Adobe abandons its Creative Suite to focus on Creative Cloud

I'm looking forward to switching to Creative Cloud at work - I'll never have to make the case for upgrading again, always getting new features as they're released, and I'm sure my employer will be as happy to smooth out one more expenditure timeline as Adobe will be to smooth out its revenue timeline. Going CC-only makes sense for business.<p>However, this totally kills my hobbyist usage at home about three to five years from now. I only ever use Photoshop, Illustrator, and occasionally After Effects for my independent design projects, and was finally able to justify upgrading from CS4 to CS6 a few months ago. A few hundred dollars every few years is worth it to pursue my own experimental work.<p>But I'm not going to justify $50 per month for that, and I have a hard time imagining others justifying it. I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market.<p>(Just to add a little math to this: A $700 upgrade every three years comes to $20/month. If Adobe can offer an a-la-carte Creative Cloud where I can get three or so apps when CS6 finally no longer cuts it, I suppose this will ultimately be a non-issue.)

If you're not a professional designer and are looking for some Adobe suite alternatives on the Mac, may I suggest:<p>Pixelmator[1] (replaced Photoshop) Currently $15<p>Artboard[2] (replaces Illustrator) $29<p>Scribus[3] (Cross platform - replaces InDesign) $Free<p>These apps serve me well for basic Web/App Art, my resume, and the occasional flier. The only thing I do miss is the Illustrator XAML export plugin for when I work on WPF/Silverlight stuff.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.pixelmator.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.pixelmator.com</a><p>[2]<a href="http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/</a><p>[3]<a href="http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus" rel="nofollow">http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus</a>

I love Adobe CC. I would consider it the first thing Adobe has done right in a long time.<p>A year's subscription is less than what I bill per day and I have access to every app that they produce. I can run it on my laptop, my other laptop, as well as my desktop machine that just gathers dust these days.<p>As someone who has used Photoshop since Version 3.0, I can say, with some authority I guess, that the current version is really, <i>really</i> good. Except for the crop tool. The crop tool sucks. It sucks so bad I had to write a replacement stand alone app. All they need to do to fix it is put the image resizing step back in, instead of having to do that separately.<p>Their other apps are also improving in quality from a low point of a few years ago. Premiere is solid, After Effects is way faster than the previous version, Prelude and SpeedGrade are a little inaccessible but once you learn the non-standard UIs are useful tools. Illustrator is still a bit of a drag though. I don't touch InDesign unless I'm designing a photo book for Blurb.<p>And then there is the whole extensibility of the suite that most people don't get too involved in, but I do. We started out writing some pretty heavy javascript extendscript stuff to do asset prep but have since moved on to Flex + Adobe Creative Suite Extension SDK. Was kind of gnarly to get going, but once going has allowed us to extend Photoshop into a full blown authoring tool for the kind of retail iPad apps we build for clients. What once took us about 2-3 weeks to build, now takes about a day thanks to that.<p>So, +1 Adobe.

This is quite radical in my mind and very greedy on Adobe's part. How is abandoning the pay once per version of software a benefit to anyone other than Adobe?<p>I get weary of software that I have to bind to an active account indefinitely.<p>There are use-cases that are no longer possible.<p>1) What if I wanted to get my 14 yo artistic niece Photoshop/Illustrator for her birthday? Now I would have to either pay $50 a month (for her), in the assumption she would get value out of it. At what point would I then transfer the subscription over to her should she want to become professional in it?<p>2) Let's say I bought After Effects with a retina mac and then in a year decide to sell it all on craigslist? Maybe I had a dream of becoming a movie director only to be put on hold because my father went into the hospital and I needed to be there for my mother?<p>3) A high school with older macs from 5 or 6 years ago has a small lab with Adobe Photoshop that was donated to them through an art grant. It's meant to be used to teach kids about photo retouching and color blending (things that have been in Photoshop for a decade if not more).<p>I never minded when Adobe adopted strict licensing DRM because it didn't remove use-cases. Maybe someone from Adobe can shed light on how switching to a subscription only model will benefit anyone other than them? Is that not taking a step backwards?

