Where's all this Adobe hate coming from? Geez. You guys need to turn it down a notch. You sound like angry villagers about to torch the castle.
Yeah, it would be super keen if Adobe completely re-wrote every single app from the ground up. Sure there is room for improvement (sometimes LOTS of improvement!). Sure there is a piling on of features for the sake of marketing bullet points. Yes, competing products have some remarkable, innovative features. And yes, I wish the interwebbing public would quit sucking on the Flash teat like a starving baby goat... but that's not Adobe's fault. They add features, and they are guilty of bloatware. They focus on performance, and they are accused of not having enough new features to upgrade.
Adobe is not deserving of all this improportionate anger.
I love how all the little kiddies are so knowledgeable about professional design. Pretty easy to pirate a copy, try it out for 15 minutes and then dismiss it as a piece of crap. After reading all the comments in this thread, it's pretty clear that having a rational discussion about CS5 or Adobe products of any flavor would be pretty much impossible here... sayonara whiners.
I'm not going to take your comment personally... nor am I kid. I've been using PS since version 1, along with assorted other Adobe products for many, many years. Illustrator was my first vector program, also at version 1, I believe in '86.
What I think is the problem for many people here, is that Adobe has become lazy over the years... or as someone else suggested, purchasing Macromedia was the beginning of that trend.
Before the purchase, no one, but no one, could do anything but sing praise for PS, since it was THE most powerful and stable program on any platform. Acrobat and Distiller were there, as well as Premier. At that time, it was the hardware that needed catching up to what PS and other Adobe products potentially offered, and I (we) spent in the 5 figures to try to get there. Monster systems, hard drives, exorbitantly high-priced video cards and monitors, RAM, RAM-drives... you name it.
However, the times have changed dramatically. The hardware has caught up, but Adobe has been caught standing in place since the early part of the decade.... fair to say even before they bought MM.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have no problem with PS... but could it be better and less bloated? I think so. Should Illustrator be better? Well, since they now have legal access to their main competitor's code base and it's inside tricks, should I expect anything less than better?
It appears to me, that the main problem with Adobe, as well as Microsoft's, is that management and a number of the fiefdoms they have created within their companies... are stifling the innovation and stability of the products as a whole, to the detriment and finally, derision of it's user base.
I sure would like to be a fly on the wall in some of those management and product-head meetings. Perhaps then we could put the proper blame where it belongs, for the stagnation of the companies and their products.
As to price: it's still worth every penny if you work in a professional design setting. It's certainly not a toy or a hobby package, so I wouldn't expect it to ever be priced as such.
That one really is the kiddies' problem, since they feel entitled to everything at "Low Everyday Prices"... or free for that matter. And if they don't get their way, they go on temper tantrums and bust up other people's property, because if they can't have "it"... they feel nobody else deserves "it" either, regardless whether they worked their ass off for years to get "it". NOTE: I just saw the so-called "protest" in Vancouver. Downright sad and depressing!
To sum it all up, you really have to wonder what 7,564 employees (as of Aug. 2009) are doing all day, when you compare say a Pixelmator, with 2 brothers and a few part-timers, and what they are producing. Maybe it will never reach "pro-grade" status... but hey... it's still darn impressive.
Reminds me of the small team around Thomas and John Knoll back in the day.... and look what that became... hmmm..... what did it become????
when you compare say a Pixelmator, with 2 brothers and a few part-timers, and what they are producing. Maybe it will never reach "pro-grade" status... but hey... it's still darn impressive.
Reminds me of the small team around Thomas and John Knoll back in the day.... and look what that became... hmmm..... what did it become????
I don't think people give enough credit to John Warnock.
... Adobe's update cycle is 2 years, and the Master collections is $900 to upgrade and includes 13 programs, plus the Bridge. That comes to about $70 per app, which is much less than upgrading Logic or Final Cut, and on par with most OSX updates.
True, but the fallacy of this approach is twofold:
(a) How phenomenally rare are the people who actually needs/uses all 13 applications?
Even if we count those instances where the 'fuzzy borders' of the various tools means that one needs 2-3 Apps to get a certain something done, there's invariably specialization that occurs, so your "Photoshop Go To Guy" isn't necessarily going to be the same guy for all 12 other tools.
Adobe knows this, which is why they set that price point where it is: if one compares it to how many individual upgrades this same $600 will buy, then you quickly figure out that the typical developer really only uses 2-3 of the 13 Apps.
(b) How much longer is it going to be until Adobe has their next "Bundle reorganization", which will replace "Creative Suite" with "Some New Name"?
The point of this question is to highlight that with Adobe CS, Adobe is using it to "break" bundled upgrade paths, so as to extract more money from Licensees. If you hadn't noticed, those developers who owned licenses of EVERY Application pre-CS bundling aren't eligible to easily "CS-ize" them into a bundle for the purposes of getting a lower upgrade price: the only 'deal' that Adobe offers is a "own one, get to upgrade to the suite for a mere $800".
