From a viewpoint of the customer, the paid upgrades approach only works if Topaz provides meaningful updates (ie. enhancements to functionality) and not mainly bug fixes. Bug fixes should always be free.
An important question is whether early loyal adopters end up paying more than new customers. This ends up penalising the “guinea pigs”!??
The new pricing strategy raises the question as to whether Topaz is losing market share and needs to be propped up by loyal customers instead of winning new customers in a fairly competitive market.
I own Cature One Pro 20, which I use for library/catalogue in conjunction with Topaz products. Their upgrade policy is to only charge for major upgrades in functionality. I hope Topaz do the same.
Sigh… I’m not sure that I see the good news here for the customer, except for the fact that this new business model might keep Topaz in business.
As an amateur photographer, there is only so much money to go around for post-processing software. While I’m not a fan of Adobe’s rental model, I do almost all of my edits in Lightroom/Photoshop so that program (or a competing product) is a requirement. Topaz’s AI products came in to play in specialized cases for a much, much smaller part of my workflow. While I believed that Topaz was charging a premium for its AI products, I was ok with purchasing them because I believed that the price of future upgrades had already been factored in. Obviously, that was not the case.
With this new business strategy, the bar has been raised much, much higher for Topaz software. Users shouldn’t be doing beta testing for you, which has often been the case. Bug fixes should be free - always. Support and documentation should be much better. Upgrades have to be substantial, with continual advancement of the technology. Even then, I’m going to think long and hard before making an upgrade purchase, because who knows when the next change to this new “agreement” is going to happen. I mean, it has already changed from free upgrades for life to this, so what is to prevent a change to a rental model?
As a data scientist, I’ve enjoyed seeing AI capabilities being brought into photo software. That being said, it is going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out in the industry. I have a hard time believing that Adobe doesn’t have a team of data scientists working on competing functionality. Additionally, the use of deep learning/generative adversarial networks for motion deblurring, super-resolution, etc. is common in the machine learning literature. In some cases (see super-resolution), Adobe is going to have a leg up with all of the photos they will have at their disposal for model training. I have to imagine that they’ve buried a clause in the cloud storage contract that says they can use the photos uploaded for development purposes such as that. Given all of the prior art on these techniques in the literature, it would be nearly impossible to get a patent on these techniques that wouldn’t be greatly narrowed in scope during examination (by which point Adobe would just be able to sidestep it). So, I’ll get my last upgrades and then continue to watch what Topaz and its competitors put out in the future.
I have come to love Gigapixel AI, although I don’t know why it’s only working for jpgs and not pngs or gif, but I’ve worked around that. It’s a great product. I also like Studio, with the classics.
I understand that you need to make money. I loved the free upgrades, but Adobe and Corel charge for a new version every year, so I get it. What doesn’t seem clear from this announcement is if fixes will be part of the upgrade fee or if they are separate from them. If I buy a new product, I expect it to be supported for working functionality until it is mature. If you add new functionality, I would expect that to be an upgrade that would be eligible for purchase. Is that what Topaz Labs envisions or will you be charging the fee for fixing bugs, as well?
Also, my laptop is on it’s last legs. It barely runs the new software. I will have to upgrade it soon. When that happens, will I be able to download my purchased software to the new machine? Will anything change in terms of my ownership of the products?
Finaly, while it may be a useless comment, I too think the annual upgrade price is high, given our products are all separate. I venture to say that most of your users own more than one product for this reason. None of these products were cheap to begin with. I think your aggregated cost should be $49, not $99 and I doubt there’s much need for a single product fee.
Nowhere did I read anything about providing decent customer service with this change. Your customer support has been awful. A year or so ago I had a lengthy email back and forth with someone there. I didn’t get the issue resolved with him. He wrote me long, technical emails that were of zero value. It would have taken 15 minutes on the phone, but instead the company frittered away hours of employee pay instead of tackling the product head on. No wonder you need to have paid upgrades. In desperation, I ultimately figured it out after many hours of trial and error over several weeks. As an older user, I was not brought up with technology, and these things are not intuitive.
I won’t name drop, but one of your video instructors agreed with me when I took a course with him that your customer support is awful, and he had pointed that out to the powers that be in the past. Apparently they were too busy thinking of how to scam rather than satisfy customers.
No good news here. After being done over by Adobe on PS & LR I switched over to non subscription programs that do just as well if not better. These programs also do not charge such high cost like $50 or $100 for upgrades.
Also bear in mind these will no doubt be US prices and are even high once the exchange rate is applied (at whatever you decide at the time it is) for us here in Australia.
