Adobe cuts Photoshop CC to $10 a month for Creative Suite users, throws in Lightroom for free

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Current owners of certain versions of Photoshop Creative Suite can now take advantage of a special offer from Adobe, which is extending a considerable discount to those who want to upgrade to Creative Cloud subscriptions.



During the company's keynote at the Photoshop World conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Adobe announced a new deal for current owners of Photoshop CS3 or higher: they can upgrade to the Creative Cloud version of the software for a price of just $10 per month, or 50 percent off the normal going rate.

A post on Adobe's Creative Layer blog confirmed that the price is available for a limited time only and is good until December 31, 2013.

That $10 price tag will get users monthly access to Photoshop CC, which pushed out regular updates as soon as they become available. Subscribers also get a a copy of Lightroom 5, 20GB of online storage, a Behance ProSite and access to Creative Cloud Learn's training resources.

Adobe's offer represents a monthly savings of $10 ? or a yearly savings of $120 ? off the regular price of a single-app subscription. Adobe transitioned to a subscription model in May of this year, drawing complaints from some customers who wanted to stay with the regular software purchase model.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 68

    Adobe is doomed.

  • Reply 2 of 68
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

    Adobe is doomed.


     

    ROFLMAO

     

    But on a serious note, the new deal I like. ;)

  • Reply 3 of 68
    tony1tony1 Posts: 259member

    Still seems like a crack dealer giving out a sample at a discounted rate.

  • Reply 4 of 68
    I'm sticking with CS6 and not upgrading to Creative Cloud.
  • Reply 5 of 68
    disturbia wrote: »
    ROFLMAO

    But on a serious note, the new deal I like. ;)

    No, really, Skil is right on this one, Adobe *is* doomed…

    The fact they are heavily discounting Photoshop CC means that it's probably not being received all too well by their target market. What Adobe fails to acknowledge is exactly why; no, it's not because of price alone (though it is an important factor and, while on that subject, the $10/month still won't be as good a deal as occasionally skipping versions was), but mostly because of control and power, both over your tools and the seller/buyer relationship. Previously, you could access your work perpetually after a one-time payment, whereas now you must *pay* perpetually in order to do so (an insanely idiotic and disrespectful proposition if you ask me), and with the older model Adobe had to compete (both for new and returning customers) on merit, while now, as it has been mentioned, they behave akin to drug dealers.

    I predict they will abandon their subscription-only model (whether by introducing CS7 or/and by offering a credible lease buy-out exit strategy to their clients) and maybe even fire Shantanu Narayen shortly after their next QR conference. You heard it here first!
  • Reply 6 of 68
    if you cant justify $600 a year for professional grade tools your not billing enough. The longer you wait the further you fall behind. Personally I can't wait like that and risk not being in the game.
  • Reply 7 of 68
    murmanmurman Posts: 159member

    $10 now, $60 later, Well you can charge more for your work right? Sure, so you could pay off Adobe, and risk losing clients to someone who is using CS6 or alternatives who didn't have to raise their price.

  • Reply 8 of 68
    hobbithobbit Posts: 532member
    I wonder about their actual sales with the new model.
    This sudden discount suggests thiey are not so great.

    It makes sense for some people I am sure, but it is really not interesting for people who skipped versions before.

    And that whole concept of having to continue to pay in order to be able to access my content in future I really don't like.
    Stop paying and Photoshop stops working within a month and you can no longer use any of your files... What an utter nonsense idea! To subscribe to that. Pun intended.

    I for one will also stay with Photoshop 6.
  • Reply 9 of 68
    Funny stuff. How high is up? I own CS2, 3, 5 and do most of my work on CS2! I don't need anything but more time to use the tools I have.
    The subscription idea is nice but not practical. The idea of someone controlling my work is quite distasteful. Especially if I need an uplink to so a demo.
  • Reply 10 of 68
    I've given Adobe over $2,000 over the years. No more. I'm at Photoshop CS6 and I'll never give Adobe another dime. Ever. Even if Photoshop CS6 becomes incompatible with a future Mac OS, I'll simply stop using the software rather than giving Adobe more money.

    Adobe can stick its new subscription model where the sun doesn't shine!

    Mark
  • Reply 11 of 68
    They better dump their CEO. I stopped buying after the introduction of the ridiculous time suck of authorizing and de-authorizing. Adobe=KMA
  • Reply 12 of 68

    I don't need lots of new features, but I would pay a reasonable amount to upgrade the suite every couple years if they used the old licensing model.

     

    I will never buy into their new model.

     

    Adobe has alienated quite a few creatives I know.

  • Reply 13 of 68
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member

    Photoshop has not added anything I need since version 7.0.

    Dreamweaver and Fireworks (even running on 10.9) are still more usable in their latest (MX 2004) Macromedia versions than whatever Adobe did to screw them up since.

    Quark's support is drop dead excellent (now), Adobe's Indian psychedelic garbage hotline is an effing disgrace to anybody paying even a dime.

