
Adobe abandons its Creative Suite to focus on Creative Cloud - mmariani
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/after-nearly-10-years-adobe-abandons-its-creative-suite-entirely-to-focus-on-creative-cloud/?fromcat=all
======
mortenjorck
I'm looking forward to switching to Creative Cloud at work - I'll never have
to make the case for upgrading again, always getting new features as they're
released, and I'm sure my employer will be as happy to smooth out one more
expenditure timeline as Adobe will be to smooth out its revenue timeline.
Going CC-only makes sense for business.

However, this totally kills my hobbyist usage at home about three to five
years from now. I only ever use Photoshop, Illustrator, and occasionally After
Effects for my independent design projects, and was finally able to justify
upgrading from CS4 to CS6 a few months ago. A few hundred dollars every few
years is worth it to pursue my own experimental work.

But I'm not going to justify $50 per month for that, and I have a hard time
imagining others justifying it. I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly
out of the prosumer market.

(Just to add a little math to this: A $700 upgrade every three years comes to
$20/month. If Adobe can offer an a-la-carte Creative Cloud where I can get
three or so apps when CS6 finally no longer cuts it, I suppose this will
ultimately be a non-issue.)

~~~
epo
"I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market." I
think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for
the rampant theft of their products. What this now does is open up the
domestic image processing market, while businesses can be milked for all
they're worth. I'll stick with Photoshop CS3 until it stops working.

~~~
kstrauser
And by "fixed the rampant copyright violation" you mean "closed the top of the
funnel to newcomers". I don't know a single college student or new home
experimenter who paid for Photoshop, but I also don't know a single
professional user who didn't pay for it.

Photoshop has always been way too expensive for hobbyists or people just
dipping their toes in the water. The people who pirated it and got serious
about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and
uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway.

This will make their numbers look good in the near future, but I'd stake cash
money that it's going to screw with their long-term user base.

~~~
stusmall
I really dislike the "it brings new users" argument for piracy. If it made
business sense to provide a free entry to their product they would. Pirates
aren't somehow doing them a favor and its moral acrobatics to pretend like
they are.

For students they have heavily discounted licenses and I know a few low-
quality(I don't know anyone worth their salt who pirates it), professional
graphic designers who use pirated copies. It is lost revenue and if they
wanted to provide demos that should be up to them not the pirates.

~~~
integraton
It's a mistake to use the "if it made business sense ... they would" line of
thinking when interpreting the decision-making of any organization, especially
large established ones.

As Marc Andreessen has noted:

 _"The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from
the outside. I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X",
or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z". Odds are, nobody
inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is
going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue.

...

"The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of
many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are
executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority. On any
given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote
on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more.

...

"You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will
affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company.

...

"You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a
big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to
influence them very much at all."_

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL41g0J:pmarca-
archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-5-the-
moby+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari)

~~~
stusmall
You are right. I've been away from megacorps for too long. Thinking of them as
rational actors is a huge mistake. :)

My point still stands that it is their product and it should be their choice
even if they piss it away.

------
Moto7451
If you're not a professional designer and are looking for some Adobe suite
alternatives on the Mac, may I suggest:

Pixelmator[1] (replaced Photoshop) Currently $15

Artboard[2] (replaces Illustrator) $29

Scribus[3] (Cross platform - replaces InDesign) $Free

These apps serve me well for basic Web/App Art, my resume, and the occasional
flier. The only thing I do miss is the Illustrator XAML export plugin for when
I work on WPF/Silverlight stuff.

[1]<http://www.pixelmator.com>

[2]<http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/>

[3]<http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus>

~~~
gte910h
The excellent Sketch does it quite well, better than Pixelmator IMO

<http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/>

It's not a look alike of photoshop, it's entirely redesigned and is fabulous
and worth it.

~~~
efields
I used Fireworks for half my career, and when it became obvious that Adobe was
letting Fw rot, I went looking for alternatives. It took a little while, but
Sketch has finally gotten there. Sketch a purely vector app, whereas Fireworks
was a strange but workable hybrid of bitmap and vector. When I need to throw
down some raster graphics, I fire up Pixelmator.

~~~
gte910h
I too find Fireworks CS4 too useful to dump entirely. Particularly canvas
resizing.

------
jawngee
I love Adobe CC. I would consider it the first thing Adobe has done right in a
long time.

A year's subscription is less than what I bill per day and I have access to
every app that they produce. I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as
well as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days.

As someone who has used Photoshop since Version 3.0, I can say, with some
authority I guess, that the current version is really, _really_ good. Except
for the crop tool. The crop tool sucks. It sucks so bad I had to write a
replacement stand alone app. All they need to do to fix it is put the image
resizing step back in, instead of having to do that separately.

