Capture One perpetual licences will no longer receive new features

garryknight said:
petapixel.com

Capture One Perpetual Licenses Will No Longer Receive New Features

Capture One is changing its support for perpetual software licenses.
petapixel.com petapixel.com
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C1 have been very short on details, and for existing perpetual license holders there is no details of what the "loyalty" scheme will offer.

When C1 discontinued the dedicated Nikon, Sony and Fuji versions, existing users were given lifetime discount to the full Pro version so they continued to pay the same price as they had been paying for the single manufacturer version.

80% of new users are opting for the subscription, with 50% currently on perpetual licenses and I am hoping that the loyalty scheme will give a lifetime subscription discount to encourage long term users away from the perpetual license model.

The new perpetual license model isn't really that much different from it is now. Currently you can get the upgrade discount, if you upgrade from the previous two versions (the same as DXO), and it's only a third off the full price. And C1 have always been bad at supporting anything other than the current release.

They have however, always introduced new features mid-cycle of a release and not stored them up for a new version, which has led to all the complaints about not enough new features to justify the upgrade price, because people forget the new features they had been given during the lifetime of the version.

I suspect they have given themselves a problem with subscription users wanting new features when they become available, and perpetual license holders expecting a long list of new features when a paid for upgrade is needed.

This rather complex sounding licensing scheme, along with the "loyalty" statement is probably their attempt at trying to please everyone, while really wanting the simplicity of everyone on a subscription.

Long term loyal users will probably be incentivised to switch to a subscription, a small number will stay on the perpetual license (until its such a small number C1 will discontinue it), the very vocal Adobe subscription refugees will go elsewhere, and for the small number of people already teetering on the edge of staying with C1, this may be enough of a disruption to drive them away.

I'm guessing that eventually, any economic losses from losing users will be more than compensated for from savings made by having a single licensing system to sell and administer.
 
Id say they have run out of big new improvements to implement so releasing a new annual version with lots of small tweaks is not what user will tolerate. Its not really any different to how it is as most updates between versions were minor anyway. I suspect that perpetual versions will phase out at some point. I only upgraded this year after 3 versions because I felt it was worth doing with the discounted option. Dont feel it will give me anything better and would probably go to Lightroom if I had to subscribe - would certainly make life simpler
 
For those affected by this, it's worthwhile browsing the FAQs that are being constantly updated.

e.g. "If you want to make sure that you get the latest version of Capture One Pro each year (as it works under the current model) and don’t need new features as soon as they are released, we want to make sure your cost of ownership does not go up."

And they are now going to announce the loyalty scheme before February.



 
AgentOrange76 said:
Id say they have run out of big new improvements to implement so releasing a new annual version with lots of small tweaks is not what user will tolerate. Its not really any different to how it is as most updates between versions were minor anyway. I suspect that perpetual versions will phase out at some point. I only upgraded this year after 3 versions because I felt it was worth doing with the discounted option. Dont feel it will give me anything better and would probably go to Lightroom if I had to subscribe - would certainly make life simpler
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They could always start on the print module. It's shockingly bad
 
After many years using Capture One I have just cancelled my subscription and am now using ON1 RAW 2023 which suits both my work and my workflow, even browsing, so much better. I used them both for a couple of years but ON1 have really shot ahead in all respects.
 
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Couple of thoughts I had after my initial horrified reaction:

- got an email which seemed to suggest, anyone who's already upgraded to C1P 23 is supposed to stay on the current model until September 23
- the loss of an upgrade price is a bit of a bummer. But, I paid for an upgrade this year (from V21, I usually skip a version), and a few weeks later they were offering similar discounts for new purchases, AFAICS.

And yes, a bit of work on the print module wouldn't go amiss!
 
jerry12953 said:
No, I read the thread title and skimmed it. If I was wrong, please forgive me.
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No need to ask for forgiveness :). But I did try to explain what C1 are actually saying in an earlier post.

C1 have always added new features during the life of a version license, which means that when it comes to paying for a license upgrade people complain about a lack of new features, forgetting they have been getting new features during the previous 12 months.

