16 ms·

Adobe abandons its Creative Suite to focus on Creative Cloud

161 points by 0x10c0fe11ce 13y ago

joshmn 13y ago
I'm not sure how I feel about this. There's a part of me that's saying that I don't need to continue to pirate Photoshop/Fireworks (I'm not a designer, but I do handle some graphic content for our company), and the other part of me is saying I should still go pirate Photoshop 7 (super lightweight compared to any other PS version.) And, what I mean by that is, not everyone needs to upgrade every version. What happens when shit hits the fan with a version of Photoshop and all the CC customers are forced to upgrade?
- nwh 13y ago
  The copy protection Adobe currently uses in Photoshop is almost non existant, and I can't imagine the CC suite will be any different. It seems to be more of a token effort to prevent easy piracy than any real attempt. The whole Creative Cloud nonsense is just a way to get people paying subscriptions. None of the "cloud" features are at all usable or useful in any design workflow that I've seen. I attempted to use them on the release of CS6, and there's just nothing there. I would love to see even one person using their 20GB of "cloud storage".
- canthonytucci 13y ago
  You never "need" to pirate software. If you're too cheap/poor to buy Photoshop, use GIMP. Grow up.
  - joshmn 13y ago
    Let me go tell 12-year-old me that.
    - wcfields 13y ago
      Exactly. I always thought that part of Adobes dominance in this market was to allow some piracy of their product because that's how teenagers learned how to use it. Adobe then made their money from actual business users who MAKE money from the tools and therefor must have legit licenses. And those businesses use Adobe because their workforce learned it already, and it became the defacto-standard because of that.
      - andyhmltn 13y ago
        Also: Some of those teenagers will grow up and eventually purchased the product. I (allegedly) pirated Dreamweaver (haha), Flash and Photoshop when I was still learning because I was broke (unless you count £10 a month pocket money as steady income...) After spending a lot of time with those tools, I eventually purchased CS3 and have upgraded to both CS4 and CS6 since then. Not to mention the various licenses I've had to buy for employment.
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    He just described a scenario where he needs to pirate PS 7.0 because Adobe doesn't offer it anymore and modern versions are inferior. Unless GIMP somehow covers all his use cases and can read his PSD files without problems? Unless it's changed since I used it last week, that's false. Basically, there are scenarios where legit customers are stuck pirating. I own licenses for multiple pieces of software that I can now only acquire through torrents because the original vendor doesn't offer the installers anymore (or wants to force you to paid upgrade to a newer version).
    - canthonytucci 13y ago
      Do you think he has a license to PS 7.0 and is going to "pirate" it by finding an installer from an alternate source? I did not get that impression. You're not stuck pirating, you're stuck unable to use the software. The choices are pay for software or use FOSS, you're doing both communities a disservice by pirating.
      - kevingadd 13y ago
        Doing that is piracy, though. Which is my point.
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- spartango 13y ago
  You probably already realize this, but pirating software and using it for commercial purposes is generally a terrible idea. Morals and ethics aside, your piracy exposes your company to legal threats, which could be costly and painful to your colleagues.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    I wonder how often companies are actually charged with this though? How would they get proof that you had an old pirate version of PS on a PC in the office somewhere, it's not like adobe has the right to come in and start rummaging around.
toki5 13y ago
I have to admit, the subscription model is way more attractive to me than the one-time model. I'm not someone who uses Photoshop every day, so if I sit down and think "it'd be really handy to use it right now, just this once, for this one thing" ... I'm not going to shell out hundreds to do it. I'm just not. I'll use GIMP if I can or I'll pirate Photoshop if I can't. I might shell out $50, though, and if I find I'm using it often, great. If not, I'll cancel and I'll have only spent $50 for a legitimate use case.
- learc83 13y ago
  Too bad the $50 plan is only with an annual commitment. It's $75 if you want month to month.
  - shimfish 13y ago
    $50/month is for everything. It's $20/month just for Photoshop.
    - learc83 13y ago
      It's $30 without an annual commitment.
    - JoeKM 13y ago
      learc83 is referring to the "annual commitment" plan (see the drop down) of the "complete" package, which includes all software: https://creative.adobe.com/plans https://creative.adobe.com/plans But you are correct that if someone only wants Photoshop, they only pay $19.99/month with no annual commitment.
      - learc83 13y ago
        >But you are correct that if someone only wants Photoshop, they only pay $19.99/month with no annual commitment. The $19.99 for photoshop is with an annual commitment, it's $30 without it.
- andor 13y ago
rubbingalcohol 13y ago
The value proposition for Adobe's software-as-a-service offering is lacking for people who only use one of their products, or who don't already stay on the bleeding edge by paying for upgrades every 2-3 years. Photoshop is the only Adobe product I use as a web developer, and I've been using it less and less as I do more backend and client architecture and less design implementation. For my needs, Creative Cloud is a really bad deal. Creative Cloud might be a great value to people who use lots of Adobe products, and good for them. But even if this were a good value to me, I still wouldn't buy it. I do not trust software as a service, at least for software that runs solely on my own workstation. Unless Adobe wants to subsidize the cost of my own hardware, I don't believe that their subscription model benefits me as a consumer. I think Creative Cloud will present an interesting challenge to the Open Source community. Open Source alternatives to Photoshop have kind of languished in recent years, and I wonder if Adobe abandoning traditional software licensing will spur new free software development.
- kbenson 13y ago
  Then pay $20/mo (with year subscription) for just Photoshop. If you need another tool occasionally, pay the monthly fee for it for a single month. $20 a month it's all that much money for a business product. You may be paying close to that for reliable hosting with all the perks or for some virtual servers for testing.
  - beedogs 13y ago
    $240 a year for something I use every few weeks, at best, is still pretty absurd.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      Don't commit to the full year, then. You at no point are stuck buying $240 a year save for some deals, you can start and cancel CC to your heart's content.
    - kbenson 13y ago
      Only if it doesn't provide that much value. In the cases where you use it, if you can't do without it or use another tool, or you view the one time cost of learning another tool too high, then it's worth it. If this pricing makes you re-examine whether you really need to use Photoshop and switch to something cheaper, all the better, since you will probably be happier with something that accomplishes your needs that you feel isn't costing too much (and I imagine whatever you do in Photoshop so infrequently isn't hard to accomplish in many other programs).
felixthehat 13y ago
I've been using CC since it came out - the killer feature for me is that you can install CC on all your computers - PC & mac with the same license key. As someone who hops platforms and computers all the time, it's fantastic. I always used to pirate Adobe software, but the monthly pricing is very reasonable and you get all the Adobe software for the price, rather than web/print/video bundles like they used to. They've really turned around and made this pirate into a customer.
Moto7451 13y ago
If you're not a professional designer and are looking for some Adobe suite alternatives on the Mac, may I suggest: Pixelmator[1] (replaced Photoshop) Currently $15 Artboard[2] (replaces Illustrator) $29 Scribus[3] (Cross platform - replaces InDesign) $Free These apps serve me well for basic Web/App Art, my resume, and the occasional flier. The only thing I do miss is the Illustrator XAML export plugin for when I work on WPF/Silverlight stuff. [1]http://www.pixelmator.com http://www.pixelmator.com [2]http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/ http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/ [3]http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus
- aristus 13y ago
  Pixelmator1 was nice because it was a bug-for-bug clone of Photoshop 5 (not CS5, v5) including shortcut keys. Pixelmator2 was a step backward, IMO, without adding many new features except stability. If you're going to throw away all your muscle memory anyway, I'd suggest looking at Acorn. http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/ http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/
  - chc 13y ago
    I'll second Acorn. It is weird compared to other image editing interfaces, but it's actually quite usable for most people's needs (or at least what I imagine are most people's needs) and it has really nice polyglot plugin support that should please developers.
    - seltzered_ 13y ago
      Thanks for mentioning this, I've been developing a mac plugin (http://thimbleup.com http://thimbleup.com) and didn't realize Acorn also had plugin support.
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bocalogic 13y ago
This might be problematic. Photoshop works for a lot of us because it is a stand alone application. Curious to see what kind of lag issues will occur on a cloud based solution. As mentioned above, it seems more like an anti-piracy issue solution. While Photoshop is the standard, several other applications exist that do a good job as well. They might lose market share over this move.
- cstejerean 13y ago
  This is not photoshop in a browser. It still runs locally, your files are saved locally, etc. The only real difference is the monthly pricing instead of having to purchase the software upfront. (There are some additional cloud features for saving your files in the cloud if you want but you can ignore those)
- jaxomlotus 13y ago
  Think of it like you are forced to rent a car forever instead of buying it. You still get to drive the car, but can never own it outright.
  - randomsearch 13y ago
    Yes, and the car you rent is continuously upgraded to the newest model, and for one price you get a whole range of cars, and the total cost of ownership over a few years is cheaper than buying them.
gwgarry 13y ago
Adobe is going to lose plenty of money and customers over this. I don't want to deal with trying to upload large files on 512 kbps upload. It's a truly stupid idea.
- criley 13y ago
  There is no requirement to use some kind of cloud storage. You can use the programs like you always have. Most designers sync with tools like Dropbox anyway, so large uploads aren't uncommon already.
  - gwgarry 13y ago
    Using dropbox is different than working on something live. Like if I want to work on something right now, there is no way in hell I am waiting even 5 minutes for it upload. That's a total motivation and productivity killer right there. Total fail. Not to mention network connectivity issues, etc, etc.
    - nemothekid 13y ago
      Then don't save to the cloud. I don't think CC is forcing anyone to use Cloud Save.
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- nwh 13y ago
  I'm currently working on a 3GB PSD, with the fastest connection I could purchase, that will take 11 hours for me to upload. It would also consume 15% of my storage capacity on their Creative Cloud with one document. Suffice to say I won't ever be using the "cloud save" crap.
  - lstamour 13y ago
    Yep, until we all get fiber-quality uploading, we will never have true cloud performance for design files. 9 megabits a second means it would take about 51 minutes to upload that on a decent cable connection. And that's still way too long. A fibre 250/250 would be done in a minute and a half. Personally I want streaming documents and live changes. At least some kind of collaboration features to go with my "cloud" ;-)