Their other apps are also improving in quality from a low point of a few years
ago. Premiere is solid, After Effects is way faster than the previous version,
Prelude and SpeedGrade are a little inaccessible but once you learn the non-
standard UIs are useful tools. Illustrator is still a bit of a drag though. I
don't touch InDesign unless I'm designing a photo book for Blurb.

And then there is the whole extensibility of the suite that most people don't
get too involved in, but I do. We started out writing some pretty heavy
javascript extendscript stuff to do asset prep but have since moved on to Flex
+ Adobe Creative Suite Extension SDK. Was kind of gnarly to get going, but
once going has allowed us to extend Photoshop into a full blown authoring tool
for the kind of retail iPad apps we build for clients. What once took us about
2-3 weeks to build, now takes about a day thanks to that.

So, +1 Adobe.

~~~
gmurphy

      > I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as well
      > as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days.
    

I'm not sure how you're doing this - a killer problem for me with CC is that
there's a two-machine limit for product activations. I used to own two
Photoshop licences so I could run it on three machines, but you can't get
multiple Creative Cloud subs under one Adobe account.

~~~
drawkbox
This two activation nonsense has to end. That was fine before when we all had
one desktop. I have been harping Adobe and Unity to allow 3 activations by
default. I don't know one developer that doesn't have at least a mac, windows
and laptop for testing. It's a silly game to keep moving the activations
around when they are below the common threshold. 3-5 activations, one user per
use is needed, maybe no activations required on that (isn't that what the
cloud is really?). I have no problem having the app shut down on the other
machine if I use on another device/computer but being blocked from using if
you leave it open on two machines at work is annoying.

------
jarjoura
This is quite radical in my mind and very greedy on Adobe's part. How is
abandoning the pay once per version of software a benefit to anyone other than
Adobe?

I get weary of software that I have to bind to an active account indefinitely.

There are use-cases that are no longer possible.

1) What if I wanted to get my 14 yo artistic niece Photoshop/Illustrator for
her birthday? Now I would have to either pay $50 a month (for her), in the
assumption she would get value out of it. At what point would I then transfer
the subscription over to her should she want to become professional in it?

2) Let's say I bought After Effects with a retina mac and then in a year
decide to sell it all on craigslist? Maybe I had a dream of becoming a movie
director only to be put on hold because my father went into the hospital and I
needed to be there for my mother?

3) A high school with older macs from 5 or 6 years ago has a small lab with
Adobe Photoshop that was donated to them through an art grant. It's meant to
be used to teach kids about photo retouching and color blending (things that
have been in Photoshop for a decade if not more).

I never minded when Adobe adopted strict licensing DRM because it didn't
remove use-cases. Maybe someone from Adobe can shed light on how switching to
a subscription only model will benefit anyone other than them? Is that not
taking a step backwards?

~~~
kleinsch
This is business. Why is Adobe expected to do anything that would benefit
anyone other than themselves?

~~~
vor_
To please customers?

~~~
omegant
And let competitors enter their market.

------
rubbingalcohol
The value proposition for Adobe's software-as-a-service offering is lacking
for people who only use one of their products, or who don't already stay on
the bleeding edge by paying for upgrades every 2-3 years.

Photoshop is the only Adobe product I use as a web developer, and I've been
using it less and less as I do more backend and client architecture and less
design implementation. For my needs, Creative Cloud is a really bad deal.

Creative Cloud might be a great _value_ to people who use lots of Adobe
products, and good for them. But even if this were a good value to me, I still
wouldn't buy it. I do not trust software as a service, at least for software
that runs solely on my own workstation. Unless Adobe wants to subsidize the
cost of my own hardware, I don't believe that their subscription model
benefits me as a consumer.

I think Creative Cloud will present an interesting challenge to the Open
Source community. Open Source alternatives to Photoshop have kind of
languished in recent years, and I wonder if Adobe abandoning traditional
software licensing will spur new free software development.

~~~
kbenson
Then pay $20/mo (with year subscription) for just Photoshop. If you need
another tool occasionally, pay the monthly fee for it for a single month.

$20 a month it's all that much money for a business product. You may be paying
close to that for reliable hosting with all the perks or for some virtual
servers for testing.

~~~
beedogs
$240 a year for something I use every few weeks, at best, is still pretty
absurd.

~~~
kbenson
Only if it doesn't provide that much value. In the cases where you use it, if
you can't do without it or use another tool, or you view the one time cost of
learning another tool too high, then it's worth it. If this pricing makes you
re-examine whether you really need to use Photoshop and switch to something
cheaper, all the better, since you will probably be happier with something
that accomplishes your needs that you feel isn't costing too much (and I
imagine whatever you do in Photoshop so infrequently isn't hard to accomplish
in many other programs).

