Adobe New Model

[Sieg@VU]

Whether you love the idea or hate subscription based software, this Q&A style blog from Photoshop guru Scott Kelby cleared up a lot of the fact vs. fiction for me regarding the Adobe announcement, now I just need to decide what to do:

My Take on Adobe?s Announcements Yesterday at the MAX Conference | Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider

 

[Scubadude_LA]

Thanks, good link. I see they actually do have the option to buy sort of hidden on the site. However, no upgrade option, Full Version only.
Seems like the next version will be cloud only but CS6 can still be purchased outright. I guess it is because there are retailers everywhere that still have boxed version to unload,
so Adobe is keeping that available for now??

 

[Oceanshutter]

I don't like it either. I think they are trying to increase revenue, by not providing a better product. They are also trying to thwart piracy. Unfortunatly, hackers will always find a way. This just opens things up for a competitor. The cloud sucks and people aren't buying it. Especially in the form of a monthly fee.

Dustin

 

[bvanant]

Maybe the real hackers can figure out to break the code, but many of the dive professionals I meet in the tropical South Pacific has a pirated copy of Photoshop on one of their laptops and if you look at the non-diving folks in much of the developing world, there is a ton of software piracy and that is one of the main reasons for CC. Of course you can buy software now and use it for as long as you can, but Adobe has made a business decision (like Microsoft) and you get to decide to use it or not. As for roll out the competition, I think that there really is not much competition for Photoshop CS (GIMP doesn't really work the same). For Lightroom there is of course Aperture but for me at least LR is way more better than Photoshop.

Bottom line, buy CS6 now for $700 and Lightroom for $150 or wait a bit and see what the LR/PS CS bundle will cost in the cloud. At $25/month you will take 3 years to get to the $850 you would need to spend and I am sure you will have LR 7.9 and Photoshop CS9 by then. I really don't see what the big deal is and if you really think the cloud will go away I have a bridge for you (and not the Adobe one).
Bill

 

[Diver Dave1]

Full access is priced at $50/month for now. Single program access for $20/month for now. If you ever stop paying, you lose all access to your work. Once a few yrs have passed and Cloud users have all the recent work tied up, do you think the monthly rate will stay stable? Seems likely the business model is to start at a lower price and move to a higher one later once you are locked in. What would limit the price increases? Whatever the market will bare.
If there was no competition, how much would mobile phone or cable TV service cost?

 

[bvanant]

I don't know where you live (Central USA is a big place) but here in Los Angeles there is not much competition for cable TV service and prices to me are ridiculous. As for losing your work, I am not sure what you mean by that. You take a picture (in raw, hopefully) and you make some adjustments to it and then you export it as JPG/TIFF/DNG ad nauseam. You still have the raw file, you still have the adjusted photo. What did you lose?

I am all for competition but there is a reason that Photoshop has such a hegemony in that market place, it is used by most of the professionals who deal with images and it does it better than most of the competition. More importantly it is not clear that Elements will be in the Creative Cloud so there is always a way to get much of what you really need.

My hope is that in a few months Adobe realizes that photoshop CS and PS Light room should be bundled together for less than $50/month and at $25 per month it seems a good deal if that ever happens.
Will prices go up? Probably a bit, but I am sure that there are folks out there now looking at the business opportunity to bring you photo editing for a fixed price.
Bill

 

[Oceanshutter]

Maybe the real hackers can figure out to break the code, but many of the dive professionals I meet in the tropical South Pacific has a pirated copy of Photoshop on one of their laptops and if you look at the non-diving folks in much of the developing world, there is a ton of software piracy and that is one of the main reasons for CC. Of course you can buy software now and use it for as long as you can, but Adobe has made a business decision (like Microsoft) and you get to decide to use it or not. As for roll out the competition, I think that there really is not much competition for Photoshop CS (GIMP doesn't really work the same). For Lightroom there is of course Aperture but for me at least LR is way more better than Photoshop.

Bottom line, buy CS6 now for $700 and Lightroom for $150 or wait a bit and see what the LR/PS CS bundle will cost in the cloud. At $25/month you will take 3 years to get to the $850 you would need to spend and I am sure you will have LR 7.9 and Photoshop CS9 by then. I really don't see what the big deal is and if you really think the cloud will go away I have a bridge for you (and not the Adobe one).
Bill

Bill,

The big deal is that most people I know, don't like monthly payments. There are too many to begin with. At some point it has to stop. I don't like the idea, that if I lose my job and have to cut expenses, that now my software is unusable and I'm out of a job, the concept is just outrageous......There is a difference between $800 upfront and you choose when to upgrade (new camera/extra features) , and $20- $50 a month forever. Personally, I would rather pay more upfront, and not have a monthly than to be locked into something like that.

Keep in mind, I am a software sales rep, and I sell systems that are $40,000 upfront and $1000 to $2000 a month. When you have a niche industry (only 5000 potential customers to sell to), like we do....you have to charge that or else the business can't survive. But something as widely adopted as Adobe products.....a monthly is ridiculous. Think of the average person, and if all the major software goes this way.