They have come up with something very complex, but essentially, people who subscribe will get new features as they become available and perpetual license holders, will only get them when they renew their perpetual license. Regular bug fixes will continue for both license models.

They have renewed their long term commitment to perpetual licenses and said that the new perpetual license model will not be more expensive than the existing one (but I think this going to depend on how you currently manage your perpetual license)

If you read the detail, it all sounds horrendously complex, and, as most new C1 users are going for a subscription (80%), and as this seems to be the way the world is going, I'm not ruling out them going all subscription one day, but this current announcement is actually all about their long term plans for keeping perpetual licenses available for those who want them.
 
jerry12953 said:
I'm sure you know the history of Adobe's disinformation over the perpetual version of Lightroom. It was very controversial at the time. However I'm not going to argue about it any more.
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I didn't think we were arguing.

I have no firm idea of what C1 will do long term, even if I suspect it might be subscription. But, so far there actions have been very different to Adobe.
 
myotis said:
Did Adobe run perpetual licenses alongside their subscription? I think C1 has been offering both since 2014.
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The a fundamental decision with regard to Adobe's approach is that they packaged LR and PS into the bundle and sold the subscription at a relatively low cost *for both*.

Now C1 is in odd position. For a group of customers who chose perpetual licences it is that aspect of the product tha is its USP over Adobe's offering. C1 is more expensive than Adobe's LR + PS combined offering. You get the impression taht C1 has wanted to kill the perpetual licemce for a while but is kind of stuck - not willing to risk the losss of the customers who would leave and also benefitting perhaps from customers drawn to C1 because of taht licencing mofdel (who may later convert to a subscription).

Adobe ran LR on a traditional licence for a while - begrudgingly - but benefitted from a much more dominant market position than C1 and dangled the inclusion of PS in the subscription as extra bait / comfort.
 
It seems really strange to penalise those who upgrade after February.

I'd always wondered why anyone would subscribe when the price was so similar to the perpetual license.

Announcing it all after the Black Friday deals isn't very sporting. I was planning on upgrading next year and probably would have gone for their deal with all the styles - which was cheaper than the upgrade price for me, if I'd known.... though lots did upgrade and are complaining that they would have gone for other software.
 
Dryce said:
The a fundamental decision with regard to Adobe's approach is that they packaged LR and PS into the bundle and sold the subscription at a relatively low cost *for both*.

Now C1 is in odd position. For a group of customers who chose perpetual licences it is that aspect of the product tha is its USP over Adobe's offering. C1 is more expensive than Adobe's LR + PS combined offering. You get the impression taht C1 has wanted to kill the perpetual licemce for a while but is kind of stuck - not willing to risk the losss of the customers who would leave and also benefitting perhaps from customers drawn to C1 because of taht licencing mofdel (who may later convert to a subscription).

Adobe ran LR on a traditional licence for a while - begrudgingly - but benefitted from a much more dominant market position than C1 and dangled the inclusion of PS in the subscription as extra bait / comfort.
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We don't know how many people chose C1 because of it's perpetual license offering.

I suspect that the most vocal of C1 threats of a subscription complaints come from those who were also the most vocal about Adobe going subscription, but I'm not sure how indicative all this noise about C1 subscriptions reflects the actual proportion of users who feel this way. As I said earlier, over 80% of new C1 users are going with the subscription model.

C1 has always been more expensive than LR. Adobe brought out LR at around 2/3rds of the price C1 was charging and C1 was just an ACR replacements without any of the cataloging tools. It's USP has always been the quality of it's raw processing, and an apparently large influx of new C1 users were from Fuji users, based on image quality rather than it being non-subscription.

It's difficult to compare Adobe and C1. At the last C1 annual report I showed C1 saw themselves as clearly targeting a professional/enthusiast market which was almost entirely photographers. And within their core customer base, they probably are the dominant program ie high end fashion, portrait, editorial, commercial, scientific and retoucher seem to largely use a C1 + PS combination.