------
jamieb
"Convincing users to upgrade was a daunting task that left an impact on
product decisions."

Yeah, like having to make useful features that customers would actually want
to pay for.

Fuck capitalism, eh? Just pay your taxes and we'll give you what we think you
want.

~~~
jagermo
You can always use gimp, although I am not sure what a design software has to
do with a political system. Adobe probably doesn't get a lot of your taxes.

------
jscheel
Moving exclusively to Creative Cloud feels like Adobe's way of admitting that
their updates have become less and less impressive.

~~~
omfg
Or that customers don't like grandiose updates anymore and expect a continuous
stream of small innovations.

------
felixthehat
I've been using CC since it came out - the killer feature for me is that you
can install CC on all your computers - PC & mac with the same license key. As
someone who hops platforms and computers all the time, it's fantastic.

I always used to pirate Adobe software, but the monthly pricing is very
reasonable and you get _all_ the Adobe software for the price, rather than
web/print/video bundles like they used to. They've really turned around and
made this pirate into a customer.

------
toki5
I have to admit, the subscription model is way more attractive to me than the
one-time model. I'm not someone who uses Photoshop every day, so if I sit down
and think "it'd be really handy to use it right now, just this once, for this
one thing" ... I'm not going to shell out hundreds to do it. I'm just not.
I'll use GIMP if I can or I'll pirate Photoshop if I can't.

I might shell out $50, though, and if I find I'm using it often, great. If
not, I'll cancel and I'll have only spent $50 for a legitimate use case.

~~~
andor
That depends on the use case. The subscription model will be significantly
more expensive for people who don't need the newest features. At about $50 per
month the $1200 for CS Design Standard are payed off after 2 years. Whereas
I'm still using the 6 year old InDesign CS3. And a nearby t-shirt printing
shop is using Illustrator 10, from 2001.

~~~
toki5
This is absolutely a fair point regarding the total cost over time, but I'm
referring to the first cost, where I don't have the product and am considering
purchasing it.

A one-time $1200 fee is a non-starter. There's no way I'm paying that much
money for a product that I'm not even sure I'll use next month.

$50 (or, as I've been corrected by others -- thanks) $20 to try it out? That's
a much easier decision.

~~~
learc83
$20 to try it out?

Its $30 without the annual commitment.

------
joemaller1
Adobe's biggest mistake is pricing.

The cost of Creative Suite bundled in losses from piracy. A Creative Cloud
subscription costs pretty much exactly what Creative Suite does--without
having to compensate for losses to piracy.

Adobe should have provided incentive to switch by dropping the price. If they
can truly eliminate piracy then their profits wouldn't be hurt by dropping the
price substantially. Doing so would also generate a lot of good will among
users.

Keeping prices high with no other option will just encourage new forms of
piracy that much sooner. Until now, pirates could just ignore Creative Cloud.
No more. I expect we'll see cracked activation proxies within a few months.

------
frozenport
This is really bad for artists. Many folks I know picked up copies of CS5 when
they were in collage for $400 and have been using them for the last 5 years.
Now they will need to pay more per month than a cellphone with a data
contract. With Adobe posting massive profits, this is an act of greed and I
hope antitrust regulators will look at Adobe with more scrutiny.

~~~
shock-value
Yeah as joelhooks said, if these people are using their educational versions
to produce products for sale, they are committing fraud. EDIT: Seems to depend
which educational version they have installed ... some are ok for commercial
use, some are not.

~~~
gte910h
No they're not committing fraud (a crime), they're violating their software
licence (a tort) at most

------
tenpoundhammer
This is the story of a dominate company in a market were it's users feel it
can't go anywhere else, if they wanted to. It turns to be a good thing.

I think this is going to put a big dent in piracy of adobe products going
forward, provide a large window for competitors to provide products to people
that don't want a subscription, and give the users some really great benefits
of using cloud products.

It's one example of a company moving forward and doing good because it has a
mostly captive audience and it's a win,win,win.

~~~
djKianoosh
How does this put a dent in piracy exactly? I think I've heard this sentiment
before, but the pirates always figure out a way. Even the article somewhat
casually throws away a line that says pirated apps will continue to exist. I'm
just saying, if piracy isn't eliminated completely it's wishful thinking to
say it will somehow happen less.

~~~
tenpoundhammer
I have not researched this thoroughly so I am not one hundred percent sure.
But I assume the application side of this software will live on a server
somewhere and you may only access via a web browser or some kind of client
application. This implies that a user will have to authenticate when using the
software and that this authentication will be tied to them as a person.

So if their account is being using for wide spread piracy it will be shut down
quickly and that individual will personally be out money and not have access
to the service. This still allows for small scale sharing --onsies twosies
kind of stuff.

However this won't stop piracy of old software only the software going
forward.

This makes a lot of assumptions, but I think it's basically correct.

