Hogan's Predictions for 2024

Thom Hogan is always an interesting commentator, even though I do not always agree with him. His first and last predictions for 2024, are probably the most concerning.

We have grown used to having incredibly cheap post processing software. I spend about €100 a year on a cut price suscription for Capture One. My Engineering software costs me €1000 a year, and my Chinese knock-off Autocad software costs €800 every time they update. The subscription cost of Autocad Autocad, is somewhere up in the stratosphere. The complexity of these software packages is about the same. I believe we are going to be paying more for post processing software soon, on a subscription basis whether we like it or not very soon.

About Chinese, lenses. I agree there is a niche in the specialist lens market. I can justify €1200 for my Laowa 15mm PC. I cannot justify €3000 for a Nikon 19mm PC. So I quess there is some sort of niche market for affordable specialist lenses.

His last point, I think is sadly true. DPR is not what it was. It has not recovered fully from the closure saga. Forums there are very much more quiet than before. Another very well known blog I have followed for years, is in decline and the owners pessimism, shows through from time to time. He admits revenue has nose dived.

Your thoughts.

As far as I'm concerned, however the commercial post-processing software companies will do doesn't concern me. Besides PixInsight (fairly niche astrophotography software) and Aftershot Pro which I abandoned many years ago, as a hobbyist I have been content using open-source post-processing tools for the last two decades and don't see that changing. Obviously this is very much a subjective take and I understand I'm in minority here.

I haven't followed market enough to have opinion about points 2, 3 and 4. Unfortunately I guess he's right about point 5.

I'm a longtime Adobe subscriber. A factor Tom didn't mention that was central to Adobe's move from selling products to leasing a service is the cost to operate the business.

Every software app has bugs. Every software app that's a product gets updated, from time to time, to retain existing customers and attract new ones. When Adobe was selling their apps, a significant portion of their cost of operation was servicing customers who chose not to install bug fixes or who made some change to their computer's configuration that broke the app.

Adobe also lost customers through sales of software to people who never upgraded. It's an odd situation because, in a weird way, they still had the customer. That photographer processed their images in an Adobe product. But Adobe never saw another sale to that customer.

The subscription model ensures consistent and predictable revenue. As important - arguably more so - the subscription model lowers the cost of operating the business. Adobe controls how the software is installed and automatically updates the software with bug fixes. When a subscriber migrates to a new computer, Adobe manages the transition of the product decommissioning on the old system along with the installation of the app on the new. Some apps live in the cloud where they're 100% safe from the fumbling and bumbling of the customer.

I've got to believe Adobe's cost per customer to provide support in respond to questions about the software not working properly has significantly decreased as result of adopting the subscription model.

From a customer retention standpoint, that too has improved. Customers get used to paying the monthly subscription fee. They budget for it and, as a result, stop thinking about it. When Adobe drops a major software update - usually one or two each year - the customer automatically has access to whatever new tools are included. If the customer finds one they like, they're reminded why they're not shopping around to "upgrade" image processing apps.

The biggest vulnerability of photography - and this is something no camera manufacturer or designer of photo processing and editing apps can change - is that photography is an image-making process. There are two kinds of photographers: the person who does photography as their preferred process for making images and the person who makes images and uses the photographic process to do so. The difference is subtle but important, and the second type of photographer is where the medium is most vulnerable.

There are far more people on this planet who enjoy making images than who enjoy doing photography. We've seen this reflected in the rise of the smartphone over the last 15 years as the preferred image-making platform for the vast majority of people. They use the smartphone camera as part of their image-making workflow but they don't self-identify as photographers. They use apps to transform their photos into images...avatars, dreamt of vacation spots, humor and other topical commentary.

The resulting image isn't a photo of an actual person, place, thing, or event. It's a different kind of image; an illustration, photo art, digital watercolor or some other thing.

Please, note that this observation isn't a criticism. I'm not suggesting anything untoward or unethical occurs. It's just a different approach to image-making than a dedicated photographer uses. Neither is right or wrong; they're just different processes.

