“Adobe first launched Creative Suite 1 back in 2003, and now, ten years and six versions later, the company is taking a left turn: Adobe is abandoning its Creative Suite entirely to focus efforts on Creative Cloud.”
“Adobe first launched Creative Suite 1 back in 2003, and now, ten years and six versions later, the company is taking a left turn: Adobe is abandoning its Creative Suite entirely to focus efforts on Creative Cloud.”
Does this mean the apps will work through a model browser of any brand – firefox, chrome, safari, ie, opera, .. ?
Does this mean I can finally use the excellent apps without having to have Windows or MacOS .. as long as the broswer is suitably modern and capable?
Is yes, and yes .. well, yay!
No. This means you can no longer walk into a store, grab a box off the shelf, pay for it once, and use it until the end of time. Now, you have to go to the Adobe website, put in a credit card number, and pay $30 / month in order to use any/all of the Creative Cloud apps. Still need Windows/Mac OS X; these are not new apps, just a new way to pay for using them.
IOW, instead of paying $500-odd upfront to “own” and use the app forever, you now pay $30 every month for the privilege of continuing to be able to use the apps on your computer.
Yup, for better or worse, this is the direction the industry is going, for both apps and games. The main criticism against DRM in general is that it never prevented piracy and only inconvenienced legitimate consumers. However, with more and more of the code going server-side, this will no longer be a viable argument. The most you could do is hack somebody else’s account, and even that couldn’t be done on a wide scale.
Not that I like it any more than anyone else, but I kind of see their point. It’s a win-win situation for them. Not only can they stop piracy, but they also have more direct control over what machines legitimate purchasers can run the software on.
Don’t forget the most important part I keep seeing in lots of these companies.
You get to use open source code without paying a dime for it or give back to the community, because no one can prove what it used on the server side.
That’s why network-aware stuff should be AGPLv3+.
TBH Creative Suite got pirated to hell, not surprised they are doing this.
Somewhat ironically the massive pirating also helped establish Creative’s massive mindshare and thus also helped make Create Cloud a possible product.
If you are a creative who will blindly upgrade every release to the latest CC, this is actually a really good deal. For everyone else, it sucks balls.
Meh, looks like it’s the same old Win/Mac software, only subscription based and distributed online.
reason I ask is the following from Adobe gave me hope…
“We believe that we’re now collectively hitting a tipping point where the web is now ready for a generation of tools and services that help build the future of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript web,” said David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe’s digital media business unit, at the MAX keynote.
(from the register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/06/adobe_kills_creative_suite_…)
They are simply saying they’ll try hard to keep up up-to-date with their content creation tools wrt. HTML5, CSS and JS and make themselves indispensable in that area. Adobe has quite extensive support for web content these days through their whole portfolio and even some specific apps just for that, so they’ll just bang on that full-time. The announcement in no way or form means that the apps would themselves become web apps.
Of course it’s the same software. We’re talking millions of lines of code (PS alone has 4.5M) and many many millions of man hours over 20 years. Adobe aren’t about to magically poof that vast investment into HTML5 just to be trendy. The Web != HTML, contrary to what Mosaic and its many blighted descendents would have you behave. The Web is merely a mechanism for exchanging resources of every shape and kind; the only constant is hyperlinking as the means of discovering those resources.
All that’s changed at this point is the distribution model, and while the primary motive is obviously financial (steadier income flow and [hopefully] less piracy) it may provide some user benefits too, e.g. smaller, more frequent rolling releases of new features and fewer hassles when exchanging files with others (not least since Adobe themselves won’t be motivated to screw about with file versioning simply to drive sales).
In the long run it’s harder to predict how this’ll all play out, and who will win and who will lose. For example, decoupling revenue stream from shrinkwrapped product might encourage Adobe and other ‘big app’ vendors to evolve their unassailably monolithic products into a more flexible component-based platform, allowing users to customize their apps by adding/purchasing just the features they need from Adobe and/or 3rd-parties. Alternatively, it might kill competition by discouraging customers from purchasing individual apps from other vendors when their Adobe subscription means they’re then effectively paying twice for the same general functionality, in which case expect to see antitrust suits raised before long.
Nope you’re wrong… the web = HTML!!!
The Web refers to Web pages made up of HTML + CSS + JS + other tech.
You must be thinking of the Internet, of which the web is just one part.
Wrong again: the web = hypertext documents, i.e. textual documents which contain and are interconnected by hyperlinks. (Although note there’s no reason the web couldn’t use non-textual hyperlinked documents as well; think HyperCard stacks, for example.)