~~~
jonknee
> But I assume the application side of this software will live on a server
> somewhere and you may only access via a web browser or some kind of client
> application. This implies that a user will have to authenticate when using
> the software and that this authentication will be tied to them as a person.

That's not how it works. You have the binaries on your machine and then it
phones home periodically to auth (at minimum once per month or six months, the
FAQ is confusing).

[http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/faq.html#how-
wor...](http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/faq.html#how-works)

> You will need to be online when you install and license your software. If
> you have an annual membership, you'll be asked to connect to the web to
> validate your software licenses every 30 days. However, you'll be able to
> use products for 180 days even if you're offline.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _You have the binaries on your machine_

Then I love this definition of "in the cloud". Even desktop apps are now
"cloud" apps!

~~~
jonknee
In Adobe's world: cloud = "Customers never stop paying".

------
thenomad
I intensely dislike this.

Artistic careers usually aren't extremely stable, revenue-wise.

Before Creative Cloud, it was possible for an artist to buy all the tools they
needed in a boom period, and then keep using them no matter how pear-shaped
their income situation got. (Bear in mind that in the film world, for example,
clients simply _not paying at all_ is close to routine.)

Now, if your revenue stream dries up, your tools go away, and you're
completely fucked.

~~~
randomsearch
Surely, pay-as-you-go is much more preferable when you don't have a stable
income?

It's also cheaper, so just keep the cash in the bank and pay per month.

~~~
thenomad
That assumes:

That artists will keep their tools at the latest version at all times - they
don't. Often, they're still using a version of Photoshop three upgrades old.
At that point, Creative Cloud is a __lot __more expensive.

That they get paid in advance. They don't, always. Particularly if you're
creating something for consumers, you get paid after creation. However, if
your tools have gone away, you can't create, which means you can't get paid,
which means you can't buy the tools, which means... Yep, you're screwed.

That all artists are really good with money and financial planning. They
aren't. I know you'll probably say "well then, they deserve to have no tools".
Sadly, I've never seen that artistic ability directly correlates to business
sense, and I'd rather that brilliant artists don't end up stopping producing
work I enjoy, regardless.

On that note, that dry periods never go on for longer than the old purchase
price of Photoshop / duration of dry spell * monthly cost of Creative Cloud.
If a dry spell does go on for that long, even if you saved up the purchase
price of Photoshop and dilligently pay it month after month, you're screwed.

~~~
randomsearch
> That artists will keep their tools at the latest version at all times - they
> don't. Often, they're still using a version of Photoshop three upgrades old.
> At that point, Creative Cloud is a lot more expensive.

Not true:

Amazon list price for CS6 Photoshop today: £631. CC price for 3 years: £632.
With no upfront outlay.

> That they get paid in advance.

Surely if they have a problem with cash flow, it is advantageous to not have
to outlay capital? So "pay as you go" makes much more sense. This is why
start-ups use the cloud.

> That all artists are really good with money and financial planning.

This is true - but part of making a living by being an artist is also having a
decent head for business.

------
antonpug
I don't get it - am I not going to be able to get an install of Photoshop
anymore? If so, then that sounds like a HORRIBLE strategy, since by far not
every person is always connected to the internet, never mind high-quality
internet.

~~~
ryanSrich
CC is an install. Instead of just buying the product you pay per month. Forget
to pay one month? Then the software won't work. So long as you're paying each
month you can use it offline.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I'm curious how it can tell if you've paid up if you are using it offline? I
would assume if it isn't able to phone home to check your subscription, it
would fail.

~~~
stan_rogers
Yes, which means that unless you're willing to expose your money-making
machines to the internet (studio workstations generally are not) or are in a
position to connect (which is not always the case on deep projects) you don't
have a stand-alone app.

------
Osmium
Education pricing requires an annual commitment, which is a real shame. When I
need an Adobe program there's often no substitute, but I only need it very
rarely. If they did it month-to-month I'd be happy to buy it just for that
month... Since they don't, I guess it's good for me they do 30-day product
demos.

------
randomsearch
Wow, I can't believe how many people are against this.

I think it's a great move and will benefit independent designers and creators
hugely.

First: the price keeps coming down. Now you can get Photoshop or Premiere for
$10/month. That is much cheaper than buying a copy every two years.

Next: I know indie film-makers who have pirated Premiere. They simply don't
have any money to pay for it, but have sworn to buy a copy if they ever make
any money from it. This complete ends this argument - even those working short
bar shifts can afford a copy. So they contribute in the short-term, and we all
get a fuzzy warm feeling knowing that programmers at Adobe are getting some of
our cash.

