Subscription Photoshop

The Adobe Creative suite of software will be moving to a subscription-based model soon.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Any time software changes from a purchase to a subscription, the cost grows tremendously.  On the other side, as a software developer, support costs often outweigh the initial software development costs.  This is why most "professional" software is subscription-based.

When it comes down to it, Photoshop is for professionals.  Photoshop is an extremely powerful program.  So powerful in fact, that there is a very small number of people that actually need to use Photoshop.  Most people that currently use Photoshop probably only use features that have existed in Photoshop for over 5 years.

This is actually where the problem lies.  When a new version of Photoshop comes out, and you don't need any of the new features, are you going to spend the $1000 to upgrade?  For most people, no, you aren't going to upgrade.  You may skip that version.  But, if you were paying a subscription cost, and upgrades were "free", then you are going to upgrade.  This lowers the maintenance cost for Adobe, since they don't need to support older versions, and it gives them a stable source of income to add new features.

The lesson in all of this is there are two types of people in the world: those who need to use Photoshop, and those who don't.  If you don't actually need to use it, there are plenty of other programs out there than can remove red-eye just as good as Photoshop does.