A growing number of photographers and creatives, once loyal to Adobe, are walking away. Is this the slow decline of Adobe's monopoly on the creative world?
For the last twenty years, Adobe has had a creative monopoly in the creative world. Little competition, but really, no competition that could come close to offering what Adobe could offer its creative users. In recent years, Adobe's dominance has started waning, and the pushback has begun due to rising costs, ethical concerns, and better competition. Adobe has become too comfortable as the leader in tools for creatives. Will this come back to bite them in the butt?
The Breaking Point
What is driving the departure? One word: subscriptions. Subscriptions have their pros and cons, like everything, but many are starting to feel subscription burnout. Think about it—how many subscriptions, as a photographer, are you paying for each month? For me, it's six. Add in the subscriptions you are using at home, and the number can be much higher. Gone are the days of purchasing software and then uploading it for use. Don’t get me wrong, the subscription route in the long run is a much more affordable option if you regularly update your software. Many are starting to feel that you are essentially “renting” the software, which is just wasted money. Many alternatives offer flexible plans or one-time purchases, creating long-term savings in return. An Adobe Photography Plan costs $240 a year, compared to Affinity Photo costing a one-time purchase of $70.
Ethical and Privacy Concerns
The hot-button topic these days is AI, and Adobe is no stranger to the issue. Back in 2024, Adobe updated its terms of service, allowing AI training on users' content—a move that raised significant concerns and crossed a line for many. Rightfully so! This created backlash from the creative community, especially long-time users of their products, leaving them feeling betrayed. With this, many users started questioning Adobe’s transparency and ethics around their use of users’ data. The result: trust issues. Adobe was seen as the cheating spouse after years of marriage. How could they be trusted?
Performance
Users started complaining about sluggish performance and frequent crashes, especially with Photoshop and Lightroom. Users began exploring other options and found that Capture One and Affinity Photo were suitable replacements, providing better responsiveness. Often, Adobe prefers machines with higher specs, which can be unfriendly to budget-conscious or mobile creatives.
Hostage Situation
Adobe has created a locked-down system that could be described as a hostage situation. There was difficulty in migrating catalogs and raw files to other options you are migrating to. Many of Adobe’s files and workflows are solely tied to their processes. When a developer locks down their software, they are creating fear in the user, whether they know that or not. Why? They are then too afraid to leave. They feel they are starting over, and when you have thousands of photos, migrating them to a new platform seems daunting. Even transferring files from one computer to a new one can be daunting.
Gaining Momentum
While Adobe appears to be losing ground, other developers are releasing options that are giving Adobe a run for its money. Releases like Affinity Photo and long-standing ones such as Capture One have become more powerful with new releases and tools at the disposal of creatives. Options will become more prevalent than they already are in the future as Adobe continues to let down its existing customer base. I expect Adobe to start losing its monopoly over the years as creatives shift their business elsewhere, unless Adobe wakes up and realizes what a mess they have created.
The Transition Isn’t Without Tradeoffs
In a world where creatives have long been loyal to Adobe, despite their reservations, the transition has not been smooth for the creative user. New interfaces, shortcut changes, and unfamiliar workflows ultimately bring a learning curve. Taking time to learn new software and workflows will take a once-speedy process, due to familiarity, and ultimately draw out one's time. Once the learning curve is in the rearview mirror, many users have stated they are seeing better usability and faster results.
What This All Means to the Creative Industry
The creative industry is rooted in history with Adobe, and its market share largely remains, but competition is finally credible. The backlash against Adobe signals that creatives are valuing control, ownership, privacy, and ethics more than ever before. Taking a stand and letting Adobe know that we are fed up and taking charge. No longer are creatives wanting to be held hostage by brands and their privacy agreements. What happens when enough creatives voice their opinions and start to leave Adobe products? Adobe will begin to see this shift, and it could force their hand to rethink their strategy on pricing, performance, and trust.
Should You Make the Shift?
First and foremost, only you can make the final decision. Yet, there are key considerations to take into account when you are thinking of ditching Adobe and making a switch.
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Budget constraints
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Level of reliance on Adobe
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Type of creative work (video, photography, retouching, and design)
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For hobbyists and freelancers: alternatives can fully replace Adobe
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For high-end commercial teams: partial switch or hybrid workflows might be a better starting point
In Conclusion
The age of choice has returned to creative users. For the first time in years, photographers and other creators finally have more than a few choices for viable, reliable, powerful creative software. Adobe remains the largest provider of software to innovative users, despite its downfalls over the last few years. Adobe will remain the number one choice of users for years to come, but they will lose a large portion of their user base in the future, especially if they continue to play their same old game. Unfortunately for Adobe, they did this to themselves in a short matter of time. For us creatives, our future has never been brighter, with more options than ever to choose from. One final question that I pose to readers is: What do you value more—familiarity or freedom?