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antihero 13y ago
I'm trying the free trial of CC, but I can't work out how to actually run any of the apps. I click the "Apps" tab at the top but it just says "Learn More" next to everything?
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antihero 13y ago
I'm trying the free trial of CC, but I can't work out how to actually run any of the apps. I click the "Apps" tab at the top but it just says "Learn More" next to everything?
bocalogic 13y ago
Also, if you are doing low level graphics Snag It can be a good alternative for minor jobs. http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html
jscheel 13y ago
Moving exclusively to Creative Cloud feels like Adobe's way of admitting that their updates have become less and less impressive.
- omfg 13y ago
  Or that customers don't like grandiose updates anymore and expect a continuous stream of small innovations.
- tobolek 13y ago
  or that adobe product managers can now focus on useful enhancements rather than marketable features
mortenjorck 13y ago
I'm looking forward to switching to Creative Cloud at work - I'll never have to make the case for upgrading again, always getting new features as they're released, and I'm sure my employer will be as happy to smooth out one more expenditure timeline as Adobe will be to smooth out its revenue timeline. Going CC-only makes sense for business. However, this totally kills my hobbyist usage at home about three to five years from now. I only ever use Photoshop, Illustrator, and occasionally After Effects for my independent design projects, and was finally able to justify upgrading from CS4 to CS6 a few months ago. A few hundred dollars every few years is worth it to pursue my own experimental work. But I'm not going to justify $50 per month for that, and I have a hard time imagining others justifying it. I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market. (Just to add a little math to this: A $700 upgrade every three years comes to $20/month. If Adobe can offer an a-la-carte Creative Cloud where I can get three or so apps when CS6 finally no longer cuts it, I suppose this will ultimately be a non-issue.)
- cstejerean 13y ago
  If you only use the software occasionally you can pay $75/month only in the months that you use the software. (The individual app subscription can work out as well if you only use one or two apps, but by the time you get to 3 it's cheaper to get the whole suite).
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    I don't know if that'll work out for these sorts of prosumer scenarios. Speaking for myself, I use Photoshop several times a week for photo editing, but total usage per week is probably only a couple hours max. Generously, if I use Photoshop 10 hours a month, I'm paying $7.50 an hour for the privilege.
    - PaulHoule 13y ago
      which is just about equivalent to hiring somebody for minimum wage
tenpoundhammer 13y ago
This is the story of a dominate company in a market were it's users feel it can't go anywhere else, if they wanted to. It turns to be a good thing. I think this is going to put a big dent in piracy of adobe products going forward, provide a large window for competitors to provide products to people that don't want a subscription, and give the users some really great benefits of using cloud products. It's one example of a company moving forward and doing good because it has a mostly captive audience and it's a win,win,win.
- djKianoosh 13y ago
  How does this put a dent in piracy exactly? I think I've heard this sentiment before, but the pirates always figure out a way. Even the article somewhat casually throws away a line that says pirated apps will continue to exist. I'm just saying, if piracy isn't eliminated completely it's wishful thinking to say it will somehow happen less.
  - tenpoundhammer 13y ago
    I have not researched this thoroughly so I am not one hundred percent sure. But I assume the application side of this software will live on a server somewhere and you may only access via a web browser or some kind of client application. This implies that a user will have to authenticate when using the software and that this authentication will be tied to them as a person. So if their account is being using for wide spread piracy it will be shut down quickly and that individual will personally be out money and not have access to the service. This still allows for small scale sharing --onsies twosies kind of stuff. However this won't stop piracy of old software only the software going forward. This makes a lot of assumptions, but I think it's basically correct.
    - rplacd 13y ago
      > But I assume the application side of this software will live on a server somewhere and you may only access via a web browser or some kind of client application. I'd argue that's not as simple a change to turn around - not without doing a lot of fundamental plumbing into a very heterogenous set of grody old codebases - even if they do successfully end up booting out the cobwebs in PS and AI, what about replicating that effort in the ever-so-slightly different ID? And then for the Macromedia products? So I don't suspect they'll do anything radically different with this implementation of cloud software - they'll just push the Adobe Updater to the fore. (Although I shouldn't be expecting it: if they do something else that's more invasive then I'll have brought it on myself...) The more interesting question is whether the pirates'll bother to keep up with the updates at all - and if they can't, what that could possibly mean for Adobe.
jason_slack 13y ago
What about all the CS Plug-In developers? Does this essentially kill them off?
- wmf 13y ago
  Why would it?
- seltzered_ 13y ago
  No, there's a number of small businesses that are doing CS plugins, including myself with http://thimbleup.com http://thimbleup.com . If anything this makes plugin development easier in the same way developing an iOS app is easier with nearly forced updates. When interviewing design shops, many of them stuck to an 'every other year' upgrade path, so many of them still used CS5 - which meant I also have to buy multiple revisions of CS to support/test everyone. I'm a bit concerned personally though since this also kills the used market for Adobe products going forward (CS6 sells for only $700 if you look for just used licenses), although I'm hoping the reduced support costs of going cloud will make their products maybe cheaper in the long run. My only possible concern would be the cloud-based plugins like layervault competing with Creative Cloud's features, but they could serve support for the non-Adobe crowd and support pixelmator/acorn users.
  - jason_slack 13y ago
    You make some good points. I prefer to just buy outright versus the monthly fee.
antonpug 13y ago
I don't get it - am I not going to be able to get an install of Photoshop anymore? If so, then that sounds like a HORRIBLE strategy, since by far not every person is always connected to the internet, never mind high-quality internet.
- ryanSrich 13y ago
  CC is an install. Instead of just buying the product you pay per month. Forget to pay one month? Then the software won't work. So long as you're paying each month you can use it offline.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    I'm curious how it can tell if you've paid up if you are using it offline? I would assume if it isn't able to phone home to check your subscription, it would fail.
    - stan_rogers 13y ago
      Yes, which means that unless you're willing to expose your money-making machines to the internet (studio workstations generally are not) or are in a position to connect (which is not always the case on deep projects) you don't have a stand-alone app.
jawngee 13y ago
I love Adobe CC. I would consider it the first thing Adobe has done right in a long time. A year's subscription is less than what I bill per day and I have access to every app that they produce. I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as well as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days. As someone who has used Photoshop since Version 3.0, I can say, with some authority I guess, that the current version is really, really good. Except for the crop tool. The crop tool sucks. It sucks so bad I had to write a replacement stand alone app. All they need to do to fix it is put the image resizing step back in, instead of having to do that separately. Their other apps are also improving in quality from a low point of a few years ago. Premiere is solid, After Effects is way faster than the previous version, Prelude and SpeedGrade are a little inaccessible but once you learn the non-standard UIs are useful tools. Illustrator is still a bit of a drag though. I don't touch InDesign unless I'm designing a photo book for Blurb. And then there is the whole extensibility of the suite that most people don't get too involved in, but I do. We started out writing some pretty heavy javascript extendscript stuff to do asset prep but have since moved on to Flex + Adobe Creative Suite Extension SDK. Was kind of gnarly to get going, but once going has allowed us to extend Photoshop into a full blown authoring tool for the kind of retail iPad apps we build for clients. What once took us about 2-3 weeks to build, now takes about a day thanks to that. So, +1 Adobe.
- gmurphy 13y ago
  > I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as well > as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days. I'm not sure how you're doing this - a killer problem for me with CC is that there's a two-machine limit for product activations. I used to own two Photoshop licences so I could run it on three machines, but you can't get multiple Creative Cloud subs under one Adobe account.
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    This two activation nonsense has to end. That was fine before when we all had one desktop. I have been harping Adobe and Unity to allow 3 activations by default. I don't know one developer that doesn't have at least a mac, windows and laptop for testing. It's a silly game to keep moving the activations around when they are below the common threshold. 3-5 activations, one user per use is needed, maybe no activations required on that (isn't that what the cloud is really?). I have no problem having the app shut down on the other machine if I use on another device/computer but being blocked from using if you leave it open on two machines at work is annoying.
jasonbarone 13y ago
I think the subscription model is far superior. It's great knowing I have a set cost each month for the software and I'll receive all of the updates as part of the subscription. However, it's too bad the updates are still incredibly slow. I joined when CC started and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook support, and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge. I'm glad to see them focusing on the service even more.
- Angostura 13y ago
  Whereas I'm old fashioned enough to think that the right way to handle things is to buy some software that meets your requirements and use it for as long as it meets those requirements and not give a damn that the company would like you to upgrade to a version that does little new that you want.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook support, and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge. Well, it's not like updates come out of thin air, or that shoving more engineers and money at them makes them come out faster. Especially more so for complex software.
  - jasonbarone 13y ago
    Ya good point. I guess I would expect more considering this is basically the most popular software in the world for creative work. The sad part that I didn't mention above is that not one piece of the software is optimized for Retina. It's runs like a dog and is easily the worst performing piece of software on my Retina, which I find to be crazy. All they did was simply update the interface to support it...
wwweston 13y ago
In related news, Fireworks continues to be neglected (note the lack of a CC version).
- fredleblanc 13y ago
  According to this tweet, "neglected" may be as good as it gets from here on out. https://twitter.com/DeeSadler/status/331209193451315202 https://twitter.com/DeeSadler/status/331209193451315202 Edit: here's a blog post too: http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-future-of-adobe-fireworks.html http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-future-of-adobe...
  - wwweston 13y ago