The educational discounts are huge. I've always wanted to use Premiere and
Photoshop, but have never been able to afford the capital outlay (being a
lowly post-doc), and am not a big fan of pirating things. I'm going to sign up
today for CC.

I think this business model is a lot more sustainable. It gives Adobe a solid
stream of revenue and we all get to use the latest versions.

The only improvement I'd like to see now is perhaps one more drop in price,
and then a condition whereby those who have been subscribed for a certain
amount of time (say, 18 months or 2 years) and cancel their subscription can
keep the suite - perhaps with some limitations, e.g. they're limited to the
version that was available when they first subscribed, or only a subset of
tools are available...

------
bocalogic
This might be problematic. Photoshop works for a lot of us because it is a
stand alone application.

Curious to see what kind of lag issues will occur on a cloud based solution.
As mentioned above, it seems more like an anti-piracy issue solution.

While Photoshop is the standard, several other applications exist that do a
good job as well. They might lose market share over this move.

~~~
jaxomlotus
Think of it like you are forced to rent a car forever instead of buying it.
You still get to drive the car, but can never own it outright.

~~~
randomsearch
Yes, and the car you rent is continuously upgraded to the newest model, and
for one price you get a whole range of cars, and the total cost of ownership
over a few years is cheaper than buying them.

------
delackner
I never use Photoshop, but sometimes I work with graphic designers who like
preparing everything as one huge PSD with lots of layer groups, and it feels
like an absurd waste of energy to keep subscribing to Photoshop just to export
all layers as PNG, since that is all I ever use it for. Photoshop itself can
barely do this, HOURS on moderately complex documents.

Maybe this would be a good time to ask, does anyone know of a 100% compatible
way to do PSD -> any open layered format, without Photoshop? Maybe this is a
business opportunity, to run a web service whose sole purpose is to open PSD
files in photoshop with a custom export script, and then export the layers.

~~~
plus9z
According to some comments above, GIMP does support PSD files, and I know for
a fact that GIMP supports scripting, so you could just write a script to
export the layers for you.

~~~
delackner
Gimp absolutely does not support 100% correct conversion from psd. Layer
effects are particularly broken. I have not seen any third party tool that
properly handles psd files containing non-rasterized layers.

------
podperson
I suspect Adobe will hurt themselves in two ways here — first, their apps are
becoming increasingly dispensable, and this will push users to less capable
but far cheaper and often more nimble alternatives (perhaps renting CC apps
when occasionally needed) and second it will eliminate over-licensing (e.g. In
some workplaces Adobe CS was pretty much site-licensed).

It may help with piracy, but I suspect that's a two-edged sword as well.

Personally, I was an "upgrade every two or three versions" user, which let me
use CS for significantly less money, so this will probably just cause me to
wait Adobe out.

------
dredmorbius
It was a similar pricing strategy which in part convinced me to switch from
work involving a set of proprietary tools to pursuing opportunities which
largely made use of freely available, free software tools I could download and
experiment with myself.

The cost for the tools I'd previously been using ranged from hundreds to
several thousand dollars. Annually. In addition to the expense, additional and
advanced features were only available at a significant additional annual cost.

The vendor was also increasingly focusing its efforts on systems I had little
interest in using. Despite a multi-platform legacy, much present use is on
Windows systems (I've not used these as my principle environment for over a
decade now).

I understand why Adobe would do this, and to a certain extent, subscription-
based software models offer benefits: upgrades are already paid-in, and you
can move users to the current level with fewer constraints (or with no
alternative in the case of web-hosted software).

Operating in multiple markets, with multiple propensities to pay, and freely-
available competing products suitable to at least some users, this sets up
Adobe for a difficult situation.

Not entirely unlike book publishers:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-
eas...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eases-sale-
of-certain-products-abroad.html)

------
stephen_g
This may not be a good idea for their video products - Final Cut X has over
the last two or three updates just got back pretty much all the features that
professional editors had been missing and is only $300 on the App Store.
DaVinci Resolve is better than SpeedGrade and has a free option. Audio editing
has always been in the domain of Pro Tools and Logic so I'm not going to miss
Audition. The only thing I would miss is After Effects but CS6 should keep me
going for a few years.

------
greggman
I have a feeling I'm not a customer that matters for Adobe. I'm a programmer
who uses Photoshop only a few times a month, sometimes less. I've personally
owned every other version since Photoshop 3 paying ~$199 to upgrade every ~4
years or so. I don't mind paying ~$199 every ~4 years for every other version.
I do mind paying $240 every year for a subscription.

