Adobe Photography Plans

Adobe Photography Plans and subscriptions explained

All of Adobe’s professional Creative Cloud applications are subscription only. You can still buy Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements for a one-off fee, but all the rest, including Photoshop and Lightroom, are subscription only.

You can subscribe to individual apps, or the whole Adobe Creative Suite, but the Adobe Photography Plans are by far the best value for photographers.

How do the Photography Plans work?

Each plan comes with various add-on tools, access to mobile apps and an online storage allocation, but the three principal applications for photographers are:

• Adobe Photoshop: still the world’s best (or best-loved) standalone professional image editor
• Adobe Lightroom Classic: the regular ‘desktop’ version of Lightroom where all your images are stored on your own computer
• Adobe Lightroom: the newer and more streamlined web-based version of Lightroom where all your images are stored online on Adobe’s servers

• Read more: Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic: there are important pros and cons, and it’s not simply a case of ‘new’ versus ‘old’.

You do get 20GB of online storage as standard with an Adobe Photography Plan, but while this is enough for some limited image sharing, a portfolio website and other online housekeeping, it’s not enough for Lightroom’s online storage needs. So there is a fourth ‘cloud-based’ product in these plans, i.e. 1TB cloud storage.

Photography Plan: $9.99/month

This is the best basic option for photographers. It comes with Photoshop on desktop and iPad and both versions of Lightroom, though Lightroom Classic will be the best version to use because it requires no online storage. You can try out Lightroom with this plan but you’ll soon fill up the 20GB storage provided.

• Photoshop
• Lightroom Classic
• Lightroom
• 20GB cloud storage

Photography Plan (1TB): $19.99/month

This combines the regular Photography Plan with 1TB online storage, so it’s the best of both worlds – but at a price. It’s ideal if you intend using Lightroom and its highly convenient all-your-images-everywhere cloud storage, but if you intend using Lightroom Classic, there’s not much point in paying the extra.

• Photoshop
• Lightroom Classic
• Lightroom
• 1TB cloud storage

Lightroom Plan (1TB): $9.99/month

This comes with Lightroom and 1TB storage and that’s it. It costs the same as the regular Photography Plan, but effectively you swap Photoshop and Lightroom Classic for 1TB online storage. This is nevertheless a great option for photographers who can do everything they need to in Lightroom and want their images available everywhere, on any device.

• Lightroom
• 1TB cloud storage

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Are the Photography plans good value?

A lot of people object to software subscriptions on principle, hence the constant marketing message of ‘subscription free alternatives’ from rival software publishers.

However, Adobe’s Photography Plans are a very good deal. Many of use have memories long enough to remember the astronomical cost of Photoshop as a standalone product, and Lightroom used to cost as much as a full year’s Photography Plan subscription on its own.

Remember that one-off software licenses aren’t really ‘one-off’ at all. You will have to pay upgrade fees for future version updates, whereas subscriptions include all updates.

• Read more: Subscription software pros and cons

Is there a trial version?

There is, but it only lasts a few days. It’s long enough to make a decision about whether to subscribe, but not long enough to get any serious ‘free’ use out of Adobe’s software.

How do you sign up?

Simply follow the link above and choose a plan. You will download and install the Adobe Creative Cloud app, which is then used to view, download and manage the software included in your subscription plan.