the features in PS / LR and we do get our value out of the subscription.

I still drive a 2009 CRV�others jumped into the latest Tesla. I don�t see the value of these new cars as my CRV still gets me to the grocery store and back�but if someone gets a Tesla�all the best to them. People all have differing needs and priorities and just get what you need.

Apr 21, 2026 at 03:18 PM

gkinard1952
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p.2 #15 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

My guess is in 5 years you will able to push the raw files through the manufactures software, or even use the raw files directly. And just verbally say to your AI, do a Denise on the bird retaining all the detail you can, and take away the noisy background completely or what ever percentage you want. Then color enhance however you want to. Same as in (LR,Photoshop) but with verbal commands. Probably do batch post processing just by asking your agent or AI which knows how you like to process images to take care of it.

Advantage is, you pay 20/mo. But, get this as a bonus, as well as all the other features AI can give you and help you with.

Apr 23, 2026 at 11:17 AM

Mark Metternich
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p.2 #16 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Taperwing wrote:
One thing I would love to see in LRC is selection modification tools (expand, contract, feather, etc.). I do a lot of masking and selective editing, where these tools would be appreciated. While the AI selection tools, like Sky and Subject, are quite powerful, one can end up with light or dark halos at the selection margins. These effects can be mitigated by zooming in, and using a small, soft brush to adjust, but what a pain in the backside.

Maybe there is better way that I'm missing?

For me ever since they gave us RAW smart objects (raw layers) in Photoshop, you�re able to do all of that, but on a raw layer, keeping it lossless. I still find this to be the ultimate Quality workflow and having the most powerful and finesse tools on the market still today.

Basically, just do what you do in Lightroom to the Raw file (or Camera Raw) then import it into Photoshop (as a raw smart object). Once it arrives in Photoshop, you can right click on it and choose duplicate smart object, and now you have the same raw file, but duplicated as a layer. And you can double click on its layer thumbnail icon, and you can make your adjustments in camera raw, and then hit OK, and now you will have one of the layers updated showing the new raw adjustments, and you can use all of Photoshops power and finesse. Blend modes. Finessed masking. �Blend If� masking of specific tones, and on and on� when I first started doing it, I was pioneering in it, and people gave me a hard time. I�m still doing it today with the best possible results. And it�s actually quite common. I find a lot of people who want to keep the rasterized degrading adjustments down to a minimum.

It�s my job to test everything that comes out, because I�m in the business of pushing quality into further and further territories, and to date I have found nothing that beats this. Basically, I advocate for pushing the non-destructive raw layer workflow as far as you can. And then once you Rasterize it (you can do a �stamp up� control/alt/shift/E - merge all visible layers) and you can save that as a separate document, but you can keep all your raw layers, in case you ever want to go back to them.

And then if you want to do further editing on the rasterized - 16bit tiff or whatever you save it as� you can do all the things that you usually do or know how to do, if necessary, but you�ve pushed the non-destructive part as far as you can. This yields unprecedented results for those who are after it. And you�re correct, to date the Lightroom/Camera Raw selection, adjusting leaves a lot of desire for more finesse. But you get that and a world more once you import it as a raw layer smart object! I have a video out on the subject and it has sold so many times I can�t even count. And I have gotten so many testimonies of people who just rave about the workflow and quality.

Apr 26, 2026 at 07:40 PM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #17 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Mark Metternich wrote:
For me ever since they gave us RAW smart objects (raw layers) in Photoshop, you�re able to do all of that, but on a raw layer, keeping it lossless.

For even more adventurous fun, you can have multiple raw file smart objects in a single Photoshop file, one per layer.

More useful to most people probably is the fact that by importing raw layers into Photoshop as smart objects you can almost always have a completely non-destructive workflow in ACR/Photoshop. I don�t think that everyone has caught on to this yet.

Also, Adobe has greatly improved the ability of ACR to do things that we used to do in Photoshop, and this has become even more powerful in the latest release. There are all kinds of really powerful ways to create masks in ACR, including ways to invert and combine them. Other new features automate what used to be drudgery � there�s now an automatic dist removal tool, for example. The �landscape� masking tool will identify and separately mask elements of a scene such as mountains, vegetation, sky, water, etc. There�s a mask to select people, and you can then adjust what they look like in the usual ways or even remove any or all of them.

The Adobe AI denoise tool in ACR is close to miraculous. I�ve rescued old files that were grossly underexposed at high ISO, files that were a loss until this tool was added.

Once you have the smart object as a layer in Photoshop, you can easily take it right back into ACR for more adjustments or to remove previous adjustments � just double-click the layer in Photoshop.

Adobe, if you are listening, unless I�ve missed it there is no way easy way to feather the edges of mask selections in ACR. For that I still have to travel to Photoshop�

FWIW, I�ve been using this non-destructive ACR/Photoshop workflow for years now. It is extraordinarily powerful, and I�m still surprised by how many people simply don�t know that it exists or how powerful it is.

Edited on Apr 28, 2026 at 11:09 AM · View previous versions

Apr 26, 2026 at 10:20 PM

Taperwing
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p.2 #18 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

Mark and Dan, I appreciate all of the info on the latest and greatest, non-destructive workflows. Looks like I'm going to have to dust off my rusty PS skills, and add in some new ones.

Recently, I have been a bit busy with life in general, but am chomping at the bit to get back to image editing and printing.

Apr 27, 2026 at 08:19 AM

davidrwilliams
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p.2 #19 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

gdanmitchell wrote:
When Adobe first rolled out the subscription model I was anything but a fan. In fact, I was one of those �I�ll NEVER subscribe� people, and I encouraged others to resist, too. My fears were that�

1. Adobe would hook us on a cheap subscription and only then start jacking up the monthly cost once we were unable to say �no.� That did not happen. After some quick pricing adjustments very early on (including the introduction of the less expensive photography subscription) Adobe did not raise prices at all for over a decade! (Even now, some of us who stuck with...Show more →

<====THIS!!!

Couldn't have put it better for myself, myself.

Apr 27, 2026 at 02:22 PM

Camperjim
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p.2 #20 · Adobe is dying a slow painful death.

I am so unsophisticated with Lr/PS that I do not understand non-destructive workflow. After I finish editing, I use "save as" and the original file is not touched.

Apr 27, 2026 at 02:56 PM

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