    I think everybody knew it was eventually inevitable. Though the conceit in that blog post about "increasing amount of overlap" is decent PR-speak, it's really disingenuous and dances around the fact that there was always a large overlap between Fireworks and both Illustrator and Photoshop. The big issue was whether Adobe was ever going to be really genuinely willing to address a fundamental tension: * on one hand, Photoshop has always been a fundamentally flawed tool for screen design (I'd even go so far as to speculate that by now it's cost as much in designer and developer productivity as IE6 ever did). * on the other hand, it's one of the biggest brands ever and its status as a verb is gives a lot to its owner I guess today is the day they've announced the other hand wins permanently. The sad thing is if Fireworks ever had a chance, the creative cloud setup where professionals could play with it extensively at no additional cost might have been the best setup.
frozenport 13y ago
This is really bad for artists. Many folks I know picked up copies of CS5 when they were in collage for $400 and have been using them for the last 5 years. Now they will need to pay more per month than a cellphone with a data contract. With Adobe posting massive profits, this is an act of greed and I hope antitrust regulators will look at Adobe with more scrutiny.
- joelhooks 13y ago
  You "can't" use education licenses for professional work anyway.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    In North America you can use an educational license of CS for any freelance work.
- canthonytucci 13y ago
  This is really good for artists. Many folks I know wouldn't be able to justify $1200 laid out all at once, but would still like to be able to use the most up to date version of creative suite. Now they can pay less than the price their morning coffee every day. Plenty of others I know really only use Photoshop, which will come out to $0.65/day, even the starving artists I know can afford that.
- shock-value 13y ago
  Yeah as joelhooks said, if these people are using their educational versions to produce products for sale, they are committing fraud. EDIT: Seems to depend which educational version they have installed ... some are ok for commercial use, some are not.
  - gte910h 13y ago
    No they're not committing fraud (a crime), they're violating their software licence (a tort) at most
  - ixacto 13y ago
jamieb 13y ago
"Convincing users to upgrade was a daunting task that left an impact on product decisions." Yeah, like having to make useful features that customers would actually want to pay for. Fuck capitalism, eh? Just pay your taxes and we'll give you what we think you want.
- jagermo 13y ago
  You can always use gimp, although I am not sure what a design software has to do with a political system. Adobe probably doesn't get a lot of your taxes.
- drivingmenuts 13y ago
  It convinced me to finally start seriously looking for alternatives. So, maybe, just maybe, they convinced me to upgrade. In a way.
Osmium 13y ago
Education pricing requires an annual commitment, which is a real shame. When I need an Adobe program there's often no substitute, but I only need it very rarely. If they did it month-to-month I'd be happy to buy it just for that month... Since they don't, I guess it's good for me they do 30-day product demos.
jarjoura 13y ago
This is quite radical in my mind and very greedy on Adobe's part. How is abandoning the pay once per version of software a benefit to anyone other than Adobe? I get weary of software that I have to bind to an active account indefinitely. There are use-cases that are no longer possible. 1) What if I wanted to get my 14 yo artistic niece Photoshop/Illustrator for her birthday? Now I would have to either pay $50 a month (for her), in the assumption she would get value out of it. At what point would I then transfer the subscription over to her should she want to become professional in it? 2) Let's say I bought After Effects with a retina mac and then in a year decide to sell it all on craigslist? Maybe I had a dream of becoming a movie director only to be put on hold because my father went into the hospital and I needed to be there for my mother? 3) A high school with older macs from 5 or 6 years ago has a small lab with Adobe Photoshop that was donated to them through an art grant. It's meant to be used to teach kids about photo retouching and color blending (things that have been in Photoshop for a decade if not more). I never minded when Adobe adopted strict licensing DRM because it didn't remove use-cases. Maybe someone from Adobe can shed light on how switching to a subscription only model will benefit anyone other than them? Is that not taking a step backwards?
- kleinsch 13y ago
  This is business. Why is Adobe expected to do anything that would benefit anyone other than themselves?
  - vor_ 13y ago
    To please customers?
    - omegant 13y ago
      And let competitors enter their market.
  - eightyone 13y ago
    You're making the assumption that this move will benefit Adobe.
whichdan 13y ago
Mixed thoughts on this. I'm primarily a developer, and maybe once every couple of months I need to dive in to do some graphics work or pick apart a PSD from a designer I've worked with. I paid $700 for Photoshop CS3 on Windows back in 2007, and in 2010 I paid $200 to upgrade to CS5 and switch my license over to Mac. I'll have been using it for 6 years at a total cost of $900, or $12.50/mo. Assuming I don't upgrade for another 2 years, that's $9.38/mo. With this new system, I'd be paying nearly twice as much without getting all that much more value. Of course I can keep using CS5 for several more years, but my next upgrade becomes a $240/yr decision instead of a $200/3yr decision. It's unlikely that I would pay for it unless no other software can read new PSDs. Now, Photoshop with rolling updates for $10/mo? I would heavily consider it, although it seems awkward that if I cancel, I'd have to go re-install CS5.
- gte910h 13y ago
  You can turn it off and on though.
  - whichdan 13y ago
    If it's turned off, you can't use the software, right? If I had to do that every time I was pretty sure I wouldn't use it for a while, I'd probably find different software..
aridiculous 13y ago
If they start mining our creativity data, the internet has officially jumped the shark.
computerslol 13y ago
I enjoy owning my tools. I am pretty annoyed that this option is going away. I guess it's more of a perception thing than anything.
- dedosk 13y ago
  You can try Krita and you can own it! :) http://www.krita.org http://www.krita.org
- randomsearch 13y ago
  > I guess it's more of a perception thing than anything. Yes, I think this must just be a backlash against the renting model. But people renting cloud servers don't seem too bothered that they don't own the physical machines... perhaps just a cultural shift is required? We fear change.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
The word "cloud", in this case, just being an excuse to shift away from piracy to a subscription model.
superuser2 13y ago
This is interesting. My parents had no problem with me saving up for and purchasing CS5 design standard, but they'd almost certainly expect me to give up a Creative Cloud subscription before giving me any financial assistance in college. Why is it that financial difficulty makes us feel obligated to give up small, frequent purchases rather than sell large items, even when the cost is the same? Like why is it irresponsible to buy Starbucks coffee while in debt but perfectly okay to continue driving a modern car? On that note, what if Starbucks sold a year's worth of coffee all at once? Would people's consumption be less subject to the economy?
- coldtea 13y ago
  >but they'd almost certainly expect me to give up a Creative Cloud subscription before giving me any financial assistance in college. Emm, how about not telling them?
stephen_g 13y ago
This may not be a good idea for their video products - Final Cut X has over the last two or three updates just got back pretty much all the features that professional editors had been missing and is only $300 on the App Store. DaVinci Resolve is better than SpeedGrade and has a free option. Audio editing has always been in the domain of Pro Tools and Logic so I'm not going to miss Audition. The only thing I would miss is After Effects but CS6 should keep me going for a few years.
drawkbox 13y ago
I have been digging the Creative Cloud for a while in terms of availability not price. If you tried to actually buy Creative Suite you would have a hard time the last year or so even finding that on their site. This was inevitable. What sucks is them killing apps individually, I thought the creative cloud would allow more obscure apps to be tried without the need to have it supported by it's own sales right away, or some overlap. Fireworks losing out in this does suck. It didn't make sense for Adobe with Photoshop but too bad a competitor doesn't have it. I think the price is still high for CC, the upgrade price for a year is $30/month but the full price is $50/month after that year, definitely premium pricing. They have to come down or I will bail after this year.
drawkbox 13y ago
I have been digging the Creative Cloud for a while in terms of availability not price. If you tried to actually buy Creative Suite you would have a hard time the last year or so even finding that on their site. This was inevitable. What sucks is them killing apps individually, I thought the creative cloud would allow more obscure apps to be tried without the need to have it supported by it's own sales right away, or some overlap. Fireworks losing out in this does suck. It didn't make sense for Adobe with Photoshop but too bad a competitor doesn't have it. I think the price is still high for CC, the upgrade price for a year is $30/month but the full price is $50/month after that year, definitely premium pricing. They have to come down or I will bail after this year.
joemaller1 13y ago
Adobe's biggest mistake is pricing. The cost of Creative Suite bundled in losses from piracy. A Creative Cloud subscription costs pretty much exactly what Creative Suite does--without having to compensate for losses to piracy. Adobe should have provided incentive to switch by dropping the price. If they can truly eliminate piracy then their profits wouldn't be hurt by dropping the price substantially. Doing so would also generate a lot of good will among users. Keeping prices high with no other option will just encourage new forms of piracy that much sooner. Until now, pirates could just ignore Creative Cloud. No more. I expect we'll see cracked activation proxies within a few months.
da_n 13y ago
$50p/m, OK I might have considered this, however as a UK citizen the equivalent is $72p/m which irks me greatly, why does the UK get this unfair pricing, do the bits cost more to send?
- coldtea 13y ago
  Perhaps Adobe pays more taxes for software sold in the UK?
- coldtea 13y ago
  Perhaps Adobe pays more taxes for software sold in the UK?
- dan1234 13y ago
  UK pricing includes VAT (20%). US pricing doesn't include taxes because they vary by state (not a US citizen, but I've been told that's the reason).
  - da_n 13y ago
    Interesting point, that does make sense.
dredmorbius 13y ago
It was a similar pricing strategy which in part convinced me to switch from work involving a set of proprietary tools to pursuing opportunities which largely made use of freely available, free software tools I could download and experiment with myself. The cost for the tools I'd previously been using ranged from hundreds to several thousand dollars. Annually. In addition to the expense, additional and advanced features were only available at a significant additional annual cost. The vendor was also increasingly focusing its efforts on systems I had little interest in using. Despite a multi-platform legacy, much present use is on Windows systems (I've not used these as my principle environment for over a decade now). I understand why Adobe would do this, and to a certain extent, subscription-based software models offer benefits: upgrades are already paid-in, and you can move users to the current level with fewer constraints (or with no alternative in the case of web-hosted software). Operating in multiple markets, with multiple propensities to pay, and freely-available competing products suitable to at least some users, this sets up Adobe for a difficult situation. Not entirely unlike book publishers: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eases-sale-of-certain-products-abroad.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eas...
