Adobe Photography Plan

Author
Discussion

dr_gn

Original Poster:

16,368 posts

190 months

Sunday 24th October 2021
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All, with the Adobe £9.99/month PS & LR thing, can you pay for a month, and pay another month as and when you want?

I don’t need it for an entire year, just as and when I need it: probably 4 or 5 non-consecutive months a year.

I may have asked before, but ended up with the free trial that saw me through the stuff I needed to do at the time. That’s now expired.

Thanks.

Turn7

24,059 posts

227 months

Sunday 24th October 2021
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I don’t think so....

I assumed that was the case and renewed my plan...

Went to cancel it and was threatened with a £50 odd

Early settlement type fine....

Which is annoying to say the least.

dr_gn

Original Poster:

16,368 posts

190 months

Sunday 24th October 2021
quotequote all
Turn7 said:
I don’t think so....

I assumed that was the case and renewed my plan...

Went to cancel it and was threatened with a £50 odd

Early settlement type fine....

Which is annoying to say the least.
OK thanks, so you’re supposed to buy a block of consecutive months? I read that 6 months was the point at which the early termination fee after that made the annual option the best one. In other words if you only need 7 consecutive months, you’re better getting a year subscription. May have misunderstood it - none of it makes much sense for someone like me who only needs it in and off.

What stops me from buying a month, then it expires, then 2 months later buy another month? I’m not cancelling early? I’m confused!

Thats What She Said

1,176 posts

94 months

Sunday 24th October 2021
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If you arent a heavy user, consider www.photopea.com. It's free to use.

dr_gn

Original Poster:

16,368 posts

190 months

Sunday 24th October 2021
quotequote all
Thats What She Said said:
If you arent a heavy user, consider www.photopea.com. It's free to use.
I’ve tried a few free apps, but because I’m used to PS and LR it’s always frustrating. I need something that I can edit stacked astrophotography images with. So I need layers, levels, curves, nr etc as well as the more basic stuff.

Byker28i

65,914 posts

223 months

Monday 25th October 2021
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I stuck o version 6 of Lightroom, the last you could buy a perpetual licence, same for Photoshop

Turn7

24,059 posts

227 months

Monday 25th October 2021
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Byker28i said:
I stuck o version 6 of Lightroom, the last you could buy a perpetual licence, same for Photoshop
Iirc, didn’t adobe disable dehaze feature for folks that didn’t upgrade ?

tog

4,600 posts

234 months

Monday 25th October 2021
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Affiinity Photo is well regarded - I've not used it myself but I'm pretty sure it will do all you ask. I do use Publisher, Affinity's competitor to InDesign, which is excellent.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

David_M

407 posts

56 months

Monday 25th October 2021
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I'm sure that you have thought of it already - but GIMP does what you say you want and it is free.

Appreciate that it will require a lot of re-learning and possibly some alternative approaches to doing things if you already know your way around Photoshop.

sociopath

3,433 posts

72 months

Monday 25th October 2021
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I stuck with cs5, never found any need to update to a subscription, it does everything I need.

Try and find a copy of that perhaps

dr_gn

Original Poster:

16,368 posts

190 months

Monday 25th October 2021
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Tried Gimp, but found it tricky. I was going to buy PS elements a while ago, but sometimes, the new features in later updates are really good. I used anti-shake reduction a lot for some old scanned photos I’ve got. It salvaged quite a few.

Derek Smith

46,315 posts

254 months

Tuesday 26th October 2021
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tog said:
I'm pretty sure it will do all you ask. I do use Publisher, Affinity's competitor to InDesign, which is excellent.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/
I've used Affinity Photo as well as an older incarnation of Adobe's version. I can't say which is 'better', but the way Affinity merges Photo, Publisher and Designer convinces me I've gone the right way. Once you start to take the cost into consideration, the choice is made.

PS has procedures that Photo doesn't, but there's just as much in the other direction, so if money isn't a factor, I’d suggest looking to make your choice that way.

The only downside from my pov is that there isn't the same selection of magazines for Photo. In fact, there are none. The interface differs from PS, but I expected that. What I didn’t anticipate was that it would differ from their Serif ‘Plus’ software that it replaced, and couldn’t open saved software. Bit irritating that was, but it wasn’t much of a problem to be fair. The UI’s as intuitive (at least) as PH.

I bought the Affinity trio way back, 2014, actually running their beta versions prior to that, and I still have not had to pay for any additional update after my first payments. They've all come free. It’s at 1.10 at the moment and the rumour was that after 1.9 they’d go to 2.0 and charge again. Couldn’t moan after 7 years of course, but no. It was free.

I believe Affinity does a free trial period. Might not still be doing it of course. If you go that way, accept that the UI becomes second nature after a while.

I've had no problems with the software support, and there's a decent amount of help online from users, although I’ve only used it out of interest.

I’ve no connection to either software company, although I used Serif software pre Affinity, having the whole set for a few years.