     

    Not even at $1 per year would I buy anything from these idiots.

  • Reply 14 of 68

    Wonderful news, as it appears people are not as stupid as Adobe wants them to be.

     

    What Adobe giveth, Adobe can taketh away. $10 today, $100 tomorrow.

  • Reply 15 of 68
    Die Adobe. Die.

    First you make Photoshop a Creative Package and up the price. Then you lock it into a Suite and then CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS6 us to death and you limit CS to 2 machines and you make the apps and the docs non backwards compatible. Now you want to lease your F'ng apps to us in the Cloud and own what we produce.

    Die Adobe. Die.
  • Reply 16 of 68
    cashxxcashxx Posts: 114member

    Don't fall for it stick with CS 6 and backwards!    Let Adobe sweat and stop buying Adobe until they reverse this cloud and new licensing crap!

  • Reply 17 of 68

    God bless all the pirates, code breakers and torrent creators and uploaders.

     

    May we forever know "Adobe" to be a sun-dried brick made of mud and straw.

  • Reply 18 of 68
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aappleinside-forum View Post



    I'm sticking with CS6 and not upgrading to Creative Cloud.

    You should be good for a year or so depending on how much collaboration you do. Personally, I can't make it more than a month after a new CS release because some associate always ends up sending me a file that can't be opened. Rather than ask them to export it or whatever, I just bite the bullet and upgrade to the latest version. There are a few tricks that can prolong the usefulness of older versions but it becomes sort of a pain in the ass after awhile. For me it is no big deal, I just fold the upgrade cost into the fees I pass along to the clients.

     

    I sort of feel the same way about fonts. I had this guy from a huge mega corporation that couldn't open a Flash file of ours the other day because he didn't have the fonts. In the old days it would have been embarrassing to admit you did not own the latest Adobe font catalog. I guess times have changed. I always bought the entire font folio every year or two for thousands of dollars rather than ever ask a peer to send me fonts that are licensed and restricted.

  • Reply 19 of 68
    I liked it when the subscription was on option, but now that it's required I'm not so sure. When Adobe bought out macromedia, their biggest competition, I thought ther innovation would slow. And I think it did. Now that they have a monopoly, they're requiring that we pay monthly, so that if they decide to upgrade less often, they still get the same amount from us. Everything they're doing is pointing to less innovation, and more fees. I for one think Apple needs to turn aperture into a photoshop competitor.
  • Reply 20 of 68
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    cashxx wrote: »
    Don't fall for it stick with CS 6 and backwards!  Let Adobe sweat and stop buying Adobe until they reverse this cloud and new licensing crap!

    There's no reason for them to reverse the cloud option. Some people just prefer to have the option of a perpetual license as an alternative so all they'd have to do is introduce a license that works forever but doesn't get updates but it's easier if customers are on the same version. They are expecting to have 1.25m subscribers by the end of this year:

    http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/Q3-and-FY13-targets-with-GAAP-to-non-GAAP-reconciliation.pdf

    These threads about Adobe tend to go the same way but it's not really new:

    http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/73010/adobe-creative-suite-3-0-bundles-and-euro-pricing-revealed

    People have always complained about the prices even with the perpetual license. With CC, it's still expensive (more so for people who don't upgrade) but accessible to people on fixed incomes. People who don't upgrade aren't paying them money anyway so what do they care? It's not as if you can upgrade in a very flexible way with a perpetual license. If you upgrade too many versions you have to pay for the whole thing again:

    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1141241

    So for people in a business environment, it means having to have someone constantly downgrading files or forcing a very expensive upgrade unexpectedly. Being able to stop paying at some point would be good to have as an option but they know that people will just do that more and more as time goes on. Think 5-10 years away, would it be better that Adobe didn't exist? What takes their place in the industry? They are just making moves to create a sustainable revenue stream and it's something a lot of big software companies will aim to do over the years as they will have to in order to sustain their business.

    Software as a product comes with complications for a publicly traded company as Avid has discovered:

    http://blog.devoncroft.com/2013/08/13/avid-delays-filing-of-q2-2013-financial-results-and-form-10-q/

    "The focus of Avid’s internal audit is the past accounting treatment of certain software upgrades that the company previously made available to certain of its customers at no-charge. Avid management has now determined that these upgrades should have been accounted for as “implied post-contract customer support” under US GAAP accounting rules.

    As a result, Avid is currently in the process of restating its financial statements for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2011, 2010 and 2009 and for its quarterly periods ended September 30, 2012 and 2011, June 30, 2012 and 2011, and March 31, 2012 and 2011.

    Because the work required to review and restate historical transactions has not yet been completed, the company says it is not in a position at this time to compare results of operations for the quarters ended June 30, 2012 and 2013 respectively, resulting in the delayed filing of its 10-Q for the second quarter of 2013."

    They got their letter already:

    http://ir.avid.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=785690

    If Avid went the same route as Adobe, they'd get round this issue going forward and also create a sustainable revenue stream.
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