delackner 13y ago
I never use Photoshop, but sometimes I work with graphic designers who like preparing everything as one huge PSD with lots of layer groups, and it feels like an absurd waste of energy to keep subscribing to Photoshop just to export all layers as PNG, since that is all I ever use it for. Photoshop itself can barely do this, HOURS on moderately complex documents. Maybe this would be a good time to ask, does anyone know of a 100% compatible way to do PSD -> any open layered format, without Photoshop? Maybe this is a business opportunity, to run a web service whose sole purpose is to open PSD files in photoshop with a custom export script, and then export the layers.
- plus9z 13y ago
  According to some comments above, GIMP does support PSD files, and I know for a fact that GIMP supports scripting, so you could just write a script to export the layers for you.
  - delackner 13y ago
    Gimp absolutely does not support 100% correct conversion from psd. Layer effects are particularly broken. I have not seen any third party tool that properly handles psd files containing non-rasterized layers.
- andorekandore 13y ago
  http://macrabbit.com/slicy/ http://macrabbit.com/slicy/
rdl 13y ago
I wonder how much effort they will put into making it hard to crack -- if they put most of the logic in the cloud, they could do a great job (you'd have to fully re-create the software, or do some crazy proxy service to multiplex a bunch of users to one legitimate account.
contingencies 13y ago
Contrast $50/year for top quality video editing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389
habosa 13y ago
The subscription model works for many, but I personally hate the idea of not owning my software. Especially when it's mission-critical software like Photoshop. It's the same reason I don't subscribe to all-you-can-eat music services and instead buy my albums one by one on Amazon. Yes I know it costs me more on average, but I like what I buy to be mine. Also, does this make it much harder to pirate Adobe products since they require constant activation? If so, I'm not sure if that is a good idea. Photoshop has had a strangle hold on image editing because so many amateurs pirate it at home and then force their boss to buy it at work. It was rumored that Adobe recognized this and actually had no problem with the piracy, realizing that they could make up for it with the high sticker price that legit customers paid. Now that a 14 year old can't pirate PS to muck around with, he might find that other image editors fit his needs and never become a paying Adobe customer.
beedogs 13y ago
Always fun to watch a company kill off a huge chunk of its revenue stream for the sake of "stopping piracy". Idiotic.
chris_engel 13y ago
The article is misleading. Adobe is not abandoning the Creative Suite at all. What they did is: - rename the suite from "Creative Suite" to "Creative Cloud" - dropped one-time purchases of their software - added monthly subscription to the software Except the payment change of their products they didnt really change anything...
thenomad 13y ago
I intensely dislike this. Artistic careers usually aren't extremely stable, revenue-wise. Before Creative Cloud, it was possible for an artist to buy all the tools they needed in a boom period, and then keep using them no matter how pear-shaped their income situation got. (Bear in mind that in the film world, for example, clients simply not paying at all is close to routine.) Now, if your revenue stream dries up, your tools go away, and you're completely fucked.
- randomsearch 13y ago
  Surely, pay-as-you-go is much more preferable when you don't have a stable income? It's also cheaper, so just keep the cash in the bank and pay per month.
  - thenomad 13y ago
    That assumes: That artists will keep their tools at the latest version at all times - they don't. Often, they're still using a version of Photoshop three upgrades old. At that point, Creative Cloud is a lot more expensive. That they get paid in advance. They don't, always. Particularly if you're creating something for consumers, you get paid after creation. However, if your tools have gone away, you can't create, which means you can't get paid, which means you can't buy the tools, which means... Yep, you're screwed. That all artists are really good with money and financial planning. They aren't. I know you'll probably say "well then, they deserve to have no tools". Sadly, I've never seen that artistic ability directly correlates to business sense, and I'd rather that brilliant artists don't end up stopping producing work I enjoy, regardless. On that note, that dry periods never go on for longer than the old purchase price of Photoshop / duration of dry spell * monthly cost of Creative Cloud. If a dry spell does go on for that long, even if you saved up the purchase price of Photoshop and dilligently pay it month after month, you're screwed.
    - randomsearch 13y ago
      > That artists will keep their tools at the latest version at all times - they don't. Often, they're still using a version of Photoshop three upgrades old. At that point, Creative Cloud is a lot more expensive. Not true: Amazon list price for CS6 Photoshop today: £631. CC price for 3 years: £632. With no upfront outlay. > That they get paid in advance. Surely if they have a problem with cash flow, it is advantageous to not have to outlay capital? So "pay as you go" makes much more sense. This is why start-ups use the cloud. > That all artists are really good with money and financial planning. This is true - but part of making a living by being an artist is also having a decent head for business.
andyhmltn 13y ago
In theory: Brilliant. The software has suddenly become cheaper and I don't have to worry about what computer I install it on. I'm also not having to shell out huge amounts of money for upgrades. In practice: There is just something I can't deal with when it comes to moving these kinds of tools to the cloud. What happens if Adobe decides to cut the cord 4-5 years down the line? What if they go bust? With CS6, it wouldn't bother me that much. I still have the tool I purchased but I know it just won't be updated. But with this model, I'm suddenly stripped of all my tools and unable to do work until Adobe sorts out the situation or an open-source alternative comes along. Uh-oh
randomsearch 13y ago
Wow, I can't believe how many people are against this. I think it's a great move and will benefit independent designers and creators hugely. First: the price keeps coming down. Now you can get Photoshop or Premiere for $10/month. That is much cheaper than buying a copy every two years. Next: I know indie film-makers who have pirated Premiere. They simply don't have any money to pay for it, but have sworn to buy a copy if they ever make any money from it. This complete ends this argument - even those working short bar shifts can afford a copy. So they contribute in the short-term, and we all get a fuzzy warm feeling knowing that programmers at Adobe are getting some of our cash. The educational discounts are huge. I've always wanted to use Premiere and Photoshop, but have never been able to afford the capital outlay (being a lowly post-doc), and am not a big fan of pirating things. I'm going to sign up today for CC. I think this business model is a lot more sustainable. It gives Adobe a solid stream of revenue and we all get to use the latest versions. The only improvement I'd like to see now is perhaps one more drop in price, and then a condition whereby those who have been subscribed for a certain amount of time (say, 18 months or 2 years) and cancel their subscription can keep the suite - perhaps with some limitations, e.g. they're limited to the version that was available when they first subscribed, or only a subset of tools are available...
podperson 13y ago
I suspect Adobe will hurt themselves in two ways here — first, their apps are becoming increasingly dispensable, and this will push users to less capable but far cheaper and often more nimble alternatives (perhaps renting CC apps when occasionally needed) and second it will eliminate over-licensing (e.g. In some workplaces Adobe CS was pretty much site-licensed). It may help with piracy, but I suspect that's a two-edged sword as well. Personally, I was an "upgrade every two or three versions" user, which let me use CS for significantly less money, so this will probably just cause me to wait Adobe out.
t_tsonev 13y ago
Note that they still keep the regional pricing. I can understand a small difference, but 60% (EU) is complete nonsense.
wslh 13y ago
For me, it seems like the upper management is incompetent. They just read IT news about the cloud and other buzzwords without knowing what Cloud means in that context. For example, Microsoft does not offer Visual Studio on the cloud, they offer Azure that is a complement for their offerings. PS: I am not arguing that Microsoft is right on all their offerings, only using them as an example.
wluu 13y ago
If anyone is looking for an alternate photo editor, do check out the open sourced project, Lightzone - http://lightzoneproject.org/ http://lightzoneproject.org/ For raw images, it wraps around DCRaw. Lightzone was formally a commercial product, but was open sourced recently. The original author is currently an Apple employee. It'd be interesting to see if Google do something in this space, especially after their acquisition of the image editor - Snapseed, and its' creator, Nik Software. Nik from what I'm aware, developed/maintained Nikon's raw editor - Capture NX 2. I think there is definitely room for something disruptive in this space. Looking over some photography forums, people there are certainly looking and talking about what alternatives to Photoshop are out there.
malodyets 13y ago
I'm most interested to know if CS apps on CC are still available via COM. Does anyone know? I've gotten into the habit of driving CS apps from Python via win32com for publishing workflow purposes.
binxbolling 13y ago
Two questions... 1. Does this apply only to the Creative Suite, or all of the suites (e.g. E-Learning Suite)? 2. Where does that leave current customers who are on the 2-year upgrade plans? Are we shit out of luck, or can the cost of that plan be applied as credit toward Creative Cloud? I know this isn't the Adobe Support forum, but just thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone here knows.
greggman 13y ago
I have a feeling I'm not a customer that matters for Adobe. I'm a programmer who uses Photoshop only a few times a month, sometimes less. I've personally owned every other version since Photoshop 3 paying ~$199 to upgrade every ~4 years or so. I don't mind paying ~$199 every ~4 years for every other version. I do mind paying $240 every year for a subscription. So, CS5 will be the last version of Photoshop I purchase. I will not subscribe. I will keep using CS5 until I can't and then I'll start looking for alternatives. If the price comes down so it matches what I was spending before I'll consider the subscription. Or, if the subscription is on a per use basis so if I don't use it for a month or 2 I'm not charged I might consider it but otherwise no thank you. I'm also leery of subscriptions in that Adobe can basically kill me anytime they want (or anytime they screw up). In other words, I don't like the idea that if their servers go down, if they are hacked, if I'm travelling abroad with a bad internet connection, if they make a mistake, if they just don't like me, whatever, they can stop me from getting work done. The subscription probably makes sense for pros that use it every day and always upgrade and stay put in one place. It doesn't make sense for me with my usage patterns. (No, PS Elements is not a substitute, nor is gIMP unfortunately).
slt555q 13y ago
Adobe's Creative Cloud scheme is anti-consumer and anti-competitive. Adobe is essentially attempting to leverage the monopoly that Photoshop has in the professional market to lock customers into the whole suite of Adobe products. A lot of people who have to use Photoshop are going to use the rest of the CC products because they are bundled not because they want to. It's quite a burden to thing of 600.00 in adobe charges and then piling on a Media Composer purchase or upgrade. The move to CC calls into question the long term viability of the DNG format and leaves photographers with few good choices for archival storage of RAW files. Oh well, New Coke was a big hit so why not Creative Cloud.

