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Adobe (and Overall) Photo App Pricing Changes
3k Plays1 year ago
This week Matt Kloskowski chats with Brian Matiash about the recent pricing changes that Adobe announced and what the future could bring. Plus, we talk about how other photo editing apps have adjusted pricing over the years as well.
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Transcript
Introduction: Hosts and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, hi, everybody. Welcome back to another photography frame of mind podcast. My name is Matt Kloskowski, a photo educator over at mattk.com. And I'm joined by my good friend Brian Mattish over at Mattish.com. And if you wonder why we're laughing, it's because I tried starting the podcast just a moment ago, and I forgot the name of it. So
00:00:24
Speaker
Anyway, frame of mind, the idea behind what we do here is try to, you know, kind of mold, change, solidify, adapt, discuss things around your frame of mind for photography and photo editing.
Adobe Pricing Changes: Are You Affected?
00:00:38
Speaker
And our topic today is the Adobe pricing changes. So, you know, this is going to come as a surprise to some people because you I think sometimes, Brian, we get we get into the idea of because we're in the industry.
00:00:54
Speaker
and we know what's going on. And then it's like a confirmation bias, like you see all these things that talk about it. I just got two emails today from people that had no idea there were any pricing changes.
00:01:06
Speaker
So I look at it as like, wow, I've seen so many articles and videos and emails about this stuff, but it's not out there. And so we just talk a little bit about, first part is going to be talk about the pricing changes, what it is, what it means. I think talk a little bit about the future of what to expect, and then also talk about pricing just in general in the industry, because I think it's important as you look at Adobe pricing changes,
00:01:32
Speaker
what maybe some of the other pricing things that we see that aren't being talked about as much, but are out there too.
Podcast Humor: Technical Difficulties
00:01:38
Speaker
So, um, what do we got here? Uh, let's, so I'll let you kick it off. Uh, really. So there's some, I sorry. I, I've got a little bit of an elbow problem and it hurts to put it on the desk. So I have to cushion it. So you guys are going to see my neck pillow on my desk right now, but it's a podcast. So you don't even have to look at it because there's nothing visual.
00:02:00
Speaker
Just know that he's wearing like that neck pillow when you go on a flight. Yeah, I'll put it around my neck now. There you go. There you go. Yeah, much better. Yeah. So like you said, and I agree with you, it's easy for us to sometimes fall into our own echo chamber because this is our livelihood. So we kind of have to know about it. And also a lot of times,
00:02:21
Speaker
When we, when we go online, the things that we, we browse is also in that echo chamber. So when you do, when you hear like, what are you talking about? It's a, it's a good reminder. So what are we talking about? Well, we're talking about a few weeks ago, Adobe made some announcements in terms of pricing changes to people who subscribe to the creative cloud.
00:02:43
Speaker
Um, and something called generative credits, which we'll talk about in a bit, but I'm going to summarize for you, um, basically who's affected. And who's not with the pricing changes specifically for creative cloud. Now, if you want to know what those pricing changes are, just go to Google and do a search for Adobe pricing changes. It'll be like the first article to Adobe's help center. So, and there's good news to this.
00:03:08
Speaker
Maybe. I think so. I think I do. Yeah. It depends on what kind of Adobe subscriber you are.
Impact of Adobe Pricing Changes on Users
00:03:16
Speaker
So if you are subscribing to all the apps, like the full plan, which gives you everything, or you're subscribed to an individual app, like just one app. And that's whether you're the individual plan for Teams or for enterprise.
00:03:33
Speaker
then these pricing changes will impact you. Again, search for it and you'll find the specifics because it depends on how you pay that'll determine your rate increase. Where this is kind of good is if you are on the photography plan, which is Lightroom plus Photoshop or the Lightroom only plan. In addition to a few others, but for this audience is pretty much all photography plan or Lightroom.
00:03:57
Speaker
This won't affect you at all. No, no pricing changes for you. So that's not to say that it won't happen for now. And this is effective November 1st, 2023. So the date of recording today is end of September. Still a little bit of time. But I think that's great. I think that's kind of cool.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking at, you know, just, uh, again, you should, you should definitely look these up for your plan, but I'm looking at my computer screen now. So your, your single app plans, um, just as a quick summary for you. So $2 increase, if you're billed annually.
00:04:35
Speaker
So $2 increase per month, but if you're paying annually, then it works out to $2. Um, and then a $3 increase for the month to month. So think about it like, you know, it'd be $24 if you're paying annually for a single app, it's going to be $24 if it's $36. If you're doing the month to month option, um, for the creative cloud, all apps plan.
00:04:57
Speaker
I think that one went from 54.99 to 59.99. So you're looking at about five bucks a month on that one. And then like you said, there's the teams and there's the enterprise and all that stuff. And you got to look that stuff up. But I think we probably summarized most people watching this or listening to this. I keep saying watching, but it's a podcast. It's really meant to just be listened to. I think most people are going to be on the photography plan. Yes. You know, the Lightroom and Photoshop one.
00:05:27
Speaker
Go ahead. Oh, no, I thought you were asking me that. But yeah, I do think I would be willing to bet that most of our audiences are either on the photography plan, or whether it's the original 20 gig plan, the 100 gig plan or the more common terabyte plan. Yeah. And so the interesting thing about this, you know, so those plans have not gone up. And
00:05:56
Speaker
And there's been a lot of talk about this. Again, like Brian said, it's kind of a little echo chamber and it almost dates back. I wouldn't say dates back, but it almost refers back, you know, go watch or go listen to the first episode of frame of mind that Blake and I do be aware of photo advice. But toward the end of that, we talk about that. We talk about that.
00:06:20
Speaker
echo chamber of YouTube and social media. And so it's like, once you get into it, that's all it shows you. And so if you're not, if you haven't looked for anything like that, it might not show you anything where it's like, you know, Brian and I can't, we can't open up YouTube or social media without seeing somebody talk about this. The interesting thing though, is I like, I like to, to go
Adobe Subscription Model: A Brief History
00:06:42
Speaker
back. So 2013, when Adobe, um, announced the 999 plan.
00:06:50
Speaker
Okay, and I will call it out 100%. It was a colossal screw up when Adobe first announced their subscription plan. I think they tried to make it as clear as possible, and it was just such a colossal failure on so many fronts.
00:07:13
Speaker
And I think the audience spoke, which I actually, for a company their size, I really gave them credit for hearing what people were saying, which was, we are not paying $50 a month for Lightroom and Photoshop.
00:07:30
Speaker
In the long run, it might be a better deal. We're still not gonna pay it. Like this is too much money. That's $600 a year where really from somebody that upgraded and did all of the upgrades, you're probably still saving money, but still $50 a month is a lot of money, $600 a year for your photography hobby software. So they pivoted and they came out with that 999 plan for Lightroom and Photoshop, which I thought was ridiculously low.
