Subscription Model

[sydlow]

Here's what I'd like to see and pay for. See attached conceptual.
Facial and image recognition tech has been around for over a decade now.
If this was integrated into PM it would accelerate captioning so much.

[charlesteton]

Trying FastRAWViewer and its no where near as simple and clean as PM, no ingest or multiple folders open in tabs, not as fast etc. JMO. C

[vale]

May is around the corner. Can we have an update on this topic?

[greg2024]

Here is the current subscription and perpetual pricing.
https://home.camerabits.com/get-photomechanic/

[bwana]

Here is the current subscription and perpetual pricing.
https://home.camerabits.com/get-photomechanic/

Is this some kind of early April Fools prank? That's more expensive than Adobe's PS/LR bundle.

[vale]

Wait.....so until now, the license was 169$ and you could keep it until the computer/software couldn't tun it anymore.
With the new pricing, it is either 16.9x12 = 203$ (monthly payment), 168$ (yearly) or 337$ until your software is not compatible.
Can we have a explanation on how those 'numbers' were calculated? 
If somebody buys today a perpetual license and after 1 month you came out with version 7, there will be a free upgrade?

[greg2024]

I've been using the trial but haven't yet decided to purchase Photo Mechanic Plus. For me two things stand out.
1. Finding photos using the Browse, Metadata, Keywords is very fast, allowing recall of images from years ago with ease.
2. The structured keywords capability works effectively.
I haven't used all the capabilities of the product so I'm possibly understating the product's benefits.

While I dislike the increased cost I appreciate the need for a steady revenue stream. Their valuable staff must be maintained, who like everyone else must be feeling the increased costs of daily living. I'm not ready to abandon metadata and  keywords to trust in flashy AI alternatives. I would like to see Photo Mechanic continue and achieve native Apple silicon support. Perhaps it's worth an investment of a year to see what Photo Mechanic has in its roadmap.

[vale]

PM 6 was introduced in march 2019. 5 years ago!
Apple M1 was released November 2020. 3 years ago!

For a year, at least from existing customers, there will be NO revenue stream. So how can we hope for new improved versions? And how can Camera Bits convince those existing users to pay them the same amount of money for a year, when they use the same program for 6 years for the same money?

[bwana]

PM 6 was introduced in march 2019. 5 years ago!
Apple M1 was released November 2020. 3 years ago!

For a year, at least from existing customers, there will be NO revenue stream. So how can we hope for new improved versions? And how can Camera Bits convince those existing users to pay them the same amount of money for a year, when they use the same program for 6 years for the same money?

Has it really been five years since their last update and three years of no Apple Silicone support?

[ahoward]

We have updated Photo Mechanic consistently at no additional cost to anyone who purchased a license for Photo Mechanic 6 (and even folks who purchased Photo Mechanic 5 less than a year before Photo Mechanic 6 was released). If you'd like to review the updates that we have made to the product, take a look at our Announcements board or the readme included in the installer for each update. (Spoiler alert: There are many, many updates and improvements.)

Most, if not all, of the questions in this thread should be covered by the post that we made about this transition back in November (though if you only saw it when the announcement was made, there have been some updates to the post/policies we changed since then, including the fact that we continue to offer a perpetual license, so please give it another look).

While it is true that we do not yet have an Apple Silicon Native version of Photo Mechanic, all of our testing since Apple first introduced Apple Silicon has shown Photo Mechanic running as good as or better under Rosetta 2 emulation than it does natively on Macs with Intel Processors, and we offer the same technical support that we do for other platforms. Our developers also know the architecture of Photo Mechanic and the areas where Apple Silicon provides improvements, and in many cases don't think that our software running natively on Apple Silicon will provide a massive performance difference for the vast majority of users. Our lead developer, Kirk, has mentioned in a few posts throughout this forum where he thinks we will see an improvement.

With that in mind, we are actively working on a native Apple Silicon version of Photo Mechanic and it is something on the roadmap for this year. That roadmap is something we are eager to share at a future date. 

[greg2024]

Thank you for explaining.

[Claude Diderich]

Here is a list of all added features for the years 2021-2024 (all versions and Windows only, excluding Mac only) based on the announcements on this forum [hope I did not miss any]. Everybody can assess whether or not they believe that sufficient value is added by these new features for them to be worth a subscription or a purchase of a new perpetual license.

2024
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Added: Support for Exif GMT offset tags.
Added: {subsecond} variable is now four digits.
Added: Use GMT offset from xmp:CreateDate if photoshop:DateCreated does not have it.

2023
----
Added: SmugMug uploader now supports keywords from XMP sidecar files.
Added: Allow Licensors phone number type to include an unspecified option.
Added: Disregard case on sorting of IPTC lists.
Added: Support for more file types in Live Ingest.  Live Ingest now supports all still media types. It also pairs HIF files with RAW and WAV for renaming.
Added: Visual context for individual file upload status to Uploader window.
Added: {rand3} and {rand4} variables for 000-999 and 0000-9999 ranges.
Added: Warning when deleting folders from Navigator and Favorites.
Added: Uploaders - increase the maximum number of concurrent uploads to eight.  This significantly increases the performance of uploading images, depending on the service and server.  This setting is adjusted in the Connection Settings accessed from the Upload dialog.
Added: Support for Sony a7Rm5 and ZV-1F models’ makernote data.
Added: Ability to force a full rescan of a Contact Sheet, even if the directories have not changed.  Hold down the Modifier Key (Option on macOS, Shift on Windows) while choosing the Rescan menu item from the View menu.