At least I can still use the current products until I find a replacement for those I use. Thanks only for that.
One of the major reasons for going with Topaz products , when I bought them was the promise of free upgrades for life.
Making major changes to licensing agreement seems unfair as they cost around 80% of the product cost.
Updates atleast for old customers who were promised free upgrades for life , should be around 25% of the total cost of software.
I’m a long-time user who owns all of your products. As Topaz has moved to Studio and stand-alone AI products, I have moved to using products from other companies such as Exposure, Luminar, and ON1. Why? It appears that you are now using a rapid application development that, from my perspective, has resulted in the release of constantly changing, unstable, resource intensive, and sometimes incomplete products. I bought a more powerful computer so that I could use Impression Studio; however, I have since stopped using Studio because Impression has been downgraded into a limited tool and I find Studio unusable for the prior reasons. I remain a fan of your old products that still work, especially Impression, for which I have hundreds of presets (that don’t render properly in Studio) and Restyle. Of the AI products, I mainly use DeNoise AI, which is very good. Sadly, I can no longer use Remask after installing Mask AI, which is a less useful product at this time. I understand your motivation for changing free upgrades, but I think those who say that you are breaking an agreement with existing customers have a good point, and you should consider exempting them or reducing their costs. At this stage, I would only consider upgrading DeNoise AI or, if you still offer it and do not move it to AI, Restyle. I think that focusing exclusively on high-end, resource-intensive, AI-based products, which must have a much smaller customer base than your old product line, is likely part of your financial problem. I am sorry to say the above because I have always thought very highly of Topaz. I wish Topaz well and hope that it will develop products that I can use in the future.
Before purchasing Gigapixel, Sharpen, Denoise and Mask I actually emailed and asked you guys if I would have to pay for updates to this software. You said no. I had used the products during the free trial and decided I liked the direction the products were going although I still thought they were in somewhat of a beta stage. I wanted to be a part of the journey and continue to use and test them as they evolved. In fact I bought a friend of mine sharpen and Denoise as a Christmas present. I really was excited for the future products that I felt would be more solid after much testing.
How about this… since you are going back on your word how about you refund me for all the products I have purchased and cancel the licenses. This is really bad for you guys and I’ve never had a company say that the product updates are for life and then shortly after say just kidding. I have a few luminosity panels that promised lifetime updates and sure enough they have kept that promise.If you want to do this new price structure then do it for customers that you had not sold products to yet. I will be sharing this to as many photographers as I know. I will be contacting your customer service soon. Bad decision for you to do this.
Makes my decision regarding if I should buy Sharpen AI to go along with Denoise AI. I am pretty sure Sharpen AI is like Denoise AI and using the the apps in PS Smart Objects is currently unsupported by Topaz.
Here is the feedback I got today after hours of frustration “Our products do not currently officially support Actions, Smart Objects, or the Last Used Settings option in the Filter menu of Photoshop.”
I use smart objects a lot while working with luminosity masking with another product “Lumenzia”. Because of how I am post processing I am locked into LR and PS (I hate subscriptions) and this would double my annual cost for two applications that I could only really use for quick edits for posting to social media but not effectively use in in my workflow making composites for printing…
I am retired on a fixed income and $100 bucks to me is a deal breaker. My thought process was to move to the complete Topaz suite as it matured and did everything I needed. I understand you desire to increase your revenue and do wish you the very best.
So here’s a true story out of New Zealand. (And yes it has relevance to Topaz.)
Some years ago Air New Zealand had a monopoly on domestic routes and provided a good, if somewhat expensive, service. Then a competitor launched - slashing prices and Air New Zealand had to match or lose business. Guess what? The competitor spluttered along for a few years trying to provide a bare bones service on razor thin margins but ended up failing and leaving the market.
Who knew you had to charge realistic prices to run a regional airline? Once the competitor left, Air NZ raised prices and everyone screamed blue murder. Why couldn’t they charge cheap prices that would put them out of business just like the failed airline?
Topaz needs to develop killer software and they made a bad mistake in promising something they couldn’t deliver- free upgrades till the end of time. However… Id prefer they went after high quality product rather than working on a shoe string and providing questionable customer support and buggy launches.
Water finds its own level. If Topaz deliver the goods they will find customers who will pay for quality. If they don’t they are toast!
Personally I think the proposed upgrade costs are too steep for this category of product. They aren’t the only players and customers are sharp! However I use Sharpen and denoise all the time and regard them highly.
Lets see how this one plays out and don’t get too hot under the collar folks! It’s only software and a company trying to make a buck like the rest of us.
