Capture One's recent email to Capture One Express users says that the free program will be terminated on January 30th, 2024. As a reminder, the Express version was a variant of the manufacturer-specific Capture One (Fujifilm, Nikon, Sony), and was a subset of the full Capture One Pro.
As usual, the company's explanation gets a bit in the way of reality. Capture One says that the discontinuation is due to its need to focus on its main products. Hidden away in that explanation is the reality: Fujifilm owners will still get access to a Capture One-supplied Fujifilm Raw Converter (FRC) when they register. Updated: The difference is that this FRC is a 90-day trial of the full product, and you'll have to provide a credit card up front to get it. After 90 days, if you haven't cancelled, you'll be charged, and if you cancel, the product will no longer be usable. In other words, Capture One didn't get enough cash out of the original Express agreement with Fujifilm, and is now trolling users directly for money. In further clarification, Capture One says you get both a 90-day free trial of the full software as well as a perpetual FRC version. Thus, the “need to focus on main products” bit isn’t actually solved, they’re creating a fork that they’ll have to maintain. I’d speculate that there must be money from Fujifilm for this to have worked out this way, and that the discontinuation of the other Express versions is really just getting rid of the “free” products.
Coming on the heels of ending support for perpetual license updates, Capture One is clearly focusing on a pair of products via subscription: Capture One Pro and Capture One mobile (not sure why the m is lowercase, but given that their marketing and messaging has been leaving a bit to be desired, not surprising). Express users will get a chance to upgrade at a discount (not yet known how much). If you're an Express user and want further answers, Capture One has published a FAQ on the discontinuation.
I have no problems with product focus. It's how we got there and how customers have been treated along the way that's the real issue. While a business has to concentrate on dollars and cents, customers think about dollars and sense. The Capture One dollars have percolated to "higher than Adobe" and a sense of mistreatment has also been brewed.
Personally, I've terminated my Capture One Pro subscription. I have no desire to be on their roller coaster trying to loosen my wallet for more dollars any more. Obviously, you'll have to make your own determination as to what's right for you. However, I've slowly weened away from covering Capture One Pro, and now will no longer have the ability to cover it (other than their press releases, which often are just more exasperating news for customers).
To be consistent, I've taken Capture One Pro off my recommended software list.
Meanwhile, Luminar also sent out an email, the gist of which is the company is simplifying down to Luminar Neo, and that, too, will go subscription only. Separate extensions disappear after Christmas (bah humbug) and the Creative Journey Pass also goes away. It's a little unclear what happens to the Lifetime customers (perpetual license), as Luminar's use of AI engines is both driving their feature set and their ongoing costs. Pricing at the moment for the subscription appears to be US$99 year, or US$11.95 a month. There's also a discount for two years in advance.
While a number of folk will once again complain about the transition to subscription, I've said my piece on that (basically I'm for it as long as the company is actually putting that constant stream of money into a constant stream of development, which seems to be the case with Luminar). The problem I have with Luminar (Skylum) is that they've been all over the board trying to monetize their product(s), while their primary product itself has been what I'd call unreliable. The only other similar software package I've had more crashes and bugs from is OnOne. It's gotten to the point where any benefits I perceive from Luminar now don't match the cost, so I've also stopped updating that product, won't subscribe, and am uninstalling it from my machines.
But wait, there's more.
Photo Mechanic (PM) has decided to go subscription-based, too. And here's where a problem with subscriptions comes into play. Camerabits, the maker of PM says they need the ongoing stream of revenue to continue development. Okay, I looked at my account with them. Over the course of 14 years I've spent almost US$600 on Photo Mechanic (e.g. US$43/year for upgrades, seats). From a user standpoint, did I get more useful features, better performance? Not really. The UI is still the same geeky kludge it's always been, the feature set has had minimal change. The thing I've apparently been paying for is small bug fixes and keeping up with the camera companies' raw formats. Also, transitioning to Apple Silicon and keeping up with computer OS changes. These are what I call "foundation" issues.
So here's my dilemma: if PM doesn't show that they're actually adding value constantly once the subscription model starts, they'll probably lose me as a customer. It sort of depends upon what they decide their pricing will be. For "foundation" issues, it had better be relatively low. For complete rewrites, UI improvement, new features, okay, I'm willing to pay more, but have to assess that based upon how much, how fast.
PM's changes will likely open up an opportunity for a competitor, which could reduce their customer base if they're not careful. Matt Kloskowski, for example, recently caused quite a stir with his "Goodbye Lightroom" announcement, workflow, and course. In essence, the point of that was "just get your images into a hierarchy somewhere, then point Lightroom (not Classic) at it."
So let me step back a moment and Thomsplain something: workflow has traditionally been simplified to ingest, browse, process, output. PM does ingest and browse, but passes off the processing and output to something else you've installed. The new, current Lightroom (not Classic) can browse and process, leaving you only to figure out how to ingest. Too bad we don't have a really well thought out, cross platform ingest product ;~). (Videographers will note that we have several video ingest programs that are pretty darned good.)
So PM's problem is simple: a decent Ingest standalone product coupled with Lightroom (not Classic) makes for a complete basic package for someone. At least someone who can keep their files organized. Meanwhile, Lightroom Classic is the whole enchilada: it ingests, browses, processes, and outputs. The primary reasons many of the pros use PM is speed and IPTC labeling, but the speed benefit has slowly been eroding over other possibilities (e.g. FastRawViewer).
For the moment, PM, Lightroom (both kinds), and FastRawViewer all remain on my recommended software list. But come mid-2024 I'm going to have to completely re-evaluate the situation.
