Here’s another example of the frustrating ‘Adobe upsell’

No, we haven’t forgotten Quick Share. Yes, we’re still mad about it.

Adobe has come under fire by Sebastiaan de With, co-founder of popular iOS camera app Halide, for removing Apple’s ubiquitous AirDrop sharing feature from Photoshop and disrupting his workflow. De With expressed his frustrations on Twitter directly at Scott Belsky, chief product officer at Adobe, asking “Could someone at Adobe please throttle the user-hostile cloud upselling that’s happening?”

Since the release of Photoshop 23.3, Adobe has required users to save their work as a cloud document before it can be directly shared with others. The company had previously disclosed the change in May, noting that the Quick Share feature would be removed due to “low usage, desire to simplify the options bar UI, and redundant functionality to other export functions.” Earlier versions of Photoshop on macOS had several file sharing options — including defaults like mail, Messages, and AirDrop — directly from the File menu or by clicking Apple’s Share button on the app’s options bar. 

In response, Adobe’s Belsky said that cloud documents were necessary for sharing and collaboration, as its implementation assisted with bringing Photoshop to the web and the iPad, alongside unlocking new features for version control. Belsky also said that including shortcuts to other export options under the Share option would be discussed internally, and assured those accusing Adobe of upselling that “cloud features are included in the product at no additional cost.”

It’s true that Adobe Creative Cloud applications do come with some cloud storage included within the subscription price: a standalone Photoshop subscription comes with 100GB as standard, for example. But upgrading that storage will cost you an additional $9.99 a month per terabyte.

De With isn’t alone in his frustrations. Comments on his Twitter beef with Belsky expressed similar criticisms towards Adobe’s decision to remove the Quick Share feature, recommending alternative services such as Affinity. There have also been requests to re-introduce the feature on the Adobe Community forums, with one user lamenting the loss of AirDrop saying “This was extremely convenient as I didn’t have to save / export a file onto my HDD every time I wanted to send something to my phone or tablet.”

Adobe is being watched with renewed caution after the design giant’s recent $20 billion acquisition of Figma, a rival design application. Incidents like this are unlikely to help soothe concerns from professionals about how Figma, a software suite known for its innovation and approachability, could be managed under Adobe ownership.