Perhaps you paid attention to my ordering debacle v.v. Creative Cloud. Adobe was dangling a first year $20/month price in front of me then pulling out the football ala “Lucy” of Peanuts fame and telling me that I wasn’t eligible. After a week, a dozen emails and more than a few phone calls that all seems to be straightened out. Adobe people reset my password in the middle of the night (and forgot to tell me) but somehow magically made me eligible – after I created a new password, that is. Yippee.
Now comes the grisly, horrible news.
Photoshop CC doesn’t EXIST. It’s vaporware.
Shocking? I thought so! Perhaps you didn’t notice the fine print: “All-new tools and services will be available in June.” I thought they meant that they were overhauling Creative Cloud – not hyping all the features that aren’t released yet. Hey, they don’t even say WHICH June this will happen so theoretically June 2021 is good for them.
But wait… it’s worse. Even more popular than our webinars here at StarCircleAcademy has been our Advanced Stacking Action for creating star trails and cool effects. I’ve spent several hundred hours making sure the soon to be released Advanced Stacker+ works with all of the Photoshop versions I have installed: CS3, CS5, and CS6 so I figured… Hey… I should make sure it all works with the spiffy new Photoshop in the Cloud. I joined the Cloud and discovered the next, horrible, gruesome problem:
You have to deactivate your perpetually licensed CS6 to get the new features!
[See here]Apparently this is true. Because the not fancy new Adobe Application Manager that comes with Cloud insists that right now my Photoshop CS6 is Up to date. That old thing?
And because it’s up to date, I can’t install anything newer. New ACR 8? Nope. You’ll have to install a trial version of Lightroom 5 to get that. If, in fact that works… can’t verify that. I do know that trying to install the Adobe Camera Raw 8.1 Beta says (and I’m quoting):
That’s the brand new Adobe Application Manager that came with the Cloud it’s talking about.
I am incredulous. I’m also feeling really smug. Many MONTHS ago I reported that there were problems for people who were trying to interwork between the Cloud version and the perpetually licensed versions. Adobe people repeatedly commented that those problems didn’t exist any longer after updates to the Adobe Application Manager – perhaps because their solution is to disable the perpetually licensed version!
I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. Adobe has given me so much material to write about. I’m working on a column for Photoshop alternatives which will be an interesting read if the new, mandatory perpetual payment system is not one you’re comfortable with.
Again, in the interest of fairness, the Creative Cloud *will* make financial sense in many cases, but perhaps not to those who like to own things and not merely hold them for a time. And apparently not for those like me who would like to straddle both worlds. The Cloud doesn’t make sense for:
- The once-in-a-while user.
- Users with restricted or unpredictable incomes (e.g. students, freelancers).
- Users with little or no internet bandwidth, or where that bandwidth is prohibitively expensive.
- Users who frequently go on assignments – especially extended assignments where there is little or no internet.
- Developers and designers who regularly use more than two computers. You’ll have to pay for double licenses then.
- Anyone who is worried about untimely failures of the authorization process (hundreds of reports of this so far, including people unable to use their Cloud Licensed tools to make on-premise customer demonstrations, failures when visiting their cabin in the woods, daily re-authentication prompts, etc).
- People worried about long term financial stability. Adobe has been very tight lipped about what pricing they will have in the future. If you want to do multi-year budget planning, you’ll have to assume that everything will at least double in cost.
Oh, and I found that Jeffrey Tranberry, Chief Customer Advocate at Adobe, is a saint – or should be. A lot of vitriol has been directed at him, but he’s been doing a great job answering questions. Unfortunately I didn’t find his column until after I discovered that Photoshop CC is vaporware. It would have saved me from bothering to sign up for the Creative Vaporware, I mean cloud, and the week of “ineligibility” that ensued.
Kyle Plattner says:When I upgrade to Creative Cloud will I have to uninstall CS 6 and reinstall a new version?
Jeffrey Tranberry says:Photoshop CS6 will work side by side when Photoshop CC is released. There is no reason to uninstall CS6.
While Jeffrey says that the two will work, side by side, the official Adobe site also says to deactivate CS6… I’m not sure whom to believe. I’m still actively using my Photoshop CS6, so I can’t risk deactivating it to see if it will all work out – or the “call Adobe hassle” to reactivate (went through that pain once before already).
If someone who has a properly working Photoshop CC, or whatever is the current version from the Cloud would be so kind as to try out our Test Stacker and let us know how it goes, we’d appreciate it! The Test Stacker does all the things our original stacking action did, plus more, but, of course it has fewer features than our Advanced Stacker.
![Facing the Onslaught [C_073278-32li16%]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7300/8731644033_411656ae27_z.jpg)
You should add a “share” button to you website not just a ‘like’ button. Info like this needs to get out. Jetpack has all the features, you just need to enable them
Thanks. There is a share button… it’s at the bottom of the article. I guess I should make sure it’s at the top, too.
Wondering if your RSS feed is being hacked…? I’m getting a “fast payday loans for everyone” link mixed in about every three of four lines of your post. Looks fine here on the website, but the RSS entry is riddled with these spam links. Just FYI.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I thought I had excavated the crap before… but I didn’t think to look at the RSS feed.
Well, now that I’m looking, it all seems fine. Please let me know what feed link you are using, I looked at http://blog.starcircleacademy.com/feed
And didn’t see any junk in there (except my normal drivel, that is ;-).
