Adobe's recent shift toward the AI-focused Creative Cloud Pro plan makes now an ideal moment for photographers to reconsider their reliance on Adobe products. With the company automatically migrating subscribers to this pricier tier starting June 17, 2025, costs for individuals on annual plans are increasing from $60 to $70 monthly, and from $90 to $105 for month-to-month subscribers.
The motivation behind Adobe's transition appears clear: integrating extensive generative AI capabilities across their suite. Adobe emphasizes unlimited access to AI features, such as Generative Fill in Photoshop, Generative Remove in Lightroom, and Generative Shape Fill in Illustrator. They also introduced Firefly, an AI-driven tool for creating images, vectors, and videos. While these innovations might seem enticing, not every photographer finds value in AI-driven workflows. Adobe's own promotion of these tools underscores their confidence in the appeal of automated creativity. However, this also underscores Adobe’s shifting focus away from traditional photography methods.
The forced upgrade has sparked considerable dissatisfaction among users, many of whom feel pressured into features they neither want nor need. It's particularly frustrating since if one doesn't want the AI features, they can move to a new plan called Creative Cloud Standard, which costs $55 a month but removes access to most mobile apps, meaning if you want to keep those, you have no choice but to choose one of the new pricier plans. Your AI credits also drop to 25. For reference, the current All Apps plan, which costs $60 a month, includes those mobile features and 1,000 credits a month. Sadly, that plan is being discontinued, or, depending on your perspective, being renamed to Creative Cloud Pro, with the associated price increase to $70. For those keeping track, it now costs almost $1,000 a year simply to have access to all Creative Cloud apps. For a professional, that might be justifiable, but for a hobbyist, it's ridiculous.
Beyond immediate cost considerations, Adobe's forced upgrade strategy could be an opportune moment to evaluate alternative tools available on the market. Competing products like DaVinci Resolve and Affinity Photo provide robust, high-quality alternatives without the subscription model drawbacks that Adobe users regularly complain about. Indeed, some users who transitioned to these platforms report positive experiences, free from the constant pressure of upgrades and price hikes.
Alternative software such as GIMP has significantly improved in recent years. For instance, GIMP’s 3.0 update in March 2025 positioned it even closer to Photoshop in terms of capability, while remaining entirely free. Similarly, Pixelmator Pro and Affinity's suite of creative applications provide viable, affordable options without compromising on professional-grade features. These platforms not only provide stability in pricing but also prioritize user-centric updates rather than company-driven feature bloats.
The case against Adobe is further strengthened by its opaque approach to communication regarding these changes. While Adobe claims the increased pricing reflects innovation and ongoing enhancements to user experiences, this narrative overlooks the user's right to choose the features they pay for. By automatically switching users to the higher-priced tier, Adobe emphasizes their commercial priorities over customer preferences.
Moreover, the shift effectively creates a divide between casual or traditional photographers and those who regularly use intensive AI-driven features. For many users, Adobe’s extensive AI integration does not significantly enhance their photography workflow. Instead, it merely adds complexity and unnecessary expense. Thus, photographers whose workflows rely on manual editing and traditional photographic techniques gain little from this forced migration.
Now is an ideal moment for photographers to break free from Adobe's cycle of incremental cost hikes and feature bloat. Adobe’s strategy inadvertently underscores a critical decision point for photographers—stick with escalating costs for unwanted AI-driven features or reclaim creative control and financial predictability through alternative software solutions. If you're looking for free alternatives, check out this article.
Well, I don't need the entire suite of Adobe products and I only pay $120 annually for LRC and PS, so that works for me. The free stuff and even the paid alternatives just don't do it for me. I used Capture One for a few years, along with LRC and it just became too expensive. I'm receiving great value from Adobe for what I pay and how I use it. But that's my personal experience and I know others' mileage may vary.
Yeah the basic photography plan is actually good value so I won't be ditching Adobe anytime soon.
The LRC and PS plan is $240 annually, unless you're on some sort of discount: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html
That's only for new customers.
Those of us that were already subscribed at £10 per month were able to continue at that price, provided we changed to annual, rather than, monthly payments.
Which, presumably, since you'd be daft not to, most of us did.
I renewed at the same rate you did this past January. However, it appears that Alex is correct. Adobe have changed things once again. I say that because at the time I renewed for one year it was $120 US. Effectively the same $10 I've been spending for the last 8 years.
Meanwhile, when I renewed back in january, the monthly rate was $14.99 US. Up $5 a month from the previous $9.99/month. It appears they've increased the price yet another $5. Now the monthly rate is $19.99 and one year in advance is 239.88.
There is no mention of being grandfathered in for those of us who paid in advance this past January and who had been paying $/£/€10 a month all these years.
I highly suspect that when we get billed again next January or February our bills will double and there is apparently no discount for paying a year in advance. This is ridiculous...
