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New License Model: Changes to the way licensing, updates, and upgrades work

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1064 comments

  • Shane Baker

    Does anyone have practical experience of Avalanche

    0
  • Thomas Johnston

    This is a bad decision. Many people, such as myself, only switched to Capture One because you appeared to respect people who wish to purchase perpetual licenses. This announcement makes clear that you do not value me as a customer. You have raised the price of upgrades while now announcing--quite happily, I might add--that you will now no longer offer any additional small feature upgrades for perpetual license holders. You haven't even worked out what your "loyalty scheme" is, but it's a slap in the face to even invoke the word "loyalty" here. If you actually wanted to respect your perpetual license customers, you would offer them 1 year of updates from the time of purchase. As it is, the incentive to purchase a given version of Capture One decreases as soon as it is released because upgrades are cut off every ~October/November regardless of when one purchased their license. Instead, you've gone in the opposite direction and given all your perpetual license customers zero upgrades in the future.

    You want me to switch to a subscription to avoid this problem you have created, but I will not. The problem you face is that Capture One's subscription isn't competitive with Adobe's, period. I used to pay more for Capture One than I would have paid for alternatives, and I was happy to do so. Now, I am no longer happy to do so. You have lost me as a customer with this change.

    9
  • Mark Hopgood

    I will add my 2c worth.  I am a long time C1 user, from version 4 on.  I have always upgraded with the exception of this year, so I have C1 22.  The reason for that is as follows:

    1.  The price of upgrades has increased significantly over the years to now where an upgrade is similar to 2 years subscription with Adobe.

    2.  The feature upgrade set has become geared in recent times towards studio and wedding photography, neither of which I do, and not that revolutionary in any case.

    3.  Upon enquiry I was told that my pre-order discount was the same as others with versions significantly older than mine.  No loyalty bonus discount there.

    I have found in recent times a duplicitous nature in your communication with customers.  First we had the pre-order upgrade price but we will not tell you the new feature set nor what is planned (Its the reason I joined the beta program). So this huge upheaval in licensing was kept on the down low to remove options from customers and maximise profits.  This year we had the pre-order price, nothing new to see here.  Then the Black Friday sales where I could get a licence plus styles package for less than an upgraded licence, made no sense.  This lack of announcement has meant that people not on board with your new model were unable to take advantage of these sales for other software solutions, well done you.  Additionally if I had known what was coming I may have used my extra pre-order 20% discount for the new version, however now all I get is the usual upgrade discount.  All of this and yet you will still not communicate the "loyalty discount" until you have removed the option for people to opt in.  Trying to maximise pressure on people to get C1 23 so as not to miss out.

    It is obvious you are trying to move people on to the subscription model as I feel positive that many customers opted out of upgrading the perpetual licence due to high cost for underwhelming new features.  As I have no intention to upgrade my cameras for several years I will continue to use C1 22.  You have however presented me with an incentive to try out alternate software solutions where I fell that I get value for money. 

    As much as I am against your new licensing model and excessive cost compared to competitors, it is the underhand way you have timed this announcement that I find hardest to reconcile.

    17
  • Zdenek Jancik

    I'm another disappointed customer. Not requiring subscription was one of the advantage of C1 over Lightroom. With your latest licence updates you are effectively forcing people to switch to subscription :-(.

    It would be nice to al least announce details of loyalty program before removing option to buy perpetual licence.

    2
  • Mario Petersen

    Oh my, Oh my ! I never seen any company that treats its  customers so poorly.  I never liked their options to give you savings if you pay before you know what are you paying for, or now that they want you to upgrade now and they will tell you AFTER you upgrade what is going to be the price.

    And even now, the prices do not match their statement. The email states that if I upgrade now (I have Perpetual license) I will be charged 33% of the price, but when I go into the website they charge $ 149 for the upgrade to the Capture Pro for Fujifilm,  but a NEW perpetual License for the CO Pro 23 is $299, so the price should be $100.

    What a shame!

