Here's a number that might bother you: a photographer using a typical modern software stack is spending somewhere between $3,000 and $6,000 over five years on software subscriptions alone. Not hardware. Not lenses. Not insurance. Just the right to keep using the tools that process their images.
That number doesn't appear on any single invoice. It accumulates slowly, $10 here, $20 there, each individual charge feeling manageable. That's the trap. Not that any single subscription is unreasonable — it's that the aggregate, compounded over a career, represents a substantial and permanent cost that previous generations of photographers never faced.
The math nobody wants to do
A typical professional stack in 2026
Let's build a realistic software stack for a working wedding and portrait photographer and run it out five years. These are approximate current prices — your specific plans may vary, but the proportions hold.
Adobe Photography Plan (Lightroom + Photoshop): roughly $120/year. Over five years: $600.
Culling tool (Aftershoot or similar): roughly $120/year. Five years: $600.
Retouching tool (Evoto or similar): roughly $100/year. Five years: $500.
Gallery and delivery (Pixieset, ShootProof, or similar): roughly $120 to $240/year depending on plan. Five years: $600 to $1,200.
Cloud storage (additional beyond what's included): roughly $60 to $120/year. Five years: $300 to $600.
Booking and CRM (HoneyBook, Dubsado, or similar): roughly $200 to $400/year. Five years: $1,000 to $2,000.
Total five-year range: $3,600 to $5,500 — and that's before adding specialty tools, plugin subscriptions, or premium tiers.
For context, that's the price of a professional camera body. Or two to three quality lenses. It's real money that flows out of your business on autopilot every month.
The perpetual license alternative
It still exists — barely
Not every tool forces a subscription. Some still offer perpetual licenses — pay once, own that version forever. The question is whether the savings justify the tradeoffs.
ON1 Photo RAW 2026: approximately $99 one-time purchase. You'd buy a new version every two to three years, so roughly $200 over five years versus $600 for Adobe's Photography Plan. That's a $400 difference — but you lose Adobe's ecosystem, mobile apps, and cloud sync.
Capture One: offers both subscription (around $180/year) and perpetual (around $300 one-time). The perpetual version doesn't receive major feature updates, so practical five-year cost might be $300 to $600 depending on upgrade frequency.
Affinity Photo: approximately $70 one-time. No subscription at all. Major version upgrades run another $70 every few years. Five-year cost: roughly $140. The tradeoff is a smaller ecosystem, fewer photography-specific features, and no integrated asset management.
The hidden cost of perpetual
Perpetual licenses save money on paper. But there are real costs that don't show in the price comparison. Software that doesn't update continuously may fall behind on new camera RAW support — you might wait months for your new camera body's files to be readable. Plugin ecosystems are smaller. Cloud collaboration features are typically absent. And if the developer abandons the product, your investment in learning that tool evaporates.
That's not an argument against perpetual licenses. It's an argument for making the choice with full information rather than just comparing monthly prices.
What subscription defenders get right
The standard defense — that subscriptions fund continuous development and ensure you always have the latest features — isn't wrong. Adobe's ability to ship monthly updates, integrate AI features, and maintain cross-platform sync is directly funded by subscription revenue. Whether you value those improvements enough to justify the ongoing cost is a personal calculation.
Subscriptions also lower the barrier to entry. A photographer starting out can access professional tools for $10/month instead of several hundred dollars upfront. That accessibility matters, particularly for photographers early in their careers.
What subscription defenders get wrong
The argument breaks down when subscriptions become the only option. When Adobe moved Photoshop to subscription-only, photographers lost the ability to buy a tool and own it. The implicit contract changed from "pay once, use forever" to "pay forever, or lose access to your workflow." That's not choosing a subscription because it's better — it's being compelled into one because no alternative exists within that ecosystem.
The compounding cost problem also gets dismissed too easily. Individual subscriptions look reasonable. The aggregate doesn't. And because every tool in the stack adopts the same model, there's no escape through diversification — switching from one subscription to another just trades one recurring cost for a different one.
There's also the question of what happens when you stop paying. With perpetual software, you keep working with what you have. With subscriptions, you lose access entirely. Your Lightroom catalog doesn't disappear, but your ability to edit images in it does. That's vendor lock-in that goes beyond simple preference.
The honest assessment
Neither model is inherently right or wrong. Subscriptions fund better software. Perpetual licenses respect ownership. The problem is that the industry has shifted so heavily toward subscriptions that photographers have less choice than they should.
If you're running a profitable photography business, subscription costs may be a reasonable line item — tax-deductible, predictable, and funding tools that make you more efficient. If you're a hobbyist, a part-time shooter, or someone building a business in its early years, those same costs represent a meaningful percentage of your income that deserves scrutiny.
The practical advice is unglamorous but useful: calculate your actual five-year software cost. Write it down. Compare it to what you spend on gear, marketing, and education. Then decide whether each subscription in your stack is earning its keep — or whether a perpetual alternative, a free tool, or simply doing without would serve you better.
Nobody else is going to do that math for you. And the companies collecting your monthly payments are certainly not going to suggest it.