Goodbye Adobe

It's Not Me, It's You

No. I am no longer part of the Adobe community. We are done. It’s not me, it’s you.

The first notification came in a month ago. Seems Adobe had put me on their naughty list and were sending out presents early this year… I’m not impressed.

I guess I’ve been using Photoshop to edit my images since about 2003 when I switched from Windows to MAC. Previously, I had been using JASC Paint Shop Pro, a Windows only product, but working at a newspaper had convinced me of the value and security of both the new to me operating system and Adobe’s products and while expensive, the one time buy seemed manageable at the time.

I’m not sure when it was that they introduced their subscription model, but at $10 CDN for Photoshop, In Design and Lightroom, a program I hadn’t tried but was hearing good things about plus a few other esoteric offerings, it seemed like a pretty good deal and so bit the bullet and signed my name on the dotted line.

The price creep from $10 to $15 CDN over the years was inevitable, but the latest price increase includes rollbacks on what’s actually included in the plan. I’m also aware that Adobe is grandfathering me into lower pricing, much lower pricing, than they charge new customers, who I think they are ripping blind, so I know that ending this relationship is a fait accompli. There is simply no going back.

But it goes beyond the price hike. I kind of have a hate on for Adobe. I hate they charge people so much. They take unfair advantage of their market position to bleed people dry. They trick and trap people and make it difficult to get out of contracts. They gloss over the details and hide things in the small print.

They got me once when they bought a stock agency I was using called the Dollar Club, jacked the prices without my knowledge and held me to a new contract which ended up costing me hundreds of dollars to get out of for what had been a simple agreement to buy stock images once a month for a dollar apiece. Screw you Adobe.

It’s not right and I don’t want to be part of it anymore. It’s one thing if you are a business, quite another if you are simply a photo enthusiast. That they haven’t made allowances for small users is inexcusable. They have all the power in the world and what do they choose. Greed. But maybe they will come to regret that.

This is what happens when the company's stock price falls 78% in a year and the figure the way to correct it is to gouge their customers to increase earnings.

Looks good on them. I hope they choke on their greed. Goodbye and good riddance.