HTML = HyperText Markup Language, i.e. a markup language that is one particular implementation of the hypertext principle. However, it is not the only way to encode a hyperlinked document: a JSON document containing hyperlinks is also a type of hypertext document, as is an XML document containing hyperlinks.
A PDF or Word document would also qualify as a hypertext document if the URLs within its text were explicitly flagged as hyperlinks so they can be readily identified and used by any application that knows how to interpret the proprietary PDF/Word document format.
(Note that you’d also need a PDF/Word document editor/viewer that knew how to retrieve those hyperlinked resources itself, assuming that a PDF/Word representation of that resource is available. Currently, such applications don’t try to retrieve the resource themselves: instead, they mindlessly assume they must be HTML documents and kick the URL to an HTML viewer to handle.)
As you can see, there is only one true constant here: hyperlinks. The document encoding is irrelevant; the HTTP protocol that powers the Web was itself deliberately designed to be both completely agnostic and highly flexible with respect to document encodings. (Hence all of HTTP’s powerful content typing and negotiation features, which remarkably few people and applications really understand.)
…
[STROP]
It is one of the great tragedies and losses of the modern Web that its early popular adopters [mis]interpreted the original concept as an HTML-only club that should consist of a small number of technical producers (professonal web developers) plus a large audience of dumb consumers (everyone else). Obviously that arrangement has enriched the first group very nicely, but at much cost to the second, who are now excluded – by both accident and intent – from being first-class citizens of the world wide web. (The mere fact I am authoring this mini-essay as a quickly-forgotten third-class web forum comment rather than a first-class document published and hyperlinked online as a full resource its own right is testament to this.)
The origin of this misunderstanding is simple enough: the first hypertext document format created specifically for the web was HTML, and the first popular application for accessing hypertext documents was Mosaic, which was an HTML viewer. But instead of seeing these as one example of how the web could be used, its early audience mistook form for function and formed the incorrect belief that it was the only way the web could be used.
And as the psychologists will tell you, once people have formed a belief, they are extremely reluctant to revise or replace it thereafter, even if it subsequently shown to be grossly incorrect. If anything, the more invested a person is in their belief, the harder they will fight to defend it against any perceived or actual threat. And with 20 years of ego and livelihood invested in their warped vision of the web, it is no surprise that web developers fight hardest of all.
But the harsh truth is: 99.99% of the web programming profession is wrong about how the web is supposed to work. And the other 0.01% is constantly frustrated whenever they try to do the right thing, because all of the popular tools for serving and accessing the web have inherited the same ballsed-up misunderstandings.
Thus, on the client side we have HTML viewers (the so-called ‘web browsers’) that cannot speak most of the verbs in HTTP and completely ruin content negotiation, and a whole bunch of other popular applications like Word and Acrobat that automatically accept their second-class status don’t even bother to try to interact with the web themselves as first-class citizens, even though HTTP and hyperlink technology absolutely allows them to do so.
And then on the server side you get frameworks like Rails that tries to pretend the web is a local messaging OOP system. (Hint: it’s not. The web is resource-, not message-, centric, more like a giant distributed collection of loosely interacting state machines. And see Deutsch’s Fallacies of Distributed Computing as to why it’s nothing like a local messaging system and should not be viewed as such.) Plus big-name web applications like Twitter and Github that claim to be RESTful but wouldn’t recognize the REST interaction model if it bit them on the ass.
And all of this is enabled and encouraged by tens of thousands of ‘web professionals’ who never once stop to consider that their own understanding just might be incomplete or wrong, and a billion unwitting users like frogs in the proverbial saucepan being slowly brought to boil. And so the gross ignorance and rampant misconceptions are propagated ever further.
…
So, the mere fact you can easily muster a whole bunch of fellow web devs to all declare that the web is too HTML+CSS+JS doesn’t change the fact that you are all largely wrong and I am roughly right. The only question now is: are you willing yet to fundamentally challenge your own beliefs, despite your considerable vested interests in defending them; and if not, then what exactly would it take to make you question them?
[/STROP]
Edited 2013-05-08 12:49 UTC
is why they didn’t do it sooner? For their core market the sub model makes sense, and may even be preferable in a lot of cases. The only thing I have to wonder about is what the licensing will look like for students.
