For the record:  Lightroom was free to all owners of the excellent RawShooter (which Adobe had acquired) -- I certainly did not have to pay a cent for it.

My hunch is that there would be much less unhappiness over the introduction of Ultimate (and the initial payment for it and for subsequent upgrades) if it was abundantly clear that it is in a very real sense a new product and not just a partial revamping of Studio with FlashPipe incorporated. 

A detailed side-by-side (columnar) listing of the features that the four versions of Qimage have would help, not just to convince one that Qimage Ultimate is indeed a new/different product but also to guide future purchasers of the different versions of the software. 

Perhaps such a listing already exists, in which case my apologies for suggesting that there should be one.  But my point still stands, namely, that there is likely to be much less fuss, petulance, talk of loyalty, wanting something for nothing, etc., etc., if Ultimate were clearly seen to be a new product, a sufficiently advanced to warrant acquiring and to justify a fresh payment by existing owners of Qimage and Flashpipe.

Incidentally, I will not hesitate to buy Ultimate once I am sure that it provides more/better printing features than Qimage Studio and a better interface for managing that task.  I would still prefer a version just for printing, without the clutter of (no doubt excellent) features (e.g., raw processing, which for Lightroom is much more to my liking).

Hi Mike
I am a studio user and have printed very little over the years as the cost of home printing is too prohibitive when compared to costco and other low cost outfits .I definitely bought the program because of the superb offer of free updates and the quality of prints i was able to produce when i tried the program.I upgraded to studio as a way to support your hard work its been a number of years since i printed anything at home,however i may change and start printing more at home in the future also another reason to get the upgrade. I bought flashpipe also because i wanted to support you, i also have and was using downloader pro.So i have spent albeit a small amount of additional money with your company that i would not have spent if it weren't for your Qimage free update policy. I certainly understand and support your need to have a continual revenue from your software development we can all gain from that, and your software is reasonably priced with the added benefit of a very reasonable upgrade price. I wish you success with your new product however i will not be purchasing it at this time as i already use adobe and apple products for my Raw conversions and have been using them since their inception.I must admit i have never used studio to do a conversion but i do use flashpipe to get some jpegs for viewing purposes on a pc with acdsee as it is much quicker viewing jpegs than raw files.I will continue to support flashpipe although while on the subject i would love to see a way of stopping or canceling a transfer. I post this only for you to get an insight of reasons users have used your software, i am a fan of your imaging programs.

I have been using Qimage for years, first Pro then Studio. I always wondered how Mike could make any money offering free upgrades year after year especially once his product saturated the market. As as happened with other developers, they find they can no longer provide free upgrades with the amount of new sales coming in. The only solution is to come out with a new product that no longer gets free lifetime upgrades.

I applaud Mike for holding out as long as he did. The fact is though that he was the one who sold the product with free lifetime upgrades. He can't do it any longer so the product has to die. I know there are promises of bug fixes and such but the fact of the matter is that there are no more free upgrades. Over time, even the fixes will become less and less.

Here comes the "new" product Qimage Ultimate. Actually it is not new, it is an upgrade. It may have a ton of new code but it is built from Qimage. Mike may argue it is a totally new product but it is still called Qimage and it is not 100 percent new code.  I understand a lot of work went into it, I understand the economics of it all. It is an upgrade not a new product!

The decent thing to do would have been to offer current users an upgrade path to Qimage Ultimate. I bought Pro, I bought Studio, I would have paid an annual upgrade fee if it had been part of the package. Now Ultimate comes out, another upgrade, I agree to the annual fee, I want to upgrade, but I am told this is totally new and I must purchase the product at full price plus pay the annual fee. Not nice, not classy, not a good way to do business or win customers.

Mike, I am sorry you are bitter that your free upgrades for life policy didn't work forever. It's not my fault though, you made the policy. Qimage is so good that I want to support you and your work. I am more than willing to pay to upgrade to Ultimate, I am more than willing to pay an annual fee, but I will not purchase your upgrade at full price.

Five years from now whether I am still using Qimage or not I will not have paid DDI any money at all. If a reasonable upgrade path would have been offered, I would have paid DDI $80 plus the upgrade fee in those 5 years. Multiply that by the number of users who won't upgrade not because they don't feel Mike deserves the money but because they were given no consideration in being able to upgrade. Its very sad.

End users are in no position to make determinations about what is or is not a new product.  Qimage Ultimate is a new product and if you want that product, you will have to pay for it.  Did you get a free ride from Adobe when they released Lightroom and charged you full price for features that, in this day and age, should really have been included in PhotoShop?  Did you complain on their forums when they tried to sell it to you for $250 when 75% of the code is the same as PhotoShop 5 (yes 5, not CS5)?  Because I can assure you, if you did, they don't care!  People pay Adobe $250 per year and for what?  For them to change the "4" to a "5" after the letters "CS"?  What do you get with CS5?  Their content aware is a joke: it doesn't even begin to work in 98% of cases outside a couple of hand-picked simple examples on YouTube.  Then after you buy it you find out that in the vast majority of cases, it just slaughters the image and you have to resort to manual cloning.  Did people burn Adobe at the stake for forcing people to upgrade to CS5 just to get support for new raw formats for new camera models?  I'm still putting those in the old Qimage Studio!  No.  It's a business decision and people realize what they are getting and they can decide for themselves if the need is there (to buy a new product).