Adobe are clearly targeting a much larger and wider based market than C1, and less than 10% of Adobe's customers are photographers. (Jeff Schewe mentions this in a forum).

I actually feel that the evidence points to them trying to keep the perpetual license limping along rather than them trying to kill it.

The real issue for me in terms of keeping customers, is related to higher costs (perpetual or subscription) than the competition. A once superb technical support, that justified the premium price for C1, now lying somewhere between adequate to awful, Bugs that used to get fixed that live on and return at the next release after being fixed. A catalogue, that for many if not most, find unusable, which doesn't look like it will every get fixed. Half finished new features that never get finished, and an apparent priority being given to new features over improving core image quality.
 
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Bebop said:
It seems really strange to penalise those who upgrade after February.

I'd always wondered why anyone would subscribe when the price was so similar to the perpetual license.

Announcing it all after the Black Friday deals isn't very sporting. I was planning on upgrading next year and probably would have gone for their deal with all the styles - which was cheaper than the upgrade price for me, if I'd known.... though lots did upgrade and are complaining that they would have gone for other software.
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But maybe they aren't.

We don't know how the new licensing model will work, they have said the new perpetual license scheme won't be anymore expensive than the existing one.

They have also said to people who upgraded before February, that until October 2023 (not sure why it isn't December) that nothing has changed for them during that period.

We should know mid-January what the new loyalty scheme will be

Given they are making a change, it seems inevitable that there has to be a tricky change over period at some point. Unfortunately C1 aren't very good at the customer relationship/communication thing (but not as bad as my dentist, who after a couple of years of me trying to get an appointment for a broken tooth, has just written to say NHS appointments are no longer available).
 
I dont think you can say people are penalised after they bought something. They bought it at that point. There is no promise at that point of improvements or what any update is to come and you know full well that a new version will not be available to you unless you upgrade, I have had C1 for 4 years and not one of the midterm updates has done anything significant so all C1 had to do was just not release any midterm updates and no one would be wiser.

Where some are bemoaning that the announcement came after black friday has it been considered that they used that to identify the share of sales and the 80/20 figure has come from that so have made the decision to go fully subscription.

I personally dont want to be beholden to paying £120 or more every year for the rest of my photography life which the subscription model forces- I cant drop it at any point without losing the software that is essential for processing having learnt how to use that particular software in depth. Yes there are free options but they are not anywhere as user friendly.
 
Many of you will already know that Capture One started off as the free software for Phase One's medium format cameras aimed directly at high quality professionals, not for a mass market like Adobe's Lightroom. Lightroom was born just after Adobe launched Creative Suite CS1 - I was there at the birth but turned down Adobe's invitation to contribute to pre-release development because at the time I only art directed professional photographers for my clients and didn't shoot myself until I retired in 1999. Capture One has until recently had the reputation of being the leader in RAW conversion but now has some stiff competition.

However, Capture One are not great with their customer support in my experience and has got more and more expensive and more complicated how it's paid for.

As I wrote earlier, I have been using both C1 and ON1 together for several years but ON1's RAW conversion is now just as good and so I no longer have a need for Capture One and gave it up last month.
 
AgentOrange76 said:
I dont think you can say people are penalised after they bought something.
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I only meant comparing those who buy it after February to those who bought it before - they are saying they won't get the updates from February to the next release, unlike the earlier buyers. However who knows what is ahead?

I agree that buying the licence this year is really no different to other years ( as long as it's before February!). I had planned to buy the next update which now appears will be much more expensive.

myotis said:
But maybe they aren't.

We don't know how the new licensing model will work, they have said the new perpetual license scheme won't be anymore expensive than the existing one.
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I got the impression that there won't be an upgrade price, you have to buy a new licence. All will be revealed I guess in January, so that is probably the time for a decision.

I mostly use and prefer Photolab, but there are times when Capture One works better for me and I would miss it if I didn't have it. I also can't edit my phone photos in Photolab.
 
