The Torture of Trying Adobe

Sony Corleone

Sony Corleone

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Yes
I had a very bad experience with Adobe.

When you sign up for a free Lightroom plus Photoshop trial, they tell you you're paying by the month and you can cancel any time. This is deceptive, because they actually bind you to a yearly commitment. The only benefit is that you pay by the month. If you cancel, you still have to give them a lump sum based on the yearly price.

My trial ended today. Yesterday, I went to their site and started to cancel, thinking maybe they would give me a deal. One week is not nearly enough time to get used to this software, so I thought I would see if they would reduce the monthly rate, and I could study the software for another month before making a firm choice.

Yesterday, the site said I still had a day, so I decided to try again today. Then when I tried, Adobe's site blocked my ability to manage my plans. It is literally impossible to do it. I had to chat with some guy in India whose English was extremely poor.

He could not answer a straight question, and as far as I can tell, he tried to swindle me. He said they would give me two free months, which was all right, but he didn't tell me what would happen if I canceled at the end of the two months. Would I pay for two months? Was it free? How much would they be charging me today? He kept refusing to answer these questions, so I had no idea what they were offering.

I kept asking him when the site would remove the block so I could handle cancellation and discounts that way, and I could not get him to tell me. When he finally relented, he gave me a link to the site, which was still blocked.

I finally told him to cancel and give me a full refund, so that is where we are now. It appears I can't learn to use the software without committing to a payment Adobe refuses to specify.

Adobe's business practices are clearly crooked, and that is unfortunate. Maybe I would have paid for a year if they had been straight with me, but I was so frustrated after chatting with their incompetent rep, I just wanted to end the experience.

I think nothing of spending $500 or more for a lens, and I gave DxO over $300 without blinking, but dealing with dishonest idiots on a $200 deal is just too much aggravation. There are a ton of other fine programs out there.
 
A horrible experience and I feel for you having gone through a similar charade some years ago.

Try Canva Affinity Studio. It’s also free of charge.
 
Thanks. I have that, and I am enjoying Photolab and Excire Foto.

My impression of Adobe's programs is that they are best for busy pro photographers who spend all day removing pimples from prom photos and making things like calendars and restaurant placemats. In my limited experience, It seems like Lightroom is set up to jam photos into certain molds that are likely to appeal to undiscerning customers. Photolab seems to be much more geared to creating tasteful photos that don't look like cartoons.

I'm probably wrong, but thanks to Adobe's poor treatment of customers, I won't have the opportunity to find out. Who can learn Photoshop in a week? Who would pay for a year's subscription just to learn?

I uninstalled Lightroom and Photoshop because I didn't want Adobe to send me an email saying they had charged me because their cloud-connected programs were still on my PC. I just want Adobe out of my life. Now I have to figure out how to get rid of the Creative Cloud app, which refuses to leave. I also have Photoshop Elements 2024, which has been of zero use since I bought it. I should dump that, too.
 
Sony Corleone said:
My impression of Adobe's programs is that they are best for busy pro photographers who spend all day removing pimples from prom photos and making things like calendars and restaurant placemats. In my limited experience, It seems like Lightroom is set up to jam photos into certain molds that are likely to appeal to undiscerning customers.
Click to expand...

I can assure you.... I'm not a pro photographer, I don't spend all day removing pimples, and neither do I make calendars or restaurant placemats :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:

Your rant did make me chuckle though :)
 
I was not in the best mood when I wrote it, so it is conceivable that there may be some bias in there.
 
Definitely a rant.
I am a long-time Adobe user. I am certainly no pro and don't do pimple removal.
Adobe have not increased the price of its Photography package in the last 10 Years. They have also delivered a constant stream of additional features.
Guess they are not for you.
 
They doubled the price in January of last year.

The price isn't the issue. It's the dishonesty and disrespect. I just shelled out $200 for Excire, and it didn't bother me at all, but I don't want to be scammed into a year of Adobe.
 
