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:

1. The once-in-a-while user.
2. Users with restricted or unpredictable incomes (e.g. students, freelancers).
3. Users with little or no internet bandwidth, or where that bandwidth is prohibitively expensive.
4. Users who frequently go on assignments – especially extended assignments where there is little or no internet.
5. Developers and designers who regularly use more than two computers.  You’ll have to pay for double licenses then.
6. 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).
7. 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.