Photoshop Elements and its sister program Premiere Elements are slightly simpler photo and video editing programs from Adobe. The company has been developing these programs alongside its professional software for many years, but unlike the latter, which has long been available only as a subscription, the company has always continued to have regular licenses on Elements.
Adobe this week launched the 2025 release of the two programs, and observant users were quick to notice that the company has finally ditched the usual perpetual licenses. Instead, Adobe has moved to a subscription type. The company calls it a limited-term, non-renewable license.
The maximum is three years, so those who pay for the software must “purchase” it one to three years after that if they want to continue using it.
Adobe has always charged for new versions of Elements, and many users obviously chose to pay for new features from time to time, but some also settled on a certain set of features and kept the same version for many years. So it won't work anymore. What Adobe hasn't revealed is whether future updates will be sold at a discount to existing customers, and if so it will extend the license to three years from the date of the update.
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