Bebop said:
I got the impression that there won't be an upgrade price, you have to buy a new licence. All will be revealed I guess in January, so that is probably the time for a decision.

I mostly use and prefer Photolab, but there are times when Capture One works better for me and I would miss it if I didn't have it. I also can't edit my phone photos in Photolab.
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I think this is where the poor communication comes in.

What they have said that new versions will no longer be released on an annual cycle, but only when the development cycle makes sense to call it a new version. Maybe back to the way it used to be, when new versions were roughly 18 months apart (My comment, C1 haven't suggested this). At which point they will "not" be offering a discount on the upgrade price, and you will need pay the full price for a new perpetual license. Which you need to do already if you haven't updated for more than two years (as does DXO).

For the duration of the permanent license at the same version number, you will get bug fixes but no new features. I am assuming the license number will determine which features are made available, and they won't actually be making two versions of the program.

But, they have also mentioned both the loyalty scheme and that costs will be no more than they are now. I have linked these two things together and think they mean the price will be no higher for "loyal" users i.e. those that currently renew every year.

Exactly how that will work, is what I think they are trying to finalise. Currently, as I pay every year for an upgrade it's really just a hidden subscription except if I don't pay, my copy of C1 will keep working. I suspect the loyalty scheme will be simply based on a reduced price assuming you upgrade every year. Miss a year and you will need to pay the full price again.

But then they have also suggested perpetual license holder being able to pay for new features as they are released, so maybe the loyalty scheme will involve updating at each feature release.

But, who knows, C1 have never been very good with this sort of thing. In the 15+ years I've used C1, their licensing, company and marketing strategies seem to have been in constant beta !
 
RedRobin said:
As I wrote earlier, I have been using both C1 and ON1 together for several years but ON1's RAW conversion is now just as good and so I no longer have a need for Capture One and gave it up last month.
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I use C1 both for its editing and DAM capabilities (raw isn't an issue for me at the moment, as my images start on film and then scanners). I understand that ON1 has some organising capabilities, although they don't seem to e I'm interested in how hard it was to emphasise them much on their website. Having only recently moved from Aperture to C1Pro (well, to version 12, so not quite that recently), I'm interested in how hard it was to move from C1 to ON1?

EDIT: The second sentence above is a bit garbled. What I meant to be saying (and I suspect most readers will have got most of this is... "I understand that ON1 has some organising capabilities, although they don't seem to be emphasising these much in their publicity materials."

Sorry about that!
 
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ChrisR said:
I use C1 both for its editing and DAM capabilities (raw isn't an issue for me at the moment, as my images start on film and then scanners). I understand that ON1 has some organising capabilities, although they don't seem to e I'm interested in how hard it was to emphasise them much on their website. Having only recently moved from Aperture to C1Pro (well, to version 12, so not quite that recently), I'm interested in how hard it was to move from C1 to ON1?
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.... Hi Chris,
As with all digital softwares which offer a wide range of possibilities and potential, we each find what best suits our individual needs - Rather like cameras! And the leading image editors offer many features all of which we don't necessarily use - Rather like Adobe Photoshop offers.

Like you, I came to C1 from Aperture which is no longer supported on older machines. I am a Mac user too. But I only shoot RAW and all the leading editors are designed to dig out the most potential from RAW files. It's simple - A RAW image file has approximately 5x the amount of data to work with than a JPEG. I expect you already know this.

I never quite got to grips with C1's Catalogues and only used Sessions but ON1 relates better to my own folder hierarchy and culling workflow.
All the software editors work with the same Adjustments palettes/sliders on a WYSIWYG basis and so that part is easy. In fact the whole transition is easy and what I love about ON1 2023 is how everything is integrated so it can be done while still in ON1. Their thinking is much more future orientated than C1 in that they are fully exploiting AI (Artificial Intelligence) - AI is only a starting point or guide if/when you want it to be and any facet of it can be overridden in the adjustment palettes.

