The idea of subscribing to a piece of software, as opposed to owning it outright with a one-off licence payment, is a bone of contention amongst creatives. So you can imagine the internet's frustration when it looked like Adobe had scrapped its base-level Photography Plan, which includes Photoshop CC. As it turns out though, it had just hidden it.
The panicked confusion kicked off late last week when the £9.98/$9.99 Photography Plan appeared to have vanished from Adobe's sites. This meant that the next best alternative would tie people into a package that cost twice as much at £19.97/$19.98 per month.
On top of that, this service would include 1TB of cloud storage for Lightroom CC. And while that's a fine amount of storage in an tool that ranks high in our list of the best photo apps, 1TB isn't something everyone needs.
Given that subscription models are controversial enough as it is, users were predictably quick to take to social media to voice their irritation over the package's disappearance. However Adobe hadn't quietly axed the plan, it was just hiding it in the name of 'visibility testing'.
In a statement issued to our sister site, Digital Camera World, Adobe explained what happened:
"From time to time, we run tests on Adobe.com which cover a range of items, including plan options that may or may not be presented to all visitors to Adobe.com. We are currently running a number of tests on Adobe.com."
So breathe a sigh of relief, the standard Photography Plan does still exist. And the public outcry over the decision to temporarily bury it should give Adobe plenty of data to mull over. Adobe is also going above and beyond by busily replying to angry tweets to let people know the plan is still there.
There's even more good news if you're based in the UK and looking to sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud. In our exclusive Creative Bloq offer, for a limited time you can get 40% off a subscription to the Creative Cloud All Apps plan, which includes all of the software in the Photography package.
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