It looks like they’re just moving to a subscription based service which includes free file storage. The software is still installed on your computer, you dont have to constantly update to the newest version, and if you disconect from the internet they’ll still work for 180 days before you need to check in again.
All old version are still supported, this is just for new ones going forward.
It’s just spreading the cost over a year and charging you monthly for it.
e: re-did my maths, if you upgrade every year you’re better off, but if you like to skip a few versions you’re worse off.
It is not just spreading the cost over a year. First of all you want to go yearly if you want to “save”. Secondly you do not get a perpetual license anymore. That is quite a difference. What about a price increase. They might just choose to increase prices and you’re even worse off than with AD. With AD you can at least continue to use your license. With CC you have to stop using if you do not want to pay higher prices or a bad release.
Regards,
Thorsten
This is called Monopoly.
Huh… sort of happy they did it. Now there might be more companies that make PS clones that would compete on price point rather than performance. Hope more Gimp/etc/etc will emerge from this shit Adobe is doing. Maybe foundry will do some epic composting app.
The most funny thing. Two big German internet provider (Telekom and 1&1) just announced that they will reduce bandwith
of all it´s flatrates for people with a certain amount of traffic per month. It can be reduced down to 384kbit.
Of course you can pay extra to get your bandwith back. First everybody pushes you towards the “Cloud” wich implies
a pretty high amount of traffic.Than they just change their business model.. not sure if I should laugh or cry.
Regarding Adobe. I don´t really care to much about them anyway. I could go back like 5 Photoshop versions without missing something.
Any kind of color correction I do in Fusion anyway. But Autodesk is heading the same way. I fear this kind of business model is the future.
You don´t own anything anymore.. you just pay a license.
I think people should really rethink what features they really use and how much time they really spend using the Adobe Tools. I have two suites for being able to use it on 4 machines which is quite rediculous. Especially since I use them as side-tools mostly. The idea of being on subscription model wihtout actually owning anything makes it even more rediculous. I also wonder what’s the percentage of users that are using Adobe tools full time ?? Everything I do with Adobe tools now I could easily have done 10 years ago. So I think I will just wait 10 years before swithing to the cloud … if I am not looking down from one by then 
… and hoping there will be enough people having faith/stocks in Adobe by then
I went to the Creative Cloud last month and they give you all the Adobe software titles. Now, if you use them all, it’s a win for you. But, if all you use is Photoshop, it makes no sense. You still download, and install, like you did before. You get an application manager that shows you if updates are available.
A sad day.
Hello Nuke, Mari, and Avid Composer?
but, if all you need is Photoshop, it’s $10 a month. Now, that’s a good deal!
According to the homepage single apps are 19.99, in .de it’s even quite a bit more as usual. 24.95€, that’s around 32$.
But that is not my main issue with the move. I expect prices to rise once they consider the lock-in to be widespread enough. They even have an FAQ entry stating prices might go up (at any time for monthly payment, once a year for annual). I also hate the whole idea of not having the choice to stop paying and using what i paid for. I do not want to rent all software. It will turn out to be more expensive in the long run in my eyes.
Regards,
Thorsten
It’s a good deal if you only use it for 1 or 2 months a year and pay monthly. For the rest of us who use it every day and every month it’s an absolutely terrible deal. Remember you will not own the software at any point so if you stop paying you can’t use it and can’t open your files! So now instead of paying around £500 for PS and around £190 per year for optional upgrades you will be paying thousands and thousands and thousands for it over your career with no choice at all but to continue to pay every month even if you choose not to upgrade. I can’t find anything positive in this new situation.
Well, no. For the first year it’s $120, then for the next years on it’s $240. That’s £150, so assuming adobe dicks you on the conversion, lets assume £190.
So it’s exactly the same as before, expect you don’t have to pay the £500, and the first year is half price.
