By now we all should know that Adobe has ditched the traditional one-time purchase for programs in favor of the new Creative Cloud subscription model. During the transition, there were growing pains and outrage amongst the creative community. People were upset that they would no longer be getting updates for the programs that they owned and the only way to stay current would be to subscribe to Adobe’s service. Now that the dust has settled from the transition, Justin Odisho weighs in with his thoughts on the subscription and if he thinks it’s worth it as a professional in the industry.
Throughout the video, he compares the pros and cons to the one-time purchase method versus the new subscription model, giving his insight as a videographer and how it has affected him. He also makes good points in terms of the cost by explaining a few things we could cut out to save the allotted amount for the Adobe programs we want. Personally, I remember the struggle in high school when I would have to download a cracked version of Photoshop just continue the work I was doing at school while I was at home. Then when I finally invested in just Photoshop my program was quickly outdated and to keep current I had to upgrade again. The subscription model makes the Adobe Suite more affordable and available to a vastly larger demographic and more people exploring creativity is always a good thing. What do you think about the new Creative Cloud?
Intresting comments and of course everyone's usage varies. I'm aware that this is the f-stoppers website making this discussion a bit narrow in relation to the whole suite. There's also the risk of making the discussion too broad so let's stick to the question the writer of this article asks: is the subscription model worth it?
For me to answer that as a seasoned pro (and keeping that perspective) I'd like to take take 3 things as starting point: the products/suites as they were, the promises of Adobe made regarding CC and my personal situation.
First, all the apps were available as a single buy, part of a combo based on usage: print design, web design, photography, video and master collection. So, if you did print and video, master was your best option, same was for video and photo.
Second, one of the main promisses Adobe made to justify the change, was that moving to a subscription/rent model, they would be able to bring out new features (not bug fixes) quicker avalable. Now here it already gets fishy. Can we safely say that after 2013 any of the main apps has received new features quicker than in the old upgade cycle on a regular basis? I'll leave that one for you to answer.
Third, my personal situation. I work in concept development, based on advertising. Therefore I used to buy the master collection. Meaning buying all the apps. Not that I needed all of them; my main apps were ID, AI, AE, PS, CR, FW, AA and DW. I own the masters CS2 to CS6. They were all upgrades from CS2 meaning not having to pay to full master price but just the upgrade, around 600 per suite. Working in my environment means you often receive files from external sources which you are expected to be able to open. That was allways the main reason for upgrading. NOT the new features, if any. Those were in most cases always brought by 3rd party plugins or XT's. Eather requiring a higher OS or a higher version of CS. On a side note: working so broadly is always a balancing act. Which upgrade breaks valueable plugins, extensions, etc, so when do you take the plunge?
Working now with CC since dec 2016 on a Real Mac Pro 12-core with 96 Gb and a 6Gb video card, again, I can't say it was worth the upgrade. I have both CS6 and CC active on my machines for legacy lay off or the use of that special plugin. In my opinion:
* Adobe never met their promise to come up with new features quicker than in CS.
* CC is less stable than CS.
* AI is still the most under developed app (check forums to discover long standing issues still not resolved).
* Let alone new features for AI.
* Other prove for AI's status is the development of a few alternative apps by other parties.
* Same goes for FW. They had a good tandem with DW.
* DW, this was really an opportunity for Adobe to stand out and make a difference. Did they?
* AE, this app is solely being developed by its users input. Need to say more?
* PS, I don't know where to start. Check the clip on Thomas Knoll on the 20th aniversary of PS.
* LR is a nightmare with painting masks. Survives thanks to the absence of Apple Aperture.
* ID, html export is a joke. Could be a game changer! Now you need an expensive 3rd party (rentware) XT.
* Unnecessary messing with the UI in AE, ID, AA, and ID. Making tons of people very mad.
Of course, above is not a comprehensive list but it makes my point. Bottom line to me is: Adobe didn't met up with is promisses. Interesting detail also is: they didn't have a plan or disclosed with the start of CC: how long it would take before you would OWN the software you'd pay for. In other words: if I would stop paying, when do I own what? I called them and asked this in 2014. They didn't know. They had to call me back a week later. The answer was: 5 years. Here also: I leave it to you to draw conclusions.
To wrap this up, as a pro, I'd like to own my software. Shit can happen in the weekend when power and/or the internet is down, I must be able to reinstall software, activate it and make up for lost time. Whether by rent/ransomware or traditional, these are key features that are bare essentials pros need. I tend to hold a neutral stance against Adobe although they're making it difficult. Please note this was typed on a iPad.
Adobe and apple are different companies.
They both like haggling though.
Not for me. I do not have CC and have not paid anything for my LR and PS in years. I don't need every update for what I do and don't like throwing money away. In the last 5 years I've spent $160 on 2 LR upgrades and am still using an older version of PS because it does what I need it to do. That is less than $3 a month and going down every month. Tell me how the CC is better for anyone that is not an upgrade junky.
It pisses me off that Adobe leaves out features for the paid version of LR.
The article was very one sided and only seemed to talk about the benefits of CC. It honestly felt more like an ad.
I was an early adopter back when you had the option of CC and CS6. I went with CC because I liked the added perks that came with it like TypeKit and so forth. Also, mathematically, you were saving a few bucks each time because Master Collection was $2500 to initially buy and $900 to upgrade. Assuming an annual development cycle, that would cost you $4,300 versus $1800 under the subscription model. But now, as time has moved on, I find myself using it less and less because I feel Adobe reneged on their promises about CC and in fact have undermined their entire argument for shifting to CC-only in the first place.