Subscription models are very asymmetric. While they tend to make little sense from a customer’s self interests perspective, these sort of business models are mainly about providing steady and predictable revenue for the producer. While having the beneficial side effects of locking competitors out via the subscription inertia, piracy is hurdled as well.
One thing still not properly addressed by Adobe is how they are going to deal with the plugin versioning(sic) nightmare. The economic investment in those plugins are one of the main “value propositions” why many of CS customers stick with it.
Edited 2013-05-07 15:50 UTC
[qOne thing still not properly addressed by Adobe is how they are going to deal with the plugin versioning(sic) nightmare. The economic investment in those plugins are one of the main “value propositions” why many of CS customers stick with it. [/q]
Well… I was at Adobe Max and I have the beta. One of the ways they are dealing with the plugin upgrade issue is by letting Cloud users download a CS 6 product if they need it for legacy compatibility with workflows, old files or plugins. But you can also keep the newer version side by side. They know people have valid reasons to run past versions, which is partly why they have been making an effort to allow new versions to work side by side with past versions. You used to get into big problems trying run past versions side by side.
Artists were many more hats these days. Photographers often find themselves doing video, print designers need web tools these days. Having access to all the tools at once really frees you to learn and explore everything that is creatively possible.
I guess this might influence the uptake of GIMP by hobbyists, but I’m no artist.
How is making the Adobe suite cheaper and more accessible to all users going to help GIMP? This is a significantly cheaper option, for tools that are astronomically better.
Well, that really depends on which apps you use and how long you use a specific version. If you use enough of the products to warrant the Suite, using it for 2 years is the same price as buying it outright ($720 US). Use it for more than 2, and you’re paying a lot more than current pricing.
No you aren’t. The $50 per month package is a superset of CS6 Master Collection (lists for $2,599). To get to the point that the sub would cost more than outright buying it would take more than four and a quarter years, even if you discount the fact the Creative Cloud gives you apps you wouldn’t have access to in the Master Collection. From that perspective it’s a fantastic deal.
Where you get screwed over is if you want to go ala carte on one or two of the programs without going all in.
Edited 2013-05-07 01:11 UTC
Doesn’t matter if the Creative Cloud is a superset. If I only use Illustrator, Photoshop & Indesign, then the Creative Cloud is vastly more expensive, than just buying that.
There are very very few people who need all the apps. How many people do you know who need to use Fireworks, Dreamweaver & Premiere? Those are apps for completely different user bases.
It’s the Cable TV model all over again.
While my math may have been a little low, yours is way over the top, and at least my “number of years” is correct.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/05/07/2129245/adobes-creative-clo…
If you use the suite for more than two years, Cloud costs you more.
It’s dead on. You’re comparing a much lower end product than the package on offer.
People are also missing the fact that perpetual licenses of CS6 in digital form will still be available “indefinitely” as per the faq.
Except, it really isn’t cheaper. At best, it is the same pricing.
A stand alone copy of Photoshop CS6 is around $600.00 retail. I own the DVD, and I can use the software theoretically forever. As long as I have the hardware and OS version, I can use it.
Now, I can ‘rent’ Photoshop CS7 for $19.99 a month. In three years, it will be the same price as if I bought it outright. By then CS8 will be out, and I will just start the whole thing all over again.
So yes, if I am someone who updates my version of Photoshop every time Adobe releases it, then it is the exact same pricing. But if I am not a big company or a pro-sumer who does that, then yes, this is not cheaper per se. I don’t own the software. What if CS8 requires Windows OS 8.x and Mac OS XI as the minimum system requirements. The added costs now become the hardware and the OS needed to run the next ‘cloud app’ version Adobe will ‘rent’ me.
GIMP continues to get better with each iteration. It is roughly equivalent now to Photoshop 7 or CS1. I can combine that with an older physical copy of Photoshop from 7 up to CS6 (with the addition of countless shapes, brushes, and other plugins), and I will have saved myself significant costs PLUS I own the software outright PLUS I decide when I want to upgrade my systems PLUS I can do just as professional work as someone on CS7.
Because I dare say the vast majority of Photoshop ‘users’ today are running a pirated version of Photoshop.
For amateurs/hobbyists who only use a very small subset of the features Photoshop offers, they can likely get those features from free applications.
If they can no longer pirate Photoshop a huge amount of these users will not find Photoshop worth the asking price and will turn elsewhere, possibly to Gimp.
Photoshop will remain the de facto choice amongst professionals, as it should be in my opinion given that it is the best software of it’s type and have no real rival either from other commercial offerings nor from open source.