00:08:01
Speaker
You know, like I was like, Hey, I'm glad you came out with something, but this is, this is stupid. Like this is $10 a month for arguably the most important part of your photography past taking the picture. Um, so I thought it was too low, but then the interesting part is everybody said it was going to be bait and switch.
00:08:23
Speaker
Yes. Oh, that's right. That's right. All you saw, all you, all you heard from people was, you know, anybody that would complain about it and you would write back and you would say, you know, they were mad that Adobe didn't have a perpetual license anymore. And you write back and say, okay, they don't, but
00:08:40
Speaker
$10 a month is not bad. And then the response to that was, yeah, but that's bait and switch in a year. They're going to lock all my photos up in the cloud. They're going to lock everything. They're going to lock all my files and then they're going to bait me in and they're going to jump me up to $50 a month. And I'm going to be stuck.
00:08:58
Speaker
And 2014 came by, 2015 came, 2016 came, 17, 18. They did dabble somewhere around 2018, 2019 with a 1999 plan. Yes. And that went really bad for them. And then you never heard about it again. I mean, the plan's still up there. It's got more space. And so here we are 10 years later.
00:09:24
Speaker
And it's the same price. I would say, find me something that, forget 10 years, in the last, since 2019, since before the world went gonzo crazy, find me anything that's not 30 to 40% more money. Exactly right. And the way I look at it, similar kind of two sides of the same coin.
00:09:49
Speaker
$10 a month or $20 a month if you want a terabyte of storage. But let's just look at Photoshop. Well, just just Photoshop. Okay. I don't know if people really remember how expensive it was to get Photoshop. I mean,
00:10:09
Speaker
$800 in some cases. And so now, what this plan did was it all of a sudden, the gates have been open and for 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month, you can have access to, of course Lightroom, no argument there, but to Photoshop, which is arguably one of the most powerful like image editing
00:10:33
Speaker
you know graphic design tools ever created and it only gets more powerful so that's something and I'm not like trying to shill adobe you know I get it but
00:10:45
Speaker
Like, yeah, like that was the thing that no one seemed to want to admit. Like, wait a second. Like, yeah, I would, we have a subscription now I get it. Um, but now I have access to Photoshop, something that I maybe never would have dreamed that I can have access because I couldn't afford $600 up front or $800. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, it's.
00:11:10
Speaker
It's pretty crazy to see how much the price went down. And honestly, we owe Adobe, everybody owes Adobe a little bit of thanks for that because you used to work it on one. And I think there was even a picture that floating around of me talking to you in front of a trade show.
00:11:30
Speaker
when it was like, what was it? The perfect photo suite or something like that. And there was a big sign behind it and it said on sale for 479.99. Like on sale for $500. That's what software costs before Adobe did this. Adobe pushed the prices down because now all of those software packages
00:11:57
Speaker
if you pay them monthly or somewhere around 10 to $15. And if you buy them outright for the perpetual license, it's somewhere between 100, 150, something like that. So you accept Capture One, which is double the price of everything else. Yeah. And that's like an anomaly of itself. And that's fine. Again, I'm not railing against Capture One, but that is an interesting point. But the other thing with the subscription model that Adobe did, again, kind of like a debt of thanks, so to speak.
00:12:26
Speaker
One of the chief benefits that Adobe made with the subscription is that it would allow them to iterate and update the apps.
00:12:37
Speaker
more frequently, like several times a year instead of once every several years. Like, do you remember how the years that would go by between a Photoshop, you know, update or Nix? So I remember Nix software, it was almost like a joke, like it's out when it's it'll be released when it's ready. Like, it was crazy. And so now,
00:13:01
Speaker
With subscriptions, because it allows Adobe or any
Upcoming Adobe Features and Release Speculation
00:13:05
Speaker
other company to realize incremental revenue throughout the year, it makes it easier to release these things. How many things did we get in Lightroom and Photoshop in the past year?
00:13:20
Speaker
So it's an interesting, it's an interesting kind of a psychological effect too, because I think I miss the days, truthfully, I miss the days when the big version came out. There was so much celebration. It was kind of the days like when the big, the big new operating system came out.
00:13:40
Speaker
Um, back in the days of your, your favorite music artists, you know, and the big album came out and everything. It was, it, there was an excitement around it. And, and unfortunately that excitement's kind of gone. The features has come, but on the flip side of that, we don't have to wait 18 to 24 months when a new feature comes out. Now we get that new feature when, when it's ready. And I would say that.
00:14:06
Speaker
I would say that some of the biggest features, typically Adobe does a big release at Adobe Max. They will talk about, so they did it different this year, but typically they do a big release at Adobe Max. And this year we got Photoshop early, but I would say some of the most impactful features have actually come from some of the dot releases in between like Profiles and Lightroom and Camera Raw. They came in like April one year. Yep. Or DeNoise AI.
00:14:33
Speaker
Denoise AI, yeah, that came this year too, and it wasn't a big major release. That feature saves you money. Yes, it does. If you were somebody that used Topaz or what's the other one, DXO or whatever, Lightroom's noise reduction is just as good, and it's in some ways to me better.
00:14:56
Speaker
that feature, that feature 100% saved you money. Okay. Now select subject or when they made presets to be adaptable and everything. You can't necessarily say those features saved you money. They're a great features, but you know, sky replacement. Definitely. It didn't necessarily save you money, but denoise AI in Lightroom and Camera Raw, if you can use it, if you're somebody that doesn't need JPEGs to run it on JPEGs.
00:15:21
Speaker
And that saved you, what, a hundred bucks? At least a hundred bucks a year? Yeah. I'm glad you said that. A year. Like, it's not like the whole point of what we're talking about. It's not like it's just one time. We'll talk about this. You're paying. That's interesting. Yeah.
00:15:39
Speaker
so like you you you're gonna be buying topaz every year for a hundred bucks or 79 whatever they charge for you're gonna be buying that every year for a hundred bucks yes over the course of five years that saved you five hundred dollars yeah so that's interesting again like Brian said it's
00:15:58
Speaker
I think we talk about it because we're both Adobe users. I want to use what's best. Yes. To be honest with you, it's interesting because people say my business and probably the same for you, our businesses are tied to Lightroom and Photoshop, so we have to talk about Adobe in a favorable light like this. Sure. I would argue,
00:16:27
Speaker
I could probably do better if I expanded my business out to all the other apps, if I created courses, because at some point you kind of, I'm not gonna say you run out of ideas, but it'd be a lot easier, life would be easier for me to just create courses for all the other apps. And I did that for a while and what I found, and I don't know if you found this, because I know you've done, you've worked with a lot of apps before too,
00:16:54
Speaker
I did that for a while. And what I found is it's really hard for me to be passionate about it. I think when people talk about our education, it's like, I can see how into it you are. And that in turn makes learning more fun when you can feel it from somebody when they're not up there just going through the motions. And when I did, when I used this other software and I did tutorials, I wasn't into it.