2022
----
Added: new 'Alternative Text' and 'Extended Description' fields.  These fields are active by default.  You can customize the Metadata (IPTC) Info and Metadata (IPTC) Template dialogs to hide them if you wish from the Accessibility page of the Preferences dialog.
Added: Allow Uploader/FTP window to open when no contact sheet tab exists.
Added: Missing shortcut for selecting images with no color class.  Note: Windows Input Method switching may interfere with the functioning of the shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+0) and may have to be changed in the Keyboard Control Panel's "Input language hot keys."
Added: Pagination to upload templates.
Added: Variable {kelvin} returns Kelvin temperature in AWB (certain Nikon cameras).
Added: Handle EXIF data with type 13 (TIFF_IFD_TYPE).
Added: Ability to use relative pathing for folder naming in Save As and Copy/Move dialogs.
Added: XML and KMZ exporters enforce file extensions.
Added: Country Code field in all instances now enforces length and encoding limits.  Country Codes must be plain ASCII text and either two or three characters long.  If they contain accented characters or exceed the limits then they will be omitted.  This is to conform with the IPTC standard.
Added: Error/Warning messages output by the JPEG library are now logged, along with the filename that had the problem.
Added: Support for the OM-1 camera.
Added: Loading code replacements now displays error message after OK button clicked in Set Code Replacements dialog.
Added: Support for .ACR sidecar files.  Handling is OFF by default.  Enable in the Files page of the Preferences dialog.
Added: Find/use star-rating in Fuji X-E4 raw files.
Added: Apple AAE file support for HEIC/HEIF files.

2021
----
Added: SmugMug uploader now allows the replacing of files when uploading.
Added: Dropbox uploader now supports short-lived access tokens.
Added: Windows Installer, Implemented Evergreen WebView2 Runtime Deployment.  This is added in preparation for using the Microsoft Edge browser for GPS map features instead of the phased-out Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Added: Ability to save GPS coordinates in XMP for PSD, HEIC, and HIF files.
Added: New option to slideshow to only allow the Escape key to quit the slideshow.
Added: ​​Updated Nikon and Canon lens info.
Added: Dropbox uploader - Made sure that the new token and ID formats won't break the template.  Dropbox will be updating their access tokens and ID formats in September. This update should address the upcoming change.
Added: Video upload for the following services: Amazon S3, Box, DF Studio, Dropbox, FTP, FTP v6, Flickr, SFTP, SmugMug.
Added: Option to link favicon in the PM Classic Export templates.
Added: FTPv6 template - Made directory listing optional.
Added: Treat WAV files as a known file type, for purposes of renaming and playback when they're not attached to an image.
Added: SFTP Connections - Add option to force Key-Based Authentication.
Added: New 'From Clipboard' button in Set GPS Coordinates dialog that interprets text as GPS coordinates.
Added: Support for transparent layer for TIFFs.  User-defined background color.
Added: “Add to Master” keyword list button to the Keywords panel which changes to “Overwrite Master” when the Modifier Key (Shift on Windows, Option on macOS) is held down.  Add to Master will add the current list of keywords to the Master Keywords list.  Overwrite will confirm that you want to replace the entire Master Keywords list with the list of keywords in the Keywords panel.
Added: “Load from Master” button in the Keywords panel now has a Modifier Key alternative that will “Merge from Master” which will only add the keywords from the Master Keywords list that don’t already exist in the Keywords panel.
Added: XMP is now embedded directly into HEIC and HIF files rather than using an XMP sidecar file.
Added: Allow fine grid when rotating a crop to be turned off.  When the overlay grid is enabled it will be shown instead.  If the overlay grid is also turned off, then no grid will be shown when rotating.
Added: iPhone 12 Max (AppleProRAW) DNG file support. DNG files previously damaged from earlier versions can be fixed by using the Revert TIFF-based RAW command or by making some metadata change to the file.
Added: Evaluate variables when Pasting IPTC snapshot to selected photos.  Sequence, and Code Replacements are also evaluated.
Added: Rotate PMLib.log at startup.
Added: New command-line switch to output the machine ID. /machine will produce the machine ID.
Added: Set GPS Coordinates can now interpret decimal GPS coordinates from the clipboard and enter them into the latitude and longitude fields for you.  The coordinates in the clipboard must be in the decimal format (ddd.ddddd, ddd.ddddd) and can be negative or positive.
Added: SFTP Connections - Added an option to force Key-Based Authentication.
Added: Slideshow and Live Slideshow now have an option to keep the mouse cursor visible during the slideshow.
Added: The Set GPS Coordinates dialog is now resizable.
Added: New append (+) checkbox to Persons Shown in the Metadata Template dialog.
Added: Updated PhotoDeck upload template to support two-factor authentication.
Added: Contextual menu normalization between platforms.  The order of menu items is now consistent between macOS and Windows.  Also added separators on either side of Delete/Move to Trash menu items to make them less likely to be chosen by mistake.
Added: Long paths are now supported.  If a folder located on a path that is longer than 260 characters is opened as a contact sheet, it will open and work normally, but it won’t participate in the “Open Recent” documents submenu on the File menu.

[bildbaendiger]

The subscription model will start on 28.03.2024
What will happen to the licenses that exist until then regarding the updates?

Will I receive all new features as well as maintenance updates for one year from this date or does the update support of my version end with this date?

[bwana]

Is there an upgrade path for existing Ver 6 owners?

[Claude Diderich]

The subscription model will start on 28.03.2024
What will happen to the licenses that exist until then regarding the updates?

Will I receive all new features as well as maintenance updates for one year from this date or does the update support of my version end with this date?

CamerBits replied to me on a similar question by "... but nothing changes to users who purchased a Perpetual License before the switch. Your current Photo Mechanic license will continue to receive updates through May 2024, and beyond that, you may continue to use the program for as long as your computers remain compatible." [bold added my me]