For example, they promised more frequent updates and addition of features. During the dual CS6/CC years, this happened. I remember getting an update to Illustrator that added the packaging feature, mimicking something I absolutely loved about InDesign. Photoshop got an update to the crop tool. But now it seems like we get a big annual release and then only bug fixes in between... just like we did with Creative Suite. The only thing that gets additional features these days is Lightroom and Camera RAW but that's only to add new camera/lens models.
Then, in a similar vein, CC was supposed to be living, breathing software with no real static version. This is one of the things that they cited in discontinuing Creative Suite. Logically, this is sound because it would have had them supporting two differing sets of code at one time and I don't blame them for not wanting to do that. Who would? But they threw that out the window with these annual releases (CC 2015, CC 2016, CC 2017, etc.) and the fact I can download 6 different releases from CS6 to CC 2017, it kind of negates this selling point too.
They also reneged on this with the stunt they pulled with Dreamweaver. They left that program to rot so I migrated off of it to JetBrains' products. I gave Dreamweaver 2017 a shot, but I still end up back in WebStorm/PHPStorm to do my development work. Even though they took a huge step forward, some of the things I need are not in there and a lot of what I don't need is in there. I adapted to using Gulp, NPM, etc. The only advantage Dreamweaver has over JetBrains is the DOM panel.
Let's talk about perks now. 20GB of cloud storage doesn't mean anything to me. I have 3 cloud storage services I use. My free DropBox, CreativeCloud, and OneDrive (comes with Office 365). I just store artwork and such on CreativeCloud but I can easily move that over to OneDrive and not bat an eyelash.
TypeKit - Initially I was excited about this feature because default web typography sucks. Problem is it is extremely limited in terms of foundries/fonts and it is all based on JavaScript inclusions. I cannot get just modern web font files for example (I don't support IE as a matter of practice) so my TypeKits get bloated with backwards compatibility stuff I don't need when I all that is required is WOFF/WOFF2.
BeHance - Kind of nice, but honestly, it offers me nothing other than social networking. My portfolio is better off on my own site with a blog because people are going to find me there a lot better.
Adobe Stock - I absolutely *LOVE* the fact that Adobe includes placeholder copies that you can use/manipulate and then, when ready, license it and drop the non-FPO ones in place with almost no work on my part. That said, throw us a bone and give us a few free images each month. A lot of CC users probably cannot afford massive subscriptions and licensing fees but have work they'd like to show without Adobe's watermark or have stock photos to use on a blog or something.
Ultimate though, after 4 years Adobe has never seemed to answer the question that everyone asked when they first announced CC in 2013 - "How am I going to access my .PSD, .AI, .INDD, etc. files after I no longer subscribe?" With Creative Suite you still had access to them. With CC you don't.
Curious about this topic. Do you think that those who grew up on buying software outright (although you never "own" software) have a hard time subscribing to software that isn't a web app/service accesses via browser compared to maybe millennials?
If a new app came out that was at the level of PS/LR... and it was subscript based and a web app, would you not have a problem with that? I guess what I'm getting at is it that we (myself included) have a problem that we were buying outright because it's a "desktop" app?
For me, I'm cool with subscribing to new web apps but for some reason because it's a desktop app (sort of) it doesn't feel right.
I'm considered a millennial (the 20 or 30 years around 2000 which is actually offensive to anyone who's not 70 years old) and i hate the subscription model because what does everyone have? ... I'll wait...
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Still waiting...
Give me an answer!
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M.O.N.E.Y.!!!!!!!!
apparently cc is all programs for $30 - $50 x 12 (1 year) = 30x12=$360
2 years at the cheapest price is $740
Yet here i am with cs 6 which i booted up on my 2013 desktop last week and works flawlessly.
$600 for mastersuite that i can have on 2 computes for eternity.
I just have to access my email account which has been hacked probably from Russia!
My main email and actually adobe account as well continues to be trying to be hacked by ip addresses in Russia.
I blame Hillary Clinton.
But even still.
I pay for signcut about that price for $30 per month. We should really buy it for the $600 or whatever... probably spent that already.
Lets see...
30 x maybe 4 times a year i use it = $120 x 10 years = $1200
Hahaha.
Buying will always be better.
Big buisnesses are all about new ways to rip you off and make you stupider somehow in the process.
They hook you on college classes then raise the price of living just like the federal reserve bank.
Don't you love politics?
I love being able to get a legal (!) copy of Photoshop and Lightroom for roughly ten bucks a month in the photographer plan. I would never have bought PS as a private consumer.
The CC plan also recently allowed me to finally upgrade my office computer from CS5. Our company being a small one and our CEO being a bit stingy, I would probably never have received a green light for the expense for a one time buy. Being able to install the products on two machines and using the Cloud services also allows me to work on our projects from home if necessary. So yeah, I like it.
What I don't like about the subscription price is that as a small business, I just wanted to put up and update a nice website for my customers. I started with Dreamweaver MX back in the day, then went to Dreamweaver 8. I'm not a full time web designer by no means but after working with Dreamweaver for a few years I had a nice website.
Then when I went to Win 7, Dreamweaver 8 was no good, for obvious reasons. I had no problem with that, but between all the Windows upgrades and new versions, it got very expensive for just wanting to make a nice website.
I can't see paying $20 each month or so much a year when after making my website I pretty much leave it alone for a few months, there is no reason for much changes. If I stop paying the monthly fee and all of a sudden I see a typo, maybe I typed "it" instead of "is", paying $20 to change a letter would suck!
Not that $20 a month would hurt, it's not the point, I'm not a professional web designer and should not have to pay as if I am.