161 points by 0x10c0fe11ce 13y ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this. There's a part of me that's saying that I don't need to continue to pirate Photoshop/Fireworks (I'm not a designer, but I do handle some graphic content for our company), and the other part of me is saying I should still go pirate Photoshop 7 (super lightweight compared to any other PS version.) And, what I mean by that is, not everyone needs to upgrade every version. What happens when shit hits the fan with a version of Photoshop and all the CC customers are forced to upgrade?

nwh 13y ago
The copy protection Adobe currently uses in Photoshop is almost non existant, and I can't imagine the CC suite will be any different. It seems to be more of a token effort to prevent easy piracy than any real attempt. The whole Creative Cloud nonsense is just a way to get people paying subscriptions. None of the "cloud" features are at all usable or useful in any design workflow that I've seen. I attempted to use them on the release of CS6, and there's just nothing there. I would love to see even one person using their 20GB of "cloud storage".
canthonytucci 13y ago
You never "need" to pirate software. If you're too cheap/poor to buy Photoshop, use GIMP. Grow up.
- joshmn 13y ago
  Let me go tell 12-year-old me that.
  - wcfields 13y ago
    Exactly. I always thought that part of Adobes dominance in this market was to allow some piracy of their product because that's how teenagers learned how to use it. Adobe then made their money from actual business users who MAKE money from the tools and therefor must have legit licenses. And those businesses use Adobe because their workforce learned it already, and it became the defacto-standard because of that.
    - andyhmltn 13y ago
      Also: Some of those teenagers will grow up and eventually purchased the product. I (allegedly) pirated Dreamweaver (haha), Flash and Photoshop when I was still learning because I was broke (unless you count £10 a month pocket money as steady income...) After spending a lot of time with those tools, I eventually purchased CS3 and have upgraded to both CS4 and CS6 since then. Not to mention the various licenses I've had to buy for employment.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  He just described a scenario where he needs to pirate PS 7.0 because Adobe doesn't offer it anymore and modern versions are inferior. Unless GIMP somehow covers all his use cases and can read his PSD files without problems? Unless it's changed since I used it last week, that's false. Basically, there are scenarios where legit customers are stuck pirating. I own licenses for multiple pieces of software that I can now only acquire through torrents because the original vendor doesn't offer the installers anymore (or wants to force you to paid upgrade to a newer version).
  - canthonytucci 13y ago
    Do you think he has a license to PS 7.0 and is going to "pirate" it by finding an installer from an alternate source? I did not get that impression. You're not stuck pirating, you're stuck unable to use the software. The choices are pay for software or use FOSS, you're doing both communities a disservice by pirating.
    - kevingadd 13y ago
      Doing that is piracy, though. Which is my point.
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spartango 13y ago
You probably already realize this, but pirating software and using it for commercial purposes is generally a terrible idea. Morals and ethics aside, your piracy exposes your company to legal threats, which could be costly and painful to your colleagues.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I wonder how often companies are actually charged with this though? How would they get proof that you had an old pirate version of PS on a PC in the office somewhere, it's not like adobe has the right to come in and start rummaging around.

toki5 13y ago

I have to admit, the subscription model is way more attractive to me than the one-time model. I'm not someone who uses Photoshop every day, so if I sit down and think "it'd be really handy to use it right now, just this once, for this one thing" ... I'm not going to shell out hundreds to do it. I'm just not. I'll use GIMP if I can or I'll pirate Photoshop if I can't. I might shell out $50, though, and if I find I'm using it often, great. If not, I'll cancel and I'll have only spent $50 for a legitimate use case.

learc83 13y ago
Too bad the $50 plan is only with an annual commitment. It's $75 if you want month to month.
- shimfish 13y ago
  $50/month is for everything. It's $20/month just for Photoshop.
  - learc83 13y ago
    It's $30 without an annual commitment.
  - JoeKM 13y ago
    learc83 is referring to the "annual commitment" plan (see the drop down) of the "complete" package, which includes all software: https://creative.adobe.com/plans https://creative.adobe.com/plans But you are correct that if someone only wants Photoshop, they only pay $19.99/month with no annual commitment.
    - learc83 13y ago
      >But you are correct that if someone only wants Photoshop, they only pay $19.99/month with no annual commitment. The $19.99 for photoshop is with an annual commitment, it's $30 without it.
andor 13y ago

rubbingalcohol 13y ago

The value proposition for Adobe's software-as-a-service offering is lacking for people who only use one of their products, or who don't already stay on the bleeding edge by paying for upgrades every 2-3 years. Photoshop is the only Adobe product I use as a web developer, and I've been using it less and less as I do more backend and client architecture and less design implementation. For my needs, Creative Cloud is a really bad deal. Creative Cloud might be a great value to people who use lots of Adobe products, and good for them. But even if this were a good value to me, I still wouldn't buy it. I do not trust software as a service, at least for software that runs solely on my own workstation. Unless Adobe wants to subsidize the cost of my own hardware, I don't believe that their subscription model benefits me as a consumer. I think Creative Cloud will present an interesting challenge to the Open Source community. Open Source alternatives to Photoshop have kind of languished in recent years, and I wonder if Adobe abandoning traditional software licensing will spur new free software development.

kbenson 13y ago
Then pay $20/mo (with year subscription) for just Photoshop. If you need another tool occasionally, pay the monthly fee for it for a single month. $20 a month it's all that much money for a business product. You may be paying close to that for reliable hosting with all the perks or for some virtual servers for testing.
- beedogs 13y ago
  $240 a year for something I use every few weeks, at best, is still pretty absurd.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Don't commit to the full year, then. You at no point are stuck buying $240 a year save for some deals, you can start and cancel CC to your heart's content.
  - kbenson 13y ago
    Only if it doesn't provide that much value. In the cases where you use it, if you can't do without it or use another tool, or you view the one time cost of learning another tool too high, then it's worth it. If this pricing makes you re-examine whether you really need to use Photoshop and switch to something cheaper, all the better, since you will probably be happier with something that accomplishes your needs that you feel isn't costing too much (and I imagine whatever you do in Photoshop so infrequently isn't hard to accomplish in many other programs).

felixthehat 13y ago

I've been using CC since it came out - the killer feature for me is that you can install CC on all your computers - PC & mac with the same license key. As someone who hops platforms and computers all the time, it's fantastic. I always used to pirate Adobe software, but the monthly pricing is very reasonable and you get all the Adobe software for the price, rather than web/print/video bundles like they used to. They've really turned around and made this pirate into a customer.

Moto7451 13y ago

If you're not a professional designer and are looking for some Adobe suite alternatives on the Mac, may I suggest: Pixelmator[1] (replaced Photoshop) Currently $15 Artboard[2] (replaces Illustrator) $29 Scribus[3] (Cross platform - replaces InDesign) $Free These apps serve me well for basic Web/App Art, my resume, and the occasional flier. The only thing I do miss is the Illustrator XAML export plugin for when I work on WPF/Silverlight stuff. [1]http://www.pixelmator.com http://www.pixelmator.com [2]http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/ http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/ [3]http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

aristus 13y ago
Pixelmator1 was nice because it was a bug-for-bug clone of Photoshop 5 (not CS5, v5) including shortcut keys. Pixelmator2 was a step backward, IMO, without adding many new features except stability. If you're going to throw away all your muscle memory anyway, I'd suggest looking at Acorn. http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/ http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/
- chc 13y ago
  I'll second Acorn. It is weird compared to other image editing interfaces, but it's actually quite usable for most people's needs (or at least what I imagine are most people's needs) and it has really nice polyglot plugin support that should please developers.
  - seltzered_ 13y ago
    Thanks for mentioning this, I've been developing a mac plugin (http://thimbleup.com http://thimbleup.com) and didn't realize Acorn also had plugin support.
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bocalogic 13y ago

This might be problematic. Photoshop works for a lot of us because it is a stand alone application. Curious to see what kind of lag issues will occur on a cloud based solution. As mentioned above, it seems more like an anti-piracy issue solution. While Photoshop is the standard, several other applications exist that do a good job as well. They might lose market share over this move.

cstejerean 13y ago
This is not photoshop in a browser. It still runs locally, your files are saved locally, etc. The only real difference is the monthly pricing instead of having to purchase the software upfront. (There are some additional cloud features for saving your files in the cloud if you want but you can ignore those)
jaxomlotus 13y ago
Think of it like you are forced to rent a car forever instead of buying it. You still get to drive the car, but can never own it outright.
- randomsearch 13y ago
  Yes, and the car you rent is continuously upgraded to the newest model, and for one price you get a whole range of cars, and the total cost of ownership over a few years is cheaper than buying them.

gwgarry 13y ago

Adobe is going to lose plenty of money and customers over this. I don't want to deal with trying to upload large files on 512 kbps upload. It's a truly stupid idea.

criley 13y ago
There is no requirement to use some kind of cloud storage. You can use the programs like you always have. Most designers sync with tools like Dropbox anyway, so large uploads aren't uncommon already.
- gwgarry 13y ago
  Using dropbox is different than working on something live. Like if I want to work on something right now, there is no way in hell I am waiting even 5 minutes for it upload. That's a total motivation and productivity killer right there. Total fail. Not to mention network connectivity issues, etc, etc.
  - nemothekid 13y ago
    Then don't save to the cloud. I don't think CC is forcing anyone to use Cloud Save.
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nwh 13y ago
I'm currently working on a 3GB PSD, with the fastest connection I could purchase, that will take 11 hours for me to upload. It would also consume 15% of my storage capacity on their Creative Cloud with one document. Suffice to say I won't ever be using the "cloud save" crap.
- lstamour 13y ago
  Yep, until we all get fiber-quality uploading, we will never have true cloud performance for design files. 9 megabits a second means it would take about 51 minutes to upload that on a decent cable connection. And that's still way too long. A fibre 250/250 would be done in a minute and a half. Personally I want streaming documents and live changes. At least some kind of collaboration features to go with my "cloud" ;-)

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antihero 13y ago

I'm trying the free trial of CC, but I can't work out how to actually run any of the apps. I click the "Apps" tab at the top but it just says "Learn More" next to everything?