So, CS5 will be the last version of Photoshop I purchase. I will not
subscribe. I will keep using CS5 until I can't and then I'll start looking for
alternatives.

If the price comes down so it matches what I was spending before I'll consider
the subscription. Or, if the subscription is on a per use basis so if I don't
use it for a month or 2 I'm not charged I might consider it but otherwise no
thank you.

I'm also leery of subscriptions in that Adobe can basically kill me anytime
they want (or anytime they screw up). In other words, I don't like the idea
that if their servers go down, if they are hacked, if I'm travelling abroad
with a bad internet connection, if they make a mistake, if they just don't
like me, whatever, they can stop me from getting work done.

The subscription probably makes sense for pros that use it every day and
always upgrade and stay put in one place. It doesn't make sense for me with my
usage patterns. (No, PS Elements is not a substitute, nor is gIMP
unfortunately).

------
antihero
I'm trying the free trial of CC, but I can't work out how to actually run any
of the apps. I click the "Apps" tab at the top but it just says "Learn More"
next to everything?

------
wwweston
In related news, Fireworks continues to be neglected (note the lack of a CC
version).

~~~
fredleblanc
According to this tweet, "neglected" may be as good as it gets from here on
out. <https://twitter.com/DeeSadler/status/331209193451315202>

Edit: here's a blog post too: [http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-
future-of-adobe...](http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2013/05/the-future-of-
adobe-fireworks.html)

~~~
wwweston
I think everybody knew it was eventually inevitable. Though the conceit in
that blog post about "increasing amount of overlap" is decent PR-speak, it's
really disingenuous and dances around the fact that there was _always_ a large
overlap between Fireworks and both Illustrator and Photoshop.

The big issue was whether Adobe was ever going to be really genuinely willing
to address a fundamental tension:

* on one hand, Photoshop has always been a fundamentally flawed tool for screen design (I'd even go so far as to speculate that by now it's cost as much in designer and developer productivity as IE6 ever did).

* on the other hand, it's one of the biggest brands ever and its status as a _verb_ is gives a lot to its owner

I guess today is the day they've announced the other hand wins permanently.

The sad thing is if Fireworks ever had a chance, the creative cloud setup
where professionals could play with it extensively at no additional cost might
have been the best setup.

------
habosa
The subscription model works for many, but I personally hate the idea of not
owning my software. Especially when it's mission-critical software like
Photoshop. It's the same reason I don't subscribe to all-you-can-eat music
services and instead buy my albums one by one on Amazon. Yes I know it costs
me more on average, but I like what I buy to be mine.

Also, does this make it much harder to pirate Adobe products since they
require constant activation? If so, I'm not sure if that is a good idea.
Photoshop has had a strangle hold on image editing because so many amateurs
pirate it at home and then force their boss to buy it at work. It was rumored
that Adobe recognized this and actually had no problem with the piracy,
realizing that they could make up for it with the high sticker price that
legit customers paid. Now that a 14 year old can't pirate PS to muck around
with, he might find that other image editors fit his needs and never become a
paying Adobe customer.

------
whichdan
Mixed thoughts on this. I'm primarily a developer, and maybe once every couple
of months I need to dive in to do some graphics work or pick apart a PSD from
a designer I've worked with.

I paid $700 for Photoshop CS3 on Windows back in 2007, and in 2010 I paid $200
to upgrade to CS5 and switch my license over to Mac. I'll have been using it
for 6 years at a total cost of $900, or $12.50/mo. Assuming I don't upgrade
for another 2 years, that's $9.38/mo.

With this new system, I'd be paying nearly twice as much without getting all
that much more value. Of course I can keep using CS5 for several more years,
but my next upgrade becomes a $240/yr decision instead of a $200/3yr decision.
It's unlikely that I would pay for it unless no other software can read new
PSDs.

Now, Photoshop with rolling updates for $10/mo? I would heavily consider it,
although it seems awkward that if I cancel, I'd have to go re-install CS5.

~~~
gte910h
You can turn it off and on though.

~~~
whichdan
If it's turned off, you can't use the software, right? If I had to do that
every time I was pretty sure I wouldn't use it for a while, I'd probably find
different software..

------
drawkbox
I have been digging the Creative Cloud for a while in terms of availability
not price. If you tried to actually buy Creative Suite you would have a hard
time the last year or so even finding that on their site. This was inevitable.

What sucks is them killing apps individually, I thought the creative cloud
would allow more obscure apps to be tried without the need to have it
supported by it's own sales right away, or some overlap. Fireworks losing out
in this does suck. It didn't make sense for Adobe with Photoshop but too bad a
competitor doesn't have it.

I think the price is still high for CC, the upgrade price for a year is
$30/month but the full price is $50/month after that year, definitely premium
pricing. They have to come down or I will bail after this year.