00:17:18
Speaker
Right. You know, it was it was just to get through it, to do a tutorial. And and so I would actually rather use all that other software and talk about all that other software because my business would would go up my business would would improve if I did it. But I just can't I can't talk about stuff I don't use. I've tried it. I know you've tried it. And it's not fun. I can't do it.
00:17:42
Speaker
I mean, that is a I mean, that's it. I feel like whenever we chat like we like this is one of those things can be its own topic just on its own a whole episode, but to kind of like one I agree 100% with what you're saying.
00:17:57
Speaker
So for me, if I create content for a third-party plugin or even what can be considered an alternative to Lightroom, I try to focus on if it offers something that's kind of unique that you can't do in Lightroom. So I covered like Luminar Neo released this panorama extension a few months ago. And the only reason why I covered it,
00:18:23
Speaker
I mean, pano is not really exciting, it's not new, and you can do it on your own. But what you can do with this extension is you can take a video clip, and you can set a kind of in bumper and an out bumper, and it'll create a pano image. Point is, I thought that was interesting and worth covering, but I...
00:18:46
Speaker
And maybe you can call it authentic or inauthentic, but I use Lightroom for my work. And so I would feel kind of, yes, I could possibly create content to serve an audience that uses OnOne or Luminar Neo, just like you. But it's not part of my day-to-day, and I would just feel like,
Understanding Adobe's Business Model and Future Pricing
00:19:15
Speaker
There are other people who it is, they use it exclusively that would serve that audience better.
00:19:23
Speaker
I agree. I agree. 100%. Um, back over to, uh, to, you know, some of the Adobe pricing changes. So, so our, our 9 99 or 1999 a month plan, whatever you're paying for, for Lightroom and Photoshop didn't go up. Um, if I were to, uh, and by the way, I have zero, zero inside information. And I would, I would believe you're the same, right? Inside information as to whether this would happen. I believe at some point you have to expect it.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yes. You should expect it. We'll talk about the generative fill credits because I think maybe that was to maybe thwart a price increase to those plans. We'll talk about how that could but at some point you have to expect it.
00:20:11
Speaker
And across the board, it's not just Adobe. All other software companies are going to have to raise their prices. Inflation is just, it's no longer this thing that maybe one news station is saying is worse than another news station. Inflation is out there. I think every single person has felt the pinch somewhere. And if you're these software companies, your salary budget has gone up.
00:20:39
Speaker
your postage to send things and to mail things and do it to stay in business has gone up. Your rent has gone up. Your, the fuel quality, everything that you do has gone up. Your, to buy a desk for an employee has gone up. That computer for the employee has gone up. The chair for the employee. The coffee machine has gone up. The coffee that goes into the break room has gone up. So, so that, that, that's gonna, it's gonna get passed down to us at some point. Like it has to.
00:21:07
Speaker
I think that's a good place to merge into the generative fill, which, oh, by the way, before we get into generative fill, and this is going to go to generative fill, is these pricing changes don't take place until November 1st, correct? Correct. Yeah. No price has changed before November 1st. Right. So if you're listening to the podcast when it comes out, we're doing this, it's like the beginning of October.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, so we'll have some time. Yeah, yeah, you got it. You got about a month. It's interesting. They came out with that version of Photoshop before Max. I'm going to guess we're not going to see a new version of Photoshop at Max. If they just released the big Photoshop. No, yeah, I thought, yeah, I'm pretty sure that this, at least for Photoshop, they've already kind of
00:21:56
Speaker
We haven't seen the big Lightroom update. Again, I'm going to guess we'll see the big Lightroom update. Every year, we see the new Lightroom update at Max. Let me guess, we'll see. I don't know what Adobe Max is in mid-October. But it's just interesting that they came out with all that and did all that. And then everybody's like, oh, they wanted extra. Nope, so I guess I should have shut my phone off. Now we know Matt's ringtone.
00:22:26
Speaker
That's my wife's ringtone. I could cut that out, but I'm going to leave it in. And again, people in very typical fashion will jump in and say, oh, they did it early because they wanted to get an extra month of revenue, but it's interesting that they didn't take the extra month of revenue.
00:22:48
Speaker
No, they just announced it. And what's funny, just to kind of reiterate Matt's point of how low we are on any sort of Adobe totem pole, this was all news. Matt and I, because we talk every day, and we're already planning the content we're going to create for Macs, because we know that that's happening. We know things are coming. The Photoshop thing?
00:23:14
Speaker
That came out of nowhere. Oh, I had no idea. Yeah, none. And no rambling like because now you have, you know, generative fill in production. And anyway, I thought it was a it was fun, but it was also kind of like, man, it wasn't great to have maybe like a couple days notice.
00:23:32
Speaker
I mean, I was preparing a course, but that kind of got moved. You're like, I got to get this going. Yeah. You know, and for those, anybody listening, like, I'll be honest with you.
00:23:50
Speaker
I don't talk to Adobe much. And that's different from back in my previous days where I used to work and everything. I used to have a lot of communication with Adobe. I don't talk with Adobe much. They don't contact me, which is okay. That's not a dig. I don't think they have to contact me. And honestly, I know enough people there that if I contacted them and said, hey, can I get an idea of what's working?
00:24:19
Speaker
Can I get an idea of this stuff? I think they would give that to us because we know people there. But at the same time, I realized I kind of stopped talking to software companies about pre-releases because I realized something about myself, which is,
00:24:39
Speaker
I think I'm really good at teaching what's there. I can take what somebody has made and then I think I would say you're the same way, Brian. You're really good at teaching what's there. I don't consider myself a visionary for what people want.
00:24:58
Speaker
And so these pre-release programs and talking to Adobe and other software companies about what's coming up and all this stuff, you know what? I kind of stopped because I don't have any feel for what people really want. You know, people will tell me some small features here and there, but I realize I'm not visionary in what people want. I can just teach it really, really good once it's there. So I don't try to get involved too much in the beta programs because I don't know that I'm a very big help there.
00:25:27
Speaker
That and also where you and I are very much on the same page is because we are educators, because we create content on such a prolific scale, and because we're both members of Adobe's pre-release program, which does have an NDA or non-disclosure agreement.
00:25:46
Speaker
We can't, obviously, right now you can't have the beta pre-release version, at least with Lightroom, for example, installed in parallel with the public version. Unlike Photoshop, where Photoshop, anyone could have downloaded Photoshop beta and had it alongside production. We can't do so. Just from an ethical perspective, I don't...
00:26:11
Speaker
I'll install a pre-release and listen, it's not like some super secret that Adobe has a pre-release program and most companies do. And I'll put that on and kind of dive in.