Piracy will continue. The apps still need to be downloaded from the net and installed on your computer. The only difference is that the activation is verified online every few days instead of just once when you install. So, if the activation is cracked (as it always is), pirates will continue without any problems.
arpan,
“Piracy will continue.”
If it runs locally, it will be cracked plain and simple. Switching to the service model will make very little difference in terms of copyright infringement and cracking.
Edit: I don’t understand why some posters are associating this new billing scheme with cutting down illegal copies?
Edited 2013-05-07 14:59 UTC
The barrier to doing so will be higher than before.
Tbh I don’t think a lot of this is about that. Most software development these days is moving to higher cadence on releases aka version infinite and a subscription based model will probably help adobe achieve that with their tooling.
Subscription based services for tooling have been shown to work.
Leaving piracy issue aside this makes a lot of sense.
Edited 2013-05-07 22:42 UTC
lucas_maximus,
“The barrier to doing so will be higher than before.”
Are you talking about technical barriers? I don’t see how the subscription model makes a difference to the difficulty of cracking the DRM. Whether it’s a one time activation or reoccurring activation, what difference would it make to the effort needed to patch the code to bypass the check?
“Leaving piracy issue aside this makes a lot of sense.”
Definitely, many software vendors have difficulty competing with older versions of their own software. The subscription model not only eliminates that risk, but it also eliminates the 2ndhand resale market entirely.
Say I were a wedding photographer, it’s not such a dynamic field that I need to be upgrading my adobe PS software every year. I imagine that one could easily get by keeping a software license at least for the life of the hardware. The subscription model makes pros pay for software continuously. For many, it will effectively be a form of price inflation. Whether that’s good or not depends on where you stand in the tech industry
Edited 2013-05-08 00:16 UTC
To hell with pirates, if they get shafted in this deal consider it a well earned bonus. Mostly what this is about is giving Adobe a more consistent revenue stream from it’s legitimate customers.
Also, this may be news to you, but a lot of people aren’t always using legit copies.
I think rather than switch to GIMP in the short term, these people will keep on using the “old” CS versions for years.
I had missed this tidbit, but apparently Adobe already took done activation servers for CS1 and CS2. Now they put up links for downloadable copies that have serials that don’t require activation BUT you are not supposed to use them unless you already owned the product.
For some kid or mom who really only needs ACDSee or Elements at best, that is fine. But if I was a semi-pro users that is disturbing.
Will Adobe eventually remove activation service for all past versions of the Creative Suite except for the current Creative Cloud one?
At that point, yes, GIMP is starting to look better and better. I personally have used it for some time and it is on par with at least Photoshop 7 which I also still use because of the plugin support. Between those two on XP Mode on a Windows 7 x64 Pro workstation with 16GB of RAM, I am fine for any semi-pro graphics manipulation I might need. For me, it is my photography. For my wife, it is digital art and graphics design for other small businesses in our market segment.
Sorry but GIMP is utter garbage. While it maybe the only free alternative, doesn’t mean it is worth while.
Not this crap again. I don’t care if you like GIMP or not: I like it, I use it, and I am not alone in this. Also, GIMP is not the only free alternative, there are a few ones, including Krita.
But please, justify yourself: why is it “garbage”? Is it lacking the features? Is it lacking support? Or are you saying that because the interface is not like Photoshop? If it’s the latter, your argument is very, very weak.
http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-gimp-is-inadequate.htm…
Sums up how I feel about it.
That’s fine, I don’t disagree, especially with “this post has attempted to outline three potential show stoppers for digital artists”. But this is completely different than a simple “GIMP is garbage” rant. It’s not.
I don’t like the program, I think it is garbage. Like most opinions it is an opinion.
With the lack of man-power it is just going to fall further behind and there isn’t going to be any large companies to pick up the slack.
It is one thing to not like a program, but calling garbage is exaggerated and ridiculous. Also, look at the time the blog you linked was posted and compare to the updated Gimp 2.8 which was released last year in addition ofs Gimp 2.9, with 32 bit per channel enabled and ported to new engine.
Still 2 point something developers. It isn’t about particular features it is about how the product is falling behind that of a commercial rival because there isn’t any interest from the open source community.
Say what?
https://plus.google.com/+gimp/posts
So we have one successful product supporting the other failing product. Oh brilliant!
Failure is a part of life to learn from mistakes and improve oneself. What seems to be a failure today may become a success tomorrow.
Continued failure is stupid.
That depends upon the hobbyist.