Microsoft 8 - $20 a month
Excel - $10 a month
Word - $10 a month
Power Point - $10 a month
Office - $10 a month
Lightroom -$20 a month
Photoshop - $20 a month
Premiere - $20 a month

Thats $130 a month in software that I use. I don't know your money situation, you may have an endless supply of money, that most people don't. So it may not be a big deal to you, but unless you are a professional, this kind of expense is easily not taken. This is a dangerous road. And hopefully competitors come and knock them back to reality. I like Adobe, they make good stuff. In business nobody stays on top forever....I will not go for the monthly fee. Until this changes, I will not buy another Adobe product.

Dustin

 

[drbill]

I've been increasingly disappointed with Adobe products over the last few years. I still use my tried and true Photoshop 6.0 for most of my work with stills but switched to Vegas Movie Studio Platinum a few years ago as it handles almost all the HD formats I use much better than the Adobe products I have used recently.

 

[bvanant]

Dustin: No, I certainly don't have an endless supply of money, if I did I would be diving today instead of editing pictures from last weekends dive. In our office we have some of that expensive software (solid modeling and Mathworks) and we endlessly bitch about how much it costs but we don't have much option, if you want to do science you have to pay for the software. In terms of photo editing, I certainly hope that LR stays out of creative cloud and remains something that you can just buy and I am still using CS4 for the few times I need Photoshop CS (it seems to print better than LR even though the Adobe guys think it shouldn't) so I am not rushing to get into the cloud. As for $130 per month, I think you have too many items on your list. Office 365 is $10/month for 5 computers and has word/excel/PP/outlook and some Skype services and for Adobe, if you are using Premier and Photoshop and LR the total is $50/month I think. So the total for all Microsoft and Adobe is like $60/month and compared to cable TV service that is quite cheap. Alternately you can get pretty good functionality (but not great) from Google Docs for free but AFAIK the advantages of Office outweigh the cost for most folks. I am guessing that Adobe has done a reasonably thorough analysis of the revenue from the two different models and find that they make more $ with the subscription and for now you can still buy CS6. In the future if you can live with that til you get a new camera and you want the Adobe raw converter you should be set.

Maybe this will stimulate some really smart software guys to build a PS killer but I wouldn't hold my breath. As Dr. Bill says, there are other software products out there that you can still license individually, and maybe Paint Shop Pro is good enough and its only $40.

I think that there has been way to much wailing and gnashing of teeth about this. Adobe has made a business decision same as every other company does every day and it sounds to me that many folks believe that they declared war on photographers. The very fact that so many people are so upset suggests that Photoshop is very important to most folks and that the near monopoly status they have is at least partly due to the quality of their products. Paying monthly for PS is like buying 4 Vente lattes at Starbucks a month or for about 15% of a monthly subscription to cable TV of the tip you leave after a nice 3-tank dive day here in California. If you use the software a lot, then the cost is de minimis, if you use it once a month then it isn't going to be worth it. In either case, I fail to see what all the theatrics are about.
Bill

 

[Oceanshutter]

Bill,

I hear you on going diving! I am trying to figure out, how to not work and just dive all the time...LOL. Ahh...the dream!

I too hope lightroom is kept out. Photoshop for me...isn't a big deal. My wife uses it (infrequently), but we mainly use Lightroom for 99% of our stuff. As for Video...There are plenty of alternatives already. So that is a good thing for us video guys. Edius and Sony Vegas are all viable solutions. Which will be where I personally turn to after CS6 no longer works for me.

I forgot about the Microsoft thing they have going...You are right, it is cheaper than my amounts I threw out. I guess my point is that I don't want to manage monthly payments for everything I use in my life. Just let me buy something and be done with it. And when I need to upgrade...so be it. If times are good, I will do it. If times are bad, I wouldn't be upgrading anything, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to "cut" monthly expenses. I guess I am just a cash kind of guy...to eachs own I guess.

I am sure Adobe has done their research...they aren't stupid. This is to their advantage all the way. I just wish they would invest their money on better software licensing, instead of making everyone pay a monthly fee...It can be done, someone just has to figure it out. To be honest...the hackers will find a way around the licensing...The fact that it loads directly on the pc and just checks in....that will be broken in a month! Guaranteed. The torrent sites will be filled with all the files needed.

The theatrics are because people don't like change. I have to sell my customers on the cloud every day. But to be honest, I would rather have it locally hosted on a server in my building. But...I can handle computers so it isn't a big deal. But for those that can't/don't want to deal with it, then the cloud makes sense. For Adobe, it makes sense. For the customers it doesn't...at all. My buying pattern is that I normally like to skip a generation before I buy new again. So I had CS4 and now I have CS6. Have the Canon 5d mark II...will wait for the mark IV (or whatever has 4k and works good underwater).

By the way, I love you and Nanettes video and photos. Keep up the good work!

Thanks,

Dustin