The net result is that the licenses not used for that upgrade get orphaned, yet still have value.
For a large enterprise, this might not be too bad of a thing, since there's invariably some amount of incidental piracy ... but this does backfire, since it does alienate the individual who advocates for the latest copy (out of the group's budget) and he was (past tense) your anti-piracy advocate within that group.
Similarly, for the small independent shop, this residual value becomes a headache, since now they'll be motivated to go recoup that expense by reselling the old license on eBay.
Quote:
I think most Lightroom users are very happy with it's workflow as a photograph cataloguing and developing program. (Hence the name Lightroom). Adding a bunch of extra features would take away that workflow. Photoshop is for deeper photo editing and manipulation.
But it is still for PHOTO editing - not Video editing, not imports of 3D CAD images, etc. How much of its bloat is because of this scope creep which should have really been given its own dedicated app? Which is why one needs it for photos, since there's still a lot of adjustments that Lightroom simply can't do.
Quote:
Also, John B.: You can buy Photoshop CS4 Standard, and not have the 3D editing features or the extra cost. 3D is only available in Photoshop CS4 Extended. I think we can assume Adobe will continue this product model as there are lots of folks who only work in 2D.
More like: "...a lot of people who recognize that since they don't need 3D, they don't want to be forced to pay extra for it...."
The reality out of all of the above is that an increasingly large percentage of Adobe's customer base no longer feels the need to buy every upgrade - - the improvements simply aren't compelling enough at the price point that Adobe is asking. Thus, these customers perform "Skip-Upgrades".
Does this create a vicious circle where Adobe is prompted to try to compensate by charging higher upgrade prices? Yup. Afterall, a 2 for 1 skip-upgrade cuts Adobe's revenue by 50%, and a 3 for 1 skip-upgrade cuts Adobe's revenues by a whopping 67%.
The solution, of course, is to make sure that your products are compelling and have value...not blame your customers for not buying it.
Unfortunately, the 800lb Gorilla is Microsoft and their business model of the Enterprise, where 'standardization' is frequently more often important than product value. That's a path to long term stagnation.
I didn't RTFA, but does this new 64 bit version work only on Snow Leopard and above? 10.6 is becoming more stable and it doesn't make sense to release apps that don't take advantage of LLVM or GCD.
Comments
Yeah, it would be super keen if Adobe completely re-wrote every single app from the ground up. Sure there is room for improvement (sometimes LOTS of improvement!). Sure there is a piling on of features for the sake of marketing bullet points. Yes, competing products have some remarkable, innovative features. And yes, I wish the interwebbing public would quit sucking on the Flash teat like a starving baby goat... but that's not Adobe's fault. They add features, and they are guilty of bloatware. They focus on performance, and they are accused of not having enough new features to upgrade.
Adobe is not deserving of all this improportionate anger.
I love how all the little kiddies are so knowledgeable about professional design. Pretty easy to pirate a copy, try it out for 15 minutes and then dismiss it as a piece of crap. After reading all the comments in this thread, it's pretty clear that having a rational discussion about CS5 or Adobe products of any flavor would be pretty much impossible here... sayonara whiners.
I'm not going to take your comment personally... nor am I kid. I've been using PS since version 1, along with assorted other Adobe products for many, many years. Illustrator was my first vector program, also at version 1, I believe in '86.
What I think is the problem for many people here, is that Adobe has become lazy over the years... or as someone else suggested, purchasing Macromedia was the beginning of that trend.
Before the purchase, no one, but no one, could do anything but sing praise for PS, since it was THE most powerful and stable program on any platform. Acrobat and Distiller were there, as well as Premier. At that time, it was the hardware that needed catching up to what PS and other Adobe products potentially offered, and I (we) spent in the 5 figures to try to get there. Monster systems, hard drives, exorbitantly high-priced video cards and monitors, RAM, RAM-drives... you name it.
However, the times have changed dramatically. The hardware has caught up, but Adobe has been caught standing in place since the early part of the decade.... fair to say even before they bought MM.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have no problem with PS... but could it be better and less bloated? I think so. Should Illustrator be better? Well, since they now have legal access to their main competitor's code base and it's inside tricks, should I expect anything less than better?
It appears to me, that the main problem with Adobe, as well as Microsoft's, is that management and a number of the fiefdoms they have created within their companies... are stifling the innovation and stability of the products as a whole, to the detriment and finally, derision of it's user base.
I sure would like to be a fly on the wall in some of those management and product-head meetings. Perhaps then we could put the proper blame where it belongs, for the stagnation of the companies and their products.
As to price: it's still worth every penny if you work in a professional design setting. It's certainly not a toy or a hobby package, so I wouldn't expect it to ever be priced as such.