     

    7
  • Mirrorless In Seattle

    I'm a recent purchaser of C1, preparing to port my 22000-image library from Aperture. (Yes, Aperture which was abandoned by Apple 8 years ago; I buy software for the long haul!). Because of Adobe's subscription model, I didn't even consider their products, and was happy to find C1. I've now spent months learning C1 and preparing for the big move of my library. Now you tell me that upgrade pricing will be replaced with a new "loyalty scheme" (hello, marketing department!). How about the old loyalty scheme: provide a good product at a reasonable price. That seemed to be working. I should have known it was too good to last.

    8
  • Aoma Tani

    Personally I don't see what's wrong with this move. It's industry standard to withhold feature updates to the next major release. Many software companies do it the same way. If you don't need the new features, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. You only upgrade when you need it. So I'm not sure what's the fuss. Please enlighten me if I miss something.

    I just bought a license for Capture One version 16 and currently sit on version 16.0.1.17. Prior to this announcement, the only time it would cost me to upgrade would be if I wanted to buy version 17. Now, based on this announcement, I would have to pay for version 16.1, not withstanding the "free" upgrades until September 2023. So, it's no longer an issue of paying to upgrade major versions (16 -> 17) but an issue of paying to upgrade minor versions (16.0 -> 16.1). In other words, the software that I purchased will go stale (with regards to updates) much quicker than it did in the past.

    Thanks for the explanation Ian Farlow

    I do agree with you that it's unreasonable if we have to pay to upgrade minor versions (16.0 -> 16.1). However, it remains to be seen how the features in such "minor versions" will turn out, and also how much CO will be charging for them. I'd say time will tell.

    -3
  • Aoma Tani

    Ronald Tan

    Before I am chased after with spears and pitchforks—hear me out. Let's wait for the final details on February 1, 2023 for our C1PRO collective to pass judgement on Phase One / Capture One.

    Like many of you, I have been and will be a loyal customer to Capture One. My journey and experience with the software started a long time ago in a galaxy far...far away circa December 2008 with Capture One Pro (C1PRO) 3.7.8.

    Since then, I have always upgraded to 4 Pro, 5 Pro, 6 Pro, 7 Pro, 8 Pro, 9 Pro, 10 Pro, 11 Pro, and stopped at 12 Pro. Only this year and during the sales promotion that I upgraded to Version 2022.

    Like many of us working professionals, C1PRO is the first step in our image capture and workflow and any fees incurred to us are "cost of doing business" and we can raised and pass these fees onto our clients.

    I remain hopeful and optimistic. The way I understand perpetual licenses is that I could keep using the software that I have purchased the perpetual license to. In other words, because I have the perpetual license to Version 12, I could install version 12 on another PC that I own. I am aware that because version 12 has reached end-of-life (EOL), it will no longer receive updates, bug fixes, or new features.

    When the time comes, my current version 2022 will reach EOL and because I upgraded to the perpetual license, I could keep using version 2022 just as I have been using.

    If my interpretations and understandings are wrong about perpetual licenses in the context of Capture One Pro, please feel free to correct me. Communication is always bidirectional.

    I agree with Ronald Tan

    From what I understood, we can still use the version we have bought perpetually even after updates are no longer free, as long as we don't upgrade our cameras. This is exactly the same as Lightroom years ago with their perpetual license. In this sense, nothing has changed.

    The only thing that has perhaps changed is that minor updates/bug fixes are now less than 12 months, and that there's no longer an upgrade pricing available. However, it remains to be seen how much CO will charge existing customers for upgrades when they come out with the loyalty program.

    I remain hopeful and optimistic. 

    0
  • Alan Brandt

    It depends on the price of new license and the 'loyalty scheme'.  

    How often will new feature releases be?  Will there be some kind of road map?  Will new camera support be considered feature or service updates?  New OS compatibility - feature or service update?  Will there be a grace period if one buys a new version, then a new-new version is released shortly afterward?  Will the beta program continue?

    I made a gamble and upgraded to v16 (23), even though it had nothing for me.  Same with v15 (22), but I needed camera compatibility.  Most of the recent new features are either useless to me or half-baked so to be unusable in a professional context.  Guess I won't have to worry about that gamble of upcoming-features-being-worth-the-upgrade-price anymore.

