Earlier I talked about some things you should know about Adobe’s Creative Cloud method of licensing software. As of today, Monday, May 6. 2013 it became the ONLY way.
It’s a shame because just as their Cloud service has it’s strengths and WEAKNESSES, their sales implementation shows only weaknesses. For example, depending on how you find them, you get significantly different pricing. I went here, to get the pricing below. If you go to the regular front page, you’ll not see something as inexpensive.
Here is an example that apparently is “too good to be true” – a full Cloud license for $20 for the first year.
Unfortunately when I travel down the path to try to buy it (clicking the Join button):
But wait… here is what I own, according to ADOBE!
I suppose I should NOT be surprised that Adobe has managed to further trip over themselves and confuse the heck out of people like me with conflicting pricing. I would love to see Adobe take a Netflix Style hit for this failure. In the long run, their strategy may work, in the short run, I see it as another failure.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Steven! Great post about this due of an idea on Adobe’s part. It’s clearly just a way for them to make gobs of money while freelancers suffer…I’m going to share your post everywhere I can to really get the “revolution” going and hope that, like Netflix, Adobe will reverse gears and realize the stupid error of their ways. Cindy
To be fair, the Adobe model makes sense when the economics work. And in the long run it’s better for us consumers to have an Adobe with a stable income model. The problem is that the economics don’t work if your use of Adobe products is limited to Photoshop CS and Lightroom. I suspect Adobe and the entire ecosystem of photographers is going to suffer – perhaps irreparably. For what it’s worth, I used to use Paint Shop Pro – and was very happy with it. I think it’s cheaper and more powerful than “Elements” version of Photoshop.
I have been buying every-other-upgrade since Photoshop 4. (Yes, that’s right, I am quite old). The upgrades have not been painful or expensive; in fact, I’ve opened more than one freshly printed PS box with giddiness.
This new pricing model has made me consider how much utility I can squeeze out of Microsoft Paint. Who wants yet-another-monthly-bill to pay?
As I noted to Cindy, below, I didn’t ride the horse as long as you did! It was around 2008 that I jumped in on PS CS3. Before that I was a heavy Paint Shop Pro user. I didn’t get good at Photoshop (if I am now 🙂 until the last few years. So many things about GIMP (freeware) and Paint Shop Pro were better for me than Photoshop’s interface… but eventually I drank the Kool-Aide because my students were using Photoshop. It is more powerful… and more expensive… and now even more so for the more casual user.
By the way, you are probably wondering why I shelled out $140 to get Photoshop ELEMENTS and Premiere ELEMENTS. Many of my students use those packages and I needed to figure out what did and didn’t work with those packages and to be able to translate between the products. Truthfully it rather galls me that the “big package” doesn’t include the little brother, but honestly PSE is a poor choice anyway. PSE is 8-bit only missing many features, and has the “we will squirrel away your files” style workflow that I find irritating.
I did recently use PE (Premiere Elements) to compose a timelapse. It’s not as friendly or as powerful as I had hoped – at least not at first blush. Photoshop CS6 is also a bit hostile at first, but it seems much more powerful.
I suspect all my purchases may be in vain, now, however. With the economics of Photoshop + LR in the Cloud being so poor, I suspect most users who would have been willing to bite the bullet and pay the “big bucks” for Photoshop are doing the math and concluding that a program like PaintShop Pro (perpetually licensed at $79) is a much better value. PSP, for example, supports 16 bit files whereas PSE doesn’t.
After publishing the blog article, apparently more than one Adobe person noticed. I’ve been contacted by several people including a “Lori” and a “Gautum”. So far Adobe’s only solution is to have me call them. I’m wondering how that will scale for every other CS6 user who tries to respond to the special pricing. Has anybody successfully subscribed for the $20/month pricing for CS6 owners?
I supplied browser and other details (including my adobe id’s). No response so far.
I’ve checked each of the last few days and apparently I am still “Not Eligible”.
Status as of 5/15/2013:
I’ve been contacted by still more Adobe personnel. I went online and chatted with “Peter”. Unfortunately it did not send me the transcript at the end, but Peter confirmed that as a CS3 owner who upgraded to CS5 then CS6 I should be eligible for the discounted first year at $20/mo.
Peter also confirmed that there are indeed 29 separate documents that comprise the “Adobe Creative Cloud Terms and Conditions” and there is no single document that contains them all. My head hurts from trying to read them.
Here are the HEADERS for all of those documents (excluding the “base” document):
ACROBAT.COM
Acrobat.com Additional Terms of Use
ACROBATUSERS.COM
AcrobatUsers.com Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE BUZZWORD
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE CONNECT HOSTED
SUBSCRIPTION PLANS PURCHASED THROUGH A SPECIALIST
Adobe Connect Hosted Terms of Service
Participant Terms of Use
SUBSCRIPTION AND PAY-PER-USE PLANS PURCHASED ONLINE
Adobe Connect Subscription Service Agreement
Participant Terms of Use
ADOBE CONNECT MOBILE
Participant Terms of Use (Android)
Participant Terms of Use (iOS)
Participant Terms of Use (RIM)
ADOBE CONTENT SERVER 4
Online Services Agreement
Content Server Services Appendix
ADOBE CREATEPDF
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE EXPORTPDF
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE FORMSCENTRAL
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE LEANPRINT
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE SENDNOW
Additional Terms of Use
BUSINESS CATALYST
Additional Terms of Use
CS SERVICES
Additional Terms of Use
DIGITAL PUBLISHING SUITE
Terms of Use
ADOBE TRANSLATOR
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE TYPEKIT
Additional Terms of Use
PHOTOSHOP.COM
Online Services Agreement
PHONEGAP BUILD
Additional Terms of Use
PROJECT ROME
Additional Terms of Use
ADOBE PREMIUM FEATURES FOR FLASHPLAYER
Additional Terms of Use
LEGAL INFORMATION
Terms of Use
Harrumph. The CS6 $20/mo plan is not listed here: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/buying-guide.html
Only here:
https://creative.adobe.com/plans
If I hadn’t bookmarked it I’d never have been able to find it again!
And it also appears Adobe is changing the forms again… LastPass now doesn’t recognize my Adobe ID login so that it can autofill for me.
Oh, and it looks like Adobe reset the password on my account without telling me (a 2 am email is the clue). I suppose that’s an improvement since it now thinks I’m eligible for the 60% discount for the first year.
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