Adobe has made several announcements over the past few days. We’ve seen a new version of Photoshop, Creative Cloud bundles geared towards photographers, and even a go at hardware with the “Mighty” Pen and “Napoleon” Ruler. But of the unveilings, none was as controversial as the announcement that we would be saying goodbye to the Creative Suite line — from now on, it’s going to be Creative Cloud or nothing.
This has led to many a serious reaction and discussion online about the benefits and pitfalls of the new model. But of course, this is the Internet. What’s a serious discussion if it’s not balanced out by a good old fashioned meme? And so, YouTube’s Evil Edison has captioned Hitler’s fictional reaction to the announcement. Be forewarned: it is quite vulgar at times. Read more…
Adobe caused quite an outcry from the photography community yesterday after announcing that its future software offerings will only be available through subscription plans to its Creative Cloud service. The main gripe was that the $50/month cost for all the programs in the CC suite–or $20/month for just Photoshop–didn’t make financial sense for independent photographers and smaller photo studios.
Well, the sound of grumbling has reached decision makers over in the San Jose-based company. In a post published on the Photoshop.com blog yesterday, the company revealed that it’s thinking about introducing special Creative Cloud packages geared specifically at photographers. Read more…
On Monday Adobe officially announced its upcoming Creative Cloud subscription service, which will allow users to “rent” CS6 for $50 a month or Photoshop by itself for $20 a month. Whitson Gordon over at Lifehacker did some calculations on whether subscribing is actually worth it. Here’s his conclusion:
If you’re upgrading from a previous version of the program, it’s quite a bit cheaper to just grab the upgrade from Adobe instead of subscribing. And, if you can get a student discount (which nearly anyone can do), that’ll be cheaper too—at least in the case of Photoshop, which doesn’t seem to offer a subscription for students. In the case of the Master Collection, the student subscription is cheaper than the regular student version, but still not cheaper than upgrading from a previous version. However, once you get past the two year mark, all bets are off—the subscription is more expensive than buying, even if you plan on upgrading every two years.
[...] our official recommendation is to stick with the retail versions unless you only plan on using your Adobe product for under two years. The subscription is great for the short run [...], but it’ll cost you quite a bit more in the long run.
Adobe’s John Nack also writes that one of the huge benefits of the new model is that it drastically reduces the barrier to entry. Previously you had to pay $700 to get started with using Photoshop. Now the cost is $20.
Adobe’s cloud-based subscription program, called Creative Cloud, now has a price tag: $50/month with a minimum one-year agreement. Subscribing will get you access to the latest version of Adobe’s popular programs (e.g. CS6 and Lightroom 4) without the pain of shelling out big bucks for buying the boxed version and subsequent upgrades. In addition to receiving updates to the programs as soon as they’re released, you’ll also be given 20GB of cloud storage that can be used for syncing your work.
Earlier this week Adobe launched a new subscription-based model for their Creative Suite line of software products. The program ordinarily costs $699, but a yearly subscription costs $420 and gives you access to the latest version. You can also subscribe for a monthly fee of $49 if you need the program on a short term basis. While this won’t be very enticing for heavy users of the programs who can just save money by buying and upgrading, renting is a good option for anyone who needs the latest Photoshop on a as-needed basis.