I pay the same now annually as I did 10 years ago. I just renewed again last week.
 
They give better deals to existing users. For me, it's $240 per year.
 
You don't need more than Photolab and Affinity.
I currently load into PL5 and finish in Affinity 1, though with Fuji jpegs there is a lot less to do. :)
 
Sony Corleone said:
They give better deals to existing users. For me, it's $240 per year.
Click to expand...
Guess that's the penalty for being a late adopter ;)
I got the first couple of versions of Lightroom free as I was an existing user of Rawshooter Pro, which Adobe took over. This gave me plenty of time to learn Lightroom. I cannot imagine being without it. I did try some/many of the alternatives, and some, such as DxO and Capture One, came close; however they would have incurred a steep learning curve, which at my age I simply don't have the time or inclination to do.
 
gramps said:
You don't need more than Photolab and Affinity.
I currently load into PL5 and finish in Affinity 1, though with Fuji jpegs there is a lot less to do. :)
Click to expand...

This exactly, can do everything I need with DXO and Affinity photo
I did used to subscribe to Adobe but found that I preferred Affinity for what I do anyway, macro photography
I wasn’t able to successfully remove the Adobe program from my old MacBook and would be very loathe to install it on my new one , Im not a computer expert though
 
LCPete said:
I wasn’t able to successfully remove the Adobe program from my old MacBook
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Adobe is so deeply embedded in the host computer that it needs a whole new piece of software to remove it!
 
gramps said:
Adobe is so deeply embedded in the host computer that it needs a whole new piece of software to remove it!
Click to expand...
Ahh I see that explains it , no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get rid of it all
The Adobe icon at the top right of my Mac bugged me especially :oops: :$
 
You just need to shop clever, there are deals to be had.
But from what I am reading, Adobe clearly isn't the software for you.

I'm not a fan of subscriptions, for anything really, but they're a cruel fact of life now. I find Adobe to be decent, I've used it for over 10 years now, I get a student deal so I get a good deal (via my son who's going to Uni), so technically it's his subscription :ROFLMAO:

I will say though, as someone who has used Adobe products for years, the improvements in the last few years have been dramatic, the masking in Lightroom used to be absolutely awful, so much so that you had to send the image into Photoshop to do anything with it that required masking elements such as sky, but now, not only can you do it in Lightroom, but you can copy and paste the masked adjustments to all your images in one click, so if you have 50 images and you just want to mask the sky and increase the clarity and add a little dehaze, you do it in your first image, copy the masks, select all other images and paste, job done.

There are many alternatives out there though so as consumers we are spoilt for choice. :)
 
It does say "Annual, billed monthly) under the monthly payment option. Isn't that a bit of a clue?

In fact US customers get an option we UK customers don't
US$ 29.99/mo - cancel anytime no fee
US$ 19.99/mo - annual, billed monthly
US$ 239.88/yr - annual, prepaid
 
wornish said:
Definitely a rant.
I am a long-time Adobe user. I am certainly no pro and don't do pimple removal.
Adobe have not increased the price of its Photography package in the last 10 Years. They have also delivered a constant stream of additional features.
Guess they are not for you.
Click to expand...

I think they have pressed the boundaries of what is right and wrong in terms of consumer rights.

As regards 'constant stream of additional features' - one of the reasons Adobe and Microsoft have gone down the subscription route is that from the mid 2000s they realised that the new features they could add wouldn't have enough value to persuade customers to pay for updates. So the subscription model; allows them to do less for more money than they would otherwise make.

As a transaction - the subscription initially benefits the customer as it gets them a low entry. But eventually benefits the supplier .... a lot.

A more honest way to run subscriptions would be to allow a monthly rental --- with a monthly term. And discounted annual terms. But Adobe basically run it on an annual basis - a bit like an insurance company -- so you reach yyour anniversary and continue then you effectively agree to a new minimum term - where as with a monthly contracts like broadband deals you normally end up being able to cancel at a month's notice after the minimum term.

