Photoshop’s New Rental Program, and the Outrage Factor

My review of Photoshop CC on Thursday â€" especially its availability only as a rental, with a monthly or yearly subscription fee â€" generated a lot of reader feedback. Some of it was astonishing.

Here’s a sampling, with my responses.

Can you rent for a few months, stop for a couple of months, resume as needed, stop as desired? That could have advantages for non-pros.

Yes, you can. That’s the purpose of the month-to-month rental programs ($30 a month for a single program, like Photoshop). Of course, having the software is much less expensive if you agree to rent for an entire year ($240 a year instead of $360).

There is an alternative to Photoshop you didn’t mention: GIMP. It has one big advantage: it is free.

Many readers wondered why I didn’t mention the free GIMP program. It does indeed do most of what Photoshop does. I’ve found it to be even more dense and complex than Photoshop. But since it’s free, everyone who’s unhappy with Adobe’s new rental program for Photoshop should definitely give it a try.

Good article but you fail to mention what happens with plug in programs. Many of us find programs like the Nik series to be much better at doing some adjustments than Photoshop. How does CC handle this?

Exactly the same way. Remember: Photoshop CC is a program that you download to your computer and run from there â€" exactly like previous Photoshop versions. Nothing changes in the way it works with plug-ins.

Does Adobe actually pay you for mindlessly reprinting their press releases and calling it “news”? An actual journalist would have at least mentioned that huge numbers of Photoshop users are FURIOUS about this sleazy move by Adobe and are refusing to go along with it. More than 35,000 people have signed a Change.org petition to demand the restoration of the perpetual license. Lots of people are going to be seriously hurt by your journalistic malpractice.

I was stunned by the number of readers who came away from my column thinking that I am a fan of Adobe’s new rental-only program. In fact, I thought that I had written a 1,300-word condemnation of this practice.

“You have to pay $30 a month, or $240 a year, for the privilege of using the latest Photoshop version,” I wrote. “Adobe isn’t offering the rental plan â€" it’s dictating it. The 800-pound gorilla of the creative world has become the 1,600-pound gorilla.”

I then listed alternatives to Photoshop, and concluded: “Nobody knows what improvements Adobe plans to add, how many, how often, or what the subscription rates will be next year or the year after that. Adobe is just saying, ‘Trust us.’”

As for the Change.org petition with 35,000 signatures: Somehow my readers managed to miss this paragraph in my column:

“The switch to a rental-only plan may sound like a rotten deal for many creative people, especially small operators on a budget. And, indeed, many of them are horrified by the switcheroo. A touching but entirely hopeless petition (http://j.mp/1aynMtK) has 35,000 signatures so far. (‘We want you to restart development for Adobe Creative Suite 7 and all future Creative Suites,’ it says. ‘Do it for the freelancers. For the small businesses. For the average consumer.’)”

It’s possible that what angered these readers so much is my reference to the petition as “touching but entirely hopeless.” This is not a put-down of the petition. This is a simple acknowledgment that companies like Adobe have already factored in the anger.

Remember when Netflix raised the price of its most popular DVD rental/streaming-movie price by 60 percent? A million people canceled their Netflix subscriptions.

An employee told me at the time that, incredibly, Netflix’s spreadsheets showed that the company would still come out ahead, even with the mass defections. Netflix had already factored the anger into its business plan.

And that’s exactly what Adobe’s spreadsheets show. Even if the predicted number of angry customers abandon Photoshop, the total annual revenue for Photoshop will increase as a result of the rental-only program.

That’s why the petition is utterly hopeless. Adobe won’t change its course, because Adobe doesn’t care about those people. It already considers them a lost cause.

It’s very clearly a case where customer happiness is being sacrificed for more profit. And that’s the most upsetting part of all.