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

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 68
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,301moderator
    dysamoria wrote: »
    Yeah, still a big fat NO, Adobe. I'm living on disability income at the moment. There's no way I'm starting up a photography/art selling business with monthly expenses to rent the effing software tools.

    How would you save up the money for one of the CS bundles under the old model?
    dysamoria wrote:
    As for Adobe being "forced to charge more to maintain their huge corporation", that's a self-inflicted injury.

    They aren't charging more for everyone. If you bought the full ~$2000 CS4 Suite and skipped CS5, you'd have to pay ~$2000 to get CS6. That's $4000 in 3 years. Now it's $1800, you get two licenses with CC, you would have had a fully updated version in year 2 and you get online storage and online services.

    For someone that bought say the Design Premium CS4 Suite at ~$1300 and wanted to upgrade to the CS6 equivalent, that's $2600 in 3 years vs $1800 for CC and again, CC has all the updates and online services.

    For someone that buys Design Premium CS4 and holds onto it for 4 years+ without upgrading, that's when CC becomes a bad deal. But Adobe doesn't want people holding onto software for over 4 years without upgrading just like Apple puts 3 year maximum warranties on their products.

    As far as access to files if you stop paying, that's bad if the intention is to use the software for non-profit activities and a lot of money has been paid out on subscriptions. One thing they could do at least is have a default limited mode outside of a valid license that gives you maybe 15-30 minutes use per day to allow you to open and adjust/convert/export files or some other limit like one app open at a time and one file at a time and that would work as their trial software too.
  • Reply 42 of 68
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post



    As far as access to files if you stop paying, that's bad if the intention is to use the software for non-profit activities and a lot of money has been paid out on subscriptions. One thing they could do at least is have a default limited mode outside of a valid license that gives you maybe 15-30 minutes use per day to allow you to open and adjust/convert/export files or some other limit like one app open at a time and one file at a time and that would work as their trial software too.

    That's a nice idea.

  • Reply 43 of 68

    Behance ProSite is so crummy. Adobe should buy Squarespace.

  • Reply 44 of 68
    I will stick with cs6 for as long as I can. I usually skip a version, so it will be years before I start feeling the pain. Hopefully by then someone will have compiled a comparable suite of tools. I find the most compelling feature of adobe software is the ability to work seamlessly across all its apps. Until someone duplicates that, I expect they will push CC down our throats. I don't think they are listening to us.
  • Reply 45 of 68
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bulk001 View Post





    Your comment actually highlights my problems with Aperture. Lightroom is intuitive that you can open it and go. No need for all the courses, tours and seminars to learn it.

     

    Depends on where you started.  I tried Lightroom and found the interface confusing and less logical than Aperture.

     

    But, I admit, my general hatred for Adobe had me going in with a large bias to start with.

     

    Mark

  • Reply 46 of 68

    There is a tremendous amount of passion in the responses to this story. 

     

    Many of us forget that large companies like Disney rely on Adobe products and it is their voices that will be "heard" as well in this matter. Most of Disney has, I believe, not upgraded to the monthly model because their files MUST, by their nature, be housed, managed and available to the entire Company world wide. 

    The current Adobe subscription system is not really compatible with a large cost-centered corporate model. It ties the company to the software and makes compatibility an issue going forward. Disney, I imagine, would not like any other company in control of their image products...no matter how slight.

     

    For smaller ad firms and agencies the cloud might work OK but not for a large corporate model.

     

    Adobe won't go away and neither will Photoshop. Adobe is trying an approach many have contemplated but not thought possible. Microsoft Word comes to mind. The software is becoming bloated and updates are faster than most mere mortals need. We al like new tools but scarcely get good with the present ones before new tools are introduced. Most are only needed by a few.

     

    Adobe abolished the Solutions Network. Nice program and very friendly. It gave many pros access to helping Adobe but instead of using the Solutions Network for a really good focus group Adobe abolished it entirely. Lots of bad feelings there. Adobe didn't know what they had. Adobe people have become something similar to Wells Fargo employees; nice, courteous, professional-sounding with not one drop of power or influence hiding behind well-written policy and procedure.

     

    So, now, let's all sit back and watch. The big corporate users with their licensing deals will dictate how the divining rod bends.

