Adobe’s Creative Cloud

Software

Smoke and mirrors.

The funniest thing about the above piece of prize BS is that Adobe would think its consumers so stupid as to publish it. Behind this self-serving and disingenuous prose is the fact that Adobe will no longer issue disc updates for Photoshop. CS6 is the last one there will be. Thereafter, you either sign up for a monthly rent (fee) to get the new CC and updates, or you are stuck with CS6. Adobe says the rental rate will be the same as the upgrade fee we have all been paying them every 18 months or so, and if you believe that will prevail I have a nice bridge for sale in Brooklyn you might be interested in.

Of course, every business wants rental income, a steady revenue stream beating a staccato one. But the reality here is the following:

  • Photoshop has peaked. The tinkering at the margins in CS5 and CS6 are hardly compelling upgrade reasons.
  • Adobe’s pricing for new buyers of Photoshop is beyond ridiculous. $600 for the first time buyer. All this has accomplished is the creation of a burgeoning piracy industry with ‘free’ copies available for download on any number of illegal torrent sites. To attract first time buyers Adobe should do what Apple did with OS X. Reduce the price to discourage piracy and spur legal purchases.
  • Adobe’s pricing recognizes that Photoshop is about done. They can blow smoke telling you that your software will always be up to date but significant updates – like CS3->CS4 etc. will likely disappear.
  • Professional users may well like this as will teachers, but you have to wonder what the effect will be on the broader user base.
  • Adobe has stated that while Lightroom will be available through the cloud, disc copies will remain available. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts this option will go away soon. Thus the large amateur population of LR users who look for free upgrades for the latest RAW file formats will be forced to choose between the CC rental model or will simply go elsewhere. I’ll go elsewhere.

We will see what sort of push back Adobe gets from users and whether they will change their spots. But to say that your customers “…. are some of the most influential people in the world” while simultaneously emasculating them is not what I would call a basis for a long-term relationship.

4 thoughts on “Adobe’s Creative Cloud”

  1. Amen, I’ll stay with LR4.4 and CS6 as long as possible. In the mean time I’ll be exploring Corel’s PSP.

    Gary E.

  2. You are right.
    We came full circle.
    In the beginning, there was the MainFrame, and it was good.
    We were connected to it, depended on it, and paid for it monthly, but at least, we owned our data: remember those stacks of punch cards and tapes?
    Than came the PC revolution: we had our own machines, we owned the software, we owned our data, and it was good.
    I remember in the 90’s I could model structures, simulate earthquakes and perform finite element analysis on my desktop, running circles around the MainFrames of the 80’s, all for the reasonable cost of the software. No punch cards, no telex of data, no quick runs to CDC to pick up your printouts. It was good.
    Now they are bent to take this freedom away from us, and want to squeeze us into the iCloud, the google docs, the Photoshop cloud.
    I say forgetaboutit. It is not good.
    I will not use the iCloud, the Adobe cloud and the other modern MainFrames, for the same reasons I felt free and liberated when I got my first PCs and later the Macs. I don’t trust my and my clients’ data to the cloud, no matter whose cloud it is, and I refuse to pay the monthly fees; even though google docs are free, I still don’t use them. I do not want or need data anxiety.

  3. This one just baffles me, with a capital “baff.” On the one hand, surely they realize that this move is suicide. On the other hand, it never pays to overestimate corporate brains, so I agree with your bet that they’ll move LR to subscription-based also. I won’t even consider it. I’m inclined to do a pre-emptive switch to Aperture.

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