It would be nice to include some data supporting your thesis that Adobe is loosing its grip on the market. Adobe’s 2Q25 revenues were up 11%, making it hard to accept your claim without other data.
I’d agree, I’d like to know more concrete numbers. If their stock is any indicator, and it should be, it’s down nearly 40% over the last 12 months and down 30% over the last 5 years. It definitely isn’t looking good. It’s funny because I used to own a ton of adobe stock and always said, “a subscription is basically free if you own their stock.” I dumped their stock after the pandemic though and it looks like a lot of others have too.
I never thought about looking for numbers!
So, then ..... what did you based your statements on? What made you think that Adobe is losing it's stranglehold on the market if you didn't see any actual statistics to cause you to think this?
I mean, is there really any doubt Adobe is losing its footing with so many more options? Their stock price is dropping and there are more free and sub $200 programs available now than ever. It is anecdotal, but I hear soooo many people leaving Adobe Premiere for DaVinci and then you also have more Final Cut Pro users than ever today too. It's true there are more content creators than ever now too but a huge number of those are in the influencer realm and have either adopted shooting/editing on the phone itself or jumped straight to Premiere alternatives from the get go.
Like I said somewhere else in this thread, I held a lot of Adobe stock for 10+ years but I no longer feel confident in it. The stock price usually is the tail tell sign of how well a company is doing.
Obviously this topic sparks a lot of debate. Adobe's next earnings report is in 9 days so perhaps a follow up once their outlook and stock price respond to their earnings would be a good idea.
Good idea
This article is quite laughable due to its lack of research to back up its claims. As 'The Bassman' already pointed out Adobe's revenue is 11% up for quarter 2. Adobe's most recent annual revenue was $21.5 billion which was an increase of 10.8% over the previous year. Let's compare that to Affinity which is owned by Serif (Europe) Limited who is rapidly going backwards. Their turnover for the year has gone from £31 million down to £24 million. Their operating profit has gone from £17.7 million to £11.4 million. That is a huge step in the wrong direction for Serif and shows Adobe is still growing it's business.
Canva owns Affinity since 2024. It went from 2.8 billion to 3.3 billion in the last year.
I am well aware Serif (Europe) Ltd has been owned by parent company Canva since March 2024. What you do not seem to be aware of is Serif (Europe) Ltd is still run as a totally separate Private Limited Company to Canva. Their next set of accounts are not due until 30 September 2025 and their next Confirmation statement is due 9 July 2026.
It's not only photography but nearly everything associated with content. Look at Apple Music (and the death of Itunes) and other subscription services in the audio world. And Microsoft 360? It's everywhere. For photo editing software, I would like to see someone (Fstoppers?) produce a detailed summary of the top 5 image editors comparing the good, great, not so great, and bad features of all them. Also include the price differences including if they are subscription based or not.
Yes, anything related to content creation continues to rise!
I am not an Adobe subscriber but it would appear that a recent general increase in subscription rates is a major driver in the revenue increase.
No it is not because the continuing revenue increase figures were published before the subscription increases.
Just for reference: Adobe increased prices on a variety of products/subscriptions in 2022, 2023, late 2024/early 2025 and again mid-2025. The latest quarterly report, which I would assume the 11% revenue jump report is based on, was released June 12, 2025 and would include the results from the late 2024/early 2025 hikes. In their latest guidance Adobe projects continued increased revenue. CEO Shantanu Narayen and CFO Dan Durn stated in that guidance that the company's strong performance in the first half of the year is driven by continuing innovation in its generative AI and was the reason for the updated revenue targets. Throughout 2024 and into 2025 Adobe attributed its increased revenue growth to generative AI and including it in Photoshop and other products as the primary rational for their subscription price increases.
Just for reference not all their prices increased if you switched from monthly to annual payment. What it also shows is Adobe are not losing large amounts of users by any said price increases. The company is still growing.
As far as I can see it is Adobe shareholders who most benefit from their subscription model. Since Adobe switched to subscription only for their software, they have seen a massive increase in profits. But where is the benefit for us users? Some folks argue that Adobe needs the extra money to pay for software development. I don’t buy this argument at all. They didn’t have subscription years ago. And yet they were able to continue developing new software, sell it with a perpetual licence and still make a healthy profit.
