A little power is a dangerous thing…for some. It would seem, as moderator, you would be familiar with this policy and would not have deleted the original message out of ignorance of the policy.
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Hi, Well my licence for the year ran out on 31st August and now Topaz release an upgrade for Denoise less than 2 months later and expect me to pay another year. No not for me as like others have said when I bought Topaz many years ago it was with FREE upgrades for life and changing the name of the product is IMO underhanded. Thanks and goodbye Topaz. Russ.
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I"m pretty pissed about this. They told me that they sent a letter. Who cares!!! That wasn’t the deal when I purchased this. I’ll be contacting the BBB.
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Please don’t post multiple copies of the same post in different topics - once is enough.
Hi Eric and greetings to all.
I have been trialing Topaz denoise, gigapixel, sharpen and Jpeg to raw products. As a long term DxO photolab user I found the upgrade to photolab 4 (from 2) to be reasonable value for money and in my opinion the new deepprime noise reduction is at least the equal of denoise. I found little benefit in gigapixel and jpeg to raw. Sharpen is giving me some benefit and as such is the only Topaz product I currently consider as a potential purchase.
Today I started doing the sums and checking out the T’s & c’s. The best deal I could find for sharpen was $67.89, quite a lot for a single function that I have only infrequent use for. Now when looking at your upgrades policy it looks like you would basically like me to buy the product every year or two at a bit of a discount. Yes, lots other companies do the same, DxO included, but their upgrade discount is considerably better than Topaz.
I’m going to struggle to justify the cost(s) and will probably end up leaving it for now. Honestly I fee that $50 is about the top end for me with upgrades being about half of that.
Obviously If I wanted/needed all four of these the utility bundle would be the way for me to go. But for the reasons given that doesn’t work for me and I would also be very apprehensive of the potential upgrade costs.
Best regards
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For those of you debating a purchase, right now is a good time to buy or upgrade a Topaz product:
A double-discount on Gigapixel and also the Utility Bundle is available through 11/6.
This appears to be the end of the year’s grace for some of my Topaz products.
When I first purchased Topaz products, it was with your promise to never have to pay for updates and upgrades again. I know you sent out a message a year ago that you are no longer going to honor that promise. Although I understand your need for money, I am not able to “rent” the products yearly, and so will continue to work with what I have but will also be switching to Luminar’s new AI product, which doesn’t have a ‘rental’ clause. (At least yet…)
I have really loved Topaz but wish that you had made the new policy to be for new customers and kept your promise to your old customers.
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I understand what you are saying about Topaz, but Luminar is not different from Topaz. The next upgrade from Luminar you have to pay for, only updates in the current version are free. So it’s basically the same thing.
As a long time user (from your very early days) of most (possibly all) of the TOPAZ products, this new paid upgrade scheme is very disappointing.
Photography is my hobby & I only use Topaz occasionally. It is just not worth the money for me to have to continually pay for upgrades. At least with Adobe (which I’ve also used for many years) I know that my $10-00 a month is going to keep my products 100% uptodate.
It is a pity as TOPAZ products are great but I a’int paying for these expensive upgrades.
I have 6 products and don’t intend spending $300/year to maintain them. I’ll live with what I have.
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Note the maximum charge, as per the 1st post, is $99 per year plus you get to keep and use the products of you choose to stop upgrading. It is a perpetual licence not rental.
Still $99/year…
However, when I originally purchased these products I spent the money on the promise of free upgrades. On that basis alone, I will not be paying for upgrades.
Shabby treatment of the early adopters who supported Topaz.
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Skylum and Topaz are the two most sneaky companies in the software industry. One makes promises that that never intend to keep, never fix serious bugs in current versions, and do a yearly bait-and- switch to a “whole new” product that is incompatible with edits of the previous to “justify” a new purchase price. The other has reneged on its policy to offer free upgrades for life to those who bought in good faith. They could have grandfathered them in, but chose not to. They also use the “it’s a new product, not an upgrade” scam.
Skylum and Topaz should merge.
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Now I have to ask around all the dissatisfied and upgrade deniers:
Do you want the Topaz programs to evolve and get better and better, or don’t you want that?
If you want them to evolve, should they do it for free, without getting paid? Do you think this is a recreational activity? The programmers also have to pay rent and buy their food: from which money should they do this? Only from newly sold licenses, unfortunately, such a thing cannot be financed.
And if you don’t want further development: then you should be satisfied and shouldn’t complain, because you don’t have to buy the updates.
It is absurd to refer to a promise that was at the beginning of the development. How many software companies have broken this or similar promises for good reason. Because they could not foresee how the software will develop.