    1
  • FirstName LastName

    I do not like this change at all. It's time to consider going back to Lr.

    4
  • Aoma Tani

    Pip

    Aomi Tani. You must be new to C1. Their way of doing business has shown they couldn't give a rat's ass about their customers and almost certainly have no concept of customer loyalty. Find an alternative before sinking any more cash into C1. I wish I had years ago.

    You're right Pip😂 I'm new. I actually used Lightroom 6.14 for the longest of time because I didn't upgrade my camera. I have the D850 which LR 6.14 supports so I have no reason to upgrade my software. Since Adobe moved to subscription model, I have been on the lookout for a perpetual license software for the past few years that rivals LR. I am thinking of moving to Nikon mirrorless in the near future so I bought CO23. I don't usually upgrade my software every year (more like every 3-4 years). 

    0
  • Peter Klein

    Note well, I have been using Capture One since Version 3. One of the reasons I've used it is that Adobe's licensing scheme is software rental and Capture One's was not. Based on my previous experience with other software, most notoriously Sibelius music notation software,  it appears that you are moving towards a software rental model, like Adobe.

    I am opposed on principle to software rental schemes. The idea that a customer should have to pay for the rest of their life or lose the ability to edit, print, or even view their work seems wrong to me. Legal perhaps, but morally wrong. Capture One seems to have taken the first step towards that model.

    Capture One's license was perpetual as long as I've been using it. You added a voluntary subscription option in recent years. But now it seems that Capture One's perpetual license may not be so perpetual. The phrase "new customer loyalty scheme" seems to foreshadow some more Adobe-like behavior. Are we are being prepared for something like that in future? I feel a chill wind blowing from Denmark. Time to have a Plan B in place for my photographs.

    I own my car, I own my toaster, and I own my vinyl records, CDs, tapes and books. I don't have to pay to continue using these things. Yes, books and CDs contain an author's intellectual property. But once I buy a book or CD, I can read or listen to it any time I choose. Books and CDs do not suddenly erase themselves if I cease paying the author or publisher.  Regarding software, I should have the freedom to stay on Version X if Version X+1 if it does not add sufficient value. But once a customer's work is in a proprietary format using subscription software, the software company no longer has to satisfy the customer by adding value . They can just say, "Pay me forever or you're screwed."  This is why I will not consent to subscription software. It is opening oneself up to extortion.  If Capture One aggressively herds me toward subscription, I will probably dump it.

    Not good, Capture One.  Not good at all.

    8
  • Shane Baker

    Peter

    I own my car, I own my toaster, and I own my vinyl records, CDs, tapes and books. I don't have to pay to continue using these things. Yes, books and CDs contain an author's intellectual property. But once I buy a book or CD, I can read or listen to it any time I choose. Books and CDs do not suddenly erase themselves if I cease paying the author or publisher.  Regarding software, I should have the freedom to stay on Version X if Version X+1 if it does not add sufficient value. But once a customer's work is in a proprietary format using subscription software, the software company no longer has to satisfy the customer by adding value . They can just say, "Pay me forever or you're screwed."  This is why I will not consent to subscription software. It is opening oneself up to extortion.  If Capture One aggressively herds me toward subscription, I will probably dump it.

    Well said.

     

    6
  • e

    Your license is perpetual and yours to keep, for as long as you can meet the minimum system requirements.

    Hence, not perpetual.

    C1 lost me already two versions ago and I feel sad that we’re talking more about the tool than what it is ment for.

    I’m 55 and recall seeing the very early versions of Capture One on the screens of photographers I was collaborating with when I was an art director for the Swiss watchmaker industry. I’m talking about versions of C1 where there was no catalog feature and where you couldn’t even insert metadata into a file. Back then, I often asked myself why pro photographers would buy and use such an apparently poor piece of software. Until I became a photographer myself, built my workflow and started using C1. I quickly understood that, a) the raw engine was far superior to anything out there, and b) the software was developed by what seemed to be a smart team of people passionate about photography and willing to enhance the lives and workflows of pro photographers. It was a true and unique « pro » tool before it started feeling the urge to keep up with the Jone’s.

