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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 releas

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 14y 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 14y 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 14y ago
    which is just about equivalent to hiring somebody for minimum wage
    - w1ntermute 14y ago
      Software is supposed to make getting stuff done a lot cheaper than with a real person.
    - coldtea 14y ago
      And how is that relevant? Comparing 10 hours use of Photoshop per month vs hiring somebody for minimum wage for a month? That's not even Apple's to Oranges, it's Apples to Universes.
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    If you upgraded your Creative Suite on any kind of a schedule, the price per hour isn't much different, depending on which package you purchased.
  - jagermo 14y ago
    Have you tried Lightroom? I prefer it for photo editing, the process is way more streamlined.
jrabone 14y ago
Yes, this is exactly the situation I find myself in. I'm not really much of a designer, but I bought Creative Suite when it was called Design Collection when I started my first company, did my own flyers and booklets in InDesign, business cards in Illustrator and earned money doing Photoshop and Illustrator work even though I'm really a software engineer. Now I'm a nearly-40 year old software engineer with enough disposable income to flatter myself by upgrading Creative Suite on the trailing edge, but hell will freeze over before I pay for Creative Cloud at those prices. Adobe have also screwed over Audition in the later versions to the point where I'll just use Cubase in preference; so much for the fast, elegant, simple workflow they inherited from CoolEdit.
tannerc 14y ago
The question we have to beg is: "What's in it for them?" Is the market big enough for people who aren't willing to spill $50 for the full suite? Will those of us who just drop using the apps because of price balance out to those who have now picked it up for the exact same reason?
epo 14y ago
"I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market." I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the rampant theft of their products. What this now does is open up the domestic image processing market, while businesses can be milked for all they're worth. I'll stick with Photoshop CS3 until it stops working.
- Negitivefrags 14y ago
  It might be that rampant piracy of Photoshop is part of the reason it is so dominant though. Every kid who had some desire to edit images pirated Photoshop, and thus they get used to using that particular tool. If they actually end up working in a real business doing this for a job then they will demand the use of Photoshop because it's what they already know and few businesses pirate their software.
- kstrauser 14y ago
  And by "fixed the rampant copyright violation" you mean "closed the top of the funnel to newcomers". I don't know a single college student or new home experimenter who paid for Photoshop, but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. Photoshop has always been way too expensive for hobbyists or people just dipping their toes in the water. The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. This will make their numbers look good in the near future, but I'd stake cash money that it's going to screw with their long-term user base.
  - powertower 14y ago
    > The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. Except the entire industry claims that the number of people that would have bought it if they could not have pirated it is GREATER than the number of people that pirated it, used it as some kind of month or year long trial-ware, and eventually paid for it. My own experience - the day a warez copy came out on Google's front page results for my software, was the day sales got cut in half, and stayed cut. People pirate because it's easy to do, and fewer people will buy it if it's being given away for free by some site that generates its revenue from stealing other peoples work and showing you ads in the process.
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
“I'm not going to justify $50 per month for [hobby usage at home], [...] A $700 upgrade every three years comes to $20/month.” “upgrading from CS4 to CS6 [...] A few hundred dollars every few years” As you use Photoshop, Illustrator, and AfterEffects, that means you probably have the Production Premium or Master Collection bundle. Upgrades for those bundles did not come cheap. Adobe releases a new major version of CS every year, and has done so since CS3. CS4 is 5 years old. If Adobe kept its perpetual upgrade plans, you would have to first upgrade to CS6 to be able to upgrade to this year’s version (‘CS7’) – having to buy two upgrades would’ve cost way more than $700. Instead, Adobe gives users of CS3 or newer a discount to Creative Cloud, all Adobe apps for $30 a month.
- barrkel 14y ago
  Obviously he wasn't upgrading every release.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    Adobe has always allowed for 1 skipped major version. For instance, if you had Photoshop 5, you could skip version 6 and you would still be eligible for upgrade pricing for version 7. If GP were to upgrade now from CS4 to CS6, he would also have to upgrade to CS8 next year (if Adobe still offered perpetual upgrades). That would be more expensive than Creative Cloud, he would get less apps, and fewer updates.
    - steveax 14y ago
      Adobe used to allow upgrades fron any version to the latest for the same upgrade price. That changed somewhere around the time of CS1 to only allow upgrades from 2 versions back, then down to 1. As a longtime Illustrator (v88) and Photoshop (v2.5) user, this is the end of my Adobe purchases.
      - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
        You’re right, I remembered it incorrectly. I started using Photoshop at version 2.5 and Illustrator at version 5, but I had forgotten that the upgrade policy used to be more liberal and that Adobe’s installers weren’t atrocious. It’s all coming back to me now. On the flipside: stupid ATM and screen fonts, buggy QuarkXpress, monitors with thousands of colors, and having to do preflight – ugh. Some things really have improved. The Creative Cloud application installer is a delight. Updates are released often and the updating process is painless. No more hassle dealing with DVDs and serial numbers. Also, international pricing used to be way out of whack with US prices, the difference is a lot smaller now.
Spooky23 14y ago
I think that the reason they are doing this is that VDI and application virtualization is reducing the enterprise licensing count. There are many casual Adobe CS users within companies, and it's cheap and effective to virtualize the app and provide it to employees for limited periods. Creative Cloud basically delivers this functionality to everyone, with a licensing model that makes it more challenging to cheat.