What Microsoft and Adobe are doing is not actually consumer friendly over the long term. It locks out competition and locks them in as incumbents.
 
andrewc said:
It does say "Annual, billed monthly) under the monthly payment option. Isn't that a bit of a clue?

In fact US customers get an option we UK customers don't
US$ 29.99/mo - cancel anytime no fee
US$ 19.99/mo - annual, billed monthly
US$ 239.88/yr - annual, prepaid
Click to expand...

Interesting.
 
Sony Corleone said:
Thanks. I have that, and I am enjoying Photolab and Excire Foto.

My impression of Adobe's programs is that they are best for busy pro photographers who spend all day removing pimples from prom photos and making things like calendars and restaurant placemats. In my limited experience, It seems like Lightroom is set up to jam photos into certain molds that are likely to appeal to undiscerning customers. Photolab seems to be much more geared to creating tasteful photos that don't look like cartoons.

I'm probably wrong, but thanks to Adobe's poor treatment of customers, I won't have the opportunity to find out. Who can learn Photoshop in a week? Who would pay for a year's subscription just to learn?

I uninstalled Lightroom and Photoshop because I didn't want Adobe to send me an email saying they had charged me because their cloud-connected programs were still on my PC. I just want Adobe out of my life. Now I have to figure out how to get rid of the Creative Cloud app, which refuses to leave. I also have Photoshop Elements 2024, which has been of zero use since I bought it. I should dump that, too.
Click to expand...


I'm going to defend Adobe for the excellence of Lightroom (Classic, that is) It is so much better than it used to be and I just wonder how many photographers would use Photoshop if it was introduced now. However their pricing structure is complicated and a bit weird. Until very recently you could get PS, LR and LRC for about £70 pa if you bought it from Amazon at the right time of year. (Black Friday, Amazon prime Day) Sensible people stacked several years subscriptions at that price. I suspect things have changed recently but as i am stacked until next year (IIRC) it will be a while before i discover how much i will have to pay then. I hated the subscription model when it was introduced but after trying Photolab for a while reralised my only real option was to swallow my pride and go back to Adobe. I'm glad i did.
 
jerry12953 said:
I'm going to defend Adobe for the excellence of Lightroom (Classic, that is) It is so much better than it used to be
Click to expand...

There is an irony. A few years ago Adobe looked like they really really wanted to kill off LR Classic -- but not enough of us were willing to switch to the cloud version.

I started passing on LR Classic about five years ago -- switched to Capture One for new work. Having been using LR and Camera Raw more over the last year and a half I'd say that Adobe have responded to some of the good bits of Capture one and improved LR over the last 5 years.

In terms of studio based professionals I have met in the last year - Capture One has a solid presence. So it probably drives Adobe to compete without a lot of their LR customers realising that Capture One is the underlying impetus.
 
The way they treat customers, not the quality of the programs, was the big issue for me. I am old, and I don't put up with contempt, thoughtlessness, and dishonesty the way I used to. As for being a late adopter, all new customers are late adopters, and I can't go back in time and adopt before I got serious about editing. If I could, I would buy Nvidia stock instead.

Bottom line regarding price: I was looking at $720 for three years, assuming no more increases. With Excire, free Affinity, and Photolab, I paid less than that, Excire is amazing, Photolab is wonderful for what I do, and upgrades for both are very heavily discounted, unlike full-price Adobe subscription renewals. I haven't felt any need to use Affinity in a while, but it's there if I want it.

When I renew Photolab, I can expect to pay 50% of the full price of the latest version, as long as I do it within two cycles, so depending on the breaks, I'm looking at something like $80 per year. Excire upgrades are around $35 per year unless you insist on doing it yearly, which is unnecessary. So $115 per year for Excire and Photolab, and these programs seem very, very good.

I was careless about signing up. I admit that. On the other hand, the whole purpose of a "free trial" is to allay customer concerns by convincing them there is no risk, so they will subscribe hastily. I should have just forked out $30 for a month. I don't know if Adobe tacks auto-renewals on inconspicuously for monthly users.