  • Reply 47 of 68
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ronstark View Post

     

     

    The current Adobe subscription system is not really compatible with a large cost-centered corporate model. It ties the company to the software and makes compatibility an issue going forward. Disney, I imagine, would not like any other company in control of their image products...no matter how slight.

     

    For smaller ad firms and agencies the cloud might work OK but not for a large corporate model.

     

    It sounds as if you are assuming that the application and all the files live in the cloud. This not the case. The applications are downloaded to your computer and you have the choice of storing the content files either on your local network, hard drive, USB drive, CD-Rom, email them, put them on Drop Box, or if you so choose, store them on Adobe's Creative Cloud service.

     

    The only aspects of the subscription that are mandatory is that once a month you may see a pop up asking to verify your account and that you pay either annually or monthly for the service. In the case of Disney, I would suspect that the CC version would save them lots of money because you get two licenses instead of one which can be allocated to either Macs or Windows or one of each.


  • Reply 48 of 68
    rainrain Posts: 538member
    I won't, and a lot of peers won't touch CC.

    Now it becomes a waiting game. Adobe laying siege to customers and customers milling about with CS 6 laying siege to Adobe - who blinks first?

    The game changer will be MS and Apple - and if new OS's will support CS 6.

    Flash is dead. I don't think shareholders want to kill their golden goose. I think they won't kill CC, but we will see more price drops and new iterations of it.

    Meanwhile, we wait for the hacking community to figure it out.
  • Reply 49 of 68
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,301moderator
    rain wrote: »
    Now it becomes a waiting game. Adobe laying siege to customers and customers milling about with CS 6 laying siege to Adobe - who blinks first?

    The upgrade pricing offer runs out December 3rd for CS3-CS6 customers so that might persuade some to adopt it - I think they've probably topped 1 million subscribers by now. The Downfall parody summarizes the sequence of events customers will experience (subtitles are NSFW):


    rain wrote: »
    Meanwhile, we wait for the hacking community to figure it out.

    Again, how is this different from any other Adobe release or really anything that involves something people don't like? Some people want to see the new Mac Pro fail to sell because it's not the tower they wanted and promotes Thunderbolt over the PCIe slots they assume everyone uses, people convince themselves that Apple Mac sales are down because of what they did to the 17" laptop and Mac Pro, people think that Apple's smartphone sales will collapse soon if they don't release a bigger iPhone. It's standard behaviour that people assume everyone thinks like they do on subjects they feel strongly about e.g I'm so sure I'm right about this, I can't be in the minority. Then come the protests and the threats of boycotting and piracy.

    The fact is, if tomorrow Adobe said 'ok, let's have the CC apps available on a perpetual license for $2000', it's not going to change the state of affairs much at all because it's still really expensive. All it means is that it's easier to pirate the software because it's not going to get frequent updates so people cracking it can put out an update once and have it last for a while. With CC, Adobe can issue 50 updates a year if they want and it's not feasible for people to keep patching every update.
  • Reply 50 of 68
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by hobBIT View Post

    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.

    I don't think you quite understand how it works. Photoshop files ARE backwards compatible so a PSD you create with CC can be opened on a machine running 5.0 with no CC attached to it. As far as InDesign and Illustrator, you can always backwards-save your files when archiving. It just becomes part of your work-flow.

  • Reply 51 of 68
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dysamoria View Post

    All these "if you're not making enough to pay for it, you're not a professional/you're not charging enough" are the antipathetic republicans of Adobe's customers. 

    No we are not. We just consider it part of running our business. I don't expect to get free gasoline when I drive to a client meeting, or free internet, or free cell service, or free web hosting, etc. Without any of these things, I would not be in business.

  • Reply 52 of 68
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by polymnia View Post





    Wow. $2000 whole dollars? Amazing.



    That is less than 2% of my billings this year. If each version can increase my productivity by more than that i'll consider the cloud well worth the expense. Not to mention, illustrator, InDesign & typekit, though I realize this article is about photoshop.



    Either way, the whiners do not impress me. If you can't make money with CC, get out of the way.

     

    Well hoo-f**king-ray for you. Many hobbyists and part-timers use these applications as well, you know. Plus, IT departments HATE this kind of subscription model - upgrading stand-alone software is already a pain in a large IT network and IT always wait for the software to mature before deploying. Having CC throw upgrades every year or so? No. That wont sit well and, judging by this promotion and only something like 1m users its not going very well at all.

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by rain View Post



    I won't, and a lot of peers won't touch CC.