In contrast, Tone Targeted sharpening, Lightning Raw, and many more features that are currently in the works in Ultimate are innovations that go far beyond elusive "magicware" that only works for one or two in 100 examples.  They work on EVERY image!  Car companies add a new stitching to their seats and heated windshield washers and they call their model "new for 2011".  Other software companies take the exact same software from last year and add nothing more than support for another format (let's say Blu-Ray for example) and they call that a new product even though it looks almost identical to the old one.  Would you have still complained if I called the new software "Widget Plus" instead of "Qimage Ultimate"?  I almost named it something entirely different but after thinking about it, there is nothing that should preclude us from carrying on a good name and a good brand.  "Qimage" may be the brand but "Ultimate" is the model.  It is really quite ridiculous to have users proclaiming "this is not a new product".  It certainly is and it is already proving that.  The product you purchased (Lite, Pro, or Studio) is still in production and is still supported and updated.  We can't pay for truly new innovations like those (already found and to come) in Ultimate on free rides.  With Lite, Pro, and Studio, you get free upgrades to the product you purchased for the life of that product.  That's what "free lifetime upgrades" means.  It doesn't mean that everything I do in my lifetime will be added to the product you purchased for free!  Sooner or later you have to admit that what you are doing now is well beyond the scope of what people purchased.  It's then that a new product is born.  Qimage Ultimate is a new product with pricing and upgrade policies that make Ultimate as much a bargain in 2010 as Qimage and its free lifetime upgrades were in 1998!

Mike

How is QU "already proving that?"  How does it prove it's a new product?

When Adobe started bundling Bridge with Photoshop did anyone consider that a "new product?"  I didn't think so.  Adobe didn't think so - they charged current PS owners an upgrade price for the new version (the Photoshop, Bridge bundle).

Most users think of a "new product" in terms of what the product can do - to a user it has nothing to do with how much new code there is or how nifty that feature is they worked on.  It's about function, to users.

So what is Qimage to users?  For most users it's the best printing program out there.  For some users it's also a handy/good RAW converter.  From a big picture perspective, those are Qimage's core functions (I apologize if I missed something(s) but I don't think it's matters to my point).

What does Qimage Ultimate bring to the party, core function-wise?  Nothing that I'm aware of - again, I'm sorry if I missed the big new core function.  There were enhancements - from what I've read some of those enhancements are really, really good.

Even if there is some big core function that has been added to Qimage, it's still an upgrade - much like when Adobe bundled Bridge with Photoshop (with Bridge, they added the core functionality of an image browser (view images and edit metadata)).  Qimage Ultimate to me is still the best printing program out there (I don't convert my RAW images with Qimage) - in other words, its core function did not change for me and many, many others.

Even if the code were rewritten from the ground up, it's still an upgrade to users.

The bottom line, if Qimage Ultimate really was a "new product" people would use Qimage Studio alongside Qimage Ultimate.  Or Qimage Pro and Qimage Ultimate, etc.  They would use both in tandem because the two products would serve different purposes (provide different functions).  I don't think people use these products that way at all (in tandem).  If you buy and use Qimage Ultimate, you very likely stop using Qimage Studio/Pro/Lite.

Conversely, when I bought Lightroom I did not stop using Photoshop.  Lightroom really was a "new product."


Of course not.  We're not suggesting that at all.


Of course not.  We're not suggesting that at all.


This is where you lose many of us.  The logic doesn't sync with reality.  When I bought Qimage Studio it was the best printing program I had tried.  That scope has not changed.  Not for me, not for many of us.  A new product is "born" if it provides a whole new core function(s).  It's a "new product" if it is meant to be used alongside the "old product," not replace it.  A replacement is an upgrade.

Maybe I'm missing what you're saying.  Show me an example in the photo software world of what you're talking about.  Show me a software product from another vendor that you see as a good Qimage Ultimate "new product" example.


Well, I don't agree with the "new product" part but I agree that it is a bargain for new users.  Not so much for existing users.

Like egale said, I'll use Qimage Studio until it works no longer and then I'll buy the best printing program for the buck (probably QU or it's replacement).  That is the cost effective choice you're forcing me to make.  If that's five years from now, DDI lost $100 from this user.  I would rather give you a reasonable upgrade payment and the $100.  You're a tough guy to give money to Mike.

I don't see people saying they feel cheated.  Maybe I missed it.

I received a email from Adobe yesterday - offer upgrade my Elements 7 to CS5 at a 50% discount over £300 -  now that is still real money considering they will be offering another costly upgrade to CS6 soon.

jeff