00:26:25
Speaker
you know, it's probably now because we're close. Exactly. But to your point, so much like of the features, those don't come from us like that. There are product managers who had Adobe who are paid to figure this stuff out. So anyway, so so let's get into that generative fill thing.
00:26:48
Speaker
Sure, that generative feel thing. I mean, if you want to kick it out, you just launched a course pretty much on like, what I would say is, and I mean, I'm actually a big fan of what you did. It's not just like this.
00:27:04
Speaker
It's generative fill, it's generative fill for photographers. Yeah, in the real world. In the real world. You just did a whole course and so why don't you just talk a little bit about what it is. Yeah, so this new version of Photoshop, and it was out in beta, so people knew about it. There's always a beta of Photoshop, for people that don't know this. In your Adobe Creative Cloud Updater app, where you get all your new apps and downloads and everything,
00:27:32
Speaker
there's always a beta of Photoshop in there.
Generative Fill: A New Photoshop Tool
00:27:36
Speaker
Sometimes that beta doesn't have anything in it, which is why you don't really see many people talking about it, but they put this generative fill, which is Adobe's answer if you heard about Mid-Journey, where it's basically text prompted image generation.
00:27:54
Speaker
So Mid-Journey came out. So this is Adobe's version of that. They obviously have been working on it for a long time. You don't just develop this in a couple of months, but they put it into the beta months ago. And then all of the creators around making YouTube videos started doing videos on it. And so you had a lot of people that downloaded this.
00:28:17
Speaker
that already knew about it. But it just came out for real in the latest version, which happened in September of 2023. So it just came out for real, this whole generative fill thing. And it's essentially, you make a selection in Photoshop, and then you get a text prompt. And you can fill that text prompt with whatever words you want to try to fill that selection with.
00:28:37
Speaker
So there's so many uses for it between removing distractions, which I think is the big one, replacing backgrounds, adding elements, compositing elements, adding stylistic menu. You did a tutorial on oil paint and I had somebody email me the other day.
00:28:53
Speaker
on because I borrowed your tutorial and I had somebody email me the other day that wasn't able to get it working and he sent me his photo and I tried it and it worked. I think he had one setting off, but it was gorgeous. It was like people pay money for plugins.
00:29:10
Speaker
Right. Right. This artistic conversion. And it was I can't wait to share it. The gentleman's gonna let me use his image to share it. It was gorgeous what it did to this. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. So anyway, so you got this generative fill thing. And then also at the same time, Adobe came out with their version of mid journey, which is that AI generated, basically generating an image from scratch. So in Photoshop, you're not really going to do it to generate an image from scratch, you could. But I don't think that's the use for in Photoshop.
00:29:41
Speaker
And Firefly, which is Adobe's website that Adobe has, like Mid-Journey, you just create an image from scratch. You just type stuff in and it makes an image for you. Correct. So those are considered generative, okay? You're generating something. You're using some kind of a prompt. Whether or not you choose to put words into that prompt, you have a prompt where you're generating an image, okay?
00:30:08
Speaker
So you have either firefly.adobe.com or generative film Photoshop. They've now introduced credits. Correct. So for the photography plan, as example, your grandfathered in at 250 credits, is it?
00:30:21
Speaker
The photography plan with 20 gigabytes. So that's the thing. If you have the photography plan with one terabyte, you get 500 credits. Oh, okay. Yeah. With the photography plan, the 20 gig one, that's like the least expensive one. The 999 one. The 999 one. If you were paying
00:30:39
Speaker
up to, if you're a subscriber before November 1st, you get 250 credits. If you join after November 1st, it's 100 credits. And to kind of give you like, what's a credit? Because I thought that was a perfect segue. So let's use mid journey as an example. Mid journey for
00:31:03
Speaker
However long, the first six months that it was out, especially after it became the hot thing, you can create a trial account and get so many generations for free. Yeah. And mid-journey for anybody that doesn't know is a text prompted image generation. Exactly right. You type in text and it generates a photo or an image for you. Correct.
00:31:29
Speaker
I'm not saying it was just because of the overuse. I know that there was actually some abuse happening. People were generating things and using it as sort of like misinformation or disinformation type of stuff like Donald. I saw there was one Donald Trump being arrested by police. And if you were to just look at it really quickly.
00:31:46
Speaker
you it looked it looked real and so and there were stuff with like the pope point is um i've never seen a pope yeah yeah the pope was like wearing like this like puffy jacket puffy furry jacket yeah and so i mean the journey is like okay that's it no more um no more free you you can only use it if you pay now with with adobe
00:32:08
Speaker
So Adobe, when they added Firefly, which is their generative AI technology, into Photoshop Beta earlier this year, you could go nuts. You can use it as often as you want. When Adobe announced the pricing changes, they also announced this new thing called generative credits.
00:32:30
Speaker
The simplest way to explain a generative credit is like Matt said, you open up Photoshop and you open a photo and then you make a selection and you say, insert an airplane.
00:32:41
Speaker
And it does it and that deducts a credit from your balance. And again, if you do a search on Google for generative credits, there's an Adobe support article where it'll show you depending on like we just, we were just talking about depending on your plan. That's how many monthly credits you get. Yeah,
Cost and Credits of Generative Fill
00:33:01
Speaker
I did. I think I found it the other day you can do Adobe generative credit FAQ and you'll get there you go. That thing.
00:33:09
Speaker
Now, one point, if you are a generative AI fiend, and you bust through your credits, you can purchase an additional hundred credits a month for five bucks a month. The important gotcha on that one is, once you use up, let's call it the 250. Let's say you have 250 in your plan. Once you use up the 250, you can still use it, but you're going to be throttled back in speed.
00:33:37
Speaker
Correct. So right now on my computer, generative fill takes five to 10 seconds. Right.
00:33:45
Speaker
So, I don't know what this throttle back is going to be. Is it going to be 60 seconds? Is it going to be 10 minutes? Nobody knows yet because it's not being done yet. Correct. And it's also important to note that this does not take effect until like the pricing changes until November 1st. So, use the crap out of it before then. And here's an interesting thing, Matt, because I did a short video about this thing when it was announced.
00:34:13
Speaker
There was a theme of comments that I thought was completely valid. What Adobe does with Firefly currently, what you can do is actually super cool, but it's hit or miss. And a lot of people are like, well, what the heck? If I do a thing and it's not good,
00:34:38
Speaker
Why I just wasted a credit. I just wasted a credit. So I agree with that actually. And also currently the max pixel count is 1024 pixels that it will fill in. I think that's going to go up to 2000 pixels. If you look, they have it on the FAQ page 2000 by 2000. Still, you know, the point is that like our buddy Blake did a video
00:35:06
Speaker
Because one of the things that you can also do, and it's called generative expand, where you can, if you have, let's say, a vertical photo and you want to make it horizontal without actually cropping in, you can use like a crop box and extend your canvas and then use generative fill. And it will, in most cases, do a just magical job of filling it in.