The value proposition for Adobe's software-as-a-service offering is lacking for people who only use one of their products, or who don't already stay on the bleeding edge by paying for upgrades every 2-3 years.<p>Photoshop is the only Adobe product I use as a web developer, and I've been using it less and less as I do more backend and client architecture and less design implementation. For my needs, Creative Cloud is a really bad deal.<p>Creative Cloud might be a great <i>value</i> to people who use lots of Adobe products, and good for them. But even if this were a good value to me, I still wouldn't buy it. I do not trust software as a service, at least for software that runs solely on my own workstation. Unless Adobe wants to subsidize the cost of my own hardware, I don't believe that their subscription model benefits me as a consumer.<p>I think Creative Cloud will present an interesting challenge to the Open Source community. Open Source alternatives to Photoshop have kind of languished in recent years, and I wonder if Adobe abandoning traditional software licensing will spur new free software development.

"Convincing users to upgrade was a daunting task that left an impact on product decisions."<p>Yeah, like having to make useful features that customers would actually want to pay for.<p>Fuck capitalism, eh? Just pay your taxes and we'll give you what we think you want.

Moving exclusively to Creative Cloud feels like Adobe's way of admitting that their updates have become less and less impressive.

I've been using CC since it came out - the killer feature for me is that you can install CC on all your computers - PC &#38; mac with the same license key. As someone who hops platforms and computers all the time, it's fantastic.<p>I always used to pirate Adobe software, but the monthly pricing is very reasonable and you get <i>all</i> the Adobe software for the price, rather than web/print/video bundles like they used to. They've really turned around and made this pirate into a customer.

I have to admit, the subscription model is way more attractive to me than the one-time model. I'm not someone who uses Photoshop every day, so if I sit down and think "it'd be really handy to use it right now, just this once, for this one thing" ... I'm not going to shell out hundreds to do it. I'm just not. I'll use GIMP if I can or I'll pirate Photoshop if I can't.<p>I might shell out $50, though, and if I find I'm using it often, great. If not, I'll cancel and I'll have only spent $50 for a legitimate use case.

Adobe's biggest mistake is pricing.<p>The cost of Creative Suite bundled in losses from piracy. A Creative Cloud subscription costs pretty much exactly what Creative Suite does--without having to compensate for losses to piracy.<p>Adobe should have provided incentive to switch by dropping the price. If they can truly eliminate piracy then their profits wouldn't be hurt by dropping the price substantially. Doing so would also generate a lot of good will among users.<p>Keeping prices high with no other option will just encourage new forms of piracy that much sooner. Until now, pirates could just ignore Creative Cloud. No more. I expect we'll see cracked activation proxies within a few months.

This is really bad for artists. Many folks I know picked up copies of CS5 when they were in collage for $400 and have been using them for the last 5 years. Now they will need to pay more per month than a cellphone with a data contract. With Adobe posting massive profits, this is an act of greed and I hope antitrust regulators will look at Adobe with more scrutiny.

This is the story of a dominate company in a market were it's users feel it can't go anywhere else, if they wanted to. It turns to be a good thing.<p>I think this is going to put a big dent in piracy of adobe products going forward, provide a large window for competitors to provide products to people that don't want a subscription, and give the users some really great benefits of using cloud products.<p>It's one example of a company moving forward and doing good because it has a mostly captive audience and it's a win,win,win.

I intensely dislike this.<p>Artistic careers usually aren't extremely stable, revenue-wise.<p>Before Creative Cloud, it was possible for an artist to buy all the tools they needed in a boom period, and then keep using them no matter how pear-shaped their income situation got. (Bear in mind that in the film world, for example, clients simply <i>not paying at all</i> is close to routine.)<p>Now, if your revenue stream dries up, your tools go away, and you're completely fucked.

I don't get it - am I not going to be able to get an install of Photoshop anymore? If so, then that sounds like a HORRIBLE strategy, since by far not every person is always connected to the internet, never mind high-quality internet.

Education pricing requires an annual commitment, which is a real shame. When I need an Adobe program there's often no substitute, but I only need it very rarely. If they did it month-to-month I'd be happy to buy it just for that month... Since they don't, I guess it's good for me they do 30-day product demos.