If they’re the type who bought CS and always kept it up to date, price probably isn’t going to be much of an incentive for change.
If they’re the type who buys CS every few releases, they may just stick with the version they already own. That’s cheaper than the GIMP (since there are no new skills to learn).
If they’re the type who want to use CS for a short time (e.g. to learn it) then this is going to be cheaper.
I was chatting with the owner of a used computer shop a few years back. His biggest gripe was that people would come in for Photoshop, see the price, then ask to pirate it. He’d ask them what they need it for, then show them half a dozen alternatives that would be better for their needs and cost a fraction of the price. They rarely ever nibbled. You see, the problem with a lot of hobbyists is that they think they’re pros or they want to become pros. So they want to use the software pros use. So convincing them to change will be hard.
They may still be selling CS6 standalone for now, but I couldn’t (yet) find a way to upgrade PS CS5 to CS6 now. Everything redirects to the Cloud version, and the upgrade is not on Amazon, Adorama, &c.
Perhaps I missed something, but it seemed peculiar.
Edited 2013-05-06 22:08 UTC
I just don’t understand the pricing of so many ‘cloud’ apps.
It’s like it is either free or expensive. Perhaps the business folks and done the math and this is what works. But it just seems like many just take the old ‘physical’ cost and try to impose it on the cloud.
But I mean, they could capture a much wider market if they kept costs low. I’ll give an example, i used to subscribe to newspapers until they went online. Then it was free online. Now they’re starting to add paywalls, and their costs… $20/month (for the GlobeandMail in Canada). I mean really? $20/month for one website. Maybe $5/month at the most.
Now we have Adobe Suite with costs around $20-$80 per user per month. Now yes, as in the article they say if you updated your software anyways, it would cost you around $300/year anyways. Again, they just seem to be trying to match their old costs… instead of expanding their user base or counting on continuous cash flow from subscriptions.
Adobe is not selling a commodity application, there are clear and obvious upper limits to how many artists and professionals could possibly buy/use their applications.
Adobe figured they have a hold of the majority of that marketplace, and they are trying to maximize they can extract from it. The subscription model is a no brainer for Adobe as a corporation; it provides a somewhat reliable revenue stream while stifling piracy significantly.
What could go wrong for users as Creative increasingly maximize revenues while forgetting to provide new features for those who’d have needed a reason to upgrade previously?
But if that large market share is mainly due to piracy then you could be looking at a massive loss of customers when these folk can no longer afford, or are not willing to pay for, the product. CS may be popular but it’s not the only game in town.
It becomes a better value as you buy in to more of their product line, and is cheaper for the use cases of many outside of businesses.
This is the same pricing model that Office took with Office 365 and it seems to be working.
it has been a lot of years since I’ve seen computer software on a store shelf. this change by adobe seems to be a non-issue. a lagging indicator of the power of the internet.
the issue of not owning software is still a thing, though. I’m pretty sure the way the laws are now, companies can send the police to your house if you look at their software on your computer wrong
I just watched some video where this guy was dispelling myths (offline use, storage, forced upgrades, etc) about Creative Cloud.
His name was Paul Something and his title/job-description was supposedly “Adobe Evangelist”. Lolwut? Do people willingly go around admitting they’re brand evangelists these days? That’s just …. retarded.
When they are paid by the brand for it, it does make sense, doesn’t it ?
Some companies have a person that talks to (potential) users or developers about the technical abilities of their product or service and call such a person an evangelist. They give presentations, workshops, etc.
I agree with you, I don’t particularly like how they named it either.
So far there was only one person when I heard his title I didn’t cringe. That would be one of the real fathers of the Internet Vint Cerf he is the Chief Internet Evangelist at Google:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf
Yes they do. It is quite normal. This guy is talking about IE and he is a Microsoft Evangelist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtHb6tBx6Y
There isn’t a lot of the bullshitting that you would expect, mainly because a technical audience would be turned off by it right away.
I’ve often met with 3rd parties and tbh most of it is straight talking.
Edited 2013-05-08 01:39 UTC
I’m not so sure about the international pricing. People in different countries earn different salaries for the same job, but software is priced the same. For example, a graphics designer in my country could earn about 1000 euro/month (net salary), but in more developed countries he or she could make 3 or 4 times that. I see no option but to pirate the more expensive software until something changes, so instead of getting at least something every month, Adobe will get nothing from me and a lot of other designers. Then they’ll bitch about the rampant piracy.
