technology Adobe Creative Cloud?

[Krystal 1,468]

What are your thought's on Adobe's announcement of them abandoning Creative Suite for Creative Cloud?

 

For those of you who haven't heard, Adobe's extremely popular Creative Suite is no more. CS6 is the last generation and will be replaced by CC. The difference? CS was a package of programs released every year or so, each package costing roughly $1000. CC will be a cloud based subscription where you pay $50 a month for the same package that will constantly be updated instead of replaced yearly. Individual programs can be rented instead of the whole package for $20 a month if that's all you need.

 

Personally, I think I'll be in favor of this change. CC is supposed to have more features such as 20GB of cloud storage and it should be cheaper as it'll only cost about $600 dollars a year. Then again, before you'd be able to but a Creative Suite for $1000 and stick with it for a few years, saving you a couple hundred at the expense up newer updates and features.

 

Likewise, Photoshop will cost you $20 a month ($240 a year) instead of $500 before.

 

Also, if you were one of the many people who illegally acquired Photoshop before, doing so in the future may be more difficult.

 

Just to clarify, these will still be programs on your computer, not web or browser based. Though, they're supposed to tie heavily into Adobe's cloud service. I expect it to be much like Google Docs with Drive.

[Jokuc 8,174]

Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!

 

Erm.. dayum. That's a lot of cash.

I would not personally pay that amount of money myself for a program.

 

But I guess it'll be good for their business and stuff...?

 

(110% quality post, admin approved)

[joeyh3 153]

I fail to see how Creative Cloud is a better deal. I only use Illustrator, Photoshop, and occasionally Flash, so CS Design & Web was all I needed. It's true that it's more expensive to purchase, but you only have to purchase it once. And then there's two paths to go down:

 

- If you're fine with what you have, keep the version you're using, and never spend another dime on it again.

 

- If you like having the latest version, Adobe sold updates at a much lower cost. For example, if you had CS5.5 Design, it only cost $375USD to upgrade to CS6 Web & Design, as opposed to $600.

 

Plus the $50/month thing isn't entirely true either. It's only $50/month if you agree to a one year contract, meaning that once the return period expires, you can't cancel for an entire year. While that may not seem like a big deal now, financial surprises do tend to happen - you could loose your job, have your car break, medical problems, etc. So while you may think that you're able to pay $50/month now, if something happens, that $50/month can become a real burden if your financial landscape changes unexpectedly. 

 

If you don't want a one-year commitment  then it's $75/month, or $900/year. It'd be a little nicer if you can pre-pay a subscription - just give them $600 and they give you access for a year, as it's much easier to be certain about your finances in the present than it is for the future. You gotta be careful when it comes to contracts and that.

[Lost 1,411]

I've been using my student edition Photoshop CS4 Extended for like 3-4 years now quite happily, this change will be costly for people who would like to buy one version and stick to it for years.

 

Aslong as they keep student versions though, I don't mind if they swap to creative cloud, I like adobe software but I wouldn't pay full price for it, student discount just puts it into my acceptable price range.