    Now it becomes a waiting game. Adobe laying siege to customers and customers milling about with CS 6 laying siege to Adobe - who blinks first?



    The game changer will be MS and Apple - and if new OS's will support CS 6.



    Flash is dead. I don't think shareholders want to kill their golden goose. I think they won't kill CC, but we will see more price drops and new iterations of it.



    Meanwhile, we wait for the hacking community to figure it out.

     

    I believe Photoshop Magazine did a poll and found that 76% of their readers weren't even going to consider CC.

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by LosFelizGuy View Post

     

    I don't think you quite understand how it works. Photoshop files ARE backwards compatible so a PSD you create with CC can be opened on a machine running 5.0 with no CC attached to it. As far as InDesign and Illustrator, you can always backwards-save your files when archiving. It just becomes part of your work-flow.


     

    And when the next version of CC comes out? Then what?

    Saving in an older format can also have troubles - its like saving a DOCX in DOC and hoping everything remains hunky dory.

  • Reply 53 of 68
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,301moderator
    judging by this promotion and only something like 1m users its not going very well at all.

    The unexpected success of the move was one of the reasons Adobe gave for dropping CS so suddenly:

    http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672530/adobe-5-reasons-we-killed-the-creative-suite

    This $10/m offer was made because photographers asked Adobe for a tailored bundle:

    http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/04/adobes-giving-photogs-a-crazy-deal-on-creative-cloud-tools-10-per-month/

    "The company said its Creative Cloud customers had been asking for a special bundle just for photographers."

    They are on track to make over $4b revenue this year, same as they did last year (note that they still sell CS6). Their fiscal Q3 ended last month so they'll put out another report soon.

    It's not clear how many customers they have overall but their software is priced between roughly $300-2500 and they make $3.3b revenue. If their average selling price is $700, that's 4.7m customers per year of the old suite. So 1m subscribers in a year is actually ok. People who recently bought CS6, which is still on sale aren't going to jump on CC immediately.

    Like I say, people who don't like it want to see it fail but the numbers suggest it isn't failing. It has higher reviews than any other product Adobe sells - 80% of the 600-800 reviews for it are 4/5 or higher. As usual, there's a vocal minority expressing discontent and one of the reviews is:

    1/5
    "Like going back to dialup after high speed...
    BillInFlorida Posted:31-July-2013
    Extremely slow to do simple functions. Opening and closing Photoshop and Illustrator can literally take several minutes. After this year subscription, I'm going back to pre-Creative Cloud. I'm losing money waiting for these apps to operate properly. It's a shame, the concept was solid but the everyday use is VERY frustrating."

    95 people flagged that review as helpful and there's a group around that number upvoting a lot of the negative reviews.

    Being able to open and adjust files outside of the subscription is a serious concern and should be addressed with a CC option rather than relying on CS6 because downgrading files isn't ideal if you just need to make small adjustments to previous projects. Images aren't as big of a concern as project files like Indesign documents or After Effects projects. The web software is not an issue as it all comes out in text files that can be edited anywhere. There is always the option to subscribe again to open files but that's not great for people who aren't earning and have already paid for a number of years so I think having pricing benefits for long-time members would be helpful. I don't think subscribing again is as serious an issue as people make out though given the low monthly price. It's not as if suddenly people won't ever be able to find $10-50 a month and have their career come to an abrupt end.
  • Reply 54 of 68
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bmovie View Post

     

    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.


     

    So you're saying Adobe products are good enough for you to USE, but not good enough to pay for? If that's the way the revolution is going to unfold, I don't wanna play.

     

    Wanna make a statement? Refuse to pay for Adobe products and DON'T USE THEM. That's activism. What you're describing us just stealing.

  • Reply 55 of 68
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Inkling View Post



    It's a marvelous move by Adobe. As a one-Mac publisher, I'd love to see them extend it into my field. Charge perhaps $19.95 for the apps needed to create documents and books. InDesign and Photoshop would be on my must-have list. Add Muse and Illustrator, and $29.95 might be justifiable.



    Adobe needs to keep in mind a problem employees face when they try to convince their boss that they must sign up for CC. The boss is likely to see that long list of apps and say, "Why are we paying for these? We don't need them." Then they get stuck using purchased apps that get older and older.



    Selling smaller bundles would get over bureaucratic hurdles like that at many organizations.