AI has emerged as an image-making process that's not photography but is capable of making images that look like photographs. It also doesn't require a skillset beyond inputting a simple set of parameters or requests for the type of image one wants made.

It's the perfect tool for the person who wants or needs (for work or another commitment) a realistic image but isn't a photographer and doesn't have the budget to pay for or lease use of a photo.

The need is for an image of a certain type or having a certain look. Photography used to be the sole process capable of addressing that need. That's no longer the case. AI is a competitor in the arena. AI will overtake photography as the dominant image-making process. That is virtually guaranteed.

As more people abandon photography as a process used to make realistic-looking images, camera makers and photo processing app companies like Adobe will have to adapt. The camera makers will adapt to serving a much smaller customer base: those who love doing photography to make images. The software companies will adapt by tailoring their products to support image-making. Photo processing may be among the available tools but won't be the core or most-used tool of the app.

In this context, Adobe is supremely positioned to adapt to this emerging reality. Photoshop has always been an app that's useful to photographers but isn't strictly a photo processing app. It's an image making app. Yes, you can start with a photo and end with a photo. But that's just a small subset of what Photoshop can do. It is first and foremost an image-making app. Several Adobe products fall into this realm.

The real and immediate challenge for users of AI tools, is the ethics of how the images are used. Generations ago when Walter Cronkite signed off each newscast with the catchphrase, "That's the way it is," CBS was selling the integrity of one man as the reason you, the viewer, tuned in to watch. In the not too distant past, Dos Equis sold lots of beer to customers who identified with a fictional character known as, "the most interesting man in the world." The actor was real but the character was fictional. And everyone knew he was fictional...at least, they should have known.

In this new AI-world in which we live, where will the line be drawn defining the acceptable use of realistic imagery? Personally, if an AI image is presented as something that's real - a real person, place, thing, or event - when, in fact, it's manufactured from whole cloth, I take issue with that. It's an act of deception; unethical and should be treated as such.

But if an AI image is presented as what it is, something fictional (the most interesting man in the world), I don't see an inherent problem with that. Nobody's being lied to. We're adults and can reasonably be expected to exercise reason in our consumption of persuasive messaging.

But that element of how the consumer respons to persuasion, is a factor we must consider. A child, for instance, simply doesn't have the mental or emotional maturity to tell the difference between reality and fiction. They're also more impressionable and more easily manipulated. Strict limitations are needed on the use of realistic-looking AI imagery in children's content.

There's also the very real issue of how adults respond to persuasion, especially to intentional misinformation. Millions of adults believe lies and myths about the world, human history, and real people, places, things and events. What happens when a significant segment of the population becomes incapable of discerning reality from an AI-generated fantasy? How do we respond when half the population in developed countries sit around all day wearing VR goggles and living in a fantasy?

They're adults and, as such, have a right to self-determination. But they also have a responsibility to be active members of society in the real world. How do we balance the conflicting rights of the individual vs. the needs of society?

If only everybody realized they could be living more full, richer lives being out in the world doing photography 😉

... but not alone. Anything Adobe is long gone from my computer (talking years) and my only subscriptions are to Stock Market stuff.

Coincidentally, my Adobe Stock options are down 36% from what I paid for them ... grump.

And you do not have a TV and/or phone, electricity, water which are also subscription like.😁

Maybe where you live but not here.

My TV does not require a subscription. The water from my well is free.

Phone and electricity are indeed essential ... Adobe is not.

My electricity, heating, hot water, cooling and vehicle power are all free, now that I have solar. It covers everything.

I basically got out of the photography hobby after 45 years because of three basic things:

DPReview permanently banned me for nothing (another Mako victim).
Lightroom went subscription (I'm using 6.14).
SLRs stopped being developed (I can't stand mirrorless viewfinders - they suck).

The last two are complimentary. If I don't buy a new camera, I don't need a new version of Lightroom.