Edited by Derek Smith on Tuesday 26th October 20:16

ch37

10,642 posts

227 months

Wednesday 27th October 2021
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I picked up Luminar AI for £25 recently, it's very sensitive to system spec (runs great on my MacBook Air M1, was absolute trash on my obscenely powerful PC!) and it's not for everyone, but for quick edits without being tied into a subscription it's good for my needs.

Worth a free trial at least. I have a well-ingrained workflow for motorsport and weddings in LR, but could never nail down LR for editing landscape/travel shots when I want to be a little more creative. Luminar is great for that, some excellent templates to work off and tools that simplify some fairly powerful things.

Mogul

2,964 posts

229 months

Wednesday 27th October 2021
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Great software of course and Adobe have played the long game and are in a strong position but it’s easy to get frustrated with their pricing…

Not all Lightroom users need Photoshop etc.

I have been happy with standalone LR6 but since upgrading to Catalina, it’s broken and I can’t find the old 32-bit installer anywhere so I am screwed.

My aged father has paid for the Photography Plan to get his working again but he was subsequently bombarded with marketing stuff and he may have clicked on something and added an annual subscription to the full version of Acrobat when all he wanted to do was make a simple pdf of a Word document!

I spotted the new DD leaving his account and after an hour or so of web chat, Adobe agreed to cancel his future DDs and waive their cancellation fee (I assume because they could see that he hadn’t even downloaded the software that they had ‘tricked’ him into signing up for.

If you sign up for a year, what happens if you don’t renew?

Am I correct in believing that some functions remain available but others may be hobbled?

Edited by Mogul on Wednesday 27th October 09:21

spence1886

84 posts

83 months

Wednesday 27th October 2021
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I have a tracker on the Amazon price (drops every so often on the usual sale days) and buy an annual subscription each year.

It's not cheap, but it makes it less painful when I realise I have not used it for a month.

singlecoil

34,218 posts

252 months

Thursday 28th October 2021
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Photography is my hobby, I'm happy to pay the monthly fee for Photoshop, it's the best available by a long way and I wish every other aspect of my hobbies were as cheap.

8bit

4,968 posts

161 months

Thursday 28th October 2021
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I installed a trial version of Capture One last night, only had a quick play so far but it seems similarly powerful to Lightroom for a start. One nice feature is that each tool panel can have their own presets. You can emulate that in Lightroom obviously using presets that only affect one panel I guess but it seemed like a thoughtful touch to put them on the panels themselves.

Capture One also supports layers. I do use Photoshop but I really only scratch the surface; if Capture One can cover what I need from both Lightroom and Photoshop then I may be tempted to make the switch.

A friend of mine recommends DxO Photolab, I've not looked at that yet. I got a trial of Affinity as well, that's only ten days so I plan to look over that first, then Capture One and then DxO.

dr_gn

Original Poster:

16,368 posts

190 months

Monday 1st November 2021
quotequote all
dr_gn said:
Turn7 said:
I don’t think so....

I assumed that was the case and renewed my plan...

Went to cancel it and was threatened with a £50 odd

Early settlement type fine....

Which is annoying to say the least.
OK thanks, so you’re supposed to buy a block of consecutive months? I read that 6 months was the point at which the early termination fee after that made the annual option the best one. In other words if you only need 7 consecutive months, you’re better getting a year subscription. May have misunderstood it - none of it makes much sense for someone like me who only needs it in and off.

What stops me from buying a month, then it expires, then 2 months later buy another month? I’m not cancelling early? I’m confused!
To answer my own question - as far as I can tell, yes, for an occasional user like me, I can pay 9.99 for a month for PS & LR, as and when I need it. The months don’t need to be consecutive, you just cancel and re-subscribe as and when. I think the penalty would be applied if I cancelled part way into a month. So, for me, I’d probably get away with 3 non-consecutive months for £30 for a year.

cw2k

386 posts

195 months

Monday 1st November 2021
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dr_gn said:
To answer my own question - as far as I can tell, yes, for an occasional user like me, I can pay 9.99 for a month for PS & LR, as and when I need it. The months don’t need to be consecutive, you just cancel and re-subscribe as and when. I think the penalty would be applied if I cancelled part way into a month. So, for me, I’d probably get away with 3 non-consecutive months for £30 for a year.
The 9.99 a month photography plan is a 12 month contact paid monthly with no breaks.

If you want to have a one month subscription you have to get the separate apps which have the monthly non annual option. Photoshop is 30.34 per month this way. light room is only available separately on the monthly annual plan.

If you cancel the monthly annual plan after 14 days they will charge you 50% of remaining annual cost.

Mogul

2,964 posts

229 months

Saturday 13th November 2021
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12 month Lightroom CC subscription (with 1TB cloud) currently available via Amazon for £58.95.

Any other deals on the horizon as we roll into Black Friday?