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antihero 13y ago

I'm trying the free trial of CC, but I can't work out how to actually run any of the apps. I click the "Apps" tab at the top but it just says "Learn More" next to everything?

bocalogic 13y ago

Also, if you are doing low level graphics Snag It can be a good alternative for minor jobs. http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html

jscheel 13y ago

Moving exclusively to Creative Cloud feels like Adobe's way of admitting that their updates have become less and less impressive.

omfg 13y ago
Or that customers don't like grandiose updates anymore and expect a continuous stream of small innovations.
tobolek 13y ago
or that adobe product managers can now focus on useful enhancements rather than marketable features

mortenjorck 13y ago

I'm looking forward to switching to Creative Cloud at work - I'll never have to make the case for upgrading again, always getting new features as they're released, and I'm sure my employer will be as happy to smooth out one more expenditure timeline as Adobe will be to smooth out its revenue timeline. Going CC-only makes sense for business. However, this totally kills my hobbyist usage at home about three to five years from now. I only ever use Photoshop, Illustrator, and occasionally After Effects for my independent design projects, and was finally able to justify upgrading from CS4 to CS6 a few months ago. A few hundred dollars every few years is worth it to pursue my own experimental work. But I'm not going to justify $50 per month for that, and I have a hard time imagining others justifying it. I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market. (Just to add a little math to this: A $700 upgrade every three years comes to $20/month. If Adobe can offer an a-la-carte Creative Cloud where I can get three or so apps when CS6 finally no longer cuts it, I suppose this will ultimately be a non-issue.)

cstejerean 13y ago
If you only use the software occasionally you can pay $75/month only in the months that you use the software. (The individual app subscription can work out as well if you only use one or two apps, but by the time you get to 3 it's cheaper to get the whole suite).
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  I don't know if that'll work out for these sorts of prosumer scenarios. Speaking for myself, I use Photoshop several times a week for photo editing, but total usage per week is probably only a couple hours max. Generously, if I use Photoshop 10 hours a month, I'm paying $7.50 an hour for the privilege.
  - PaulHoule 13y ago
    which is just about equivalent to hiring somebody for minimum wage

tenpoundhammer 13y ago

This is the story of a dominate company in a market were it's users feel it can't go anywhere else, if they wanted to. It turns to be a good thing. I think this is going to put a big dent in piracy of adobe products going forward, provide a large window for competitors to provide products to people that don't want a subscription, and give the users some really great benefits of using cloud products. It's one example of a company moving forward and doing good because it has a mostly captive audience and it's a win,win,win.

djKianoosh 13y ago
How does this put a dent in piracy exactly? I think I've heard this sentiment before, but the pirates always figure out a way. Even the article somewhat casually throws away a line that says pirated apps will continue to exist. I'm just saying, if piracy isn't eliminated completely it's wishful thinking to say it will somehow happen less.
- tenpoundhammer 13y ago
  I have not researched this thoroughly so I am not one hundred percent sure. But I assume the application side of this software will live on a server somewhere and you may only access via a web browser or some kind of client application. This implies that a user will have to authenticate when using the software and that this authentication will be tied to them as a person. So if their account is being using for wide spread piracy it will be shut down quickly and that individual will personally be out money and not have access to the service. This still allows for small scale sharing --onsies twosies kind of stuff. However this won't stop piracy of old software only the software going forward. This makes a lot of assumptions, but I think it's basically correct.
  - rplacd 13y ago
    > But I assume the application side of this software will live on a server somewhere and you may only access via a web browser or some kind of client application. I'd argue that's not as simple a change to turn around - not without doing a lot of fundamental plumbing into a very heterogenous set of grody old codebases - even if they do successfully end up booting out the cobwebs in PS and AI, what about replicating that effort in the ever-so-slightly different ID? And then for the Macromedia products? So I don't suspect they'll do anything radically different with this implementation of cloud software - they'll just push the Adobe Updater to the fore. (Although I shouldn't be expecting it: if they do something else that's more invasive then I'll have brought it on myself...) The more interesting question is whether the pirates'll bother to keep up with the updates at all - and if they can't, what that could possibly mean for Adobe.

jason_slack 13y ago

What about all the CS Plug-In developers? Does this essentially kill them off?

wmf 13y ago
Why would it?
seltzered_ 13y ago
No, there's a number of small businesses that are doing CS plugins, including myself with http://thimbleup.com http://thimbleup.com . If anything this makes plugin development easier in the same way developing an iOS app is easier with nearly forced updates. When interviewing design shops, many of them stuck to an 'every other year' upgrade path, so many of them still used CS5 - which meant I also have to buy multiple revisions of CS to support/test everyone. I'm a bit concerned personally though since this also kills the used market for Adobe products going forward (CS6 sells for only $700 if you look for just used licenses), although I'm hoping the reduced support costs of going cloud will make their products maybe cheaper in the long run. My only possible concern would be the cloud-based plugins like layervault competing with Creative Cloud's features, but they could serve support for the non-Adobe crowd and support pixelmator/acorn users.
- jason_slack 13y ago
  You make some good points. I prefer to just buy outright versus the monthly fee.

antonpug 13y ago

I don't get it - am I not going to be able to get an install of Photoshop anymore? If so, then that sounds like a HORRIBLE strategy, since by far not every person is always connected to the internet, never mind high-quality internet.

ryanSrich 13y ago
CC is an install. Instead of just buying the product you pay per month. Forget to pay one month? Then the software won't work. So long as you're paying each month you can use it offline.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  I'm curious how it can tell if you've paid up if you are using it offline? I would assume if it isn't able to phone home to check your subscription, it would fail.
  - stan_rogers 13y ago
    Yes, which means that unless you're willing to expose your money-making machines to the internet (studio workstations generally are not) or are in a position to connect (which is not always the case on deep projects) you don't have a stand-alone app.

jawngee 13y ago

I love Adobe CC. I would consider it the first thing Adobe has done right in a long time. A year's subscription is less than what I bill per day and I have access to every app that they produce. I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as well as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days. As someone who has used Photoshop since Version 3.0, I can say, with some authority I guess, that the current version is really, really good. Except for the crop tool. The crop tool sucks. It sucks so bad I had to write a replacement stand alone app. All they need to do to fix it is put the image resizing step back in, instead of having to do that separately. Their other apps are also improving in quality from a low point of a few years ago. Premiere is solid, After Effects is way faster than the previous version, Prelude and SpeedGrade are a little inaccessible but once you learn the non-standard UIs are useful tools. Illustrator is still a bit of a drag though. I don't touch InDesign unless I'm designing a photo book for Blurb. And then there is the whole extensibility of the suite that most people don't get too involved in, but I do. We started out writing some pretty heavy javascript extendscript stuff to do asset prep but have since moved on to Flex + Adobe Creative Suite Extension SDK. Was kind of gnarly to get going, but once going has allowed us to extend Photoshop into a full blown authoring tool for the kind of retail iPad apps we build for clients. What once took us about 2-3 weeks to build, now takes about a day thanks to that. So, +1 Adobe.

gmurphy 13y ago
> I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as well > as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days. I'm not sure how you're doing this - a killer problem for me with CC is that there's a two-machine limit for product activations. I used to own two Photoshop licences so I could run it on three machines, but you can't get multiple Creative Cloud subs under one Adobe account.
- drawkbox 13y ago
  This two activation nonsense has to end. That was fine before when we all had one desktop. I have been harping Adobe and Unity to allow 3 activations by default. I don't know one developer that doesn't have at least a mac, windows and laptop for testing. It's a silly game to keep moving the activations around when they are below the common threshold. 3-5 activations, one user per use is needed, maybe no activations required on that (isn't that what the cloud is really?). I have no problem having the app shut down on the other machine if I use on another device/computer but being blocked from using if you leave it open on two machines at work is annoying.

jasonbarone 13y ago

I think the subscription model is far superior. It's great knowing I have a set cost each month for the software and I'll receive all of the updates as part of the subscription. However, it's too bad the updates are still incredibly slow. I joined when CC started and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook support, and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge. I'm glad to see them focusing on the service even more.