So, I basically haven't used my SLR in over a year, after averaging 24,000 shots a year since 2004.

What he said. Bill hit the nail right on its pumpkin head. A company - any company - is there to make money for its investors. Investors serve a fundamental role in that without them we would not have goods and services to keep the economy rolling. When the revolution in personal computing started, actually not to long ago, S/W was looked on by the public as somehow different. When Bill Gates and Paul Allan looked at PC Doc and said "we can do better," and created MS Dos. When Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne looked at the "PC" and said we can do better they built the Apple 1 in Jobs's garage. But as a business MicroSoft and Apple had vastly different approaches. MS wanted to make money selling S/W - primarily operating systems. Apple was happy to give away the OS but wanted to sell H/W.

When I took over R&D at Fairchild Camera and Instrument known at that time after several acquisitions as Fairchild Weston, I had come out of the US defense department and was schooled quickly in the ways of business and how to make money by the a few of old timers at FW. I was at FW at a tradition point in the defense electronic industry which predated the same transition point in consumer electronics. In imaging reconnaissance film imagery was giving way to digital imagery based most on real time requirements - digital supplied that film didn't. In signals intelligence applications computer horsepower was increasing which was mitigating the need for large and expensive special purpose processing hardware. However, there was still a need for state of the art hardware as the target technologies were becoming more sophisticated and complex.

What MS found after the initial push is that you can't sell S/W for enough to keep a company going. Someone buys a PC and a copy of MS Dos and later Windows - they think they are good for life. There is no reason to upgrade. As MS became more mature, they found they needed to start making hardware products. HP and Dell well selling PC products with a wholesale copy of Windows and HP and Dell were making a lot more margin. The genius of Jobs was to combine both and to explore other avenues for computing, the iPod replacing the CD music player, the iPhone, the iPad along with the desktop and lap top computing environment. Sell the H/W and just give away the OS.

Imaging S/W companies are stuck in paradigm of the mid years of MicroSoft. People buy a copy and many think they are good for life. In reality they don't read the fine print where it states they don't really own it. All they own is a license to use it. They get their panties in a wad when a company stops fixing an obsolete product maybe running on an obsolete processor for free. The solution for the SW industry was to fully address that they don't sell S/W but they lease it. As such if a users wants support there is a cost and that cost will be passed on. So we now have what used to be MS office sold under a lease or subscription plan. We had adobe going to a subscription plan. MS also started to build some of its own H/W platforms, e.g., the Surface. Capture One is in the process of transitioning to a more sustainable subscription business model. There was of course whining, crying, cussing and gnashing of teeth when Adobe transitioned to a subscription model. And history is repeating itself as C1 goes that route. We well see how long DXO holds out until we start hearing subscription.

When I took over R&D at Fairchild Weston (formally Fairchild Camera and Instrument) it was during the period of rapid technology transition from film reconnaissance imagery to digital (the first digital camera flew in space in 1976). Up until the early 1990's film still had a resolution advantage. However, real time intelligence was not achievable with film. It was with digital. In signal intelligence there was a similar technology transition from processing systems based on large complements of special purpose hardware to processing systems based on general purpose compute platforms, initially with some specialized processors evolving into a general purpose platform with all processing functionality in S/W. It caused a paradigm shift in industry in that there is a lot more margin in selling specialized hardware than S/W. Another issue is the way the patent/copyright system works for S/W. Algorithms and processing tricks can be patented. S/W that implements such cannot be patented. It can be copyrighted. However, the copyright does not supply the same protection as a patent. Industry had to figure out how to make money in this new environment that evolved. After a lot of years the defense electronics industry has make that transition to a new business model.

