It feels like they are trying to correct for some misjudged pricing decisions made in the past, but sorry Adobe, that train left the station. Usually with tech either the features improve at the same price, or the price goes down over time. An explicit price increase without additional features will be seen as without merit and create further customer loyalty. Good luck with that, Adobe.
I really dislike Adobe as a company and wouldn't want to pay those prices for those products.
Having said that, the tone of this article is odd. I think AI would have been better served with 2 pieces: one reporting of the changing options and prices and the other an editorial complaining about Adobe's practices, prices, etc. Having them mixed in together makes me less trusting of the factual statements.
The fact that they are charging more for the same thing isn't remarkable. We have all experienced that costs are higher across the board (except perhaps for office space) in recent years. When costs and wages go up, it's not "greed" for a company to raise prices. They don't need to explain or defend those increases (unless they want to). It's on us as consumers to decide if their offerings as still worth paying for. It sucks when something is no longer cost effective, but oh well.
I had an Acrobat subscription at one time and my biggest complaint wasn’t the cost but was that they would keep fiddling with the software and make it worse. It would be one thing to pay for improvements but when they remove features or scramble things up it makes something that was easy to do into something that is a pain. There is a discussion on the Adobe online community forum that has been going on for years where people are just asking for them to bring back scroll bars.
If what you need is an equivalent of Adobe's Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, check out what Affinity offers. One option is apps for all platforms—Mac, Windows and iPad—for a one-time payment of $164.99. No subscription cost. That's about what Adobe charges for a couple of months rent.
Does it work well with print houses which only use Adobe?
I had the problem recently where I couldn't get Pixelmator to export to .ai format (guessing this disappeared when Apple bought them). So I tried exporting to PDF, but it wouldn't preserve the layers when the print house opened the file in Illustrator. Even though reopening the PDF in Pixelmator showed the layers just fine. Smells like there's Adobe lock-in, and so I'm wondering if Affinity figured out a way around it.
Affinity has an indesign equivalent. Publisher. I switched out from adobe. Never looking back...
Publisher spits out a good press ready PDF print file, with all the options, for a publisher, went well even with the ipad version.
Recently did a poster and a folder. Surprisingly it worked really well on my Ipad pro m2. Much faster than a imac pro 2017 w 32gb ram.
Affinity has the illustrator equivalent, PS and indesign. They work well together, and you can buy it for all platforms. There is a period to getting used to their UI, but they work very well. They also have a generative Ai fill to patch up and get rid of unwanted stuff. Works ok!
OBS!!! I managed to leave the creative subscription plan wout paying their stupid fee. By upgrading to a different tier and taking advantage of the 14day trial cancellation option... The whole ordeal is the worst consumer experience I have ever seen. It cemented my decision to never look back, they are absolute grifters...
There are still bugs in InDesign that have been not fixed in years. I just discovered one last month, found it being discussed on the Adobe forums and it's at least 8 years old! Display glitches happen quite often too (looks like 2 different blocks of text overlapping) which I've had since 2020. The amount of money Adobe is raking in, you'd think they can afford to work on the bugs!
The danger of building a workflow on subscription or cloud software is that the vendor can decide to jack prices or change the product at any time. You're no longer in control financially, and with cloud service, not even in charge of upgrade timing. If a cloud service decides to change things up right as you're going to press, oh well. Better learn the new layout and fast.
Of course, it's not just Adobe doing it, and with the subscription there's no longer an excuse to use 10 year old versions of the software, but it's still wildly out of control.
I actually have the Adobe "Photography" Plan that just bumped up from $9.99/mo to $15.52/mo. ($19.95 listed on site).
Or had, rather, since I just cancelled it. I no longer use it enough to justify the cost, and have been using Pixelmator Pro for the odd work that I needed done.
Switching to a new program isn't easy... but it's getting easier, and I'm getting tired of Adobe's incessant price increases.
I'm currently going through the painful process of trying to delete the apps from my machine.
Apparently Adobe didn't hear about the "one click cancel/delete" law...
Why didn't you opt for the annual instead of pay monthly plan which is still $109? It works out at a bit more than $9 a month. For me that's great value for the features and functions and interoperability.
BTW, the Republican FTC has delayed the one click cancel rule as being too complex. I'm reading that as "we're going to kill it", but I'd be pleased to be wrong. If it dies at the current FTC that's sad, consumers losing again to Big Business.
Theres no substitute for InDesign. As a magazine designer, I push 4000-4500 pages per year... no other tool can do it. Well... Quark.
The cost, although more, is a part of doing business. I haven used a fax machine, even a printer, or burned DVDs, or needed more Zip discs, or _______ in over 10 years. Those costs are now gone, replaced by other things. Fast Fiber internet, cloud storage, online backups, iPads for Social media management --- all $$ I didn't spend years ago.. and CC is one of those costs.
Comments
Having said that, the tone of this article is odd. I think AI would have been better served with 2 pieces: one reporting of the changing options and prices and the other an editorial complaining about Adobe's practices, prices, etc. Having them mixed in together makes me less trusting of the factual statements.
The fact that they are charging more for the same thing isn't remarkable. We have all experienced that costs are higher across the board (except perhaps for office space) in recent years. When costs and wages go up, it's not "greed" for a company to raise prices. They don't need to explain or defend those increases (unless they want to). It's on us as consumers to decide if their offerings as still worth paying for. It sucks when something is no longer cost effective, but oh well.
Publisher spits out a good press ready PDF print file, with all the options, for a publisher, went well even with the ipad version.
Recently did a poster and a folder. Surprisingly it worked really well on my Ipad pro m2. Much faster than a imac pro 2017 w 32gb ram.
Affinity has the illustrator equivalent, PS and indesign. They work well together, and you can buy it for all platforms. There is a period to getting used to their UI, but they work very well. They also have a generative Ai fill to patch up and get rid of unwanted stuff. Works ok!
OBS!!! I managed to leave the creative subscription plan wout paying their stupid fee. By upgrading to a different tier and taking advantage of the 14day trial cancellation option... The whole ordeal is the worst consumer experience I have ever seen. It cemented my decision to never look back, they are absolute grifters...
BTW, the Republican FTC has delayed the one click cancel rule as being too complex. I'm reading that as "we're going to kill it", but I'd be pleased to be wrong. If it dies at the current FTC that's sad, consumers losing again to Big Business.