That one really is the kiddies' problem, since they feel entitled to everything at "Low Everyday Prices"... or free for that matter. And if they don't get their way, they go on temper tantrums and bust up other people's property, because if they can't have "it"... they feel nobody else deserves "it" either, regardless whether they worked their ass off for years to get "it". NOTE: I just saw the so-called "protest" in Vancouver. Downright sad and depressing!
To sum it all up, you really have to wonder what 7,564 employees (as of Aug. 2009) are doing all day, when you compare say a Pixelmator, with 2 brothers and a few part-timers, and what they are producing. Maybe it will never reach "pro-grade" status... but hey... it's still darn impressive.
Reminds me of the small team around Thomas and John Knoll back in the day.... and look what that became... hmmm..... what did it become????
when you compare say a Pixelmator, with 2 brothers and a few part-timers, and what they are producing. Maybe it will never reach "pro-grade" status... but hey... it's still darn impressive.
Reminds me of the small team around Thomas and John Knoll back in the day.... and look what that became... hmmm..... what did it become????
I don't think people give enough credit to John Warnock.
Does that mean you are taking your flattened PSDs and storming off for home too?
He's talking about people like you. You're clearly an ignorant pirate and only a designer in your wet dreams.
... Adobe's update cycle is 2 years, and the Master collections is $900 to upgrade and includes 13 programs, plus the Bridge. That comes to about $70 per app, which is much less than upgrading Logic or Final Cut, and on par with most OSX updates.
True, but the fallacy of this approach is twofold:
(a) How phenomenally rare are the people who actually needs/uses all 13 applications?
Even if we count those instances where the 'fuzzy borders' of the various tools means that one needs 2-3 Apps to get a certain something done, there's invariably specialization that occurs, so your "Photoshop Go To Guy" isn't necessarily going to be the same guy for all 12 other tools.
Adobe knows this, which is why they set that price point where it is: if one compares it to how many individual upgrades this same $600 will buy, then you quickly figure out that the typical developer really only uses 2-3 of the 13 Apps.
(b) How much longer is it going to be until Adobe has their next "Bundle reorganization", which will replace "Creative Suite" with "Some New Name"?
The point of this question is to highlight that with Adobe CS, Adobe is using it to "break" bundled upgrade paths, so as to extract more money from Licensees. If you hadn't noticed, those developers who owned licenses of EVERY Application pre-CS bundling aren't eligible to easily "CS-ize" them into a bundle for the purposes of getting a lower upgrade price: the only 'deal' that Adobe offers is a "own one, get to upgrade to the suite for a mere $800".
The net result is that the licenses not used for that upgrade get orphaned, yet still have value.
For a large enterprise, this might not be too bad of a thing, since there's invariably some amount of incidental piracy ... but this does backfire, since it does alienate the individual who advocates for the latest copy (out of the group's budget) and he was (past tense) your anti-piracy advocate within that group.
Similarly, for the small independent shop, this residual value becomes a headache, since now they'll be motivated to go recoup that expense by reselling the old license on eBay.
I think most Lightroom users are very happy with it's workflow as a photograph cataloguing and developing program. (Hence the name Lightroom). Adding a bunch of extra features would take away that workflow. Photoshop is for deeper photo editing and manipulation.
But it is still for PHOTO editing - not Video editing, not imports of 3D CAD images, etc. How much of its bloat is because of this scope creep which should have really been given its own dedicated app? Which is why one needs it for photos, since there's still a lot of adjustments that Lightroom simply can't do.
Also, John B.: You can buy Photoshop CS4 Standard, and not have the 3D editing features or the extra cost. 3D is only available in Photoshop CS4 Extended. I think we can assume Adobe will continue this product model as there are lots of folks who only work in 2D.
More like: "...a lot of people who recognize that since they don't need 3D, they don't want to be forced to pay extra for it...."
The reality out of all of the above is that an increasingly large percentage of Adobe's customer base no longer feels the need to buy every upgrade - - the improvements simply aren't compelling enough at the price point that Adobe is asking. Thus, these customers perform "Skip-Upgrades".
Does this create a vicious circle where Adobe is prompted to try to compensate by charging higher upgrade prices? Yup. Afterall, a 2 for 1 skip-upgrade cuts Adobe's revenue by 50%, and a 3 for 1 skip-upgrade cuts Adobe's revenues by a whopping 67%.
The solution, of course, is to make sure that your products are compelling and have value...not blame your customers for not buying it.
Unfortunately, the 800lb Gorilla is Microsoft and their business model of the Enterprise, where 'standardization' is frequently more often important than product value. That's a path to long term stagnation.
-hh
He's talking about people like you. You're clearly an ignorant pirate and only a designer in your wet dreams.
How terribly mature of you.
Have you read the ToS?