     

    The problem I would face is the same one I had under the purchase model: the combinations never met my particular needs.

     

    Like you, I regularly use Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Those were all in the "Design" bundles. Unfortunately there was no bundle other than the Master Collection that included those and the only other Adobe app I really need -- After Effects. By the time I paid for AE separately the total cost made the Master Collection comparatively attractive anyway.

     

    And for whatever it's worth, I also feel like $50/mo. is more than I want to keep paying so I keep looking for ways I can get away with cancelling. At $30/mo. I felt good about it and didn't give it a second thought.

  • Reply 56 of 68

    I agree with Tony1, it's like a crack dealer's sample.

     

    As for me, Adobe will have to take that $10 from my cold, dead hands.

     

    (And I'll bet they'll be gone first...)

  • Reply 57 of 68
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,301moderator
    stevenoz wrote: »
    I agree with Tony1, it's like a crack dealer's sample.

    Adobe could do with sending clearer messages about the terms of the offer. There's a thread here asking about guarantees over future price increases:

    http://forums.adobe.com/message/4932737

    The Adobe guy responded that he didn't know. It's a valid concern that people can work for 10 years on projects and then Adobe ups the monthly price dramatically. Inflation could push it up, which over 10 years will be around 40% so in 10 years time, it could easily be priced at $70/m but that's not them raising the price for profiteering. It's a similar deal with the old Mac towers. They seem more expensive now but a G4 Cube at $1799 in 2001 would cost $2374 today, which isn't far off the $2499 Mac Pro.

    They may decide not to raise the price at all, in which case it'll be cheaper in 10 years than it is now. They could have raised the price between standalone versions too but there is a stronger dependency with the subscription model so having terms that state explicitly that the subscription fee won't be raised above inflation from the time of signup would give people more certainty as to the costs to expect to pay in their working career.

    The other nice thing with software working outside of a license is being able to open and edit files if anything bad happens to the company or products. For example, even though Final Cut Pro and Shake are long EOL'd, they can be used to open, modify and export projects. If Adobe had a limited mode (e.g time-limited and/or function-limited) with CC apps that allowed you to do that, this would put some people at ease.

    They seem to suggest that CS6 will always be the backup there:

    http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/53531

    If people decide to stop paying for whatever reason, they'd save projects for CS6. I think a limited-mode CC would work better than that (and can be in addition to it) as it won't downgrade the quality of the projects.

    The rent-to-own model would let them drop CS6 entirely but I'm not sure how sustainable that would be in the long term or how people stop and then start paying again for upgrades because people would be using the software and then be able to skip paying for lots of updates that others were paying for. The monthly pricing is lower than most of the retail prices of the suites and that pricing relies on people always paying or it would be higher.

    It's a business model that is already in use in various places but not something everyone is used to with productive software, much like digital game distribution was new and people were (still are) worried about what happens to game libraries if Valve or anyone else went bankrupt as the DRM doesn't validate and they can't access the software:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam_support_what_happens_to_my_games_if/?sort=old

    The answers are typically not clear because I think the companies offering these services don't really know what the consequences would be. Computers have come from pretty much nothing to here in just 30 years. People wonder what happens with software in 20-50 years. Software as a product will always be able to run somehow and subscribed software won't unless it's cracked but will it be a problem? Is it likely that someone will try to open a project in even 10 years after not paying for the software and not have an alternative workflow by then? In some cases perhaps a movie or document needs to be redone through the same process to get the same overall output but with a few modifications that might take a lot of work to redo from scratch in another workflow. I doubt it would be a frequent problem but like I say a limited-offline-mode would at least give some assurance that it won't reach a dead-end.
  • Reply 58 of 68
    Almost 40,000 folks have signed.They don%u2019t like Adobe Creative Cloud licensing.Show @Adobe how you feel. https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model

    Another more fiscal way to show @Adobe you dont like the CC licensing scheme.http://adobe2014.tumblr.com #adobe2014
  • Reply 59 of 68

    Good luck with that...

  • Reply 60 of 68
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by lasvideo View Post



    Almost 40,000 folks have signed.They don%u2019t like Adobe Creative Cloud licensing.Show @Adobe how you feel. https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model



    Another more fiscal way to show @Adobe you dont like the CC licensing scheme.http://adobe2014.tumblr.com #adobe2014

     

    Good luck with that buddy.

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