Wow, I can't believe how many people are against this.<p>I think it's a great move and will benefit independent designers and creators hugely.<p>First: the price keeps coming down. Now you can get Photoshop or Premiere for $10/month. That is much cheaper than buying a copy every two years.<p>Next: I know indie film-makers who have pirated Premiere. They simply don't have any money to pay for it, but have sworn to buy a copy if they ever make any money from it. This complete ends this argument - even those working short bar shifts can afford a copy. So they contribute in the short-term, and we all get a fuzzy warm feeling knowing that programmers at Adobe are getting some of our cash.<p>The educational discounts are huge. I've always wanted to use Premiere and Photoshop, but have never been able to afford the capital outlay (being a lowly post-doc), and am not a big fan of pirating things. I'm going to sign up today for CC.<p>I think this business model is a lot more sustainable. It gives Adobe a solid stream of revenue and we all get to use the latest versions.<p>The only improvement I'd like to see now is perhaps one more drop in price, and then a condition whereby those who have been subscribed for a certain amount of time (say, 18 months or 2 years) and cancel their subscription can keep the suite - perhaps with some limitations, e.g. they're limited to the version that was available when they first subscribed, or only a subset of tools are available...

This might be problematic. Photoshop works for a lot of us because it is a stand alone application.<p>Curious to see what kind of lag issues will occur on a cloud based solution. As mentioned above, it seems more like an anti-piracy issue solution.<p>While Photoshop is the standard, several other applications exist that do a good job as well. They might lose market share over this move.

I never use Photoshop, but sometimes I work with graphic designers who like preparing everything as one huge PSD with lots of layer groups, and it feels like an absurd waste of energy to keep subscribing to Photoshop just to export all layers as PNG, since that is all I ever use it for. Photoshop itself can barely do this, HOURS on moderately complex documents.<p>Maybe this would be a good time to ask, does anyone know of a 100% compatible way to do PSD -&#62; any open layered format, without Photoshop? Maybe this is a business opportunity, to run a web service whose sole purpose is to open PSD files in photoshop with a custom export script, and then export the layers.

I suspect Adobe will hurt themselves in two ways here — first, their apps are becoming increasingly dispensable, and this will push users to less capable but far cheaper and often more nimble alternatives (perhaps renting CC apps when occasionally needed) and second it will eliminate over-licensing (e.g. In some workplaces Adobe CS was pretty much site-licensed).<p>It may help with piracy, but I suspect that's a two-edged sword as well.<p>Personally, I was an "upgrade every two or three versions" user, which let me use CS for significantly less money, so this will probably just cause me to wait Adobe out.

It was a similar pricing strategy which in part convinced me to switch from work involving a set of proprietary tools to pursuing opportunities which largely made use of freely available, free software tools I could download and experiment with myself.<p>The cost for the tools I'd previously been using ranged from hundreds to several thousand dollars. Annually. In addition to the expense, additional and advanced features were only available at a significant additional annual cost.<p>The vendor was also increasingly focusing its efforts on systems I had little interest in using. Despite a multi-platform legacy, much present use is on Windows systems (I've not used these as my principle environment for over a decade now).<p>I understand why Adobe would do this, and to a certain extent, subscription-based software models offer benefits: upgrades are already paid-in, and you can move users to the current level with fewer constraints (or with no alternative in the case of web-hosted software).<p>Operating in multiple markets, with multiple propensities to pay, and freely-available competing products suitable to at least some users, this sets up Adobe for a difficult situation.<p>Not entirely unlike book publishers: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eases-sale-of-certain-products-abroad.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eas...</a>

This may not be a good idea for their video products - Final Cut X has over the last two or three updates just got back pretty much all the features that professional editors had been missing and is only $300 on the App Store. DaVinci Resolve is better than SpeedGrade and has a free option. Audio editing has always been in the domain of Pro Tools and Logic so I'm not going to miss Audition. The only thing I would miss is After Effects but CS6 should keep me going for a few years.

I have a feeling I'm not a customer that matters for Adobe. I'm a programmer who uses Photoshop only a few times a month, sometimes less. I've personally owned every other version since Photoshop 3 paying ~$199 to upgrade every ~4 years or so. I don't mind paying ~$199 every ~4 years for every other version. I do mind paying $240 every year for a subscription.<p>So, CS5 will be the last version of Photoshop I purchase. I will not subscribe. I will keep using CS5 until I can't and then I'll start looking for alternatives.<p>If the price comes down so it matches what I was spending before I'll consider the subscription. Or, if the subscription is on a per use basis so if I don't use it for a month or 2 I'm not charged I might consider it but otherwise no thank you.<p>I'm also leery of subscriptions in that Adobe can basically kill me anytime they want (or anytime they screw up). In other words, I don't like the idea that if their servers go down, if they are hacked, if I'm travelling abroad with a bad internet connection, if they make a mistake, if they just don't like me, whatever, they can stop me from getting work done.<p>The subscription probably makes sense for pros that use it every day and always upgrade and stay put in one place. It doesn't make sense for me with my usage patterns. (No, PS Elements is not a substitute, nor is gIMP unfortunately).

