Adobe Has Run Out of Allies

Thirteen years ago, I sat in an amphitheater in Los Angeles as Adobe announced that it would be shifting from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud. I remember being skeptical, but I was also willing to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt. After all, it created a beloved line of tools.

I don’t use that word lightly. Adobe was, for a long time, beloved. A whole generation of photographers, graphic designers, and video editors had literally grown up with Adobe software. But Adobe is a business, and it makes business decisions. While many were not pleased about the idea of moving to a subscription, there were still those — myself included — who were willing to hear Adobe out about the choice.

No, you would no longer really “own” the software, but Adobe promised that, in exchange, going cloud-based meant that it would be more agile and better able to deliver updates and features to users. You also would, theoretically, save a lot of money by not having to purchase the physical Creative Suite disks.

Back in 2013, buying the Creative Suite Standard cost $1,130, and that just got you Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Even now in 2026, that is a prohibitively expensive upfront cost.

“By cutting out the costs of shipping and creating physical copies of software, Adobe had done something that benefits them and us: they have made their software accessible to just about anyone who would need it. Even when I was in high school teaching myself how to use the software, I could afford $50 a month. Now with a steady income, $50 a month is a pittance for the value I get out of it,” I wrote back in 2013.

I was giving Adobe every benefit of the doubt, because I wanted to see this work. I think it’s important to recognize why I felt that way and what has changed in the last five years.

Real People Who Really Cared

For a majority of my time as a technology journalist, Adobe had placed its developers — the people who actually make the software — in front of media and users. It was not uncommon for us to talk with the guy who ran Lightroom or the lady who headed up the Photoshop team. They were eager to talk not only to media, but also to users.

These people cared, and they had every reason to. They were proud of what they were making and wanted to make sure it continued to support users. They talked, but more than that, they listened. Adobe’s corporate structure encouraged them to engage.

In June 2013, just a few months after Adobe announced the switch to Creative Cloud, I published an article and video about the methods and challenges of creating photo software, which included interviews with multiple Adobe team members, including the guy who invented the Healing Brush, Jeff Chien.

“Adobe is a very different company to me, because Adobe serves the many interests of users which are, mostly, creative users. They are, in some sense, artists,” Chien said.

That sentiment carried through Adobe’s halls. Folks like Chien and the others I spoke to that day put a strong emphasis on remembering who they made software for and making sure those people felt served by what Adobe was making.

I don’t think that has wholly changed in the last decade-plus, as I know there are still people at Adobe who feel the same way — I met them just two years ago when I visited with the PetaPixel Podcast team. But the difference is the corporation around those people has changed, and now those people are no longer encouraged to talk to the public the way they once were.

A Shift in Priorities

Adobe’s product is largely blameless. The product is, for the most part, not just good — it’s great. The promises Adobe made 13 years ago have been largely upheld from a product perspective. But it’s not enough to just make a good product, especially when you’re catering to artists.

Adobe’s business model, led by now-outgoing CEO Shantanu Narayen, kept following the money. Individual users are good, but big business contracts are better. Why settle for $50 a month from a photographer in Indiana when it could get a multi-million dollar contract from a corporation in Los Angeles?

Adobe started to shift its focus to enticing those corporate customers to the detriment of its connection to the customers that gave it success to begin with. In order to better serve the interests of corporate clients, its media team changed. It ditched its long-time public relations firm that was extremely successful at connecting the business to working artists, for one that was better at getting Adobe featured in the magazines and trade publications CEOs read.

It stopped putting its product managers and engineers in media briefings and public events, instead replacing them with team managers who had never used the software. It put media-trained executives on camera, not the people making new tools. Its messaging started to be written by lawyers, resulting in incredible blowback. Individual users can tell the difference, and they hate it.

“Skip the photo shoot,” Adobe said proudly, blinded by its misplaced self confidence as it stepped on the faces of those that built its business.

Adobe began to feel like they are owed good press rather than act like the company that has to earn it. They take criticism poorly. Its communication teams are no longer those who come from customer-facing brands but instead are imported from business-to-business companies.

Slowly, the artists who praised Adobe shifted from a broad mix of actual engaged customers to only the ones paid to.

Adobe not so much forgot who its users were, but instead it actively decided they no longer mattered. It believed it had become so big, so mighty, and so important that it could move beyond them. What arrogance.

The Verge highlights a major shift that has taken place: the creative software industry has declared war on Adobe. It now faces an onslaught from all sides: Apple, Blackmagic, and Canva are all squeezing the company at the same time in what feels like an unexpected truce, as if they all silently agreed that the monster must die.

Now, as its enemies are gathering at its gates, Adobe finds itself alone. It has run out of allies. Or, rather, it has run off all of its allies.

Corporations don’t care what happens to Adobe; they’ll just find somewhere else to spend their money. They won’t rush to the company’s defense. The shareholders that Adobe’s leadership worked tirelessly to please have already left it. They’re fickle and disloyal, very ready to dump the stock in favor of the next shiny object. Adobe’s stock value has fallen 53% in five years.

Individual people — the artists that once formed the backbone of Adobe’s strength — now want nothing more than to see the company fail. They delight in watching its stock price dip and competitors appear. They cheer loudly at the simple prospect that someone, anyone, is offering an alternative to what it produces (even if that alternative isn’t quite there yet).

It is hard to imagine a more widely detested brand among its own users than Adobe.

Adobe is alone, and it has only itself to blame.

Those who once would have thrown themselves in front of oncoming fire to protect the software they loved — loved because of what it allowed them to do — will now do nothing but point and laugh as the company suffers.

Image credits: Elements of header photo licensed via Depositphotos.com.