00:35:29
Speaker
Problem is that because that canvas that you expanded is most likely larger than 1,024 pixels, it's basically stretched pixels. It looks really crappy when you scrutinize it. And so Blake did this tutorial where he created these 1024 by 1024 blocks where you would fill the blocks like a checkerboard. Problem is, and here's the thing, every single block that you have to do, that's a credit. So you can burn through your credits in a handful of photos.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I would say I think how this resolution thing shakes out is going to be a topic of discussion for quite a while. The way that I found it to work best is you can still do a generative expand.
00:36:19
Speaker
for, you know, don't take your image and two exit. But if you had to add a little bit of space to one side or another, the quality will look just fine. If you're removing a distraction, which to me is the biggest advantage of generative fill, is I have photos where I tried Content Aware and I tried the Remove tool and neither one of them works. Like to remove a person from a group shot, Content Aware, the Remove tool generally won't work because
00:36:47
Speaker
they'll actually want to replace it with a person. It'll start to detect what's under there and you'll find a lot of times it keeps trying to replace it with some person in the group.
00:36:57
Speaker
And so there's a lot of cases where Content Aware and the Remove tool did not work. And I would just give up on removing a distraction because I didn't want to spend the time to try to get it done. And Generative Fill actually generates an area to put in there. A lot of times these distractions, they don't need more than 1,000 to 2,000 pixels. And you'd be amazed at how good 1,000 pixels looks even in your big pixel image.
00:37:20
Speaker
If it's not a highly detailed area, it looks great. Now, if you're going to go out of mountain to an 8,000 pixel photo, it's going to be poor quality. If you're going to go try to add a surfer into an image, and again, you want a big quality, it's going to be poor quality. But for backgrounds, filling in a lot of distracts, I'm not going to say all of them, but for a lot of things.
00:37:41
Speaker
You are not, I haven't come up with a big problem, but you do have to set your expectations for it. And I think that's the big point. Absolutely. I mean, when all this really quickly, when all this first came out months and months ago, I did a video and I did this tutorial and it was a photo I took of my buddy in an abandoned auditorium. We were in Detroit.
00:38:02
Speaker
and he's sitting on a chair with rows of chairs around him. And so I selected him and I used generative fill to remove him as a distraction. And that's where AI is magical because AI, it infers. It's like, oh, well, there are these chairs surrounding this guy. There are chairs in front. And so we're removing this guy. So let's put these same chairs. Let's fill that space.
00:38:27
Speaker
Man oh man, that was, I think that was the photo that made me an AI convert or believer or fan or advocate. See your value in it. I could, exactly. To clarify something for people too, I think we talked about the generative credits when you're going to get charged. Think about it this way. If you're in Photoshop and you press the button that says Generate,
00:38:56
Speaker
Okay, not when you type in a text prompt, you press the button that says generate. That's a credit. That's a credit. You may not like the results. So you'll press the button again. That's a credit. Yep. Maybe you're thinking of not liking the results and you start to type something else into the prompt and then you think I know I think this looks good. You're good. If you didn't press that button again.
00:39:21
Speaker
And then you have Firefly.Adobe.com where you've got text to image generation where you can generate an image from scratch. That's got a generate button.
00:39:31
Speaker
So if you go on there and you want to generate an image from scratch, that's going to be a credit. And then you've got the text effects, which are really pretty cool. Yes, they are. It's pretty amazing. For photography, I don't think you need it, but I bet you photographers could still use it for other things because people do different projects all the time.
00:39:52
Speaker
It's amazing. I would encourage you just play, just scroll through and look at the examples and see what problems they're using. But if you do, if you try to generate text and you click generate, that's a credit. So after November 1st, so go nuts. Yeah.
00:40:08
Speaker
So use the crap out of it now and learn its strengths and weaknesses so you're better prepared for after November 1st. But every time you click the button, that's a credit. That's the easy way to remember this. Not when you open a photo, not when you save a photo, anytime you press that Generate button, that's a credit. You will not get charged more credits. If you continue to use it, you will have to go on and you will buy them. They're not just gonna automatically charge you. If you wanna keep using it after your 250 at a slow speed,
00:40:38
Speaker
We don't know what that slow speed is. Maybe it's manageable, maybe it's not. You can keep doing it. So nobody's charging you more money right now.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yes. And this is a very common argument. You choose to use the feature and you choose to click buy on more credits. Nobody's charging you more money. Your 9.99 a month plan stays 9.99 a month. I'm a fan of the move because I don't think everybody's going to want to use this. And
00:41:11
Speaker
I don't know that this went on behind their mind, but I'm a fan of the pricing move because it puts the power in the user's hands. You don't want to use it, and I've gotten lots of messages from people that don't want to use it. Great. Nothing changed in your life. Correct.
00:41:31
Speaker
You have a feature that you actually will still get to use for free. You got a new feature. And it's just, if you want to use it more at a faster speed, you'll have to pay, but nobody charged you more. And the only time you will get charged more is if you decide that you want to use this at a faster speed and buy those credits. So I'm a fan of it because the price didn't go up and maybe that's how they held the price at $9.99.
00:41:55
Speaker
Maybe. I can't figure out how they held the price at $9.99, but maybe that's the reason why. Again, maybe I am trying to justify. What I want to do is explain to people, because I think there's this very passionate knee-jerk response of like, Adobe is charging me for this.
00:42:20
Speaker
So like Matt said, you're not paying more. If you're part of one of the plans that is increasing, that would have gone up, I would suspect, regardless of generator fill. But
00:42:33
Speaker
Generative fill, that's a, and I'm speaking from very personal firsthand experience after working for two companies, two software companies that do AI predominantly. It is very expensive to do. The server costs, the paying data scientists to constantly make AI models better,
00:42:59
Speaker
every time you could generate like math it doesn't happen on your computer that's somewhere that's a computer like a cloud computer that is crunching that information that's interpreting your words
00:43:11
Speaker
Analyzing your photo and putting something in that is masked seamlessly, that abides by whatever tone and color that's in the photo, that is exceptional. Sometimes. Yes. It's not perfect. We are still in Wild West territory, but man oh man, when it does work, can be cool. Ooh baby. Ooh baby.
00:43:37
Speaker
So this is purely speculation back to our topic of pricing. But purely speculation on my part, I think maybe, I still think the $9.99 price has to go up. I still would expect that. But I think maybe this is a move to maybe have more pay to play things in the future.
00:44:03
Speaker
you know, not raise the price too high on everybody because generally it's going to be your hobbyist enthusiasts that use that Lightroom Photoshop plan. I mean, I think your professional photographers use it too. It's just that there are, you know, the professional photography market is diminishing, not increasing. So I think Adobe's lion's share of their market using that Lightroom Photoshop plan or enthusiast hobbyists that maybe make a little bit of money with it too, but who knows?