And I find the many insults here in the thread unworthy and indecent.
You can always discuss about the update price and demand more flexible models, but from my point of view the price for the update is okay.
That is entirely your opinion, many of us see this as a move of mistrust. Fine if they don’t want to provide lifetime upgrades anymore, but they should have first grandfathered in those who have got them to this point or at the very least give us a sizable discount. When I first purchased their programs I really thought that they were (and still are) on the expensive side considering that they are all one trick ponies, but the lifetime upgrades made it a little easier to swallow. I own other software that works just as good if not better and also do many other functions for less money, I will continue to use the Topaz Programs as needed until they no longer function but I will not be upgrading anymore, they had their chance.
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I’m going with a brief list-style reply here because I don’t want to spend more time than it’s worth, which isn’t very much.
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Topaz MADE this promise, its customers didn’t. If a company makes an incompetent decision, who should suffer for it…the company and its management, or the long time customers who bought in good faith? The price/value ratio of TL products has always been very high. The free upgrades somewhat justified that. The current policy has still way too high prices and with annual subscription it is simply a money grab. Topaz hopes that there is a sufficient number of lemmings like you who will reward and enrich them for bad business practices and breach of faith. I believe THEY should suffer those consequences, including bankruptcy if necessary.
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Perhaps the programmers should choose a better employer with decent management to not have to worry about starvation, etc.
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You obviously haven’t been around long. The free upgrade policy was in place for YEARS, not just during “beginning of development”. That was at a time when management was better, at least from the point of keeping its word. Now, exorbitant subscription prices are being asked for half-baked, buggy software that is not truly useable for many versions. You are paying to be a beta-tester.
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The number of other companies who have broken promises is irrelevant and does not justify Topaz doing it as you insinuate.
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Regarding being “unworthy and indecent”: you are confused in thinking that I give a rat’s ass about your opinion of my comments.
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Regarding being “unworthy and indecent”: you are confused in thinking that I give a rat’s ass about your opinion of my comments.
I can only write: Q. E. D.
If the discussion had been less emotional, a compromise might have been possible.
That other companies have changed their “promises” is of course a good argument. It is supposed to show that this is quite a normal process. Just one example: There are many freeware authors who decided to break the “freeware” promise and now sell their software, including the regular updates, of course. Strangely enough, the excitement is not that big, because most users can understand that a business model can change over time.
For example, because maintaining the product simply requires more effort than originally thought or simply because demand has increased due to a unique selling proposition. Even everyday products become more expensive because demand increases, a simple principle that you don’t have to go along with, but by no means shows incompetence.
With Skylum Luminar I make an exception, it’s just a matter of ripping off the customer.
A lot is promised and little is delivered.
That’s definitely not the case with Topaz, even if bugs appear from time to time, but it’s simply not true that the software is not usable for many versions. Bugs are - in contrast to Skylum - quickly fixed. And the software basically keeps its promises.
When you work in the software sector, you experience it again and again that license models change. Only rarely in favor of the user in financial terms.
But I have to admit that Topaz has done this very clumsily, which of course does not mean that I question the basic strategy.
If a license model is changed to annual upgrades, this should ideally be accompanied by a major update (features and convenience).
If - like here - the users have already paid a lot (too much even for my purposes) for the initial purchase anyway, the first and maybe even the second upgrade should be for free. This would have been a much better signal, even if it would probably not have reduced the complaints.
In general, the value for the upgrade has to be right (but everyone decides that for himself anyway, depending on the unique selling points of the software).
When developing software, there is always the question of the license model at the beginning: do I take money once for a software or from the beginning regularly only for upgrades or generally every year.
In my (!) opinion, the fact that a management is sometimes wrong in this difficult decision is no reason to make them liable for it right away.
Especially not up to bankruptcy, which is of course nonsense. Many companies would go bankrupt 
Nobody benefits from this, especially not the user. If Topaz goes bankrupt, we will have to buy another software with regular paid updates, I don’t see any profit in that.
And it was certainly a mistake to promise free upgrades forever, but that’s marketing. If you were naive enough to believe that, you should take a look at the marketing of millions of other products and see how promises are broken again and again. Strangely enough, people continue to buy these products in large numbers.
And to answer this question: I have been around for a long time and know the promises. But that is not an argument. A change of the licensing model is not a slow process that can be announced in time, but always a decision based on current data.
And those who call the prices “exorbitant” unfortunately have no idea about exorbitant subscription prices.
From the beginning of this new upgrade policy I have said that I have no problem with paying a small fee for development of the AI applications. Compared to all other apps we use the prices are extremely high for a single function application. $ 99,- for just 4 plugins is very expensive!