------
chris_engel
The article is misleading. Adobe is not abandoning the Creative Suite at all.

What they did is:

\- rename the suite from "Creative Suite" to "Creative Cloud" \- dropped one-
time purchases of their software \- added monthly subscription to the software

Except the payment change of their products they didnt really change
anything...

------
wluu
If anyone is looking for an alternate photo editor, do check out the open
sourced project, Lightzone - <http://lightzoneproject.org/>

For raw images, it wraps around DCRaw.

Lightzone was formally a commercial product, but was open sourced recently.
The original author is currently an Apple employee.

It'd be interesting to see if Google do something in this space, especially
after their acquisition of the image editor - Snapseed, and its' creator, Nik
Software. Nik from what I'm aware, developed/maintained Nikon's raw editor -
Capture NX 2.

I think there is definitely room for something disruptive in this space.
Looking over some photography forums, people there are certainly looking and
talking about what alternatives to Photoshop are out there.

------
slt555q
Adobe's Creative Cloud scheme is anti-consumer and anti-competitive. Adobe is
essentially attempting to leverage the monopoly that Photoshop has in the
professional market to lock customers into the whole suite of Adobe products.
A lot of people who have to use Photoshop are going to use the rest of the CC
products because they are bundled not because they want to. It's quite a
burden to thing of 600.00 in adobe charges and then piling on a Media Composer
purchase or upgrade. The move to CC calls into question the long term
viability of the DNG format and leaves photographers with few good choices for
archival storage of RAW files.

Oh well, New Coke was a big hit so why not Creative Cloud.

------
andyhmltn
In theory: Brilliant. The software has suddenly become cheaper and I don't
have to worry about what computer I install it on. I'm also not having to
shell out huge amounts of money for upgrades.

In practice: There is just something I can't deal with when it comes to moving
these kinds of tools to the cloud. What happens if Adobe decides to cut the
cord 4-5 years down the line? What if they go bust? With CS6, it wouldn't
bother me that much. I still have the tool I purchased but I know it just
won't be updated. But with this model, I'm suddenly stripped of all my tools
and unable to do work until Adobe sorts out the situation or an open-source
alternative comes along. Uh-oh

------
superuser2
This is interesting. My parents had no problem with me saving up for and
purchasing CS5 design standard, but they'd almost certainly expect me to give
up a Creative Cloud subscription before giving me any financial assistance in
college.

Why is it that financial difficulty makes us feel obligated to give up small,
frequent purchases rather than sell large items, even when the cost is the
same? Like why is it irresponsible to buy Starbucks coffee while in debt but
perfectly okay to continue driving a modern car?

On that note, what if Starbucks sold a year's worth of coffee all at once?
Would people's consumption be less subject to the economy?

~~~
coldtea
> _but they'd almost certainly expect me to give up a Creative Cloud
> subscription before giving me any financial assistance in college._

Emm, how about not telling them?

------
joshmn
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

There's a part of me that's saying that I don't need to continue to pirate
Photoshop/Fireworks (I'm not a designer, but I do handle some graphic content
for our company), and the other part of me is saying I should still go pirate
Photoshop 7 (super lightweight compared to any other PS version.) And, what I
mean by that is, not everyone needs to upgrade every version. What happens
when shit hits the fan with a version of Photoshop and all the CC customers
are forced to upgrade?

~~~
canthonytucci
You never "need" to pirate software. If you're too cheap/poor to buy
Photoshop, use GIMP.

Grow up.

~~~
kevingadd
He just described a scenario where he needs to pirate PS 7.0 because Adobe
doesn't offer it anymore and modern versions are inferior.

Unless GIMP somehow covers all his use cases and can read his PSD files
without problems? Unless it's changed since I used it last week, that's false.

Basically, there are scenarios where legit customers are stuck pirating. I own
licenses for multiple pieces of software that I can now only acquire through
torrents because the original vendor doesn't offer the installers anymore (or
wants to force you to paid upgrade to a newer version).

~~~
canthonytucci
Do you think he has a license to PS 7.0 and is going to "pirate" it by finding
an installer from an alternate source? I did not get that impression.

You're not stuck pirating, you're stuck unable to use the software.

The choices are pay for software or use FOSS, you're doing both communities a
disservice by pirating.

~~~
kevingadd
Doing that is piracy, though. Which is my point.

------
contingencies
Contrast $50/year for top quality video editing:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389>

------
jasonbarone
I think the subscription model is far superior. It's great knowing I have a
set cost each month for the software and I'll receive all of the updates as
part of the subscription.

However, it's too bad the updates are still incredibly slow. I joined when CC
started and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook
support, and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge.

I'm glad to see them focusing on the service even more.