Edited 2013-05-07 08:16 UTC
Hah, I wish (emphasis mine). Here in the UK, Adobe, like Apple, has a long and proud pricing tradition of simply swapping dollar ($) signs for pound (£) ones. So Adobe’s UK customers actually pay more than their US customers, a tradition I am delighted to report is continued into their new Creative Cloud model (the full $49.99 US service is £46.88 in the UK, a $22/£14 premium).
I think you’ll also find sympathies in developed countries tempered on account of the lower cost of salaries and living in less developed countries (plus rampant piracy) enabling graphic shops in the latter countries to vastly undercut those in the former who’ve seen a lot of their contracts march abroad these last few years.
Full props, mind, to all those individuals in the developing world seizing the bull by the horns and working hard to make their own lives better. Less props to those of us in the developed world who’ve grown so complacent in our privilege, as we’re in for a shock soon. And I’ve no doubt somebody’s getting insanely (and probably undeservedly) rich on top of it all too.
But the only thing quite a few UK workers are getting these days is their P45s, so unless you’re in the 1% then it turns out life can be [relatively] thorny no matter where you are.
Well, actually fuck everything about that. I know the feeling when I see my dream gadget cost $999 + free shipping in the U.S. and 999 euro + 50 euro shipping in my country.
Yup, that’s a problem and I sympathize. First the low end jobs were exported in countries like mine and people were happy, next mid level jobs, while low end jobs were exported to India and people were even happier, but what they don’t realize is that soon everything will be made in the 3rd world by children paid peanuts (literally).
Right now, if you don’t like a Creative Cloud price hike you can leave and buy boxed.
When its either pay us or loose your livelihood. I don’t think the CC deal will be quite so good.
When Quark was number one, it took bundling by Adobe, better pricing (Creative Suite Vs just one Application) and a better application to beat it.
Right now I can just about see GIMP getting as good as Photoshop Elements. As a host for a wide range of filters its pretty good, its interface is better than before, but I would still rather not use it.
To be honest I am far more intrigued by Krita. It runs horribly under Windows, but quite nicely on my wee KDE laptop.
It’s also possible for Calligra (the KDE suite of which Krita is a part) to get ported to Haiku – I know they had a KOffice port at one point.
What about Paintshop Pro? And are there any decent alternatives to Dreamweaver, that don’t involve doing complex CSS layouts with a text editor?
WorknMan,
“What about Paintshop Pro? And are there any decent alternatives to Dreamweaver, that don’t involve doing complex CSS layouts with a text editor?”
Funny you should mention PSP, I used and prefer it to Photoshop. I found the multi-mouse-button support to be far superior in PSP. In photoshop it seemed like they designed it for use on a one button mac, which was lame as a windows user.
IMHO PSP got worse after it shifted hands. The Jasc versions were better than Correl’s, which wasn’t even very stable. I don’t know how it ultimately panned out because I don’t do graphic editing on windows any more.
Use a Grid System for your CSS. It greatly simplifies things. Or one of the CSS frameworks like Initialzr or BootStrap.
Edited 2013-05-08 15:15 UTC
Don’t laugh but i use Elements as to tell you the truth i don’t need all of the features from Photoshop CS6. I have tried Gimp and Pixelmator on the mac and use a combination of Aperture & elements for my amateur photography.
There is no way i would pay a subscription for that service as the software is only £60 in the UK. I really hope they leave it alone with this new cloud tie in.
Im not to hopeful though, you can see the writing on the wall especially with Office being tied into Office 365 subscriptions more and more each day.
Lightroom and Elements I imagine have siphoned off a good bit of the less hardcore PS users.
I used to use PS constantly for photo work, now once a week or so. If I hadn’t already spent so much time learning it, I could probably get by with something less robust without issue, and I bet there are a lot of amateurs like me. We’ll just stick with whatever old version we have as long as we can and call it good.
(FWIW, this kind of reinforces their new subscription model. If their other products have made their CS market almost exclusively professional–eg, they cut out the riffraff like me that were on the margin–that makes subscription a much easier sell.)
Edited 2013-05-07 15:07 UTC
Through June 25 the student price is $20/mo for everything Adobe.
One year commitment, billed monthly.
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/buying-guide.edu.html
The full list of included programs, fonts and services is here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/tools-and-services.edu….
The point most people seem to be missing here is that if you stop paying you will no longer be able to open your files as the apps will stop working.
Go this route and you are locked in to paying forever, or at least as long as you want to open your PSDs, Illustrator etc.