Cloud Central?

I just realized that I haven't posted anything about Adobe's recent decision to discontinue Photoshop as a boxed product, and move it (and most of Adobe's other products) purely to a subscription model.

This is a terrible decision, that I think will hurt Adobe pretty badly.

While I think that it will work for some people (purely on a dollars-paid basis), I can't see it working for very many people.

But first, let's get my biases out of the way.  I don't use photoshop.  I've played around with Elements a few times (in a couple different versions), but have never really stuck with it.  I've thought about going to Lightroom (especially with my recent problems with importing in Aperture), but have never actually used it.

My main problem with Photoshop has always been the cost involved.  I've seriously considered it a few times when I was eligible for student pricing (and even thought about taking a community college course just to get that student pricing), but never did get it.  And I've never really contemplated paying full price for it (though I might if the learning curve was less steep).

Right now, I'm fairly happy with Aperture, DxO, and lots of plugins (nik, onOne, and topaz suites, along with photomatix hdr, ptlens, and ptgui pro (not a plugin, so more of a pain)).  Photoshop would add a few more capabilities (smart removal and color correction would be the big ones, although it wouldn't surprise me if one of the plugins I have does color correction.  But also layers and masking would occasionally be useful) that would be nice to have.

So, with that out of the way, why do I think this is a terrible decision?

Well, the short of it is that I think the subscription model is fundamentally flawed.  I've never bought software on subscription; it just doesn't make sense to me.  Why would this ever be an improvement for the customer?

And for the business, it actually reduces the incentive to innovate.  They're getting their money whether they add new features or not, so there's no real push there.  It likely also screws up testing cycles, as it means new versions will probably have less testing.

And the big problem, of course, is what you do when you don't have the money anymore.  Can you get to your pictures at all?  Everything I see so far is a no.  You won't be able to open up the PSD files, layered or flattened.  So you'll have to export the TIFFs.  Which works fine, but it's a slow process (as far as I know, you can't select several hundred PSDs, and mass convert them into TIFFs).

And what if you have the money at one point, but then don't have the money?  You get screwed, plain and simple.  In the desktop model, you buy it when you have money, and then you can still use it when you don't.  No muss, no fuss.

And if you don't have a stable (and fast) internet connection?  Multiple problems here.  Potentially it could cause issues with the software's periodic phoning home.  More likely, it makes multi-gigabyte downloads problematic.

And students?  Where do they fit in?  There isn't a student pricing, but the bigger issue is that students are generally not good at things like subscriptions.  Nor do they have lots of money.  Will schools pay the requisite number of subscriptions for their students?  I have my doubts.  Will professors want to teach their aspiring artists software that comes with lock-in?  Again, I have my doubts.

And if the students aren't learning Photoshop, who's going to come along to pay that absurd subscription price in five or ten years?  This is actually the big reason why it's a very short-sighted decision.

I've heard a lot of people saying that this is Adobe's way of dealing with piracy.  And I think there's some appeal to that argument, but the real question is, how is that piracy hurting Adobe?  Every study I've seen (that wasn't paid for by the BSA, MPAA, or RIAA) says that piracy helps companies, by broadening their exposure and mind share (to people with little money now, or in parts of the world where it's difficult or impossible to pay for the software).

And to deal with the last argument, that it makes sense for some people (particularly people overseas or who are using many of the other programs in the CS suite).  Financially, in the short term, it probably does.  But it locks in those customers in a way that CS didn't.  First, there's the issue I already mentioned above, about what happens if you can't keep paying for it.  And secondly, you're at Adobe's mercy on pricing, at that point.  If you go to the subscription, and Adobe raises the price (and they will, I guarantee), you're completely stuck with paying the higher price or losing access to your files.  Either way, you're screwed.

So I really don't see this being of benefit to any of Adobe's customers, even the ones who might think it is.  We'll see; there's quite a bit of time for Adobe to try to address some of those issues (especially the end-of-subscription-access one).  But so far, they haven't (other than to say that they're thinking about it).

I think Thom Hogan has it right, from Adobe's perspective, when he says that they won't even think about whether this is the right thing to do for another year or two.  But I also think he's right that this is making a lot of people question their commitment to Adobe software, and that's never a good thing.

I think this is another example of a decision with very wide impact being taken by a bean counter unable to recognize externalities.  That is, long-term effects that don't directly show up on a balance sheet.  And I think it'll be recognized (eventually) as a huge mistake for the company.