Upgrade Sketch was € 69,- for a year, Cubase Pro € 59,-, Wavelab Pro € 99,-, Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher one time payment of € 54,99 each, Mamp Pro 6 € 39, Screaming Frog SEO € 170,- Capture One 21 € 111,74
Cubase and Wavelab are apps with 100ths of plugins and a complete digital mixing studio and mastering suite. And they are charged by version number not a year.
Capture One is for latest 21 version but I have the perpetual license, so after a years it keeps on working.
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I have no time or interest in getting into a pissing contest with you. You may call it “marketing”. Around here, we call it lying. Euphemizing and diluting lying by calling it “marketing” has led us to where the world is today. Again, you try to justify sleazy (Don thinks it’s spelled “sneaky”) bait-and-switch tactics just because “everyone else does it”. Doesn’t make it right.
I have no problem with changing the rules going forward at any time. But those who bought under the previous policy should be grandfathered, mistake or not. Topaz should not be rewarded (or bailed out) by making their (former) good-faith customers pay for their mistakes.
It’s moot, anyway. Adobe will fix this soon, as they just made Luminar’s Sky Replacement superfluous . They did it better than Skylum, at no additional cost to the customer. And they never promised and reneged. They are already gauging interest in a Neural Denoise filter in PS 21. Not only did I respond in the affirmative, I strongly requested a Neural Sharpening filter as well.
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Thanks a lot for the fast and friendly feedback (you don’t get it every day in threads), that motivates me to answer immediately.
If you identify all the marketing promises they have not kept as lies and stop buying these products, you have a heroic way to go. Good luck with that.
And as already written: I am also of the opinion that you have to treat former buyers differently than new buyers. But forever in vain, just because it was promised at the time of purchase, would not be my expectation now.
And the fact that you mention Photoshop or Adobe as a shining example is more than astonishing, you pee on your own leg - to stick to your expression.
I didn’t know that Photoshop costs nothing, has no additional costs.
I’ve been using Photoshop since Version 1.0 and the complete Creative Suite for a long time:
Adobe has been ripping off users for years with completely excessive update prices. Every year these were exorbitant prices for the updates without adding many new features. The usability of Photoshop is still a horror today, far from the comfort of other programs. And if I only think about the standstill of Adobe Dreamweaver, I would like to see how users would react here, if they should pay for it at all. Or when I see that programs are simply no longer updated, even though they have been paid for for years (Fireworks). Or some products are simply taken out of the program completely.
And then Adobe changed the update model to a regular subscription model, which didn’t make it any cheaper or better. The fact that Adobe is now getting excited about adding really innovative new features was more than overdue.
And to be honest: only the Sky Replacement is reasonably competitive, the rest of the AI functions are more or less useless, partly so badly implemented that I wonder why they publish this already.
Also the zoom function is far away from the quality of Gigapixel AI.
But we still pay monthly or yearly for it, there might be something to come, let’s hope so.
It’s really amazing that Adobe is mentioned as a positive example.
You should have mentioned DxO Photolab instead:
there is serious competition for Topaz DeNoise here (DeepPrime) and the program is cheaper compared to Topaz and has more features if they are considered useful (not by me).
And I apologize for the upgrade price statement. I didn’t realize that this is a consumer software, so the comparison to other programs is certainly justified. But the annual upgrade prices of Topaz are not that exorbitantly higher, even though the Topaz programs are of course functionally very focused. Everyone may decide for himself whether the special functions of the Topaz products are worth the money.
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To me, they do seem to be much higher. For slightly more than the upgrade price of one product, I can upgrade DxO or ON1 and have a complete photo editing and RAW processing program rather than a couple of one-trick ponies. If I want to pay the $99 to get upgrades to everything, I still don’t have anything close to a complete solution, yet I have spent more than the purchase price of either of those products.
Although I don’t believe what they are doing is ethical, my main gripes are the price and the lack of any consideration for current customers. The fact that others have done it doesn’t make it right either. If a new customer wants to make the decision to buy based on the new Topaz policy, that is their decision. But I and many others justified purchasing the products even though they were expensive because we would get free updates for life. As I have said before, this is just my opinion but I believe that a lower price for existing customers would have been accepted much more widely.
I strongly believe that if Topaz ever decides to start updating JPEGtoRAW or Adjust AI, those products will also change to a paid upgrade model, but that is just my opinion. As it stands right now, based on the public release notes there hasn’t been an update to either of them in over a year so Eric saying that we still get free updates to them is no great gift. We will have to see how that plays out.
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