--------------UPDATE--------------
I logged into my creative cloud and it still shows that I will be paying $119.88 in January of 2026. I think a key component of what Alex was looking at is that that is other photography plan that includes one terabyte of storage... So perhaps that's what we're grandfathered into.
Those of us already subscribing to the £10 per month plan, were able to continue, provided we swapped to paying annually, rather than monthly.
Since it would seem daft, not to, presumably, most of us did just that.
Nope, I was charged $120 this past January for my renewal for the year, sooo. I'm not gonna complain about that. I guess I got grandfathered into the old price. Likely on the next renewal, it will go to the $240 price, but then I'll just switch over to just LRC b/c I don't really use PS, I just kept it b/c it was the same price as the LRC only with 1TB. I don't need or use their storage either. So either way, I'll still be paying around $120 next billing cycle.
I've been a user/monthly subscriber for decades and the 50% bump is the last straw, I found a deal of Newegg.com for $110 after taxes for one year and will not pay more. I don't like what Capture One is doing either, the venture capitalists ruined them also. A little competition in the marketplace would be nice.
Decades? Creative cloud hasn't been around for decades. Lightroom 6 was the last stand alone and that was released about 9 years ago with creative cloud dropping in 2017.
Photoshop since '94 and purchased stand alone versions until they offered LR/PS bundled with monthly fee.
To replace Lightroom I've been testing DxO Photolab and I'm quite happy with it for now. I was a long time Capture One user and loved it but they just ended up giving the finger to hobbyists.
I'm getting tired of this AI stuff; I'm a photographer not a digital artist.
I've heard good things (and it's well priced at 75€) about Affinity for replacing Photoshop, which I only use for focus stacking anyway. Maybe I should check Gimp too.
I'm just a hobbyist photographer but I really like Affinity Photo as a replacement for Adobe's Photoshop. For a while I worked as a graphic designer and used the Adobe CC suite but only because I got it for free from the company I worked for. I find Adobe too pricy to use for my needs. Affinity is very intuitive and has a logical work flow for doing non destructive RAW editing.
After decades as an Adobe customer, I dropped their service earlier this month. It seems obvious to me that they're going in a direction that doesn't support my work or business so I 'm going my own way.
I am going to do the same. No more paying extortion prices. Enough is enough.
Part of the answer may be here – Adobe is still growing albeit at a slower rate than in the past. Projected revenue growth for fy25 is 8.9% rather than the high double digit growth in the past. In 2024 Adobe's stock withstood a brutal sell-off losing 25% of its value and since then has been down about 14% from its previous high. But the big reason for all of the emphasis on AI is investors are increasingly concerned with Adobe's ability to successfully monetize its significant investment in AI and are looking for a clearer path forward on that front. AI was a relatively small part of their Q1 fy25 report at $125 million. Investors are worried about other AI-powered products chipping away at Adobe’s traditional stronghold in the creative software market. And finally Adobe's fy25 guidance has been a disappointment to some. So in the end, what better way to boost the AI side of things by forcing people into more AI driven products at what might seem an acceptably modest price increase.
GIMP for people that were using a 60 to 90$/month Adobe plan. Please be serious. We're not talking about the same type of user
That's only one of the options recommended.
I dumped Adobe years ago when they stopped offering stand alone versions of Lightroom and Photoshop. If they were to release a stand alone version of Lightroom now, I would buy it in a heartbeat…and I would be more than happy to manage without continuous access to the latest updates. It costs them money to produce constant updates, I get that, but I personally don’t need constant updates. I would be quite content with a basic version that does the job.
What would be ideal is if we could all have the choice; those who like the subscription model can choose to carry on paying it, while those of us who prefer to have a perpetual licence can choose that instead. For some reason Adobe took that choice away.
The subscription model with constant price increases is bringing everyone to the breaking point. Not just Adobe, but every single thing is being subscription (from TV to basic video transitions). Not any more for me. I'm dumping it one by one–everything that is not really essential and has no replacement at the moment. It's all Adobe's fault for all this subscription BS we are all enduring. People are finally getting fed up.
They really need to fall hard, and as soon as possible, in order to bring some sanity to all of this.
I wanted to get rid of Adobe. I get this message that if I end my plan, I'll have to pay $89. Every billing cycle, it drops. Does anyone get that when you want to cancel your subscription?
I switched from LR to C1 a few years back and I mostly like C1... heck I even prefer it for colors and output BUT there is a huge issue. When your catalog gets into the tens of thousands of images the whole application just gets unusably slow, this is the case for Windows and Mac as I use both systems.
I still haven't figured out a perfect solution, suggestions welcome. My current implementation is simply smaller and more catalogs but that doesn't let me browse my library easily. Sometimes I have projects that need images from different years.
I tried hot folders but it's also rather slow since it doesn't build a thumbnail cache the way a catalog does.
In February this year Adobe’s gross profit margin was 89.15%. So for every 10 Dollars you spend on your subscription, just over $1 actually goes toward paying for your software. Hmm…Is this good value for money I wonder.