    Over the years, I have witnessed the very good, the good, the beginning of the ugly, the bad and now, the very bad we are collectively experiencing with what has become an ugly company and a not-better-than-another tool. There is even a feeling of sadness and a sense of disgust that has gained me to see marketing people (are they even photographers?) sink a boat that was once very much afloat and a reference in our industry. Where did it go wrong? I see a lot of incompetence.

    I don’t usually talk very much, but I wanted to speak up to add my voice and compassion to my fellow photographers and also remind them that, in the end, it’s your archive, your eye and your photography that counts, not the tool. When choosing mine, I try to evaluate the people behind the code, before features or price, then, I check on them periodically to try and sense in which direction they are going. This helps anticipate the inevitable storms, but it isn’t a guarantee against making mistakes. I was for example among those hardly hit by the Apple Aperture SNAFU after which I migrated hundreds of thousands of images to C1. I remember them cashing in from the thousands and thousands of migrants for whom they had rushed an Aperture import feature that didn’t work well and never really got out of beta. Maybe it was after that episode that C1 subscribed to the greedonomy, I don’t know. Back then, C1 didn’t feel like a mistake, on the contrary. I personally invested all my trust, but now, it is obviously time to withdraw and move on.

    1. Save metadata to your files or XMP
    2. Export final edits to tif or psd
    3. Reimport your masters to another tool (made by honest people)
    4. Rebuild your workflow and your habits. 

    Not enjoyable, terribly time consuming, but doable. I know what I’m doing at Christmas (or Easter).

    I always feel sadness and sometimes anger towards people who put their interests before other people, but the good news is that there will always be humans willing to enhance lives of other humans. We just need to find them and, when choosing a solution to support our lifetime of work, maybe ask ourselves the question: if money didn’t exist, would I still invest in this person/team/product? 

    In the current situation, I join those who will not give one more drop of trust to Capture One, because a company who announces a « loyalty scheme » to already loyal customers while blatantly not being loyal themselves, is a sign of a major landslide that has begun.

    All I would like to convey is that your archive is a person who will survive the ugly and the disgraceful. Let’s please put our energy into our photography and not into rogue companies.

    10
  • George Tzortzis

    Another disappointed client of yours here. I truly cannot understand the marketing policy here, but I guess you will re-consider this accordingly, depending on customer losses, including me. I ll personally wait for competition's responce to this 

    7
  • Ben McPhee

    I’m writing to address the email I received overnight, and the information at the link it provided here: https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/7998068628637?__s=in8u8jmlo2poh8rl9cq0

    To say I have some concerns is putting it mildly.



    “Many of you have expressed a desire for us to make changes faster and to implement features more quickly”



    I think you may have confused our desire to see the software progress faster to keep up with the competition and have each new “full version” be compelling to make the upgrade price worth it, with releasing a product “quickly” and in a way that’s likely to cost us far more, and might leave us high and dry without so much as bug fixes.


    “This means that any updates containing new features and functionality will not be included in your license purchase. However, bug fixes and optimisations will be included(16.x.x) until a new paid version is released (16.x)”.



    This concerns me greatly. I purchase version 7 of Capture One late in it’s life, and when it was broken by a MacOS update just a couple of months later, Capture informed me that I had to upgrade to Capture 8 to receive support. 



    At the time, I found this unacceptable, but I took the path of least resistance and angrily upgraded. However, it cost you a lot of good will from me, and I let a lot of people know about it. 



     

    Now, you’re effectively saying that anyone who purchases the software on January 31st will be completely without support (even bug fixes) as early as the next day if you decide to release a new feature?

    I can tell you for a fact, that you will run foul of Australian Consumer Law using this business model, and most other jurisdictions have similar laws too.

     

    That is an extremely anti-consumer move, but considering what you call “features” these days (such as the “new business model” of LIVE which doesn’t add any functionality to the feature that was already in Capture 21), that’s a completely unacceptable stance to take.






