Any Adobe CS users?
 

Adobe Creative Suite Going Subscription-Only - Slashdot


May want to hurry up and upgrade now before it goes subscription only...

Just saw that.

Hope they choke on it.

I smell a class action form all the 6.0 retail users who are now locked out of updates.

$50 per month would be a huge price drop from the $1,000 price tag that Photoshop CS6 Extended costs.

I suspect that the cost would be closer to $80-90 per month.

Knowing Adobe... Once they have your data they got you by the balls.

I am using CS4 but now it won't support my new cameras. I need to upgrade but I am very hesitant about going the subscription route unfortunately I think the monthly charge is going to be the wave of the future for everything.

Adobe was a lot more customer friendly when they had Pagemaker and Quark was treating their Xpress customers like sewer rats. Once InDesign came out and people had a real alternative to Quark's legendarily abusive customer service, Adobe started getting too big for its pants.
Competition is a great motivator. I agree, the world needs a good alternative to Photoshop and InDesign.

Iv'e been on the CC subscription for a year now and it's a fantastic value. Granted, I'm getting it at $30.00 per month because I was an early adopter. If they raise the price I'll be bummed but I still think it's a good deal. Adobe's big problem with the subscriptions so far is they don't have a large enterprise subscription model. A lot of the companies I freelance for would love to switch over so they'll always be at the latest versions of software and will have access to everything in the Adobe catalog on all machines but as far as I know Adobe won't let them in on the deal!

Spoke with a few people at work - if you can get an .edu email address the price drops down to 25 a month or so.



What about your camera doesn't it support? Reading exif data or working with the raw file format that is generated?

They have corp rates now, $60 a seat.

I think the problem is a lot of of people don't upgrade with every version, they skip, meaning they did 2, 4 and 6 or 3 and 5 and are waiting for 7 because the suites are pretty pricy.

I personally have installed and use 4, 5 and 6 simply because the newer versions tend to get bloated and do **** that I don't like so for simple things I usually opt to use 4 unless I need a feature from one of the newer versions.

The other thing this does is totally screws everyone on the backwards compatibility issue.

You could always count on going a couple of years before being forced into an upgrade because the adoption rate for new versions was not all that fast.

But once adoption rate hit a certain point you had no choice because files you were getting from outside sources were newer versions and you could not work with them.

This updating at will is going to create a mess.

I think it sux. I've been using the suite since it was Macromedia 4 and like stated above, I've always skipped a set and have CS5 now. I go through spurts and may build 4-5 sites in a month and then none for the next 4-5 months. I cannot justify paying a monthly subscription on something like that. Complete BS. They will lose many small timers over this.

Adobe has lost its mind. No way I am paying a monthly to use Photoshop. 30 bucks a month for Photoshop or 50 for the whole thing. And at the end of the your contract you do not get to continue using CC7 unless you keep paying your monthly.

Maybe if I could pay for 1 year and at the end of the contract keep using CC7 then wait a year and signup again for the latest software. Photoshop is not a service. it is a tool. Why should I pay for it as if it were a service.

Hoping this creates competition for Adobe.

+1
Yeah, no idea how we got here but I don't like it.

Got any stories to tell about this Quark place? Never heard of them.

I'm sorry but I don't understand the reasoning behind people saying "it's more expensive now because I can't skip versions". Buying a new CS "Master Collection" has always been expensive, $1600 or more as I recall. At the subscription's $50 per month after 2 years you're still saving money. As far as the backwards compatibility issue goes, you've always been able to save if a more compatible "earlier" file format and could always read a file from an older version. I don't see that changing. That really would be business suicide!

Please understand I'm not saying anyone's wrong but perhaps I'm missing something? I will say that I really don't like not "owning" the software (although in theory you never did thanks to the Eula). but we no longer own the books, music, videos or almost anything else digital that we buy so until the consumer wises up and starts really complaining about the new "digital serfdom" this is what we'll be stuck with. Now if you'll excuse me I have to finish my Kindle book and then download the latest Mad Men onto my Roku! :)

-Michael

Quark is page layout software, use it for books, magazines, multi page docs.

Your standard arsenal back in the day was Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark.

Quark got replaced by Indesign because they got lazy and their product stagnated while Adobe constantly refined and made Indesign better.

And Quark ain't cheep.

It works better for some apps than others.

Photoshop sometimes throws errors but is pretty stable.

Illustrator has fits and how it regresses new features is a lot of times downright ugly and results in cumbersome files.

Indesign, horrible backwards compatibility, many times it can't resolve what to do with a new feature that was used in a file and just tells you to go f off.

You usually end up loosing effects/plug ins/workflows that your client depends on and that's no bueno.

And how often does Adobe ship new features that are actually bugs? When my systems are stable I want to keep them that way until I have no choice but to update.

I do NOT see more frequent upgrades from Adobe as a benefit, to me it's anything but.

And what happens to your project files when or if you find you no longer pay the licensing fee?

Again, photoshop files not a big deal, GIMP is fully compatible.

Illustrator files, hmmm, gets dicey.

But those are apps that create individual files.

What about Indesign, After Effects and Premiere?

They are project based apps where you import external assets/resources and assemble them in app.

Without the ability to open the project you are toast.

I guess for Premiere you could hedge your bets and export an EDL at the end of every project but that won't get you everything back if you import it into a new editing app.

There is no reason that Adobe have given that is valid for going to a subscription only model.

They currently have two models, why not maintain that.

If subscription is as wildly popular as they claim they will get to a subscription only model eventually so why create all the bad will.

My guess is they did the math and determined they will lose customers but it will be less of a hit than what they lose to piracy.

News flash, the people that pirate it will never pay for it so I think this backfires on them in several ways.

You make some great points on software compatibility. Coming from the VFX/Motion graphics world I'm mostly a Photoshop/ AE/ Premier user who occasionally uses Illustrator. I'm always looking forward to the newest releases of AE and now Premiere because Adobe seems to always make strides in features and performance. Premiere is so good now I'm thinking of doing a DI conform on it. Something I would have never thought of doing a couple of years ago.

I never thought of their other programs. Dreamweaver, Indesign, and even Illustrator really don't seem to get the love that Photoshop and the video tools seem to get so can really understand where you're coming from. Thanks!

As far as Adobe shipping buggy software and letting the end user finalize the beta process for them, yeah that's annoying but Adobe isn't the only one who does it. Autodesk LOVES to do that with Flame and Smoke. In fact their recently released "20th Anniversary Edition" of Flame was so poorly made NO facility I work at bothered to install it. Sad. I wonder if you will still be able to run older versions of your Creative Cloud based software? I don't see any reason why not. The current CC download tool doesn't make you uninstall any software before downloading something new.

Autodesk put their Flame/Smoke owners on a subscription model years ago and most facilities I see are running software at least 1 version behind, paying 8 grand a year for nothing.

It seems like everyone is dropping the ball on professional level creative software these days. Apple, Adobe, and Autodesk have all f'ed up pretty badly recently. Maybe that will open opportunities for some newer, hungrier players. I know I am going to have to learn Nuke to remain competitive in my field whether I want to or not.

Good luck,
-Michael