In consumer electronics S/W, clearly a subscription model is one way and that paradigm will spread. Of course some "long time customers" will walk away. However, I cannot see how some one that is still on a 5 year old version of C1 or Lightroom could be considered a long time customer. Both Adobe and Capture One have been adding value to their products with new features, faster implementation of existing capabilities and making the product more intuitive and easier to use. I found myself doing the yearly update of C1 anyway. When I used DXO Pro I found myself doing the yearly up grade. I also keep my Nik Plugins up to date. I recently transitioned to a subscription for C1 since I like to have and use the online support and have found it to be quite useful. I also like to get new features when they are available instead of waiting for once a year in the new update and pretend Santa Clause came to visit. I actually see the cost difference for what I need to be a wash.

Clearly Apple perfected their business model long ago. Jobs was a genius. They make their profits on high end H/W platforms and support it well with the OS and architect their devices in such away as to sell an integrated environment where everything works together. How much does Apple make on the simple "AirTags?" MS is in the process trying to evolve to that model. A S/W company like Adobe nor C1 have that luxury. The subscription model allows them a stable cash flow and to monetize their otherwise overhead cost such as technical support.

The one thing about AI image generation is Bill is right on the money. This is not photography, however, it will replace some of the need for commercial photographers. For example if an ad agency can produce all the necessary imagery for a produce ad, whey will they pay for a commercial photographer. They won't. If they can do it in house with AI image generation S/W - that will be much more cost effective and mean they will be in direct control of the process. On the other hand. Could that impact the camera companies - of course it can. On the other hand with the push for content authentication integrity now under way - I don't think the impact will be as great as some predict. The camera industry went on steroids with the advent of digital. That was not actually sustainable. Today the many wanting their iPhones to make everybody smile in a snap shot would not be been photographed in the 1980's prior to digital capture. There of course will be change. However, throughout history change has been the only constant.

Correct, we change cameras, software improves and is able to do new things. I had no problems getting a C1 subscription with a discount for €109 each year, which is very good value compared to what I pay for my FEM software and Autocad(clone) software each year.

We spend thousands on camera gear, and then whine about spending €100 each year for the software that turns out the final image.

I guess I'm that guy who has never given Apple a single dollar.

Maybe I'll get back into it sometime when I'm less tied up. Still don't plan to buy a mirrorless camera or a Lightroom subscription.

I don't spend thousands each year. I bought a system, from 2004-2006 and kept it until 2016. Then I sold most of that and bought new in 2016. Haven't bought anything since.

So Apple became the most valuable company in the world without your contribution. 😉 Back in the late 1970's a good friend of mine showed me his Apple 2 and told me I should buy some Apple stock. I wish I had - oh well. 🤬

For me it's more of a matter of preferring completely open solutions (as in "source code is available for literally anyone to see, modify and build, anyone can contribute assuming contribution isn't poor quality") rather than about money. But it's a preference rather than rigid doctrine; if I'd like to have something and there's no feasible open option available, then I'll go for a commercial option.

Oh, I have cameras.

Canon 20D, 5D, 7D Mark II
Canon 8-15/4L, EF-s 10-18, 18-135USM, 50/1.8 II, 70-200/2.8 II, 1.4x and 2x TC II
Sigma 18-35/1.8, 150-600C
Celestron Edge HD 11, 0.7x wide converter

So, that's equivalent focal lengths from circular fisheye through to 4,500mm without TCs. Continuous from fisheye to 960mm equivalent, then 2,000mm, 2,800mm and 4,500mm equivalent discrete steps.

I also have several compacts, but my main one is my Canon SX50 (24-1200mm equivalent 50x zoom lens).

There is a lot of benefit in open source - particularly for users who are also "tinkerers." That is they like to see what is under the hood and be able to make mods and explore different processing approaches. On the other hand the downside of in pure Open Source is the lack of an overall system engineering approach that develops functionality based on well vetted requirements. It's difficult to have an open source model for hardware. On the other hand it's pretty easy with S/W. My major gripe with Linux in the early days was the lack of a descent user "desktop" interface. In reality the a 2004 Linux desktop was on the order of a late 1990's variant of Windows. The Sun microsystem Solaris ( a POSIX compliant Unix) had a much better integrated and much more capable desktop GUI. Of course after Apple transitioned to an Intel based Mac and a POSIX compliant Unix OS for the Mac, the Mac had the best desktop layered over a Unix base. Today Mac OS running on the Apple M ARM 64 bit chipset is also a POSIC compliant variant of Unix.