     

     

    "I have a license for Capture One Pro 23 purchased before February 1st, 2023”
    You will receive free updates until September 30th, 2023.
    If you wish to get a new version of Capture One Pro after September 30th, 2023, you will need to buy a new license.




    Nope. That’s not the deal we made when I purchase Capture on a perpetual licence. A promise was made and your users budgeted around it. You can’t just pull the rug out from under them. When people purchased their “perpetual licence” they had every right to expect upgrade pricing going forward. What you’re doing is moving the goal posts, and it affects peoples businesses. It is particularly egregious for anyone with a multi user licence, or legacy users like myself who have 3 licences included with my previous purchase.







    Asking users to commit to buying “one last perpetual version of capture one as we know it” before announcing the details of the “loyalty plan” or pricing that will be the norm going forward the following day is gross, and this sounds like an awful deal for us.



    “Q: Are you getting rid of the perpetual license option?

    A: No. The changes we are making allow us to shift to the latest software development practices without removing perpetual licenses altogether. “



    SO MISLEADING! You already update your 16.x. releases with new features until 17.x. is released, and have done for years. This in no way “allows” you too shift to the latest software development practices.

    It’s quite clearly a tactic to force people to subscribe because it’s an artificial “better deal”, and I for one see through it and don’t appreciate it.
    This is a huge part of why many people chose you over Adobe, and it’s why many will flock back once you make this change.





     

    “If you are considering moving to Capture One Pro 23, our upgrade pricing (33% off the full price) is open to you until January 31, 2023”



     

    And then what?! Will the next version cheaper still since it will potentially not even receive support if Capture starts releasing a 16.x version every month (putting an end to bug fixes for anyone not using it).



     

    You say there won’t be a Capture 24 and you won’t do “upgrade pricing” anymore (and instead you’re using loyalty as your “currency”), so how will you account for the fact that I’ve bought 7 versions since Capture 6, and other users are trying it for the first time today, or differentiate between users who stuck with Capture 10 until now because it was just fine for them, vs someone who bought every version on day one?

    “We are moving to a ‘release when ready’ model which allows us to deliver new features and improvements as soon as they are ready. As such, the length of a version will vary based on the time it takes us to develop each feature.”



    Using the now almost 2 year old Capture 21 as an example, you released FIVE versions (14.0 – 14.4), and there were 22 “features” added or improved in total (5, 4, 1, 6, 6 changes in each respective version).



    So…. Some questions if I may?

    1. PLEASE EXPLAIN how this is different from what you’ve been doing for Capture 21, and 22 over the past 2 years, and even for many previous versions to some extent.

    2. How does this new structure make it “possible” to “release when ready”, when you were achieving it perfectly fine before this? (Were those features not ready to release?).


    4. Also, if you released each of those one by one, that’s TWENTY TWO “16.x releases”. If they were evenly spaced, that’s about one every 2 weeks, and there’d be NO BUG FIXES for anyone not on the latest version?! Offering zero support after a matter of weeks or months would be… illegal to put it mildly. (And don’t say “get a subscription”).

    5. If someone decided to only pay for a release every 6 months, (Skipping 10 or so releases), do they have to pay for the releases they skipped, or just for 2 upgrades per year?

    6. On the same note… how much per “paid release”.
    - $10? Alright… maybe that’s ok.
    - $20? That’s $440 “per year”.
    - Or $40? ($880 a year). Gets obscene pretty quickly doesn’t?

    Can you not see how this is distasteful?
    How is this better for your customers, given the fact that under your new business model (or “loyalty system” as your email put it) we’d have had no features added, or even bug fixes if we’d decided to support you by buying on day one?

     

    And can we talk about the “loyalty system?”

    Do people who you deem to be “more loyal” get extra benefits? And by what metric do you measure loyalty? How “loyal” do we have to be to be eligible, and do we get “special pricing”?

    You won’t explain until AFTER you terminate the current method? Shouldn’t we get some firm details before, or is there something we might not like about it?