Angostura 13y ago
Whereas I'm old fashioned enough to think that the right way to handle things is to buy some software that meets your requirements and use it for as long as it meets those requirements and not give a damn that the company would like you to upgrade to a version that does little new that you want.
coldtea 13y ago
>and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook support, and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge. Well, it's not like updates come out of thin air, or that shoving more engineers and money at them makes them come out faster. Especially more so for complex software.
- jasonbarone 13y ago
  Ya good point. I guess I would expect more considering this is basically the most popular software in the world for creative work. The sad part that I didn't mention above is that not one piece of the software is optimized for Retina. It's runs like a dog and is easily the worst performing piece of software on my Retina, which I find to be crazy. All they did was simply update the interface to support it...

wwweston 13y ago

In related news, Fireworks continues to be neglected (note the lack of a CC version).

fredleblanc 13y ago
According to this tweet, "neglected" may be as good as it gets from here on out. https://twitter.com/DeeSadler/status/331209193451315202 https://twitter.com/DeeSadler/status/331209193451315202 Edit: here's a blog post too: http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-future-of-adobe-fireworks.html http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-future-of-adobe...
- wwweston 13y ago
  I think everybody knew it was eventually inevitable. Though the conceit in that blog post about "increasing amount of overlap" is decent PR-speak, it's really disingenuous and dances around the fact that there was always a large overlap between Fireworks and both Illustrator and Photoshop. The big issue was whether Adobe was ever going to be really genuinely willing to address a fundamental tension: * on one hand, Photoshop has always been a fundamentally flawed tool for screen design (I'd even go so far as to speculate that by now it's cost as much in designer and developer productivity as IE6 ever did). * on the other hand, it's one of the biggest brands ever and its status as a verb is gives a lot to its owner I guess today is the day they've announced the other hand wins permanently. The sad thing is if Fireworks ever had a chance, the creative cloud setup where professionals could play with it extensively at no additional cost might have been the best setup.

frozenport 13y ago

This is really bad for artists. Many folks I know picked up copies of CS5 when they were in collage for $400 and have been using them for the last 5 years. Now they will need to pay more per month than a cellphone with a data contract. With Adobe posting massive profits, this is an act of greed and I hope antitrust regulators will look at Adobe with more scrutiny.

joelhooks 13y ago
You "can't" use education licenses for professional work anyway.
- frozenport 13y ago
  In North America you can use an educational license of CS for any freelance work.
canthonytucci 13y ago
This is really good for artists. Many folks I know wouldn't be able to justify $1200 laid out all at once, but would still like to be able to use the most up to date version of creative suite. Now they can pay less than the price their morning coffee every day. Plenty of others I know really only use Photoshop, which will come out to $0.65/day, even the starving artists I know can afford that.
shock-value 13y ago
Yeah as joelhooks said, if these people are using their educational versions to produce products for sale, they are committing fraud. EDIT: Seems to depend which educational version they have installed ... some are ok for commercial use, some are not.
- gte910h 13y ago
  No they're not committing fraud (a crime), they're violating their software licence (a tort) at most
- ixacto 13y ago

jamieb 13y ago

"Convincing users to upgrade was a daunting task that left an impact on product decisions." Yeah, like having to make useful features that customers would actually want to pay for. Fuck capitalism, eh? Just pay your taxes and we'll give you what we think you want.

jagermo 13y ago
You can always use gimp, although I am not sure what a design software has to do with a political system. Adobe probably doesn't get a lot of your taxes.
drivingmenuts 13y ago
It convinced me to finally start seriously looking for alternatives. So, maybe, just maybe, they convinced me to upgrade. In a way.

Osmium 13y ago

Education pricing requires an annual commitment, which is a real shame. When I need an Adobe program there's often no substitute, but I only need it very rarely. If they did it month-to-month I'd be happy to buy it just for that month... Since they don't, I guess it's good for me they do 30-day product demos.

jarjoura 13y ago

This is quite radical in my mind and very greedy on Adobe's part. How is abandoning the pay once per version of software a benefit to anyone other than Adobe? I get weary of software that I have to bind to an active account indefinitely. There are use-cases that are no longer possible. 1) What if I wanted to get my 14 yo artistic niece Photoshop/Illustrator for her birthday? Now I would have to either pay $50 a month (for her), in the assumption she would get value out of it. At what point would I then transfer the subscription over to her should she want to become professional in it? 2) Let's say I bought After Effects with a retina mac and then in a year decide to sell it all on craigslist? Maybe I had a dream of becoming a movie director only to be put on hold because my father went into the hospital and I needed to be there for my mother? 3) A high school with older macs from 5 or 6 years ago has a small lab with Adobe Photoshop that was donated to them through an art grant. It's meant to be used to teach kids about photo retouching and color blending (things that have been in Photoshop for a decade if not more). I never minded when Adobe adopted strict licensing DRM because it didn't remove use-cases. Maybe someone from Adobe can shed light on how switching to a subscription only model will benefit anyone other than them? Is that not taking a step backwards?

kleinsch 13y ago
This is business. Why is Adobe expected to do anything that would benefit anyone other than themselves?
- vor_ 13y ago
  To please customers?
  - omegant 13y ago
    And let competitors enter their market.
- eightyone 13y ago
  You're making the assumption that this move will benefit Adobe.

whichdan 13y ago

Mixed thoughts on this. I'm primarily a developer, and maybe once every couple of months I need to dive in to do some graphics work or pick apart a PSD from a designer I've worked with. I paid $700 for Photoshop CS3 on Windows back in 2007, and in 2010 I paid $200 to upgrade to CS5 and switch my license over to Mac. I'll have been using it for 6 years at a total cost of $900, or $12.50/mo. Assuming I don't upgrade for another 2 years, that's $9.38/mo. With this new system, I'd be paying nearly twice as much without getting all that much more value. Of course I can keep using CS5 for several more years, but my next upgrade becomes a $240/yr decision instead of a $200/3yr decision. It's unlikely that I would pay for it unless no other software can read new PSDs. Now, Photoshop with rolling updates for $10/mo? I would heavily consider it, although it seems awkward that if I cancel, I'd have to go re-install CS5.

gte910h 13y ago
You can turn it off and on though.
- whichdan 13y ago
  If it's turned off, you can't use the software, right? If I had to do that every time I was pretty sure I wouldn't use it for a while, I'd probably find different software..

aridiculous 13y ago

If they start mining our creativity data, the internet has officially jumped the shark.

computerslol 13y ago

I enjoy owning my tools. I am pretty annoyed that this option is going away. I guess it's more of a perception thing than anything.

dedosk 13y ago
You can try Krita and you can own it! :) http://www.krita.org http://www.krita.org
randomsearch 13y ago
> I guess it's more of a perception thing than anything. Yes, I think this must just be a backlash against the renting model. But people renting cloud servers don't seem too bothered that they don't own the physical machines... perhaps just a cultural shift is required? We fear change.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

The word "cloud", in this case, just being an excuse to shift away from piracy to a subscription model.

superuser2 13y ago

This is interesting. My parents had no problem with me saving up for and purchasing CS5 design standard, but they'd almost certainly expect me to give up a Creative Cloud subscription before giving me any financial assistance in college. Why is it that financial difficulty makes us feel obligated to give up small, frequent purchases rather than sell large items, even when the cost is the same? Like why is it irresponsible to buy Starbucks coffee while in debt but perfectly okay to continue driving a modern car? On that note, what if Starbucks sold a year's worth of coffee all at once? Would people's consumption be less subject to the economy?

coldtea 13y ago
>but they'd almost certainly expect me to give up a Creative Cloud subscription before giving me any financial assistance in college. Emm, how about not telling them?

stephen_g 13y ago

This may not be a good idea for their video products - Final Cut X has over the last two or three updates just got back pretty much all the features that professional editors had been missing and is only $300 on the App Store. DaVinci Resolve is better than SpeedGrade and has a free option. Audio editing has always been in the domain of Pro Tools and Logic so I'm not going to miss Audition. The only thing I would miss is After Effects but CS6 should keep me going for a few years.

drawkbox 13y ago

I have been digging the Creative Cloud for a while in terms of availability not price. If you tried to actually buy Creative Suite you would have a hard time the last year or so even finding that on their site. This was inevitable. What sucks is them killing apps individually, I thought the creative cloud would allow more obscure apps to be tried without the need to have it supported by it's own sales right away, or some overlap. Fireworks losing out in this does suck. It didn't make sense for Adobe with Photoshop but too bad a competitor doesn't have it. I think the price is still high for CC, the upgrade price for a year is $30/month but the full price is $50/month after that year, definitely premium pricing. They have to come down or I will bail after this year.

drawkbox 13y ago

joemaller1 13y ago

Adobe's biggest mistake is pricing. The cost of Creative Suite bundled in losses from piracy. A Creative Cloud subscription costs pretty much exactly what Creative Suite does--without having to compensate for losses to piracy. Adobe should have provided incentive to switch by dropping the price. If they can truly eliminate piracy then their profits wouldn't be hurt by dropping the price substantially. Doing so would also generate a lot of good will among users. Keeping prices high with no other option will just encourage new forms of piracy that much sooner. Until now, pirates could just ignore Creative Cloud. No more. I expect we'll see cracked activation proxies within a few months.

da_n 13y ago

$50p/m, OK I might have considered this, however as a UK citizen the equivalent is $72p/m which irks me greatly, why does the UK get this unfair pricing, do the bits cost more to send?

coldtea 13y ago
Perhaps Adobe pays more taxes for software sold in the UK?
coldtea 13y ago
Perhaps Adobe pays more taxes for software sold in the UK?
dan1234 13y ago
UK pricing includes VAT (20%). US pricing doesn't include taxes because they vary by state (not a US citizen, but I've been told that's the reason).
- da_n 13y ago
  Interesting point, that does make sense.

dredmorbius 13y ago

It was a similar pricing strategy which in part convinced me to switch from work involving a set of proprietary tools to pursuing opportunities which largely made use of freely available, free software tools I could download and experiment with myself. The cost for the tools I'd previously been using ranged from hundreds to several thousand dollars. Annually. In addition to the expense, additional and advanced features were only available at a significant additional annual cost. The vendor was also increasingly focusing its efforts on systems I had little interest in using. Despite a multi-platform legacy, much present use is on Windows systems (I've not used these as my principle environment for over a decade now). I understand why Adobe would do this, and to a certain extent, subscription-based software models offer benefits: upgrades are already paid-in, and you can move users to the current level with fewer constraints (or with no alternative in the case of web-hosted software). Operating in multiple markets, with multiple propensities to pay, and freely-available competing products suitable to at least some users, this sets up Adobe for a difficult situation. Not entirely unlike book publishers: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eases-sale-of-certain-products-abroad.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eas...

delackner 13y ago

I never use Photoshop, but sometimes I work with graphic designers who like preparing everything as one huge PSD with lots of layer groups, and it feels like an absurd waste of energy to keep subscribing to Photoshop just to export all layers as PNG, since that is all I ever use it for. Photoshop itself can barely do this, HOURS on moderately complex documents. Maybe this would be a good time to ask, does anyone know of a 100% compatible way to do PSD -> any open layered format, without Photoshop? Maybe this is a business opportunity, to run a web service whose sole purpose is to open PSD files in photoshop with a custom export script, and then export the layers.