Of course the push to use Linux in commercial applications because of cost benefits ran head long to the fact that in such application not only performance but reliability and availability were critical requirements system requirements. The US DOD was exploring how to get the cost of compute hardware down. However, the US DOD had a requirement that all new systems be POSIX compliant (POSIX based on a IEEE standard to insure interoperability between systems). While Linux was a less expensive option, it was not POSIX compliant.

Also not everyone was enamored with the only GUI that was reliable was heavily dependent on the command line. VM and other line editors is so 1980's. Also code running in defense department applications has to be curated and certified to be POSIX compliant. One does not want a system that controls a constellation of 1/2 billion dollar satellites to have an issue and put any of those resources at risk nor does one one any non POSIX system talking to such a control system. That can be an issue with OS.

Red Hat Linux tried to thread the needle to be Open Source and still meet the reliability and availability requirements demanded by commercial users and addressing the POSIX compliances. Eventually it became more intractable as such system engineering controls required to do that and the concept of Open Source are somewhat at odds. Eventually IBM bought Red Hat and Red Hat was forced to bring more systems engineering structure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is no longer free. One buys a license to use the OS and the license is based on a "build" executable structure - similar to most S/W packages. The Red Hat S/W is developed based on classical best system engineering principles as strict configuration control management, independent regression testing, etc. prior to the release on a new version. Today while Red Hat Enterprise is not fully POSIX compliant the Red Had Linux requirements are moving in that direction to the point in many applications Red Hat Enterprise can be used in US DOD systems. However, no non fully POSIX system can talk to or control a DOD satellite or talk to a computer that talks to a satellite. However, to accomplish this requires a transition to a model where one "rents and not owns" through a license the S/W similar to the subscription system of Adobe, Capture One. Of course there are other distributions of Linux which are truly Open Source. But these are not really ready for prime time for commercial applications.

I've kicked around some Open Source code. I always found such code in general to require a tinker's mentality and finds solving the issues integrating such code into their particular system enjoyable. I personally don't want to have to tinker with my tools to get them to work, I want them to work right out of the box. The Leica Q2 has there "crop modes." The lens is 28 mm. You can select a 35 mm, 50 mm or 75 mm crop. The camera shows FOV of the selected lens in the viewfinder using frame lines. However, it is more than just frame lines. The exposure is calculated within the selected FOV not the 28mm FOV is a corp other than 28 mm is selected. This crop is applied to the Jpeg but not the Raw. Lightroom reads this flag from the extended metadata and applies the crop to the raw. You can always of course remove the crop and get to the full 28 mm FOV. Capture One does not do that - it imports the full 28 mm and does not apply any crop that was selected.

I poked around and found an open source Capture One script for the Mac that would read the crop mode out of the metadata and then apply it to the raw. I down loaded the script and other code that was required for it to function. I followed the install instructions. When I fired it up and used the script - it crashed C1. I spent a little while looking to see if there was some sort of a permission issue, but after a little while I decided I'd had enough and uninstalled both the scrip and the module I needed for interface. Obviously the script was not ready for prime time and while it was free, one often gets what one pays for.