Forget the Topaz products! ON1 has AI NoNoise with flexible settings and AI Resize which is especially useful for generating files for printing - All integrated. I would advise buying the full ON1 RAW 2023 without the plug-ins as standalone separates.

I have to go out now but can post more info later.

The one thing I hate about ON1 is their incessant marketing emails!
 
I have been using a combination of Affinity Photo (more or less since the release of the first version of the software, now I use v2) and Capture One 22 (which I bought in July after using the free Express version since early 2022). It suits me fine, but I am concerned about the email Capture One sent out last week. I am not ready, or willing, to pay an excessive amount of money for future upgrades.

Affinity Photo (and also the Serif company's other software Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher) had been able to provide free updates for the last five years or more. That's nearly unbelievable. Now when they launched the second version of their software suite (including all the previous apps I mentioned, both for macOS, iPadOS and Windows) they only charged about £110 for all these versions of their apps.

I do not ask or demand Capture One do the same, especially since they only have one app to sell to us. However, if Serif (the makers of the Affinity software) manage to upgrade and sell a perpetual license for all their apps, for all platforms and without a subscription, Capture One should at least consider changing their price plans (for both the perpetual license and the subscription license) and the company's very poorly communicated plans for the future.

If they now get rid of the year-numbered versions (21, 22, 23 etc) and instead decide to go back to the numeral versions of Capture One, they could also make the perpetual license to cover one year from the purchase no matter when the customer bought the license. If you bought it on 12 May 2023, it would then be valid until 11 May 2024, regardless if there is a new major version released during that time or not. If the version number is 16.2.5 on 12 May 2023, and there will be a major upgrade to 17.0 on February 23 2023, your license will be covering that upgrade as well. During the year that the perpetual license is valid, you will in this case receive all the updates, bug fixes, and new features as well as any upgrade from one major version to another, as long your license is valid.

To suggest that a perpetual license only covers for what Capture One calls service release (16.x.x) and not also feature release (16.2 to 16.3 to 16.4 etc), is not only unfair against the customers, but it's also bad for the company in the long run.

Many users have also compared the prices between what they get from Capture One and what they get from Adobe. Here I believe that Capture One has to reconsider its prices. They can not charge more the double what Adobe does for their combined offer of LR and PS. I really enjoy editing my photos in Capture One, but I do not believe that Capture One ought to charge this excessive amount of money for just one single app, especially not since Adobe only charge half for access to both Lightroom, Photoshop and the iPad version of Photoshop. Capture One should include its iPad app in both the perpetual license and the subscription license.

What the company has done now, is ruin its reputation badly. We, as users, are probably getting a hard time trusting them again. Trust is earned over time, and trust is very easily gone. Hopefully, Capture One has understood in the last few days, that they ought not to change the license models for the worse. If we should be able to work this thing out together and be able to have a future relationship between us as users of their software and them as a trustworthy company, they have to reconsider their plans (as we have interpreted their plans in their email from last week).
 
Affinity seems to be a leading light in terms of value for money. I want to support Serif because they have asked so little.

ChrisR said:
I use C1 both for its editing and DAM capabilities (raw isn't an issue for me at the moment, as my images start on film and then scanners). I understand that ON1 has some organising capabilities, although they don't seem to e I'm interested in how hard it was to emphasise them much on their website. Having only recently moved from Aperture to C1Pro (well, to version 12, so not quite that recently), I'm interested in how hard it was to move from C1 to ON1?
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It is worth doing a trial of On1 before you buy. I just can’t get along with the colours - I’m on an ageing MacBook Pro (that is calibrated). Perhaps with jpegs that wouldn’t be an issue, and it is subjective.
 
Edwardsson said:
Capture One has understood in the last few days, that they ought not to change the license models for the worse.
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The problem for Capture One is that the subscription model is much more attractive. Perpetual licence users are (at least on the forums) apparently a testy lot and even if there are a lot of them the upgrade income is presumably mainly collected over two or three months - and the income is less certain as they can choose to skip an entire upgrade.

