Your toughts on Adobes milking plan

[Brellivids]

Just few days ago I realised that Adobe will no longer offer the CS packages in any other form than monthly subscription. Basically they make online access mandatory while you use it. How ever annoying and compromising the online requirement is. The biggest problem is the Cost.

 

From a video perspective there is more sense to the approach that they have taken since .. they trickle down those Mercury engine updates from one version to the next and in a sense they offer actual new features by enabling Hardware acceleration for filters and functions. In addition offering support for new cameras and video codecs. For a photographer the program has been ready enough for years.

 

There is quite heated discussion going on on Drpreview.com forums. People are searching for alternative workflows paths that does not involve Adobe products at all.

 

Aparently the Lightroom 5 still is a standalone program but version 6 might be a different story.

[Julian]

Being online is not mandatory. For a yearly subscription it's something like once every 90 days minimum, and there is a grace period. Check the exact days at adobe. It is all documented.

 

I think the Creative Cloud is a great deal if you work in a (semi)pro environment.

 

The whole concept works great in my experience. Just download/install whenever/wherever you want. You can use it on two computers (not at the same time, but at home and at work for example, could be mac and windows if you want). Access to the whole creative suit... fast updates, etc.

 

For enthusiasts it is a bit of a let down... unless you use a few packages very intensively and always buy the new version.

[ScreensPro]

As a designer, photographer and videographer.... I absolutely love it. Amazing value.

[Brellivids]

The problem is that Adobe could change the pricing at any time since it's a company that is solely responsible only to the stock holders.

 

So to affect the stock price they could one day say 2 years from now up the price by 30% .. And there is nothing you can do about it. How ever reasonable the pricing as a package it is for you right now.

 

 

So.. Now they lure you in and once they "have you" it's very hard to let go. Then they can start raising the prices.

 

I would Welcome competition. You have just seen it how good it is with the camera gear. IF there was just Canon and Sony .. we would not have the stuff we now have.

[/p/]

I pay a monthly fee for Premiere, for the moment it suits my needs (no more expensive than World of Warcraft was in my teens) this year it will work out at $360 which is actually not that cheap really, however if I decide to buy a longer subscription than just 1 month the cost goes down. I was also very happy with the 5 day grace period and thought that was a nice touch.

 

At the moment I am making a little money shooting and editing a 30 minute show every week, I may feel differently when money isn't coming in and I am expected to keep up with a subscription as opposed to buying a program once and not having to worry for a few years until you upgrade again.

[AaronChicago]

Cost wise, it's actually less expensive than buying the CS suites, if you are one to update regularly.

[ScreensPro]

It's a good point Brellivids.... But at some point, you just have to put your trust in a company and hope for the best. I've made plenty of money from Adobe products and they have been pretty fair over the years i have used them, about 15 year and counting.

 

I don't have to worry about paying for upgrades anymore.... and as i use several products in various creative fields, that added up, every time they upgraded.

 

For most creatives, it is about an hours work or less to pay off the monthly subscription to creative cloud. Even if they doubled it, which is unlikely, it would be easy to soak up the costs, if you are using several products.

[jgharding]

Currently using this daily and it's great, it means if I suddenly need Acrobat, I just DL and install. Them remove it. Everything stays up to date.

 

The only issue is for pirates, a lot of them are kids who are learning the ropes, and can't afford it. Piracy is an amazing learning tool, and in that form only has a positive impact on sales. when they grow up they buy it, if they don't use it anymore they don't, no lost sale. They'll have to make sure educational pricing stays reasonable!

[Sean Cunningham]

It's a good point Brellivids.... But at some point, you just have to put your trust in a company and hope for the best. I've made plenty of money from Adobe products and they have been pretty fair over the years i have used them, about 15 year and counting.

 

 

People are worried about this but the fact is, at least the software I use, has been going down in price since original introduction, not up.  When first introduced, the bread-n-butter application that I use the most, After Effects, was something like $1400 and change in top configuration.  It's gone down since but I likely spent at least $600+ on upgrades since then.  I forget what I originally paid for Premiere back in the mid '90s, though it wasn't as expensive as AE.  Photoshop was also quite expensive, if you didn't absolutely live in it and depend on it heavily.

 

So, since I've been an Adobe customer for fifteen years or more and have seen the price go down while the value go up I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and not freak out until they actually do anything that could actually be considered a "wrong" to me.  They're in full-on tinfoil hat mode over at P-V over this. 

[ScreensPro]

Yep, when i first saw the creative cloud deal... my jaw hit the floor. So much cheaper than the constant buying and upgrading i had been doing.

 

I think the best part though, is exploring software that I never really checked out before. I''m now getting pretty good in illustrator... Something i had avoided due to yet another extra purchase and upgrade path.

 

All the people complaining about this being some kind of trap seem to be forgetting that the paid upgrade path is every bit a trap too... More so even, as if you miss a couple of version upgrades, you can sometimes find your upgrade path is no longer valid.

[mtheory]

Personally, I feel the Creative Suite has become rather outdated over the years anyway, - I hope this announcement is going to result in some new software developers coming into the market and writing new software from the ground up with innovative new approaches to UI/workflow/integration for the creative community.

 

For example Lightworks, the editor that was used to cut Pulp Fiction is coming to OSX this year. 

http://nofilmschool.com/2013/04/lightworks-beta-mac-os-demonstrated-nab/

 

Till then, CS6 will be my friend.

[Sean Cunningham]

Roger Avery (Tarantino's writing partner and basis for scripts up to and including Pulp Fiction) did his rough edit for Rules of Attraction in iMovie on his jellybean iMac, if memory serves.