I'm trying the free trial of CC, but I can't work out how to actually run any of the apps. I click the "Apps" tab at the top but it just says "Learn More" next to everything?

In related news, Fireworks continues to be neglected (note the lack of a CC version).

The subscription model works for many, but I personally hate the idea of not owning my software. Especially when it's mission-critical software like Photoshop. It's the same reason I don't subscribe to all-you-can-eat music services and instead buy my albums one by one on Amazon. Yes I know it costs me more on average, but I like what I buy to be mine.<p>Also, does this make it much harder to pirate Adobe products since they require constant activation? If so, I'm not sure if that is a good idea. Photoshop has had a strangle hold on image editing because so many amateurs pirate it at home and then force their boss to buy it at work. It was rumored that Adobe recognized this and actually had no problem with the piracy, realizing that they could make up for it with the high sticker price that legit customers paid. Now that a 14 year old can't pirate PS to muck around with, he might find that other image editors fit his needs and never become a paying Adobe customer.

Mixed thoughts on this. I'm primarily a developer, and maybe once every couple of months I need to dive in to do some graphics work or pick apart a PSD from a designer I've worked with.<p>I paid $700 for Photoshop CS3 on Windows back in 2007, and in 2010 I paid $200 to upgrade to CS5 and switch my license over to Mac. I'll have been using it for 6 years at a total cost of $900, or $12.50/mo. Assuming I don't upgrade for another 2 years, that's $9.38/mo.<p>With this new system, I'd be paying nearly twice as much without getting all that much more value. Of course I can keep using CS5 for several more years, but my next upgrade becomes a $240/yr decision instead of a $200/3yr decision. It's unlikely that I would pay for it unless no other software can read new PSDs.<p>Now, Photoshop with rolling updates for $10/mo? I would heavily consider it, although it seems awkward that if I cancel, I'd have to go re-install CS5.

I have been digging the Creative Cloud for a while in terms of availability not price. If you tried to actually buy Creative Suite you would have a hard time the last year or so even finding that on their site. This was inevitable.<p>What sucks is them killing apps individually, I thought the creative cloud would allow more obscure apps to be tried without the need to have it supported by it's own sales right away, or some overlap. Fireworks losing out in this does suck. It didn't make sense for Adobe with Photoshop but too bad a competitor doesn't have it.<p>I think the price is still high for CC, the upgrade price for a year is $30/month but the full price is $50/month after that year, definitely premium pricing. They have to come down or I will bail after this year.

The article is misleading. Adobe is not abandoning the Creative Suite at all.<p>What they did is:<p>- rename the suite from "Creative Suite" to "Creative Cloud" - dropped one-time purchases of their software - added monthly subscription to the software<p>Except the payment change of their products they didnt really change anything...

If anyone is looking for an alternate photo editor, do check out the open sourced project, Lightzone - <a href="http://lightzoneproject.org/" rel="nofollow">http://lightzoneproject.org/</a><p>For raw images, it wraps around DCRaw.<p>Lightzone was formally a commercial product, but was open sourced recently. The original author is currently an Apple employee.<p>It'd be interesting to see if Google do something in this space, especially after their acquisition of the image editor - Snapseed, and its' creator, Nik Software. Nik from what I'm aware, developed/maintained Nikon's raw editor - Capture NX 2.<p>I think there is definitely room for something disruptive in this space. Looking over some photography forums, people there are certainly looking and talking about what alternatives to Photoshop are out there.