00:44:32
Speaker
But I think you could see more features like this. And we don't know what those features are right now, but maybe more features like that. Again, purely speculation. In fact, I've never seen this feature. I've never heard talk of this feature, but I'm just trying to think of what one of those features could be. And let's say generative sky replacement.
00:44:54
Speaker
Okay. So we have sky replacement in Photoshop and you can continue to use it and you can continue to go outside and take a photo of a sky, plop it in, use it as your own sky there. You can buy sky presets. You can do all those things, but maybe Adobe comes up with a generative sky replacement feature.
00:45:12
Speaker
that because the downside of Adobe sky replacement is, is every time I do a photo critique or every time I do something where people submit photos, do you know how many times I see the same sky over and over again? Right. You know, that same like sunset sky or the same one with the clouds in it and everything like that. Right. Right. Do you know how many times I see it over and over again?
00:45:36
Speaker
Man, that's funny. That is so funny. So maybe people don't want to go out and take their own skies. Maybe they don't want to buy one. So maybe there comes a day where there's this generative sky replacement feature and X amount of credits you get for free. And then if you want to go over that and use it a lot, maybe you pay per credit. Maybe there's again, selection technology could go there.
00:45:59
Speaker
Who knows? But I would be prepared that more features might come out like this to try to keep the monthly cost down and then to make it so if you're going to use these features to the extent that you might use them of 250 credits, then maybe you pay.
Future Adobe Pricing Strategies: Pay-to-Play?
00:46:17
Speaker
I don't know. Could be totally wrong, but it makes sense to me. I mean, my prediction
00:46:25
Speaker
I still think that one of the things Adobe will
00:46:32
Speaker
um really push or or kind of like just amplify is cloud storage. I still think that's um yeah that's gonna be a big play for them especially for photographers maybe not so much for because photographers really are the only ones like you don't see them pushing for illustrator cloud you know like like one terabyte in fact I don't even know if that's not like you probably could but
00:46:59
Speaker
The photography plan or the Lightroom plan, those are the only two plans where they emphasize the cloud storage because of syncing your photos. So that's one thing. This prediction is about a day old only because if I remember, it was yesterday that Adobe released Photoshop for the web.
00:47:21
Speaker
And apparently, I haven't used it yet, but apparently it's pretty cool. It's actually pretty robust. So what I would be willing to say, because there is a Lightroom web, there's a full-on Lightroom web app.
00:47:36
Speaker
I would see us see a Lightroom web plan that you don't have access, maybe you have access to the mobile app. There's an iPad that's Photoshop. I forgot what it was called. There's a mini Photoshop app. Then there's a Lightroom for both iPad and iPhone and Android, of course. But you don't get the desktop apps.
00:47:57
Speaker
Yeah. So that's my prediction, Matt. And I'll mention it for you. For those of you that are using the Lightroom desktop, not classic. So basically anybody using anything other than what's called Lightroom Classic,
00:48:13
Speaker
Uh, Brian has just done a course on, it's called Lightroom Everywhere, which I am so jealous. It is a brilliant name for a course. The moment you said it, I was, I was pissed. I didn't come up with that name myself. Can I, can I tell you, you need to get pissed at Ashley, my wife. She is the one. Oh, she did it. That's a great name. That's exactly what people would search. Hey, how can I use Lightroom Everywhere? Right.
00:48:35
Speaker
You know, like I want to use it on my phone, my tablet, my computer. So Brian's done a course, a very, very inclusive course on everything to do with that ecosystem, which it's not easy to master that ecosystem. And I know from talking to him over the last months, he has put a lot of time into uncovering the questions.
00:48:52
Speaker
that are hard to uncover, are hard to search for on the internet and find answers to, but he's put that together. So if you're not using Lightroom Classic and you're using that other version, or you want to find out more about that other version, check out Mr. Matias's website, matias.com, M-A-T-I-A-S-H, correct?
00:49:11
Speaker
That's it, or I actually got LightroomEverywhere.com, so if you don't want to spell my miserable last name, let's go to LightroomEverywhere.com. I might have you beat, though, for last name. You have me beat, man. Justin, sheer pronunciation variations. I've heard so many with you, Matt.
00:49:29
Speaker
Yeah, yours is good, too. Yours is good. Mine has actually said the exact way it's spelled, where yours is not. It's just people see too many letters in mine, and then it screws them up. But if you just looked at it, it said exactly the way it's spelled, which when it comes to Polish names, I'm actually very lucky.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yes, many, many silent letters in them. I grew up in a Polish town. So yeah, Italian, I got the Polish and Polish name on the side of things there. So but you also have what I would argue in terms of if your URL was like if it was like the stocks,
00:50:10
Speaker
So the fewer letters in a stock, the more prestigious. MattK.com. I got lucky there. Thanks for promoting the course. I appreciate that.
00:50:25
Speaker
All right, let's finish this up. I think we got about 10 minutes left. And I think it's interesting to talk about the alternatives because we said Adobe pricing changes and the industry. But so we haven't talked about the industry. Adobe gets the lion's share of chatter because they're Adobe. They're the biggest software company
00:50:48
Speaker
You know in the world if not maybe photo, but I think the biggest software company in the world or its second biggest whatever it is Sure, so they can of course I'll get all the lion's share of chatter and they're publicly
Alternatives to Adobe: Pricing and Features
00:50:59
Speaker
traded. So it's just gonna be magnified But all these other companies
00:51:07
Speaker
they're not decreasing their prices. So I think it's important to know that people are like, oh, this generative fill stuff, I'm going to jump ship, I'm going to go find something else. Number one, I think Brian and I are both in agreement on this. We are done with the subscription conversation.
00:51:26
Speaker
Over. And the last I'm going to say of it is I'm just not going to talk about it anymore because I do a post about, you know, new Adobe software is out and, you know, it looks like you'd check out some pricing increases and also I'm flooded with the comments of, you know, knew they were not renting price software. Yeah.
00:51:43
Speaker
or not paying to rent my software, I'm done with that. I talk to people that want to use the software. If you don't want to, that's your prerogative. I think you could be making a mistake and misunderstanding some pricing things, which is interesting.
00:51:59
Speaker
So let's pull up. Oh, lay it on me, Matt. I know you got it. Show me what you got. Capture one. Well, let's do capture one. Sure. Let's pull up capture one. So when you go to capture one's pricing, all right, capture one pro on the desktop is $15 a month build yearly. You choose the monthly option. Oh, look at that. Holy crap. That's the biggest
00:52:25
Speaker
change the whatever that word is of the difference between the two the biggest difference I've seen $15 a month build yearly $24 a month build monthly you
00:52:39
Speaker
I mean, that's $10 a month difference. Like I expected $15 a month billed yearly, $18 a month billed. It's $10 more a month. So then there's this all in one bundle, which includes Capture One mobile. Okay. Which is separate. Yeah. Yeah. So if you just do the cheaper plan, you don't get Capture One mobile. That's 22 bucks a month billed yearly, 34 bucks a month.