I don’t buy a new camera every month, so I don’t need constant access to the latest updates. The software I have is good enough and does the job. If at some point a new update to my software is released that I really must have, then I can choose to pay for it. Until then I save my money. I don’t mind if I end up paying a bit more doing it this way. What's most important to me is that I can choose if and when I pay for updates to my software. The idea of being held hostage by Adobe and having to pay them indefinitely does not appeal to me.
The benefits to users is they do not have to purchase Photoshop in the first place. Before 2013 Photoshop CS6 cost $700 and if you wanted the upgrades every 18 months you have to pay for that which was about $200. Then on top of that you have the cost of purchasing Lightroom plus the updates every 18 months. Also you now get more updates all the way through the year with many more new features being added. So the benefits to professionals who use the software day in day out are huge. In the Photography package you also get full access to 100's of extra Font's which will work on any brand of software plus you get free domain space for unto 5 websites when you use Adobe Portfolio online website software which is included in the price as well.
By that train of thinking after paying out to Adobe for 2.5 years renting photoshop you would have already paid out the full price of a perpetual license. At that point why not just get a signature loan from a bank to pay for a perpetual photoshop license? At least at the end of 2.5 years you own the software instead of continually renting it flushing your money down the drain. The vast majority of people that use photoshop do not need the continual updates that adobe provides so there is little point to continue renting the software.
If Adobe were to go back to selling a perpetual licence version of Lightroom, I would buy it in a heartbeat, even if it was more expensive. In 2015 bought a copy of Lightroom for £120 and proceeded to use it for 5 years. Effectively, it cost me £24 per year to use it. Someone paying the subscription could only get 1 year for their money; for exactly the same product.
And upgrades? If I need to have upgrades, this must mean the software wasn’t fit for purpose when I first got it. If it works well and does what I need it to, why would I need upgrades? In 2013 Photoshop CS6 had a vast array of tools and features. The possibilities for photo editing were only limited by the user’s skills and imagination. In 2013 it was already good enough for my needs.
If someone was paying subscription they would be getting Lightroom and Photoshop for £120 a year, not just Lightroom. You would want upgrades when new features come out. A 2015 version of Lightroom has nowhere near the features of the latest version of Lightroom. There is a night and day difference in features and Raw conversion quality plus if you had upgraded your camera in the last 10 years to a new model the camera you would not have Raw support. You are not in a position to say you don't need the new features in Photoshop either if you have never used it. The healing tools in CS6 alone will simply not get you anywhere near to quality of the current Photoshop's healing tools regardless of user skills. The masking tools are massively more accurate now, than in CS6 during to improvements in technology. Based on your way of thinking you will never need to upgrade your camera otherwise it means your camera 'wasn’t fit for purpose when you first got it'.
I disagree with the assumption that I would want upgrades when new features come out. If it works well and does what I need it to, why would I need upgrades? Those who want to always have the latest upgrades are welcome to do so. I prefer to choose if and when I pay for an upgrade, whether that be my camera, software, or whatever. Being locked into a subscription that obliges me to keep paying for upgrades whether you want them or not, takes that choice away from me.
It is true that the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom have more advanced tools and features. However, back in 2015 photographers all around the world were producing outstanding works with the equipment they had available at the time. Having all the latest technology does not make us better photographers, in my opinion.
All companies have a vested interest in convincing us we need the latest upgrades. It helps keep them in business.
With the same skills and better equipment and software upgrades you are going to get better results though.
What kind of better results did you have in mind? I see no evidence that an upgraded camera or software will impact the quality of my photographs, from a compositional or technical point of view. A good photograph is a good photograph. Has been and always will be. If a picture needs that much post processing, maybe it wasn't such a great picture to begin with. How much did HDR, when it first became trendy, really improve photography? Maybe a photo that depends so much on an innovative healing brush is flawed to begin with. Many of the images that I see these days which are dramatically refined by software, simply are not very compelling images, in my opinion.
Exactly. If I don't have the money to pay upfront I can get a loan from my bank. At the end of the loan you own the software instead of continually renting it long after you would have paid it off.
Consider this for a minute. The reason that Adobe switched to subscriptions was to prohibit the theft and pirating of their software for which they got NO revenue. So many people I know, even professionals, had illegal pirated copies of Photoshp. So perhaps Adobe revenue went up because all of those thieves now had to pay for it!
To play devil's advocate, another theory is that Adobe tolerated piracy for decades as part of a strategy to gain market dominance and then sprung the subscription trap after everybody was "hooked."
