What you call junk is everywhere… in one form or another. That’s the price you pay for using raw files and saving the development somehow (in a catalog and/or as proprietary sidecar) for later access.
It’s important to remember that if you’ve used PL for development and then want to move or rename your images, always do so within PL. Otherwise, you’ll encounter issues with the PL database, aside from manually “synchronizing” sidecar files, etc.
Personally, I rename images (and delete bad ones) before developing them in PL.
For more details you may check here and here .
So far, I’ve always found my stuff without keywords or DAM. I’m not a professional, not an event photographer, I no longer run a photography club website, and I don’t need one yet – just a dedicated amateur who likes to keep things simple.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. They should not do subscription, but should let you upgrade from PL3 to PL9 for the same price as I can upgrade from PL8 to PL9?
I do think “cutting off” below N-2 is not ideal, but surely they have to cut off somewhere? Maybe upgrade from N-1 to N is $X and from N-2 to N is $X x 1.2 or some such. The only way I can see they give long tail customers what they want is to only release upgrades every 3-5 years.
In the end, it’s a business. Personally, I don’t get all the hand wringing about subscriptions. In many cases you end up spending the same amount of money in the same timeframe and it’s just easier for everyone.
There are many different subscription models and they are not all bad. Skylum and Topaz both let you keep whatever functions you had when you stopped paying. That seems more than fair to me. You want a good DAM? Adobe let you use all of the functions of Lightroom Classic for $0.
If you don’t like certain subscription models, that’s your prerogative, but the whole “subscriptions are evil” mantra is helping no-one.
The pricing of some of the competitors is much lower and presumably they have a decent return on capital too.
Lightroom may mav be a good DAM but i would rather not use countless apps to cover my hobby. In any case, lightroom does not support my newer files, so using LR as a DAM is no longer an option for me. As a hobbyist , I do not need to upgrade every iteration of any software. Given some alternatives price themselves well under 100 eur (or even half that in sales), and still make money, it would be nice to see a bit of tweeking on the price of upgrades and the cut off point could be 3 or 4 years. Afterall , On1 (for example) charges around 50 for a full version and not everybody upgrades every year and - the overall cost over 4-5 years for a HOBBYIST is MUCH lower. It really depends if you are the type to chase new features constantly or not. The software companies can make money in any case, either by changing a lot, or selling a lot at lower prices.
But whatever the pricing; ensuring DAM and main functions are all included in 1 software, ensures customer loyalty. surely common business sense.
I do believe by including a decent DAM and keeping pricing competitive and upgrades cheaper for longer, will build a much wider loyal customer base, ensuring a long term income stream