and having to continually pay for a subscription when I haven't been using the product for months just annoys the heck out of me. If I stopped, when I want to start back up again I'll have to go through the annoying process of signing up again, and I don't know if they have any rules about how long you have to wait to re-subscribe.
My understanding from chatting with an Adobe rep is: The $9.99 photographer CC package, with Lr and PS, can be handled on a month to month, as needed basis.
Once installed, it can be used on Home computers and mobile devices, completely off-line if need be, with only the need to get online once a month to "check-in and pay" to keep it active.
So, if you stop paying, what happens? Well, Lightroom is not removed from your devices! Just "castrated". You still have Lightroom to use, with the
Develop Module turned off.
You can still use Lightroom's
Library module to view all of your images, (Which stay on whatever storage "drive" you keep them on), and to export those images to whatever sizes you need for printing or producing jpegs, etc. I don't know how they "turn-off" Photoshop.
In a couple of months, or whenever you need, you can re-subscribe, and continue using the full Lightroom and Photoshop programs.
I particularly asked the rep about this several times, to reaffirm, and they said you can subscribe and stop, and start, stop and start, indefinitely, they don't care!
My real concern was the ability to also subscribe as needed to an add-on program like After Effects.
Perhaps subscribing for a few months to learn the program, then stopping and only subscribe when I had a job that needed After Effects.
And YES! This can be done also, no problem! But, the cost of AE month to month is $29. vs yearly subscription of $19.99 monthly.
Sidenote: Adobe's single program/App plan ( for instance, for Photoshop only ) is $29.99 a month.
BUT, The Photography plan (Photoshop AND Lightroom), is not double that, or a "two-for" at $29.00, not even $19.99, but $9.99 a month. That's less than 35 cents a day.
Still, I stay with the stand-alone Lr 6.