I’m afraid to say that strategy has not succeeded. A friend of mine recently showed me a pirate copy of Photoshop he had downloaded to his computer. He also showed me a website with a long list of cracked copies of Photoshop, Lightroom etc, available for download. It’s not something I personally wold do, but he had done it precisely because he didn’t want to pay the subscription.
Theories that the subscription deal was to avoid piracy were mooted by many posters on forums such as this at the time but were quickly discounted by Adobe themselves as holding no water.
The real reason was simply that a subscription model generates more income.
It's possibly true to say that by making their software more accessible; in a manner of speaking, fewer people would pirate it but I suspect that there are still plenty of people using pirated versions.
My own copy's genuine but a very quick Google reveals that 'free' versions of Photoshop and Lightroom (along with plenty of other stuff) are still readily available.
The hostage issue is real: what matters is that if I switch to new software, I can import my Lightroom files and have all my edits translate faithfully. I really don't want to re-create those, and while I have plenty of images where I wouldn't edit again and could safely lock down with a final JPG or TIFF, there are plenty where I WOULD re-do an edit in the middle of the stream without having to start at the beginning with a RAW file. That's the essential selling point of non-destructive editing, after all.
No doubt someone here will tell me to start anew with all my images anyways (good for my creative soul, you know), but we humans are a lazy lot, so I want my non-destructive edits to translate. And faithfully.
That means the new software needs a very, very deep understanding of what Lightroom is doing with any edit command, from the simplest to the most complex. One would need to deconstruct the software so as to figure out how it does what it does, and there are all sort of legal and economic reasons why no one is going to do that.
So yes, longtime Lightroom users are held hostage unless they start over. If you are going to leave the Adobe plantation you'll need to export all your edited images and consider them final, because you aren't going back.
I'm an avid amateur photographer who takes over 10,000 images per year, mostly insects, reptiles, plants, etc. I don't sell any.
Adobe used to be an affordable option for us amateurs, but no longer...
Additionally, around 2003 Adobe bought out a digital audio software app called Cool Edit Pro and renamed it Audition. I used this software extensively when it was a one time purchase, but Audition eventually also went the subscription route. This once again made it difficult for those of us not making money off of our art to continue to use the software that we were already familiar with.
I have since found suitable substitutes for all of my recording and photo needs and would likely never go back to Adobe even if I started making money with my work. I enjoyed using their products when I had the ability to purchase them outright, but I guess I feel a little jilted by the whole subscription/hostage situation at this point.
'Adobe used to be an affordable option for us amateurs, but no longer...'
In 2012 Photoshop had an upfront fee of $700 and then upgrades every 18 months of about $200, how exactly is that an affordable option for an amateur?
I can only think of two ways it was affordable back then and before. First, every amateur I knew (and even some Pros) had a pirated copy of Photoshop. Secondly, and in my case, you could get a free copy of Photoshop with the purchase of certain scanners or other gear. Then the $200 update every 18 months was affordable.
Why do I not recall spending $700 on photoshop in 2012? I remember Lightroom being $200 or so but I don’t recall PS being 3 times that. I also remember never needing to upgrade Photoshop much except maybe the raw converter for a new camera.
Patrick Hall dunno I remember it. It was optional to upgrade PS every year but if you missed two years you had to buy it again from zero. I remember the upgrades were about $500 and I did it because I was a working professional and it was part of the cost of doing business. Now that everyone is a photographer they want it all for free.
Well that is the price it was at the time and I like many photographers and graphic designers remember it well.
100% Stuart Allan ! People forget how expensive it was to buy PS before the subscription or they weren't doing photgraphy back then. I remember ie being $1000 to buy PS and about $500 a year to update it. Now they're whining about having to pay $144/year (if they locked it in when it was announced they'd still have the $12/month price like I do)
I switched from monthly to yearly payments last evening to lock in the price as my renewal was due on 9th September. For anyone reading this if the option does not show on your website account contact Adobe via their chat and they will sort it out and send you a link. Before subscription I like many could not afford the initial outlay for Photoshop as it was so expensive. Now I pay £124.42 a year which also includes server space for the two websites I run but using Adobe Portfolio. That saving on server space alone is worth £61 for the year for just one of the websites, which means I am effectively paying £63 a year to have Lightroom and Photoshop, which work out to just over £5 a month.
I think Adobe has a wonderful option for amateurs.
In 2020 B & H Deal Zone had a special of the day; Adobe Elements for $59. I bought it, and I still use it today.