    If the loyalty program is awesome, those who bought to “get ahead of the change” will rightly be pissed. But if it’s terrible, those who held off to see what the new plan would bring (or didn’t realise in time that you made this change) will have every right to be angry also.


    Either way, half your users are going to take issue with you - and we talk. So unless I’m wrong and this is actually amazing,… it is a really bad look.

    I think you have a RESPONSIBILITY to at least tell us what changes the “loyalty program” will bring before you “corner” us one way or the other. People will turn on you.

    Davinci Resolve (Basically Capture One/Lightroom and Photoshop for Video) are introducing features that are making each new version a gigantic LEAP over the last one, and their 18.1 release added features that were worthy of a 19.1 release. Yet they give 90% of it away for FREE, or only ask for a one time payment of $295USD!

    Despite the fact that I’ve seen them rise by around 60% over the years, your prices are much better than Adobe’s subscription only BS. And none of your users seem to be asking for that, or even really complaining too much about your yearly upgrade prices, which are almost as much as what Blackmagic charge for LIFETIME upgrades.

    So if you’re going to do this… I sincerely hope it is profitable for you but WORTHWHILE AND FAIR for us, or you might find that many of us can’t afford to be as loyal as you hoped.

     

    Either way, you MUST re-invest it into your software, because this latest releases “biggest” feature seems to be attempting to speed up culling. You had a year and you came up with 6 (not really) new “features” that certainly don’t revolutionise Capture, or even really distinguish it from last years version.

     

    “Changing the capture time” is not a “feature”.

     

    Neither is making “Live” free for everyone when that service is already available in Capture 22, and you have limited the “free” version so much that you have to pay for it to make it useful. Even your own release notes call it a “new business model”.

     

    That makes exactly 4 “upgrades” for a new version, and 2 of them were “redesigns” of existing features. Welcome and handy… maybe. But not exactly worthy of an upgrade compared to things you’ve done in the past. 


    I can think of dozens of quality of life improvements that should already be there, and for the most part I’m not talking about any fancy AI stuff or gimmicks - just rock solid huge improvements.

     

    Any headway you’ve made with bringing people over from Lightroom was likely down to the perpetual licence, and “loyal” users like myself shouting from the rooftops about how fair that is, and how great the Capture One software is. Sure, it lacks a few bells and whistles and to the uninformed it can seem a bit “boring”. But I tell anyone who will listen about how the tech under the hood makes files look amazing. And for tethering, there’s just no other solution that works so well.


    But have you seen what Lightroom is doing feature wise? It’s getting harder to explain why Capture is better when LR adds so many features, and many of them are so noteworthy.

    I get that Adobe vs Capture is a bit of a David and Goliath comparison, but rightly or wrongly, you’re kind of a distant 2nd in sales. So how do you think you can improve that with a payment structure that will drive people back to Adobe because you’ve managed to make it WORSE than the payment model that brought them here?

    And you’re essentially putting your hand out for money for practically the same product you released last year, and now you’re FORCING people to buy a new licence (without telling them the cost). And if they don’t, they are risking bugs that will destroy their productivity/business? So in the end, the $500 software they invested in may only have a shelf life of mere weeks or months.

    Does that sound like something we should agree to? I certainly won’t be.

    The cynic in me thinks you might be artificially holding back your best features for now so that the “loyalty scheme” and the subscription model you’d clearly love us to adopt starts to look amazing when you finally release some heavy hitting new features which are only available that way…


    Only the stubborn who refuse to change their workflows and the “professionals” who won’t argue about price because “it’s not worth it to change” will be “loyal”. Anyone else will weigh up their options…. and you could very well lose a LOT of what you’ve been building.


    As a Capture user since version 6, the ever increasing price of an upgrade has forced me into a cycle of only upgrading every 2 years. But without fail, I’ll buy the new version of Capture the day it comes out if it includes a “must have” feature.  


    So if you want to increase your cashflow and have people upgrade more often, keep Capture licences perpetual for those who prefer it, and make upgrading genuinely essential and compelling by introducing features we NEED and ask for, and keeping up with (or besting) the competition in as many ways as possible, while occasionally giving us things we had no idea we needed but couldn’t live without.