None of this would have mattered much to me if they hadn't tried to swindle me. Yesterday, I ordered a $900 lens, and I think it was money well spent. Telling me I still had a day left and then blocking me from canceling, putting me on chat with an incompetent who refused to answer basic questions and who hid important details...these are the things that really drove my decision. After 20 minutes of chatting with someone who acted like he was high on something, my patience snapped, and my other programs started to look really good.

I was also unhappy to be told that Elements, which I bought outright, limited colors in JPG's. This was on my mind while I was stuck in that chat, and it added to my annoyance. Adobe sold me this product without mentioning the color problem. That seems like an odd detail to leave out when selling to a person who edits photos. I'm not crafting narcissistic selfies for Instagram. I am decorating my house with family photos and my efforts at artistic shots. I want things to look as good as they can.

Affinity does not restrict colors. Just tossing that out. I wonder if there is any reason for anyone to use Elements now.

I don't rule out trying Adobe again in the future, but I have zero incentive to deal with them right now. I feel like I just divorced a crazy wife, so right now, I'm off with my hot new girlfriends.
 
Now that I think about it, I could have Lightroom for a few dollars per year. If I ever run into problems it handles really well, I can sign up for a month, fix them, and quit.
 
How does Elements limit colours in JPEGs?
I don't use it often but have never noticed a problem
 
You would be better off asking AI. That's how I found out.
 
He tells me that it can limit colours but only if you change the mode from JPEG, the default is the standard millions of colours
 
Sony Corleone said:
You would be better off asking AI. That's how I found out.
Click to expand...
I never believe AI without cross-checking other sources. It is over-hyped. Sure, it can be useful, but I generally find errors in it, especially when I ask it a question the answer to which I know from personal experience.
 
I agree with that 100%.
 
I saw a pop-up ad on my phone a week ago, A company called Wowcher was offering a Lifetime Licence for Lightroom Classic 2025 for £29.99.

A friend of mine raves about Lightroom so I thought I'd try it.

Turned out Wowcher sells voucher that the customer then redeems from a third party - in this case Webmedia-Nijmegan in Holland. Their website
seems to specialise in cut price remaindered software.

So I now have Lightroom! With no Adobe !! (And it's baffling!!!)

Nil desperandum, and all that

PS. I agree with you about atrocious modern selling methods. I recently bought Nord VPN which eventually crashed my computer - all made worse by
moronic 'Customer Service' Grr!
 
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Old Smudger said:
I saw a pop-up ad on my phone a week ago, A company called Wowcher was offering a Lifetime Licence for Lightroom Classic 2025 for £29.99.

A friend of mine raves about Lightroom so I thought I'd try it.

Turned out Wowcher sells voucher that the customer then redeems from a third party - in this case Webmedia-Nijmegan in Holland. Their website
seems to specialise in cut price remaindered software.

So I now have Lightroom! With no Adobe !! (And it's baffling!!!)

Nil desperandum, and all that

PS. I agree with you about atrocious modern selling methods. I recently bought Nord VPN which eventually crashed my computer - all made worse by
moronic 'Customer Service' Grr!
Click to expand...
That's actually not too bad if someone really wants Lightroom but doesn't want the monthly hit.
It obviously doesn't come with any updates and I doubt it will have any of the AI features, but even so a good deal.

Had a look at the deal on Wowcher and looks legit, although I am intrigued how you 'refurbish' a licence. :ROFLMAO:
 
Old Smudger said:
I saw a pop-up ad on my phone a week ago, A company called Wowcher was offering a Lifetime Licence for Lightroom Classic 2025 for £29.99.

A friend of mine raves about Lightroom so I thought I'd try it.

Turned out Wowcher sells voucher that the customer then redeems from a third party - in this case Webmedia-Nijmegan in Holland. Their website
seems to specialise in cut price remaindered software.

So I now have Lightroom! With no Adobe !! (And it's baffling!!!)

