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SOFTWARE

By Will Fastie • Comment about this article

Adobe converted its Elements line into subscription products, while at the same time claiming it hadn’t.

For 20 years, Adobe sold Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, along with the Adobe Organizer, as economical and perpetual-license versions of its mainstream products, Photoshop and Premiere. Even after Adobe moved those mainstream products into subscriptions — moving from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud — the Elements line remained perpetual.

Around Thanksgiving, Adobe began aggressively promoting the 2025 version of both Elements products, either individually or in a bundle. But this time, the license terms changed. And Adobe was a bit sneaky about it.

I’m used to seeing Photoshop Elements (PSE) pop up little reminders about new versions, such as the recent one shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A pop-up notification within Photoshop Elements promotes a new version update.

There are settings in PSE to suppress notifications, but I usually leave them on so I’m aware of promotions or upgrades. In the past, these notifications sort of faded away when they were continually dismissed.

For Black Friday, these notifications were strident. They popped up every time I launched PSE and then several times while I was using the product. Not only that — big, in-your-face dialogs appeared within PSE that also required dismissal. During the sale, the notifications included a steep discount, for both the two Elements programs as well as their bundle. The discounts attracted my attention, even though I’m using PSE 2024, which I think you will agree is relatively new. Although I did not click through, I did visit the Adobe site to check things out.

That’s when I discovered that Elements 2025 has a new license. The two programs are no longer being sold with a perpetual license but rather with what Adobe is calling a “term license.” The term is three years. Calling this a term license is a bit deceptive, but its real meaning comes to light when you read the FAQ at the bottom of the Adobe Elements 2025 family page (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Two items from the Elements FAQ explaining the new license

The first item above is a simple question with an answer that appears to be quite clear. “A subscription is not required.”

But the second item explains that at the expiration of the license, Photoshop Elements will no longer run. I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned, if a product stops working at the end of a term, it’s a subscription product.

Adobe’s distinction is that the license does not renew automatically, or at all. With subscriptions, automatic renewal is de rigueur — we expect renewal unless we explicitly cancel. But how will this actually work? Adobe is not simply going to let a PSE license expire without trying to get the user to upgrade to the then current version at whatever the new price is. Expect lots of those little pop-up notifications, possibly with incentives.

What is the actual effect? Adobe is releasing Elements upgrades every year. Let’s assume you’re using 2024 and accept the upgrade to the term-limited (i.e., not perpetual) license for 2025 today. You’re then good for three years, until December 2027. But Adobe will be offering you 2026 and 2027 in the meantime, trying to get you to upgrade annually. Theoretically, that might mean you’d get a new three-year term license every year. We don’t know that; Adobe could attempt to shorten the term a year at a time until the term limit is one year.

One thing is clear: A term-limited license is a subscription. Adobe is trying to obscure that fact, in a very silly — and insulting — manner.

I’ve been using PSE for over 20 years. Early on, the version-to-version improvements were significant, and I bought a new version roughly once a year. Then the feature stream slowed, so I began to skip years. In those 20 years, I think I bought eight editions. This year, I took the 2024 update because I decided to buy a copy of Premiere Elements in the bundle. The Elements products have been priced at $100 each; the bundle is $150. Upgrade prices tend to be 20% less, and I took advantage of a promotion (I can’t remember the details, but it was a good deal).

At the same time, I’ve been gearing up for film-digitization work. My brother has been encouraging me to subscribe to Lightroom because it has many features that support such tasks. I’ve been reluctant to accept that subscription because I don’t want to have a lot of metadata in catalogs to which I’ll lose access if the subscription lapses. I’ve been looking for alternatives.

Also in parallel, I’ve been studying low-cost video editors. Last year, I purchased a Corel “Ultimate” bundle of PaintShop Pro (PSP) and VideoStudio Pro, on sale for a very low price. It was the latter product that most interested me, but I decided having PSP around would give me a chance to compare it side by side with Elements. This coincided with the news that my favorite low-cost video editor, Movie Studio Platinum (the little brother of Vegas) had been discontinued. I’m very early in my full examination of VideoStudio Ultimate, but I expect it to be a satisfactory replacement for Movie Studio Platinum.

It turns out that PSP has many of the features that a Lightroom user desires. I’ve done some experiments in conjunction with my brother (a heavy Lightroomer), who agrees that the PSP features I’ve described generally match those of Lightroom. Now with this unfortunate news from Adobe, I’m starting to use PSP instead of PSE. PSP is more fully featured than PSE, so there is a learning curve. But I’m beginning to think that switching to PaintShop Pro is a good idea.

One thing I have tested is the quality of images produced when taking large images, such as screen captures, and reducing them to fit in the AskWoody newsletter and for my Web development projects. I’ve long said that Adobe did the best job of this, a feature Adobe calls “Save for Web.” So far, PSP’s results are as good as or better than those of PSE. Hmmm.

But there is another question. I mentioned above that I had bought eight editions over 20 or so years. On average, that means I bought an upgrade every two and a half years. I generally paid $80 for upgrades, or roughly $32 per year. Adobe now wants me to pay $100 for a three-year subscription (sorry, Adobe, I’m not calling this a term). That’s $33 per year, effectively the same. In other words, I could continue with PSE and not spend more money than I was anyway. Should I do that?

I don’t think so. I consider myself part of the rebellion against the Adobe subscription model. I would have continued to buy PSE perpetual licenses, but I won’t subscribe.

Can Adobe get any more annoying? Can it find new ways to insult our intelligence? Probably.

All the hardware and software mentioned herein was purchased by me, with my own funds.
I neither solicited nor received any consideration from any of the manufacturers or vendors I chose.
My choices do not represent endorsement of any product or manufacturer.

Contribute your thoughts in this article’s forum!

Will Fastie is editor in chief of the AskWoody Plus Newsletter.

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