On the Open Source imaging editing applications I find most have a really crappy GUI. However, if one wants to try their hand mucking with algorithm parameters to see if they can get better performance or better images then some of the OS image editors support that. When Fujifilm introduced the XTrans sensor, Adobe did not do a good job. If one had an XPro1 or XT1, I can see where using a OS application could be beneficial. However, by the time I got my XPro2, Brian had released Iridient Developer which does a really good job with XTrans. It didn't get as much play has it should have as it was designed for the Mac. However, compared to Adobe products it was head and shoulders better. Capture One soon caught up for all practical purposes but there are a still a few images I develop using Iridient and finish editing using Capture One. Adobe eventually has almost caught up but it often takes predeveloping using Iridient XTransformer or Adobe Enhanced Details which is pretty time inefficient. DXO PL now also does a good job on XTrans - although it is not really a fully functional image editor, but close. In stall the next update of C1 and fire it up and it just runs with newer capabilities and bug fixes I probably hadn't noticed. The same with DXO Nik Plugins. The same with Topez Photo AI which is now fully integrated with Capture One. The same with the Adobe products. They are commercial products that are ready for prime time and just work out of the box all with user friendly and robust GUIs. If something doesn't work and you have a subscription license - there is robust user support. Of course you pay for it. But when I look at the cost of my cameras and lenses, cost for fully supported editing S/W is down in the noise.

So while not too long ago OS image editors offered something unique, that is no longer as true. However, OS will always offer the ability to tinker with the algorithms and code while cussing at the UI. 😉

I'm not sure I'd be welcome or helpful. I didn't realize this until I had been into photography for about 40 years, but my attitudes about photography are unusual. For example, I have never gone out looking for shots, I don't share my pictures outside the people for whom they were taken unless for technical purposes, and I think artistic critiques are not just worthless, but also harmful.

Ideally, there will be at least one company (or person) that puts out non-subscription software. The problem is, the subscription software may have what you want. The main problem would be if camera manufacturers required subscription software for their cameras to function, something akin to printers requiring you to use proprietary ink or the printer will not print.

But cameras are small change. What about when this comes to cars? To appliances? To everything?

So long as they aren't RF mount, apparently.

I had started posting a lot less on DPR beginning with the pandemic. That's odd, 'cause I'd have thought exactly the opposite would be the case. I don't know if it's coincidence or if the pandemic did the same to others, but I thought I'd put it out there.

I'm thinking that no one really cares. Smartphones are where it's at and their dominance will only increase. Camera manufacturers and software producers will try to squeeze every last bit from us that they can as they try to crush their competition and emerge as the last one standing. One by one, camera and lens manufacturers as well as software makers will bow out from trying to steal the scraps from the others. Small no-name cameras, lenses, and software will come from China and have a cult appeal to people who grew up with cameras, but they'll never be big operations.

Of course, it doesn't matter that they'll never be big operations. Technology will continue to march on, and the future cheapie cameras and lenses from China in the future may well outperform the best we have today, especially when it is all designed by AI and assembled by robots.

But the good news is that your cameras and your current [non-subscription] software will still work, and, honestly, I think it's all been "good enough" for some time now. In all seriousness, while I enjoy photography, no one I know cares -- a snap from my smartphone would be more than enough -- and I think the vast, vast, vast majority of people feel exactly the same. Honestly, most photos I look at, I'm thinking the same thing, so of course it's the same with my photos. Still, I do photography because I enjoy it. That no one else cares is besides the point, really. As the digital revolution in photography comes to a close, I don't find what I have lacking. Sure, I'll always want more and better, but I've had "good enough" for a long, long time now -- and people have not been any more impressed with the photos I've taken with the better equipment.

In the digital era, the subscription model makes sense.
Digital technology changes fast. It might be memory, camera body, lenses or PP. Make an advance in one and it flows right through the chain. This is true of the hardware and the software and they need each other. It isn't only photography, it's reality for all digital technology. It's a completely different world to analog image making. I agree with tprevatt, I don't find the subscriptions cost me more than the regular update of a program. Either way, it's a lot, lot cheaper than buying film and paper and chemicals once was.

During my life I have built 3 darkroom. When we moved to our current house, my wife putdown her foot - she was not giving up half her basement for another darkroom. So began my move to digital. First from buying a high quality scanner and giving up printing. For developing film all that is really needed is a changing bag and a sink. I people think a subscription to C1 or Adobe is expensive - try building a darkroom.