    But what you’re about to do… it’s bad business. And it will backfire spectacularly.

    16
  • Ben McPhee

    Seems like enough people here to start a class action. Someone set it up please?

    0
  • Ian Wilcox

    Add me to the list of disappointed customers, like many I moved away from Adobe not because of thier product but because of their licencing model and although CC wasn't quite as good at  the time I supported the development with yearly perpetual licences, I will not be forced into a subscription model. Please reconsider this move as you are losing your unique selling point compared to lightroom, and many will migrate back, plus the timing of this announcement post upgrade cycle is extremly unprofessional and shows a total lack of respect to your customer base and many will leave myself included - by all means modify the subscription model but please leave the perpetual model as it was

    5
  • Meredith Cosgrove

    I moved from Adobe to Capture One to avoid just this kind of licencing and upgrade trouble. Because what happened was constant updates and a constant dumbing down of the product. Sadly, I thought Capture One offered a sensible, stable product that I wouldn't have to worry about -- or keep paying more and more for. I will move away from C1 if it is heading in the Abobe direction.

    And yes, it would have been be nice to know about this change before I upgraded to a perpetual Pro23 licence.

    I have loved trusting this software. Please don't screw it up. 

    4
  • Ivo HUTH

    I didn’t know Russia also invaded Denmark?! Putin also wants it all, but hey look at the price he is paying. 

    Blackmagic must be the stupidest company, giving away a far more complicated program like Davinci Resolve for free. Or you can pay, one time, to get extra features. And that company is doing great, very strange. 

    I guess we have to pay for the extra heating costs in the Denmark management offices of C1, but I’m not paying and I hope you will have a very cold winter up there!

    I cancelled my C1 beta program license, I will spend my free time to debug your programs better on Affinity’s beta program.

    0
  • Tony Chang

    Utter disappointment. You're basically forcing people to switch to a subscription plan. If I wanted a subscription I'll go back to Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop which cost half the price. So long Capture One.

    4
  • Ulrich Symanek

    So happy that I did not buy the update to version 23!

    Goodbye C1 ...

    7
  • Jesse See Tai

    Way to piss off most of your customer base with this corporate greed subscription based bullshit. People switched to C1 from Adobe because of that and now you're going down the same path. Hopefully you all do some reflection after the backlash and realize how awful this direction is and course correct.

    9
  • Biniam Shawul Shawul

    I think you made a big mistake , by this move capture one , all ex adobe clients will move back to adobe subscription , and in the other hand you left open the door for your other competitors to keep out of your business as the 20/100 not " interesting for you"  you treat us !!!

    CRYPTOMONEY LIKE BUSINESS ,

    2
  • Niels Mickers

    Well of course CaptureOne is entitled to change licensing scheme.

    But now we are offered to buy the upgrade (just after black Friday discounts), while we know nothing of the new pricing scheme.
    Will this new scheme be cheaper (because less upgrades) or more expensive?

    At least give us some insight to let us make a calculated decision instead of trying to guess. This is not the lottery.

    5
  • Pascal van Gerven

    To me the key question is: what does the new “loyalty scheme” look like? Why this mystery anyway? I guess February 1 will be a turning point for many owners of a perpetual license, who have already seen C1’s upgrades becoming perpetually (pun intended) more expensive over the past years. C1 looked so great to me as an alternative for Lightroom five years ago. Now I’m not so sure anymore. This doesn't feel good and it's quite clear that I'm not alone. C1's marketeers should realize what that means: Lr may just become a good alternative again. No matter how much I like using C1, this new situation as well as recent developments in the Lr toolbox may make me reconsider everything.