Eric, I am pleased with the changes you are proposing, and surprised that you have been able stick to “no upgrade charges” as long as you have. Having done beat testing for a number of years for Topaz I know just how difficult it is to do everything that you wish to do, for every combination of machines, operating systems, graphics systems, etc., etc. etc. This takes time, expertise, and money, not to mention what is required for future, and often quite radical ideas. You have my congratulations on the straight forward way you are dealing with this.
It looks like you’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest. Plenty of angry customers on this forum.
I personally have used my Topaz products for so long (since 2008 or 09) that I’m not unwilling to pay some more down the road because I get great results from the Topaz products.
I hope you can sort this all out without incurring to much wrath.
Wow!!! What a way to treat your faithful customers, making us pay even more…Don’t you think that we should have a grandfather clause for helping you obtain more customers. I know I use to tell everyone about your project, now I am not so sure I will continue that. I like many have every photography product your company has developed, even sticking by you when things did not go well with updates…I chose you over others because of the free upgrade features and quality products. Understanding that every business needs to grow I get it ,but so disappointed. LIAR, LIAR
I’m so disappointed. This is exactly what Adobe did when they went from cs6 to the cloud based service. I use topaz because I like the product. The promise of upgrades for life felt good. It not only is a fantastic product but I felt like family made it. I would be ok for the policy to change for new folks…, but not old users. Please honor your product. You said for life. You don’t get to pull out of your contract. That’s not fair. If you do than you are just like Adobe. That would be sad…
hello,
I don’t agree because topaz started with plugins and then did a studio environment to group them.
First they forgot to include restyle, adaptive expo+regions, star effects in studio and then, instead of improving modules start again making plugins we can’t use inside studio.
So, to help topaz engineers, by habit i purchase any new plugin but don’t use.
even adjust ai because outside the studio.
the raw develop and transform tools are quite poor compared to lightroom.
so we need lightroom as frontend.
so paying per plugin has nosense.
we should pay for the 1 year support and update at for instance 99usd for the whole suite.
I couldn’t pay for instance for gigapixel i have never launched, just to keep it up to date.
Hi Eric, I have been using TOPAZ products since their inception. I have in general enjoyed working with your products. Regarding your latest decisions, I have to agree with SEWHITE and other Retired users as to the enormous cost to us. I do not live in the USA, so converting our currency to US dollars, makes you products very expensive. Sadly, if this action of yours is final, I will most likely not continue being a customer. RogerG
As a long time use of Topaz products and an owner of every product released - except for the just announced video AI; I must admit to being confused over the product and company direction for quite some time. There was at one time excellent plugins (which I am not certain will continue to be supported) / followed by Studio (an excellent standalone editor) / Regular Webinars that provided details on the use of the products (these have all but disappeared) And just when I thought that there was a coherent direction of moving functionality under the umbrella of Studio, out pops Studio 2 (a still incomplete replacement for Studio 1 with the immediate dropping of support for Studio 1). Somewhere in there came the beginnings of disconnected AI based packages with inconsistent user interfaces released in what has been described as Beta versions.
In short - At one time I thought I understood the Topaz product direction and supported what I thought was a cohesive / integrated; best in class solution for image editing. Sadly, what I see is no clear vision for the products or the company.
I had anticipated the eventual adoption of some form of “Subscription Model” as the Topaz business model could not be sustained (and frankly, I am somewhat surprised it took Topaz so long to recognize it as I was discussing this with fellow Topaz users about this time last year) And like others mentioned, I have a subscription for Adobe and view Topaz products as an extension to LR and PS; but also use standalone. But, this announcement just seems to add another level of confusion to what has been the user experience with Topaz over the last few years. In short - I really don’t understand the product or the support direction.
If this support model is going to be forced on the user community; then the pricing is too high and needs simplification - the functionality received simply does not justify the costing when compared to an Adobe subscription functionality and stability. And likely a certain percentage of Topaz users will just decide to cut the losses and move on. (this has been seen in the comments this evening) Eventually for Topaz ; the question will be if a sufficient number of users will remain to support the business - of course, I state the obvious.
The announcement today is not acceptable. The proposed pricing is not aligned with the value received and the “subscription model” too complex. Both need to be re-considered. Additionally, there needs to be an end to the release of disjointed / disconnected sets of functionality and a clear strategy of product direction developed and communicated.
I agree with Alexi. Alredy sold products under a certain offer of contract - having a lifetime free upgrade and bugfixing - can not be changed one sided without the agreement of your contractual partner. I strongly suggest to visit your lawyers to avoid further confusion.