I think that the VAST majority of people who pay the subscription rate for the full Adobe suite really don't use anything that isn't in Elements. For some whacked and wrong reason, many people don't even consider Elements when they are contemplating whether or not to get Photoshop. It's like they just assume that it won't have what they need, when in truth many of these are mid or low level hobbyists who only use a tiny bit of what Photoshop is capable of, and Elements would be way more than they would ever use.
Go ahead, flush $20 down your damn toilets every month, if that is what y'all are hell-bent on doing. But I will continue to use my Adobe Elements that I paid $59 for back in 2020, and I bet I will use it for another 5 or 10 years with no need of an upgrade or replacement.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that Photoshop Elements is able to open 16 bit image files, but can only work in 8 bit mode. For a few images here and there where I'm pushing exposure in one extreme or the other, 16 bit is valuable. Or maybe I just think it is because that's been touted as common knowledge. On the other hand I suppose I could make the basic edits to exposure in Camera Raw, and do the final edits in Elements 8-bit. I use Photoshop CS5 presently, having refused to pay Adobe rent, but that will change when the next computer comes along and CS5 won't fly with the new OS. One way or another, upgrades are inevitable.
Even after you get a new computer, couldn't you keep the old computer and just do your editing on that? That way you would not have to pay Adobe the ridiculous monthly rate.
Even when images are printed HUGE, like 48" across, I can not see any difference between 8 and 16 bit files. I have never been able to notice any difference at all in bit depth. But noise, that is another thing ..... the slightest bit of grain just completely ruins the viewing experience for me.
There will probably be no new computer until this one fails, at which point since CS5 won't work on a new OS, I'll migrate to Affinity Photo, which I'm trying to use now occasionally, or maybe Elements. This is the kind of decision I'll delay as long as possible. Like painting the house.
Printing 8 vs 16 bit image files shouldn't make any difference. I can't tell one from the other at the printing stage either. It's the earliest stage of editing where it supposedly makes a difference, because 16 bit provides more data from which to make extreme tonal adjustments without gaps or banding issues. How noise figures into that I wouldn't know.
You will see the difference between 8 and 16 bit when you are editing the files.
I decided against Lightroom, and in davor of Capture One, about 8 years ago, because I am not up to a flat rate for the software supplier.
Perpetual licenses keeps them honest.
Yes Capture One prices went up a lot. When the new owner of Capture One, which is an investment company, drops perpetual licenses in future then I will be gone. Right now CO23 does more than I need.
Hu Ba Capture One pro license is $479 USD. That's 3 years worth of what I pay for my Adobe subscription for LR and PS. So if I switched and updated every 3 yaers, it's the same price! Why people get their panties in a bunch over subscriptions is beyond me
I paid $300 for Capture One, one time and haven't needed to upgrade for 4 years now. My software still works perfectly fine. On the other hand subbing for Light Room is worthless because the software just doesn't work. I have pretty beefy computers too. I get 5 images in and LR gets as slow as molasses flowing uphill on a mid-winters day. Photoshop just out right crashes after soaking up all of my ram because it won't dump the data stored in ram after I close one project to move to another. Then I have to restart my computer. Not great for getting work done. Not to mention all the bloat-ware and data collection destroying the performance of my hardware and effecting the performance of the other software I use. Also after all these updates from adobe over the years the polygonal Lasso tool in photoshop is STILL broken.
All those issues are at your end on your computer. I am running an Apple M1 Studio and have none of those issues you mention regarding speed and crashing. You say you have been using Capture One for 4 years so you have not even been using the last 4 years of updates to Lightroom to make a proper comparison.
Oh right, because everyone’s just sitting on a pile of cash ready to blow on an Apple M1 Studio. What a genius take. Here’s the thing, people with an actual skill set don’t need shiny new toys every five minutes. They know how to work with what they’ve got. Meanwhile, 70% wouldn’t even manage a halfway decent photo without their beloved AI crutches, the one-click-wonder crowd.
On FIVE different computers as well as the computers at my job? My laptop has the newest ryzen 7 laptop processor, a 4060, and 32gb of DDR5 ram. If Photoshop and LR are performing poorly on a $1000 laptop built for performance then yes it is the software's problem. My desktop is spec'd above my laptop it also has problems with running adobe software.. Yes I HAVE used recent updates to light room AND Photoshop at my day job. It still sucks. We also use an M1 Mac studio with 32gb of ram. It makes our machine slow to crawl. I'm wondering if you've just grown accustom to using trash so much that you don't know what actual performance is. It's why I use C1 for my personal work. CC is the worst thing to happen to adobe products. You can't sit there and tell me I'm wrong when I have a large swath of machines both mac and windows powerful and not powerful that I've tested this on.