plus9z 13y ago
According to some comments above, GIMP does support PSD files, and I know for a fact that GIMP supports scripting, so you could just write a script to export the layers for you.
- delackner 13y ago
  Gimp absolutely does not support 100% correct conversion from psd. Layer effects are particularly broken. I have not seen any third party tool that properly handles psd files containing non-rasterized layers.
andorekandore 13y ago
http://macrabbit.com/slicy/ http://macrabbit.com/slicy/

rdl 13y ago

I wonder how much effort they will put into making it hard to crack -- if they put most of the logic in the cloud, they could do a great job (you'd have to fully re-create the software, or do some crazy proxy service to multiplex a bunch of users to one legitimate account.

contingencies 13y ago

Contrast $50/year for top quality video editing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389

habosa 13y ago

The subscription model works for many, but I personally hate the idea of not owning my software. Especially when it's mission-critical software like Photoshop. It's the same reason I don't subscribe to all-you-can-eat music services and instead buy my albums one by one on Amazon. Yes I know it costs me more on average, but I like what I buy to be mine. Also, does this make it much harder to pirate Adobe products since they require constant activation? If so, I'm not sure if that is a good idea. Photoshop has had a strangle hold on image editing because so many amateurs pirate it at home and then force their boss to buy it at work. It was rumored that Adobe recognized this and actually had no problem with the piracy, realizing that they could make up for it with the high sticker price that legit customers paid. Now that a 14 year old can't pirate PS to muck around with, he might find that other image editors fit his needs and never become a paying Adobe customer.

beedogs 13y ago

Always fun to watch a company kill off a huge chunk of its revenue stream for the sake of "stopping piracy". Idiotic.

chris_engel 13y ago

The article is misleading. Adobe is not abandoning the Creative Suite at all. What they did is: - rename the suite from "Creative Suite" to "Creative Cloud" - dropped one-time purchases of their software - added monthly subscription to the software Except the payment change of their products they didnt really change anything...

thenomad 13y ago

I intensely dislike this. Artistic careers usually aren't extremely stable, revenue-wise. Before Creative Cloud, it was possible for an artist to buy all the tools they needed in a boom period, and then keep using them no matter how pear-shaped their income situation got. (Bear in mind that in the film world, for example, clients simply not paying at all is close to routine.) Now, if your revenue stream dries up, your tools go away, and you're completely fucked.

randomsearch 13y ago
Surely, pay-as-you-go is much more preferable when you don't have a stable income? It's also cheaper, so just keep the cash in the bank and pay per month.
- thenomad 13y ago
  That assumes: That artists will keep their tools at the latest version at all times - they don't. Often, they're still using a version of Photoshop three upgrades old. At that point, Creative Cloud is a lot more expensive. That they get paid in advance. They don't, always. Particularly if you're creating something for consumers, you get paid after creation. However, if your tools have gone away, you can't create, which means you can't get paid, which means you can't buy the tools, which means... Yep, you're screwed. That all artists are really good with money and financial planning. They aren't. I know you'll probably say "well then, they deserve to have no tools". Sadly, I've never seen that artistic ability directly correlates to business sense, and I'd rather that brilliant artists don't end up stopping producing work I enjoy, regardless. On that note, that dry periods never go on for longer than the old purchase price of Photoshop / duration of dry spell * monthly cost of Creative Cloud. If a dry spell does go on for that long, even if you saved up the purchase price of Photoshop and dilligently pay it month after month, you're screwed.
  - randomsearch 13y ago
    > That artists will keep their tools at the latest version at all times - they don't. Often, they're still using a version of Photoshop three upgrades old. At that point, Creative Cloud is a lot more expensive. Not true: Amazon list price for CS6 Photoshop today: £631. CC price for 3 years: £632. With no upfront outlay. > That they get paid in advance. Surely if they have a problem with cash flow, it is advantageous to not have to outlay capital? So "pay as you go" makes much more sense. This is why start-ups use the cloud. > That all artists are really good with money and financial planning. This is true - but part of making a living by being an artist is also having a decent head for business.

andyhmltn 13y ago

In theory: Brilliant. The software has suddenly become cheaper and I don't have to worry about what computer I install it on. I'm also not having to shell out huge amounts of money for upgrades. In practice: There is just something I can't deal with when it comes to moving these kinds of tools to the cloud. What happens if Adobe decides to cut the cord 4-5 years down the line? What if they go bust? With CS6, it wouldn't bother me that much. I still have the tool I purchased but I know it just won't be updated. But with this model, I'm suddenly stripped of all my tools and unable to do work until Adobe sorts out the situation or an open-source alternative comes along. Uh-oh

randomsearch 13y ago

Wow, I can't believe how many people are against this. I think it's a great move and will benefit independent designers and creators hugely. First: the price keeps coming down. Now you can get Photoshop or Premiere for $10/month. That is much cheaper than buying a copy every two years. Next: I know indie film-makers who have pirated Premiere. They simply don't have any money to pay for it, but have sworn to buy a copy if they ever make any money from it. This complete ends this argument - even those working short bar shifts can afford a copy. So they contribute in the short-term, and we all get a fuzzy warm feeling knowing that programmers at Adobe are getting some of our cash. The educational discounts are huge. I've always wanted to use Premiere and Photoshop, but have never been able to afford the capital outlay (being a lowly post-doc), and am not a big fan of pirating things. I'm going to sign up today for CC. I think this business model is a lot more sustainable. It gives Adobe a solid stream of revenue and we all get to use the latest versions. The only improvement I'd like to see now is perhaps one more drop in price, and then a condition whereby those who have been subscribed for a certain amount of time (say, 18 months or 2 years) and cancel their subscription can keep the suite - perhaps with some limitations, e.g. they're limited to the version that was available when they first subscribed, or only a subset of tools are available...

podperson 13y ago

I suspect Adobe will hurt themselves in two ways here — first, their apps are becoming increasingly dispensable, and this will push users to less capable but far cheaper and often more nimble alternatives (perhaps renting CC apps when occasionally needed) and second it will eliminate over-licensing (e.g. In some workplaces Adobe CS was pretty much site-licensed). It may help with piracy, but I suspect that's a two-edged sword as well. Personally, I was an "upgrade every two or three versions" user, which let me use CS for significantly less money, so this will probably just cause me to wait Adobe out.

t_tsonev 13y ago

Note that they still keep the regional pricing. I can understand a small difference, but 60% (EU) is complete nonsense.

wslh 13y ago

For me, it seems like the upper management is incompetent. They just read IT news about the cloud and other buzzwords without knowing what Cloud means in that context. For example, Microsoft does not offer Visual Studio on the cloud, they offer Azure that is a complement for their offerings. PS: I am not arguing that Microsoft is right on all their offerings, only using them as an example.

wluu 13y ago

If anyone is looking for an alternate photo editor, do check out the open sourced project, Lightzone - http://lightzoneproject.org/ http://lightzoneproject.org/ For raw images, it wraps around DCRaw. Lightzone was formally a commercial product, but was open sourced recently. The original author is currently an Apple employee. It'd be interesting to see if Google do something in this space, especially after their acquisition of the image editor - Snapseed, and its' creator, Nik Software. Nik from what I'm aware, developed/maintained Nikon's raw editor - Capture NX 2. I think there is definitely room for something disruptive in this space. Looking over some photography forums, people there are certainly looking and talking about what alternatives to Photoshop are out there.

malodyets 13y ago

I'm most interested to know if CS apps on CC are still available via COM. Does anyone know? I've gotten into the habit of driving CS apps from Python via win32com for publishing workflow purposes.

binxbolling 13y ago

Two questions... 1. Does this apply only to the Creative Suite, or all of the suites (e.g. E-Learning Suite)? 2. Where does that leave current customers who are on the 2-year upgrade plans? Are we shit out of luck, or can the cost of that plan be applied as credit toward Creative Cloud? I know this isn't the Adobe Support forum, but just thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone here knows.

greggman 13y ago

I have a feeling I'm not a customer that matters for Adobe. I'm a programmer who uses Photoshop only a few times a month, sometimes less. I've personally owned every other version since Photoshop 3 paying ~$199 to upgrade every ~4 years or so. I don't mind paying ~$199 every ~4 years for every other version. I do mind paying $240 every year for a subscription. So, CS5 will be the last version of Photoshop I purchase. I will not subscribe. I will keep using CS5 until I can't and then I'll start looking for alternatives. If the price comes down so it matches what I was spending before I'll consider the subscription. Or, if the subscription is on a per use basis so if I don't use it for a month or 2 I'm not charged I might consider it but otherwise no thank you. I'm also leery of subscriptions in that Adobe can basically kill me anytime they want (or anytime they screw up). In other words, I don't like the idea that if their servers go down, if they are hacked, if I'm travelling abroad with a bad internet connection, if they make a mistake, if they just don't like me, whatever, they can stop me from getting work done. The subscription probably makes sense for pros that use it every day and always upgrade and stay put in one place. It doesn't make sense for me with my usage patterns. (No, PS Elements is not a substitute, nor is gIMP unfortunately).

slt555q 13y ago

Adobe's Creative Cloud scheme is anti-consumer and anti-competitive. Adobe is essentially attempting to leverage the monopoly that Photoshop has in the professional market to lock customers into the whole suite of Adobe products. A lot of people who have to use Photoshop are going to use the rest of the CC products because they are bundled not because they want to. It's quite a burden to thing of 600.00 in adobe charges and then piling on a Media Composer purchase or upgrade. The move to CC calls into question the long term viability of the DNG format and leaves photographers with few good choices for archival storage of RAW files. Oh well, New Coke was a big hit so why not Creative Cloud.