It’s not the same at all though, because after a short while (just a couple of years) we will both have paid the same amount of money for the software except that I can then stop paying and continue to use it to work and to read my files, whereas you are now locked in and must pay yet another £190+ each year. And the price will surely increase. The path I am on now you could consider to be an investment. I own the software or at least the perpetual right to use it, without having to pay a penny more or to upgrade. You will be locked in for the rest of your career if you ever wish to open one of your legacy files or work with one from someone else.
Nobody is stopping you from leaving cs3 installed
No but let’s be realistic here. At some point you are going to need to upgrade so you can read someone else’s file produced in a later version. It will happen at some point. At that point in my situation the most it would cost me would be a fresh standalone license for around 500 or whatever it costs at the time. In the rental scenario I would have probably been paying every month for however many years up to that point, which would have cost vastly more.
And apart from anything, a CS3 or 6 won’t be able to open a CC PSD or PSB due to incompatibility. So no, this is not a viable option.
EDIT just imagine this very realistic scenario. I am now on PS CS6 and I decide not to upgrade and move to CC. So I am stuck on CS6 but at least it works and doesn’t cost me anything any more. In a few months’ or a year’s time I decide I need to hire a freelancer to do some photoshopping for me. By this point pretty much everyone will be on CC so I can’t open their files. This means I cannot hire them without having to upgrade myself for a consderable sum and future lock-in with rental. This is bad for both me and them, obviously. So maybe I have to hunt around to find someone still on CS6. That will take time and might not be feasible or I might lose money during this period of searching. Bad, again.
I get the impression you’re just looking for reasons to hate this. So many things wrong with what you just said.
The biggest one is psd’s are backwards compatable. Always have been, always will be. Most people who use photoshop work as freelancers and the situation you describe has been coming up for 10 years.
If you sit a few versions out and decide to upgrade, you only pay for that year you upgrade.
I have opened cs3 files from work in my copy of photoshop 7 at home.
And despite your complaints, you’re already on the newest version of photoshop? Why? You already pay more than the yearly cost of this in upgrades already - What was the last version which introduced a feature you actually cant work without?
edit: and you say after waiting a few years it’ll ‘only’ cost you 500 to upgrade with the old pricing. If you were on a subscription for the next 3 years it would cost you 75 for the first year and 150 for the 2 after - which is 375. taking you through a full 3 years of the most up to date versions for less than the cost of skipping 3 years. Should you utilize their 180 days offile grace period, you could get 18 months out of each yearly subscription cost. So that’s 4 1/2 years, for 375.
But you could also avoid the subscription entirely, and only pay the 150 in 3 or 4 years time if you really wanted that new feature. Jump from cs6 to cc5 or whatever.
Everything you have said here is assuming that their current model of CC will remain at the same price and with the same restrictions (or non restrictions). It is extremely easy to picture Adobe making it impossible to back save from CC to CS at some point very soon. There are likely to be CC-only features saved with PSDs that must be removed or cannot be removed to make it work with CS. Or even a previous version of the CC ‘edition’. And the chances of the prices staying the same? I would say almost zero. And it’s far, far easier to slowly increase a rental cost than it is to whack up a standalone cost to the same value.
Also again you have missed that we cannot skip versions otherwise we cannot use the software at all during that time, regardless of cost savings.
I have no agenda here. For me this CC business has one fantastic benefit for my workflow and that is that I can now rent a copy of AE from time to time when big animation jobs come in and not have to pay for it the rest of the year when I am not using it. That’s great news. But since I use PS and LR my overall costs will increase year on year and will only continue to increase, with further extreme restrictions.
Of course I am looking for reasons to hate this. I am running a business and costs and my pipeline are critical! If you aren’t looking for the negatives in detail then that’s rather foolish, I would say. If it works for you overall, fantastic. For me it’s bad news with my current setup, and I think I have a more realistic view of the future than you, in my opinion. I guess we will all find out how the land lies in a year or two. Bottom lines will be simple enough to read.
If anyone isn’t convinced yet that this is basically about squeezing more cash from existing and new customers have a quick look at this.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7580863#post7580863