Nil desperandum, and all that

PS. I agree with you about atrocious modern selling methods. I recently bought Nord VPN which eventually crashed my computer - all made worse by
moronic 'Customer Service' Grr!
Click to expand...

Hanley said:
That's actually not too bad if someone really wants Lightroom but doesn't want the monthly hit.
It obviously doesn't come with any updates and I doubt it will have any of the AI features, but even so a good deal.

Had a look at the deal on Wowcher and looks legit, although I am intrigued how you 'refurbish' a licence. :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...

I have gone a few years without updating LR or PS but it seems to do pretty much everything I need it to tbh Sometimes it struggles with panoramic stitching though so I use my old Affinity which sometimes is better.
 
Hanley said:
I am intrigued how you 'refurbish' a licence.
Click to expand...
Probably part of a corporate licence originally intended to be used by an employee of the company under the terms of the licence.
 
I don't steal software. If I were willing to go that route, I'd try to convince Adobe I was a student.
 
We started with Photoshop when it was Photoshop 7. Over the years, our computers changed, as did Photoshop. Each time, we paid for the upgrade, which was always installed only after the upgrade found a valid version to upgrade. So, every time we got a new computer, we I had to
Install PS7
Apply upgrade to PS7
Apply next upgrade.... etc. etc
And of course I had to find all the CDs :(

Eventually Adobe got tired of keeping their older validation servers running, and turned them off. At that point they made a version of CS2 available that required no activation. I downloaded it. And that is why I use CS2 today even though we have the paid version up to when they went subscription only.

Plus Affinity...
 
Sony Corleone said:
I don't steal software. If I were willing to go that route, I'd try to convince Adobe I was a student.
Click to expand...

The student subscription is for the whole Adobe bundle. It does get discounted from time to time.

But traditionally even when discounted it has been more expensive than just going for the LR+PS subscription - so its probably value depends on whether you want things like Premier and InDesign.
 
interesting comments!
Im no pro photographer, & I spent a long time avoiding Adobe's subscription., but my photography activities have dramatically increased due to having more time on my hands & now pay for LRC & Photoshop monthly., I got a great price deal by speaking with them on chat. Tbh & this is purely my opinion but these 2 programs are simply the best for editing photos. Sure for more casual photographers there are probably cheaper if not free options, but honestly I have never looked back & don't regret signing up for one minute. From a photo editing POV Im on a big learning curve & the knowledge base /information resources out there is just huge & a big deal for me.
 
Sony Corleone said:
Thanks. I have that, and I am enjoying Photolab and Excire Foto.

My impression of Adobe's programs is that they are best for busy pro photographers who spend all day removing pimples from prom photos and making things like calendars and restaurant placemats. In my limited experience, It seems like Lightroom is set up to jam photos into certain molds that are likely to appeal to undiscerning customers. Photolab seems to be much more geared to creating tasteful photos that don't look like cartoons.
Click to expand...

I used CS2 and 5, I think, amongst other things for years and I resisted going to the subscription version but I've been with it now for a time and I sadly have to admit that it's a vast improvement over anything I've had before even if it takes a few years to add up the cost of buying a stand alone version and then you're still paying.

I use Camera Raw for most things and then do a few things to the odd picture in Photoshop2026. I did try Lightroom and found it horrible. I like Photoshop more and I find just about everything I want to do pretty easy to do and there are often Youtube vids for the things I don't know how to do or more likely have forgotten how to do because I don't do them often enough.

I disagree about the tasteful photos v cartoons thing as to me it all depends on how far you push the dials. You can IMO go too far with any package and end up with unreal pictures baring little resemblance to reality. IMO this down to self control and not the processing package you use.
 
LeeRatters said:
I have gone a few years without updating LR or PS but it seems to do pretty much everything I need it to tbh Sometimes it struggles with panoramic stitching though so I use my old Affinity which sometimes is better.
Click to expand...

For me sometimes PS202x makes a mess and when it does I try again and often it works the second time even though they're the same pictures.
 
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