00:53:06
Speaker
a month build monthly. So that's 12 bucks more.
00:53:11
Speaker
That's $12 more. So that's going to be roughly $340, $50, $60 a year. And then you get Capture One Pro on the desktop, which does not include their mobile option. So it looks like the only way you get Capture One mobile is if you do the monthly subscription. And then there's a perpetual license to capture one on the desktop for $300, which is two years of Adobe subscription.
00:53:38
Speaker
I think the important thing, the reason why Brian and I want to talk about this is, number one, all of these prices are going up. I remember, I'm going to pull up on one's website in a minute, but I remember for the year that I worked at OnOne, when they first started rolling out their Lightroom competitor, it was $69. I think it's $199 today.
00:54:05
Speaker
But what you have to understand is when you buy this perpetual license, people dig their heels in and say, I'm buying my perpetual license. You have to understand, number one, you are getting one version of a product. Let's say it's version 10. When version 11 comes out of that product, which it will in a year, because no software company today can survive without releasing yearly updates and charging for them.
00:54:31
Speaker
When version 11 comes out, your version 10 will never see an update again. Never get touched again. And eventually changes to your operating system changes to hardware will phase your perpetual version out. Unless you're just going to sit on old hardware and old operating systems. Yep. But it'll phase it'll, your, your perpetual version, which you feel your, your God given right to own will get phased out.
00:55:00
Speaker
And one day you won't be able to open it. So you don't own it forever. You own it for a period of time until software and hardware changes, phase it out is really what it should say. Yeah. Oh, like we talked about before we started, there is a planned obsolescence that is built into everything. I mean, you can even look at an iPhone. You can say, Oh, I bought the iPhone. I own it outright. Yeah. Well, uh, anyone who owns, for example, the iPhone SE, like my mother-in-law.
00:55:26
Speaker
No, the iPhone XR. iPhone XR next year. No more. This is her last iOS of the year. You just can't do so. And that means apps. That means, you know, somebody says, Oh, you got to get this app. Nope, they don't work on that phone anymore. Correct. I mean, you know, Luminar Neo is doing it as well. They have, go ahead. I was going to pull it up. You can say we're going to say alcohol is the pricing.
00:55:53
Speaker
Well, you want to talk about on one, or did we talk about on one? Well, just I'll pull up Luminar Neo. Yeah, Luminar Neo. One month, $20 a month. Yeah. I mean, does that even come with cloud storage? No.
00:56:10
Speaker
No, they don't have any sort of like, they're, they're starting to do their own generative AI, which is only you can only use if you are a subscriber, not if you buy their lifetime license, or scratch that you could if you have your lifetime license, you also have to buy what's called a creative journey pass, it is it is very convoluted. But the point is, all of these companies,
00:56:34
Speaker
they want you to subscribe. First of all, these companies are building their own generative AI stuff, which as I said a few minutes ago, costs money. It's ongoing expense. They all want you to subscribe, whether it's, you know, they you want to call it a subscription or an annual, whatever.
00:56:55
Speaker
However, it makes you like you're a subscriber. You're paying a recurring cost. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So yeah, Luminar Neo, I mean, 12 months, if you pay yearly, you pay, so it's $10 a month. That's like Adobe. You pay $120 a year. But, you know, Luminar Neo is a
00:57:15
Speaker
a merge of Lightroom and Photoshop, or, you know, with Adobe, you're getting Lightroom, Photoshop, you're getting all the mobile apps, you're getting all the apps on your tablets and all that cloud storage if you need it. All that stuff. So yeah, but I mean, 10 bucks a month. And then you switch over here to on one. So on one, photo raw, $179.99. And that's with
00:57:43
Speaker
So that's the Max version, which includes the ability to use all of the apps as plugins to Lightroom and Photoshop. And then it's $99.99 for just the standalone. So like I said, a few years ago, it was $69. But I think where people miss is, and I would ask you, you the user could be the only person that could answer this.
00:58:11
Speaker
Do you, did you buy the version and then did you sit on it for three and four years? Or. That's a great question. Did you buy that version saying, I am not going to subscribe. I'm digging my heels and I'm not going to subscribe. I'm not going to rent my software. And then you bought the perpetual version from other, some other company as an alternative. And we all know nobody really wants the alternative, right? But all right. It's the alternative. You know, you go out to dinner on one day and Monday night to your favorite restaurant.
00:58:41
Speaker
It's closed on Mondays. What do you say? Oh, it's our alternative. I can't go to my favorite. So we go here. So the alternative is never a good thing, but you got it as an alternative and not to say their software is not great. It's just, I know people that I know people that went over to their software.
00:58:56
Speaker
because of the subscription. And I never thought that was a good reason to switch. If you like the interface on one does, I think in some ways have a simplicity to it. Although I believe it's getting more complicated, but there was a simplicity to it.
00:59:12
Speaker
Um, if you went over the, by all means, if it suits you great, but you went over for money and what did you do? You spent the same money every year. Cause the next year you bought the update version from the software you left until the next year. So to make yourself whole, you had to buy the next version. And then the next year you bought the version and guess what that's called?
00:59:35
Speaker
a subscription. Exactly right. I mean, you know, you know, it's like clockwork around this time every year, you're going to get the emails from on one and from Skylum and from Topaz labs. You know, Topaz just had their, you know, photo AI 2.0. And
00:59:53
Speaker
You're not getting that, you know, you want those updates. If your upgrade cycle has expired, you're not getting that upgrade. You have to pay for it. And you get it for a year. Same thing with Luminar and Neo and their creative journey pass. If you want to use all their tools, same thing with On1, not knocking it. My dad had a saying, and I might be saying it wrong, but it's like specifically Matt to your point where you're like, I'm going to teach Adobe a lesson and I'm taking my 10 or 20 bucks a month somewhere else.
01:00:20
Speaker
That's cutting your nose despite your face. Matt nailed it. I don't want to belabor the point. If every one of these companies, Skylum, On1, Adobe, and the Capture One, they have their own secret sauce. Every raw editor is based on their own secret sauce. And you might genuinely love the taste of On1. Man, that just hits for me.
01:00:49
Speaker
If that's you, go with God. I wish you the best. Like keep using it and just enjoy. But if you're like, you know what, man, I love Adobe's flavor, but screw them. And this renting, uh, I'm not renting my software, which first of all, you don't ever own your software. Period. But.
01:01:11
Speaker
To give up, I mean, have you honestly, and I'm not trying to be reductive here to anyone listening, have you honestly taken a serious look at the things that you get with Lightroom and Photoshop and think that anyone else, they might have something called something similar, some similar name, or do you really honestly think that
01:01:37
Speaker
There's a comparison there, like, yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah. And I, yeah, we're not bashing. Well, it is interesting because.
