Among the most significant changes with this year’s Elements releases has little to do with new features but instead concerns the ways users purchase and own the software. While prior versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements have been lifetime licenses — the user buys the software and then owns it indefinitely — this year’s release has moved to a three-year license term.
You can understand them being eager to come back in the enshittification race, it’s their thing. When you’ve been the enshittification whiz kid, but somehow dropped down behind the competition, you might just want to come back and reclaim your #1 mug at some point.
I say, nice move, fuckers.
I’d been struggling over the weekend to install Photoshop and Lightroom in Wine on Bazzite. After reading this article, I decided it wasn’t even worth the free license I get through work to willingly add Adobe software to my personal computer. I just finished installing DarkTable instead.
ETA: at this point, Adobe is like a mafia with a really nice storefront and great products. When a customer comes in, picks up a nice vase and says “this would look good in my den,” one of the sales reps comes up and says “yeah, it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it!” Then they smash it on the floor while the potential customer walks out in disgust shouting “WHAT WAS THE POINT?? THAT WAS YOUR OWN PRODUCT!”