For those on subscriptions sitting back and watching with a cup of coffee and a muffin as a portion of the perpetual licence community throws its toys out of the pram then they should be worried a bit too. If Capture One doesn't have the perpetual licence holders to worry about then they don't have to focus on a minumum set of feature upgrades to get the annual upgrade revenue from them.

I have to say I have some sympathy for Capture One trying to reconcile the differentuals between their different groups of customers and the price points and upgrade yield they need to achieve.
 
Bebop said:
Affinity seems to be a leading light in terms of value for money. I want to support Serif because they have asked so little.

It is worth doing a trial of On1 before you buy. I just can’t get along with the colours - I’m on an ageing MacBook Pro (that is calibrated). Perhaps with jpegs that wouldn’t be an issue, and it is subjective.
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.... Are you saying you "just can't get along with the colours" of Affinity Photo or of ON1 (2022/23)?

Personally I don't think that any fair comparison can be made between Affinity Photo2 and ON1 2023. ON1 offer sooo much more with their integrated features and options. I like Affinity Publisher2 but think that Photo2 falls far short of what ON1 and C1 have to offer (disregarding cost!). I can't comment about Lightroom because I have never used it and am not interested in doing so.
 
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Edwardsson said:
Many users have also compared the prices between what they get from Capture One and what they get from Adobe. Here I believe that Capture One has to reconsider its prices. They can not charge more the double what Adobe does for their combined offer of LR and PS. I really enjoy editing my photos in Capture One, but I do not believe that Capture One ought to charge this excessive amount of money for just one single app, especially not since Adobe only charge half for access to both Lightroom, Photoshop and the iPad version of Photoshop. Capture One should include its iPad app in both the perpetual license and the subscription license.

What the company has done now, is ruin its reputation badly. We, as users, are probably getting a hard time trusting them again. Trust is earned over time, and trust is very easily gone. Hopefully, Capture One has understood in the last few days, that they ought not to change the license models for the worse. If we should be able to work this thing out together and be able to have a future relationship between us as users of their software and them as a trustworthy company, they have to reconsider their plans (as we have interpreted their plans in their email from last week).
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.... 3 annual versions ago C1 could be forgiven for not looking in their rear view mirrors and ignoring ON1 but now ON1 are a serious contender who could easily overtake them as market leader - Not in terms of sales, nor of price, but in terms of editing power and ease of use.

Affinity Photo2 is still a long lap behind and its price reflects that. But C1 would be very foolish and short-sighted to ignore how ON1 are developing. ON1 even include iPad versions in their pricing (I think) and certainly very powerful networking capabilities for those who need it. Unfortunately I can't help thinking that Capture One still think they are better than they actually are < This used to be justified but technology never stands still.

There are two major fundamentals which are essential to all photo editors : High quality RAW conversion and ease of workflow - ON1 2023 have got this nailed (at last!).
 
@RedRobin Its the On1 colours I’m not keen on (with raw files). The Capture One and Photolab colours are more similar to each other - to me.

I haven’t used Affinity Photo2 yet, but I would use the first version for focus stacking, cloning and soft proofing.
 
Bebop said:
@RedRobin Its the On1 colours I’m not keen on (with raw files). The Capture One and Photolab colours are more similar to each other - to me.

I haven’t used Affinity Photo2 yet, but I would use the first version for focus stacking, cloning and soft proofing.
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.... Before cancelling my Capture One subscription I tested some of my RAW files (I only shoot RAW) in both Capture One 2022 and ON1 2023 and saw no difference in colours. My monitor is a colour calibrated EIZO 27-inch.

At the moment I only use Affinity Photo2 to overlay my watermark labels and have no need to use it in preference to ON1. I now cull in OM Workspace as it displays more valuable data such as more camera settings and much better colour than FastRawViewer.
 
@RedRobin Perhaps the monitor makes all the difference, but I did compare CO22, On1-22, On1-23 and Photolab - using some bird shots and some high ISO challenging light shots. It is subjective, but we are heading a bit off topic, so let's just both be happy with our chosen software :)
 
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