cstejerean 14y 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 14y 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 14y ago
  which is just about equivalent to hiring somebody for minimum wage
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    Software is supposed to make getting stuff done a lot cheaper than with a real person.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    And how is that relevant? Comparing 10 hours use of Photoshop per month vs hiring somebody for minimum wage for a month? That's not even Apple's to Oranges, it's Apples to Universes.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  If you upgraded your Creative Suite on any kind of a schedule, the price per hour isn't much different, depending on which package you purchased.
- jagermo 14y ago
  Have you tried Lightroom? I prefer it for photo editing, the process is way more streamlined.

jrabone 14y ago

Yes, this is exactly the situation I find myself in. I'm not really much of a designer, but I bought Creative Suite when it was called Design Collection when I started my first company, did my own flyers and booklets in InDesign, business cards in Illustrator and earned money doing Photoshop and Illustrator work even though I'm really a software engineer. Now I'm a nearly-40 year old software engineer with enough disposable income to flatter myself by upgrading Creative Suite on the trailing edge, but hell will freeze over before I pay for Creative Cloud at those prices. Adobe have also screwed over Audition in the later versions to the point where I'll just use Cubase in preference; so much for the fast, elegant, simple workflow they inherited from CoolEdit.

tannerc 14y ago

The question we have to beg is: "What's in it for them?" Is the market big enough for people who aren't willing to spill $50 for the full suite? Will those of us who just drop using the apps because of price balance out to those who have now picked it up for the exact same reason?

epo 14y ago

"I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market." I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the rampant theft of their products. What this now does is open up the domestic image processing market, while businesses can be milked for all they're worth. I'll stick with Photoshop CS3 until it stops working.

Negitivefrags 14y ago
It might be that rampant piracy of Photoshop is part of the reason it is so dominant though. Every kid who had some desire to edit images pirated Photoshop, and thus they get used to using that particular tool. If they actually end up working in a real business doing this for a job then they will demand the use of Photoshop because it's what they already know and few businesses pirate their software.
kstrauser 14y ago
And by "fixed the rampant copyright violation" you mean "closed the top of the funnel to newcomers". I don't know a single college student or new home experimenter who paid for Photoshop, but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. Photoshop has always been way too expensive for hobbyists or people just dipping their toes in the water. The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. This will make their numbers look good in the near future, but I'd stake cash money that it's going to screw with their long-term user base.
- powertower 14y ago
  > The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. Except the entire industry claims that the number of people that would have bought it if they could not have pirated it is GREATER than the number of people that pirated it, used it as some kind of month or year long trial-ware, and eventually paid for it. My own experience - the day a warez copy came out on Google's front page results for my software, was the day sales got cut in half, and stayed cut. People pirate because it's easy to do, and fewer people will buy it if it's being given away for free by some site that generates its revenue from stealing other peoples work and showing you ads in the process.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

“I'm not going to justify $50 per month for [hobby usage at home], [...] A $700 upgrade every three years comes to $20/month.” “upgrading from CS4 to CS6 [...] A few hundred dollars every few years” As you use Photoshop, Illustrator, and AfterEffects, that means you probably have the Production Premium or Master Collection bundle. Upgrades for those bundles did not come cheap. Adobe releases a new major version of CS every year, and has done so since CS3. CS4 is 5 years old. If Adobe kept its perpetual upgrade plans, you would have to first upgrade to CS6 to be able to upgrade to this year’s version (‘CS7’) – having to buy two upgrades would’ve cost way more than $700. Instead, Adobe gives users of CS3 or newer a discount to Creative Cloud, all Adobe apps for $30 a month.

barrkel 14y ago
Obviously he wasn't upgrading every release.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  Adobe has always allowed for 1 skipped major version. For instance, if you had Photoshop 5, you could skip version 6 and you would still be eligible for upgrade pricing for version 7. If GP were to upgrade now from CS4 to CS6, he would also have to upgrade to CS8 next year (if Adobe still offered perpetual upgrades). That would be more expensive than Creative Cloud, he would get less apps, and fewer updates.
  - steveax 14y ago
    Adobe used to allow upgrades fron any version to the latest for the same upgrade price. That changed somewhere around the time of CS1 to only allow upgrades from 2 versions back, then down to 1. As a longtime Illustrator (v88) and Photoshop (v2.5) user, this is the end of my Adobe purchases.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      You’re right, I remembered it incorrectly. I started using Photoshop at version 2.5 and Illustrator at version 5, but I had forgotten that the upgrade policy used to be more liberal and that Adobe’s installers weren’t atrocious. It’s all coming back to me now. On the flipside: stupid ATM and screen fonts, buggy QuarkXpress, monitors with thousands of colors, and having to do preflight – ugh. Some things really have improved. The Creative Cloud application installer is a delight. Updates are released often and the updating process is painless. No more hassle dealing with DVDs and serial numbers. Also, international pricing used to be way out of whack with US prices, the difference is a lot smaller now.

Spooky23 14y ago

I think that the reason they are doing this is that VDI and application virtualization is reducing the enterprise licensing count. There are many casual Adobe CS users within companies, and it's cheap and effective to virtualize the app and provide it to employees for limited periods. Creative Cloud basically delivers this functionality to everyone, with a licensing model that makes it more challenging to cheat.