~~~
coldtea
> _and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook support,
> and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge._

Well, it's not like updates come out of thin air, or that shoving more
engineers and money at them makes them come out faster. Especially more so for
complex software.

~~~
jasonbarone
Ya good point. I guess I would expect more considering this is basically the
most popular software in the world for creative work. The sad part that I
didn't mention above is that not one piece of the software is optimized for
Retina. It's runs like a dog and is easily the worst performing piece of
software on my Retina, which I find to be crazy.

All they did was simply update the interface to support it...

------
wslh
For me, it seems like the upper management is incompetent. They just read IT
news about the cloud and other buzzwords without knowing what Cloud means in
that context. For example, Microsoft does not offer Visual Studio on the
cloud, they offer Azure that is a complement for their offerings.

PS: I am not arguing that Microsoft is right on all their offerings, only
using them as an example.

------
binxbolling
Two questions...

1\. Does this apply only to the Creative Suite, or all of the suites (e.g.
E-Learning Suite)?

2\. Where does that leave current customers who are on the 2-year upgrade
plans? Are we shit out of luck, or can the cost of that plan be applied as
credit toward Creative Cloud?

I know this isn't the Adobe Support forum, but just thought I'd throw this out
there in case anyone here knows.

------
beedogs
Always fun to watch a company kill off a huge chunk of its revenue stream for
the sake of "stopping piracy". Idiotic.

------
hcarvalhoalves
The word "cloud", in this case, just being an excuse to shift away from piracy
to a subscription model.

------
rdl
I wonder how much effort they will put into making it hard to crack -- if they
put most of the logic in the cloud, they could do a great job (you'd have to
fully re-create the software, or do some crazy proxy service to multiplex a
bunch of users to one legitimate account.

------
malodyets
I'm most interested to know if CS apps on CC are still available via COM. Does
anyone know? I've gotten into the habit of driving CS apps from Python via
win32com for publishing workflow purposes.

------
da_n
$50p/m, OK I might have considered this, however as a UK citizen the
equivalent is $72p/m which irks me greatly, why does the UK get this unfair
pricing, do the bits cost more to send?

~~~
dan1234
UK pricing includes VAT (20%). US pricing doesn't include taxes because they
vary by state (not a US citizen, but I've been told that's the reason).

~~~
da_n
Interesting point, that does make sense.

------
bocalogic
Also, if you are doing low level graphics Snag It can be a good alternative
for minor jobs.

<http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html>

------
t_tsonev
Note that they still keep the regional pricing. I can understand a small
difference, but 60% (EU) is complete nonsense.

------
computerslol
I enjoy owning my tools.

I am pretty annoyed that this option is going away. I guess it's more of a
perception thing than anything.

~~~
dedosk
You can try Krita and you can own it! :) <http://www.krita.org>

------
aridiculous
If they start mining our creativity data, the internet has officially jumped
the shark.

------
jason_slack
What about all the CS Plug-In developers? Does this essentially kill them off?

~~~
seltzered_
No, there's a number of small businesses that are doing CS plugins, including
myself with <http://thimbleup.com> .

If anything this makes plugin development easier in the same way developing an
iOS app is easier with nearly forced updates. When interviewing design shops,
many of them stuck to an 'every other year' upgrade path, so many of them
still used CS5 - which meant I also have to buy multiple revisions of CS to
support/test everyone.

I'm a bit concerned personally though since this also kills the used market
for Adobe products going forward (CS6 sells for only $700 if you look for just
used licenses), although I'm hoping the reduced support costs of going cloud
will make their products maybe cheaper in the long run.

My only possible concern would be the cloud-based plugins like layervault
competing with Creative Cloud's features, but they could serve support for the
non-Adobe crowd and support pixelmator/acorn users.

~~~
jason_slack
You make some good points. I prefer to just buy outright versus the monthly
fee.

------
gwgarry
Adobe is going to lose plenty of money and customers over this. I don't want
to deal with trying to upload large files on 512 kbps upload. It's a truly
stupid idea.

~~~
nwh
I'm currently working on a 3GB PSD, with the fastest connection I could
purchase, that will take 11 hours for me to upload. It would also consume 15%
of my storage capacity on their Creative Cloud with one document.

Suffice to say I won't ever be using the "cloud save" crap.

~~~
lstamour
Yep, until we all get fiber-quality uploading, we will never have true cloud
performance for design files. 9 megabits a second means it would take about 51
minutes to upload that on a decent cable connection. And that's still way too
long. A fibre 250/250 would be done in a minute and a half.

Personally I want streaming documents and live changes. At least some kind of
collaboration features to go with my "cloud" ;-)