Adobe's Creative Cloud scheme is anti-consumer and anti-competitive. Adobe is essentially attempting to leverage the monopoly that Photoshop has in the professional market to lock customers into the whole suite of Adobe products. A lot of people who have to use Photoshop are going to use the rest of the CC products because they are bundled not because they want to. It's quite a burden to thing of 600.00 in adobe charges and then piling on a Media Composer purchase or upgrade. The move to CC calls into question the long term viability of the DNG format and leaves photographers with few good choices for archival storage of RAW files.<p>Oh well, New Coke was a big hit so why not Creative Cloud.

In theory: Brilliant. The software has suddenly become cheaper and I don't have to worry about what computer I install it on. I'm also not having to shell out huge amounts of money for upgrades.<p>In practice: There is just something I can't deal with when it comes to moving these kinds of tools to the cloud. What happens if Adobe decides to cut the cord 4-5 years down the line? What if they go bust? With CS6, it wouldn't bother me that much. I still have the tool I purchased but I know it just won't be updated. But with this model, I'm suddenly stripped of all my tools and unable to do work until Adobe sorts out the situation or an open-source alternative comes along. Uh-oh

This is interesting. My parents had no problem with me saving up for and purchasing CS5 design standard, but they'd almost certainly expect me to give up a Creative Cloud subscription before giving me any financial assistance in college.<p>Why is it that financial difficulty makes us feel obligated to give up small, frequent purchases rather than sell large items, even when the cost is the same? Like why is it irresponsible to buy Starbucks coffee while in debt but perfectly okay to continue driving a modern car?<p>On that note, what if Starbucks sold a year's worth of coffee all at once? Would people's consumption be less subject to the economy?

I'm not sure how I feel about this.<p>There's a part of me that's saying that I don't need to continue to pirate Photoshop/Fireworks (I'm not a designer, but I do handle some graphic content for our company), and the other part of me is saying I should still go pirate Photoshop 7 (super lightweight compared to any other PS version.) And, what I mean by that is, not everyone needs to upgrade every version. What happens when shit hits the fan with a version of Photoshop and all the CC customers are forced to upgrade?

Contrast $50/year for top quality video editing: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637389</a>

I think the subscription model is far superior. It's great knowing I have a set cost each month for the software and I'll receive all of the updates as part of the subscription.<p>However, it's too bad the updates are still incredibly slow. I joined when CC started and it's taken almost an entire year just to get Retina Macbook support, and there are still a number of apps that don't have it, like Bridge.<p>I'm glad to see them focusing on the service even more.

For me, it seems like the upper management is incompetent. They just read IT news about the cloud and other buzzwords without knowing what Cloud means in that context. For example, Microsoft does not offer Visual Studio on the cloud, they offer Azure that is a complement for their offerings.<p>PS: I am not arguing that Microsoft is right on all their offerings, only using them as an example.

Two questions...<p>1. Does this apply only to the Creative Suite, or all of the suites (e.g. E-Learning Suite)?<p>2. Where does that leave current customers who are on the 2-year upgrade plans? Are we shit out of luck, or can the cost of that plan be applied as credit toward Creative Cloud?<p>I know this isn't the Adobe Support forum, but just thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone here knows.

Always fun to watch a company kill off a huge chunk of its revenue stream for the sake of "stopping piracy". Idiotic.

The word "cloud", in this case, just being an excuse to shift away from piracy to a subscription model.

I wonder how much effort they will put into making it hard to crack -- if they put most of the logic in the cloud, they could do a great job (you'd have to fully re-create the software, or do some crazy proxy service to multiplex a bunch of users to one legitimate account.

I'm most interested to know if CS apps on CC are still available via COM. Does anyone know? I've gotten into the habit of driving CS apps from Python via win32com for publishing workflow purposes.

$50p/m, OK I might have considered this, however as a UK citizen the equivalent is $72p/m which irks me greatly, why does the UK get this unfair pricing, do the bits cost more to send?

Also, if you are doing low level graphics Snag It can be a good alternative for minor jobs.<p><a href="http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html</a>

Note that they still keep the regional pricing. I can understand a small difference, but 60% (EU) is complete nonsense.

I enjoy owning my tools.<p>I am pretty annoyed that this option is going away. I guess it's more of a perception thing than anything.

If they start mining our creativity data, the internet has officially jumped the shark.

What about all the CS Plug-In developers? Does this essentially kill them off?

Adobe is going to lose plenty of money and customers over this. I don't want to deal with trying to upload large files on 512 kbps upload. It's a truly stupid idea.