It's a me problem alright, but I'm in no way unique in refusing to put up with the mountain of grief that the Gimp UX is.
> I've been using it productively for photo editing and web design for two decades+.
I know Gimp must have its share of long term users but they're a miracle to me and I don't know what to say to that. I suppose it's good people reading these threads who are open to giving Gimp a go see there are users for whom it's working out.
I personally learned Paint Shop Pro first, after baby steps of Mac/MS Paint. Later on didn't find Photoshop particularly intuitive... although liked 3.0 on the Mac. It's even worse now according to professional friends.
I've used many others over the years and never had a problem with basic to medium features. They all work roughly the same—WIMP. Point, click.
Gimp works similarly to every other graphics program, so using it for common tasks is not hard. It's not "full of grief." If you can't do it, you either never learned how to use a GUI program properly[1], proceed by rote, or refuse to consult the manual for more specific tasks.
For one thing, it's a helluva lot easier to learn than Blender, which has no chronic troll posts that I've seen.
[1] Not uncommon in web times. The original Apple HIGs might help.
Blender being harder to learn has pretty much zero to do with how great or poor the experience of using it is. On top of missing the point, you're also missing the connection between the lack "troll posts" and what the user experience is like.
But since you're muttering to yourself about troll posts and how it's really just a skills issue, I might as well go and mutter to myself about how great Gimp could be if it had users who had standards instead of being chronic enablers who just cheerfully whistle through the wart fair it is.
I've had my yearly share of discussing Gimp I think. I'll just keep to my routine: see an update, install it in hopes of finding it has changed, and quit it ten minutes later kicking myself for being dumb enough to allow myself to hope.
Maybe Adobe's worried about AI making Photoshop irrelevant. Here's the cautionary note from its latest quarterly report: "While we have released new generative artificial intelligence products, such as Adobe Firefly, and are focused on enhancing the artificial intelligence (“AI”) capabilities of such products and incorporating AI into existing products, services and solutions, there can be no assurance that our products will be successful or that we will innovate effectively to keep pace with the rapid evolution of AI across our Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud. If we do not successfully innovate, adapt to rapid technological changes and meet customer needs, our business and our financial results may be harmed."
I think the dark patterns here are garbage, but Adobe has provided a ton of value for those subscriptions.
Is it common for people to upgrade LR or similar software every year?
Or the subscription made LR more accessible to people
The Lightroom CC is the mobile/desktop product. That is and always has been a separate "more accessible" product. Moving Lightroom "Classic" (the desktop only product) to a rental only model simply makes profits more accessible to Adobe.
That may not matter to you, but that is the market now.
Make a serious dent in their business and they will damn sure try. Typically with lawfare.
And the subscription turned out to be about the same cost as
upgrading every year.
Lightroom upgrades cost about $80. According to the wiki page Adobe rents Lightroom for $10/mo. That upgrade would only get me eight months of access.
Adobe has provided a ton of value for those subscriptions.
And yeah I paid for two upgrades before Adobe moved Lightroom to rental only. The pricing was quite steady. Keep in mind Lightroom had no DRM baked in. No licensing checks, perpetual three seat cross-platform license, etc., etc. That $10/mo is for one seat only.
If the cost to the consumer were close Adobe wouldn't have spent the engineering effort to integrate Lightroom with all of their licensing software and incur the cost of having to keep the rental servers running. You can't predict the future but based on the steady pricing (both rental and perpetual licensed) the rental software is unambiguously more expensive for the consumer.