01:01:46
Speaker
I'll call them out when there's times to call them out. Sure. I would say for the most part, what I've noticed since the subscription price, since the pricing flipped to subscription from Adobe and then all these other alternatives started popping up, what I've noticed is they typically are all taking features from Adobe. Yes.
01:02:15
Speaker
The difference is, but at the same time, sometimes Adobe's so far behind on something that I'm surprised. Like noise reduction is a great example. Why did it take until 2023? I know you want to say to have great noise reduction, just usable.
01:02:34
Speaker
Yes. Just usable. Noise reduction in previous versions was flat out unusable. If you compared it to what Topaz has had for years, what DXO has had for years, what Noise Ninja has had for years, Adobe was a one and they were a nine or a 10. Yes. There are some things. Most of those companies are always playing catch up to Adobe.
01:02:57
Speaker
I know he's typically coming out with a friend, but I will say, you know, on one, on one did the noise reduction first. Um, why did it take Adobe so long to come out with it? You know, on one had some, on one had some pretty complex masking built into their raw editor in some ways first.
01:03:18
Speaker
But to me, Adobe just took it and went and said, basically Adobe, if they are last to come up with something, like why did it take until 2021 to get color grading? Correct. Instead of split zoning. I will say that everyone's taking, like on one took from Topaz, like no noise. Like that was true. And same thing, Apple does the same thing. You have these individual, these indie developers who build these amazing apps and all of a sudden Apple's like, we're going to build this ourselves and put you out of business.
01:03:49
Speaker
But yeah, like I would say the trend generally, listen, there can only be one king and like people are going to, you know, these companies see that there is this opportunity to kind of siphon off or at least be a cat, a net to catch those customers who are like never, the never Adobe customers, the ones that are like,
01:04:12
Speaker
Fine, great. But don't tell me that you leave Adobe because of the money and
01:04:22
Speaker
Like I'm sorry. You can't spend the same money. Exactly. Like we do this for a living. Like we know what these apps can do, what their, where the quality performance is. I'm sorry. You're not going to tell me that. That there's something that maybe, maybe capture one. Cause that is actually quite good. But point is like overall. Yeah.
01:04:46
Speaker
Capture One is a great competitor to Lightroom. I mean, I would put Capture One as a raw editor. I personally don't care for the interface. It could be just because I'm used to Lightroom. So that's fine. Somebody's going to listen to this and send me an email and say I'm totally raw. That's fine. Everybody's got their opinion on it. But Capture One is a great competitor to Lightroom.
01:05:06
Speaker
But it doesn't photoshop correct and and i need photoshop i want distraction removal there's times where i want to add text there's times where i want to replace a background do it a lot but i do it enough that i want distraction removal is key especially for a lot of my wildlife stuff like.
01:05:23
Speaker
I need distraction removal. And raw editors, we're just not there yet. And I think it's going to be a while before we're there on a raw editor level to remove distractions. I know people see the technology in Photoshop. Why can't that be in Lightroom? But you're talking about two different styles of editors for a raw photo. Remember, a raw photo, everything's got to be non-destructive. And it's called parametric editing, not pixel-based editing.
01:05:51
Speaker
It's a little bit different, but... It is, and here's my closing thing, and then I'm done. I'm done. And I know... Because what you said, someone will probably write to you and say, well, you know what, fine, you have Capture One, you don't want Photoshop, go to Affinity Photo. Do you know why I love Apple? I love Apple because I love how it integrates with all the other Apple devices and services. Yeah.
01:06:20
Speaker
The integration between Lightroom and Photoshop is such a beautiful, harmonious integration for me. It's almost like a ballet. And I know I'm being kind of like...
01:06:32
Speaker
overly poetic about it, but it's true. That's why I'm not looking for alternatives. Find me an alternative that suits my needs and gives me the same equivalent performance. And when I say performance, I mean across the board, features, image quality, raw processing. Let's talk, but find it for me first. Don't just tell me, oh, well, this one's cheaper. To me,
01:06:58
Speaker
I don't want to skimp. And it's got to have the community. I think that's important for people that are listening to us. Use what your friends use. Make your life so much easier because you can talk about stuff and you can share ideas and tips and things. These are the widest, widest used editing apps in the world.
Conclusion: Choose Software That Fits Your Needs
01:07:18
Speaker
Rightly so, I don't think they have their place because they're just a big company. I think they have their place because they delivered really good features over the last 10 years. Not to say other companies had, and if I were to say my closing remark would be simply, we talked about the pricing changes, we talked about all that stuff.
01:07:36
Speaker
And when we talk about this stuff in the industry, it'd be use what you want. I think the prices are so close together today that don't make your decision based on price.
01:07:52
Speaker
whether it's $120 a year, maybe you love on one, it's $180 a year. That's fine. It's $60 more, but you love on one, you love what their apps do. So use what works for you and don't let price. That's $60 a year. I'm not saying $60 a year is nothing. And I understand we have a lot of differing income levels on here. So I don't want to just discount 60 bucks a year. However, this is,
01:08:20
Speaker
the most important thing you'll do in your photography, aside from taking the photo. And it's the cheapest thing you can buy in photography. Like a filter, we gladly go out and spend people gladly go out and drop hundreds of dollars on filters. But this is the software that edits your photo.
01:08:43
Speaker
It's the cheapest thing that you do. So use whatever suits you. I would just say, don't let the pricing change. And as far as Adobe goes, nothing has changed. If you're a Lightroom Photoshop subscriber, your world is exactly the same today as it was two weeks ago, and it will be the same in six weeks as it was four months ago. Nothing has changed.
01:09:06
Speaker
The only thing that can change is if you choose to use a feature more than you're given your free credits for and you choose to buy more for it, but nothing will change in your world. No price has changed in your world, which is pretty good considering the state that we're at when it comes to prices going up in the world. Couldn't have said it better. All right, buddy. I think we already said it, but where can people find out a little bit more about you?
01:09:32
Speaker
Uh, just my website, matiash.com. That's M A T I A S H dot com. And, um, you can find me over at matkei.com. We both essentially do photo education photography stuff. So swing by our websites. Um, you know, both of us, I know, I know Brian and I know myself, we're both very.
01:09:52
Speaker
in tuned with people that email into us. It's not like it goes to some customer support place that we never see. So while we may not have a full show website up for this podcast, by all means swing by the websites. If you got comments, if you got ideas, just hit the contact button, write them in a blog post. I read all my comments. I know you read all your comments. So you'll find a way to get ahold of us if you have a question or idea or thought about this. So thanks everybody for watching and or listening. I keep saying watching.
01:10:22
Speaker
Oh, thanks, Brian, for joining me this time. Thanks for having me, dude. All right, guys. We'll talk to you again soon.