I see what you mean, the content being delivered by Google Feedburner contains some junk that is not present in the feed itself. The good news is I am rebuilding the site on another hosting provider so the nonsense should be gone soon – unless it’s really being injected by feedburner. As I noted, I looked directly at the feed markup and there is nothing unusual in it… will have to double check how feedburner is getting it’s content.
I was specifically thinking of a Facebook Share (post) button. You have a like button. Pedantic I know.
Yes, I was using the “official buttons” which have the text “Like” in them. Just for you I’ve swapped to the “unofficial” icons+text.
There is some lively discussion on Facebook as well that you may be interested in.
I think Adobe is doing a huge disservice to its customer base.
Adobe is deliberately being coy – there is a huge amount of misinformation out there – some of it attributable to Adobe. When a company is this coy about its new business model, watch out.
What little we are hearing about the cost structure is disconcerting to say the least. It appears that Adobe is doing this solely for the money despite claims it is to prevent piracy. Prevent piracy on the internet? You have to be kidding. The various prices Adobe is saying we will have to pay to have a working copy is way more than we are paying now And the so-called “benefits” don’t make up for it. Companies can pass the cost off to its customers – but what about the average person? The hobbyist or freelance photographer will get the shaft in this new business model because if you want Lightroom & Photoshop, you get to pay way more than you have been paying. And because they need 3 Adobe products will, a lot of freelance graphic designers will be hard pressed to pay what Adobe wants to charge. This is not about a business becoming more efficient – it is more than obvious that it is all about the money.
In addition too the items you listed in your email, there are others – for example:
Schools won’t want to cut monthly POs – so watch for Adobe to pander to them (and the students) – after all, this is where folks can get hooked on the product.
What about lower income users? It appears that they will be left behind because over time the “cloud” will move out of reach.
And what about scrapbook moms? Adobe wants more of your money too.
What about retirees? Too bad if you now have the time to use your camera gear – fixing your photos just got more expensive.
What about people with no internet? It looks like they will have to go to somewhere to find free wi-fi so they can download their monthly (or quarterly) “permission slip.” Same holds true for people with less than ideal internet connections. Looks like Adobe doesn’t care about it’s customers in the boonies, the reservations, the poor sections of town, etc. Very un-PC.
This move is geared to corporations, schools, and professional photographers – the rest of us don’t need to improve our photos or create brochures or make scrapbooks.
Adobe isn’t the company i thought it was – and I am not alone.
I don’t know if Adobe really thought about the whole environment or not. I don’t know if they are surprised by the harsh reaction, or expected it. Eventually the way people spend their money will reveal whether Adobe chose poorly. Netflix led the way not long ago and took a colossal wallop for failing to understand or communicate with their customers. Of course Netflix also reversed their course and didn’t split their business in two.
To be fair, it will cost the scrapbook moms less over two years to “rent” than it would have to buy Photoshop, assuming the currently known pricing holds. But I honestly think Adobe doesn’t understand that there is more than just finances driving the ire of the consumer: there are more fundamental concepts of control and ownership at stake.
As one of the ‘nearly-retired’, an additional effect that the Creative Cloud will have is that is is likely be that Nikon will NOT sell me a new camera body. A D600 and CS6 will probably be the last camera AND software I buy.
I think Nikon should hear from you as well. The one thing Adobe has tried to do is to create a DNG format and have others adopt it. If Nikon did that, they could sell you new cameras that would still work with your CS6. Adobe rightfully claims that they have to work to add support for new cameras when they come out and it’s not unreasonable for them to expect some compensation… on the other hand, with Creative Cloud they’re now getting a LOT of compensation!
Here is a snippet of conversation with Jeffrey Tranberry – the Adobe Saint whom I mentioned in the article confirming that you have to give up your Perpetually Licensed status of PS CS6 if you want to get any Cloud Updates. The updates seem to be in place to fix problems with Cloud licensing, so you don’t really get anything new.
Steven Christenson says:
I have Photoshop 13.0.1 x64 (Windows 7-64). …
I’ve concluded that I have the latest available perpetually licensed version for windows. Correct?
I am wary of both the pain and the effect of uninstalling and reinstalling CS6. I want CS6 to continue to behave like the latest available perpetually licensed components (to test my scripts and actions), but I would also like to make sure my actions work with the latest available Cloud CS6/CC.
Sounds like I can’t do both on the same machine at this time, correct? And thus I won’t be able to check how my scripts and actions will work with the “Cloud” until CC is released.
Jeffrey Tranberry says:
You are correct, CS6 13.0.1 is the latest perpetual update for Windows, and you can’t install 13.1.2 and 13.0.4 side by side like you will be able to with 14.x [Photoshop CC] and 13.x [Photoshop CS6].
Good News / Bad News
Good news the ACR 8.1 update (no longer a Beta) can be installed by Adobe Application Manager now (June 17, 2013) without blowing up as I noted earlier.
Bad News: Today is when CC is supposed to be released, but I notice the text has been changed from “Available June 17th” to “Available in June”) . The individual product pages (e.g. Photoshop) make no mention of when CC will be released, and the Adobe Application Manager still shows only Photoshop CS6 in the catalog.
I now see that they’ve said the release will be at 9 PM PDT… We’ll see!
More Good news Bad news…
I managed to install Photoshop CC and fire it up once. Now on day two, apparently Photoshop CC already needs updates! Also, unlike DVD versions of Photoshop, Adobe Bridge must be separately installed.