    4
  • Markus Schwerer

    So kann man es auch machen ! Man überlegt sich, wie man als Firma mehr Geld verdienen kann. Dann erzählt man den treuen Kunden, dass sie ja immer auf dem neuesten Stand sein wollen und man sie immer mit neuen Features versorgen möchte (echt???), und es deshalb am sinnvollsten ist, monatlich in eine Subskription (Abo) zu gehen, das ja auch nicht günstig ist. Da die Neuerungen aber ehre gering ausfallen (zumindest war es bisher so) - wie auch bei der Version 23 - zeigt, dass es hier nur ums Geld geht. Ich fühle mich mit Verlaub verschaukelt ! Wenn ich also nicht mehr bezahlen will, wie bisher - also jährlich ein Update zu machen - so kann ich etwa erst alle 2 Jahre updaten, um preislich nicht höher zu liegen wie bisher mit einem jährlichen update. Das ist nicht seriös und auch nicht fair! Ich bin maßlos enttäuscht! Ihre Bezahlmodell, eben eine Software zu kaufen, hat mich zu Capture One geführt, weil ich die Abo-Politik von Adobe nicht beführworten kann und will.  Es ist zum Davonlaufen !

    5
  • Jarold Burke

    Since many of your customers have apparently "expressed a desire for us to make changes faster and to implement features more quickly", I would like to join the list of commenters here to inform you of my opinions on the matter.

    When I switched from Aperture to C1P version 8, my primary reason was the perpetual licensing with discounted upgrade pricing.  I did not find C1P to be the superior product, but rather the superior value.  I also wanted to support a company who's practices I agreed with.  I am now greatly disappointed to read about the planned restructuring of your licenses.  Due to this new license structure, along with the increases in price over the last several years, I suspect that the application will no longer be justifiable for a non-business customer such as myself.  I will not even consider switching to your subscription model as avoiding that was the reason I purchased C1P in the first place.

    The timing and wording of your loyalty scheme give me a very negative impression.  It seems very suspicious that the details of this new arrangement won't be disclosed until the day after the current upgrade offer expires.  This is basically telling me that have to gamble on which option I think will be better for me.  To be blunt, you should be selling customers on the value of your product, not asking them to make uneducated guesses.  Calling it a "loyalty scheme" gave me a good laugh, if nothing else.  The word "scheme" is often used in the context of activity that is deceptive, such as "ponzi scheme" or "pyramid scheme".  I believe it was a very poor choice of words.  Given the frustration others have expressed regarding the timing of this announcement shortly after the version 23 upgrade, I think a significant portion of users will not trust that this loyalty scheme will be a positive change for them.

    7
  • Henrik Andersson

    The positive: CO will return to the internal version numbering, v16.x, v17.x and so on. The annual releases that started with v20 (release year), when the official version jumped from v12 did not make any sense and forced CO to develop enough new features in 12 months to motivate users to upgrade for a steep price. I think the majority of the comments here prove that they failed.

    The next major version (v17?) may very well be released more than 12 months after v16 (CO 23) to allow for more new features and encourage people to upgrade, rather than skipping one or two releases.

    The negative: Everything else, and after 240 comments (I have only read half of them) I think it is clear to CO where they have failed.

    What’s totally unacceptable and unheard of in the software industry is that a perpetual license (after Sep-23) only will be supported with bug fixes for a few months (and no new features).

    Capture One: You MUST communicate all details on the “loyalty scheme” NOW in order to keep at least some of your credibility. What will be the approximate discount for loyal customers when upgrading to the next major version (v16.x to v17.x) and how do you plan to discount minor upgrades (v17.x to v17.y) when perpetual licensees must pay for every single new feature? I fully understand that the second question all depends on the number of new features in a release, but can you indicate a price range?

    6
  • Thomas Kyhn
    Top Commenter

    Pay $299 for every new version? vs $179 CO annual subscription vs adobe annual LR+PS for $239.88.

    with Adobe I get 2 software + Extras

    • 1TB of cloud storage
    • Step-by-step tutorials
    • Adobe Portfolio
    • Adobe Fonts
    • Behance
    • Creative Cloud Libraries
    • Access to the latest features

    And on top of the currently 349 euro for a perpetual license you need to add the price of supplementary software to get around Capture One's inability to handle larger catalogues, edit GPS metadata, etc.

    4

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