Adobe Creative Cloud Upgrade – Is it Worth It?
Updated May 9th, 2013 – my edits are in italics. Adobe recently changed its pricing structure to only have subscription-options going forward. Also, my one year $30/month deal expired so now I’m paying $50/month.
I think the first version of Photoshop I ever used was Photoshop 5 or 6. Since then I’ve upgraded to every major version when it came out and plunked down hundreds of dollars every time there was an upgrade (maybe I skipped a version or two). In total I’ve probably spent several thousand dollars on Adobe products over the years.
This year Adobe launched it’s creative Adobe Creative Cloud platform which makes ALL these pieces of software available as part of a monthly subscription, which I think is both a smart business move on Adobe’s part and also a good deal for designers like myself. It’s arguable whether this is a good deal – I think it really depends on your level of usage. If you’re a designer who makes a living doing this, then probably yes. If you’re not a design professional, then it may not be worth it.
While there’s a monthly cost now, the benefits of going the Creative Cloud route outweigh the cons (if you’re a graphic professional).
The cost for standalone is $49/month but if you already have Photoshop or similar, it’s only $29/month for people who own a previous CS product (like Photoshop CS5, etc.). This is only for the 1st year though, after which your price for the entire suite will go up to $49/mo indefinitely.
When I Switched
When it was time for me to upgrade from Photoshop CS5 to Photoshop CS6 I went ahead and got the Creative Cloud subscription instead. This allowed me to get a bunch more programs that I can use for various other purposes.
For instance I hadn’t worked with Dreamweaver since about 2006 but since Dreamweaver CS6 came with my subscription I went ahead and downloaded it. While I do most of my coding in Espresso, I do fire up Dreamweaver CS6 to do sitewide code searches. For instance if I need to know which files reference a certain php variable, Dreamweaver is my goto tool for that.
Easy Installation and Fast Programs
I love the new Photoshop CS6 (Here are some Photoshop CS6 reviews in case you’re interested: Ars Technica, Ken Rockwell, Lester Chan - they do a more extensive job explaining the new features.)
With CS6, Adobe has vastly improved how fast the programs run and how easy they are to install. Everything is installed via the Adobe Application manager. The process is about as simple as installing a Mac app (which is way better than the old way of going through all the install screens).
So last week when I was doing my taxes and needed to combine a bunch of statements pdf’s I fired up the Adobe Application Manager and installed Acrobat X Pro. It was downloaded and installed in a few minutes – easy. Bam!
Now that Lightroom 4.1 has finally been added to Adobe Creative Cloud, I’ll upgrade that too. I have a lot of pictures so it’ll be an over-the-weekend project for later this year.
I haven’t worked with After Effects CS6 yet but since it comes with my subscription, I’ll have to download some templates from Video Hive and play around with that at some point too.
The Obvious Conclusion
So overall I’m very happy I went with the Creative Cloud subscription. At $30 per month it’s definitely worth it to have all the latest and fastest versions of the gold standard design software out there (Photoshop, Illustrator, & Lightroom 4.1 mostly).
It’s really like walking into Adobe’s Candy Store and being able to play with ALL the toys.
Now that I’ve used it for over a year, I think it’s probably only worth getting Photoshop for $20/mo instead of the entire Suite – UNLESS you also need one or more of the other apps – like Illustrator or Lightroom. So if you’re an illustrator, graphic design professional, or a photographer – then Creative Suite is probably worth $50 per month. If not, then the other apps may just be bloatware on your machine.
Also, I see that a lot of people are upset about being forced to go monthly subscription-only. I’m not quite sure where I stand on this – as I think it’s a professional suite of tools and are priced as such – but I can understand people’s frustration. I guess time will tell if this is a smart move by Adobe or not.
About
Max Spiker is the founder of DMAD and has been developing for the web for over 10 years. He is passionate about design, Wordpress, travel, iPhone apps, online marketing, and lifehacking. +Max Spiker is currently into studying rationality and decision making and creating fun online projects. Note: Some links on this site are monetized by affiliate programs - see disclosure for more details.
34 thoughts on “Adobe Creative Cloud Upgrade – Is it Worth It?”
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I would love to visit some of your websites.
you might like paying $29.99 now, but when the contract is over you will pay $49.99 or more – price may increase depending on the market. And in the future, if you can’t afford cloud you risk all your files created with cs6 not opening in your older adobe software.
I just can’t do it. Sure, it looks like a value if you use all the apps in Adobe’s Creative Suite, but I think it is safe to say a large chunk of CS users use Photoshop, Illustrator, and perhaps InDesign.
And another factor, for me, is the low cost of alternatives for sale on the Mac App Store – there are plenty of HTML editors that I would rate more favorably than Dreamweaver, and while there is no serious contender to Photoshop just yet, a few are getting pretty close. And some of these apps are $15!
I could dedicate another paragraph to the bloat issue, but I won’t. Half of the ‘apps’ in CS are just wasted hard disk space.
I don’t disagree about Dreamweaver, but I like having it in my arsenal as an alternative / running side by side to Espresso. I like the subscription for Lightroom, Photoshop, & Illustrator and to always have the latest release of each running on my machine. I also don’t disagree that most of the other stuff is bloat.
You’re right about Adobe apps hogging a lot of disk space – this actually matters again now that more people are running SSD’s that are ultrafast, but smaller.
I think I’m in the target audience for CC, though; I hop between video, animation, web, photography, and sometimes even print. The only reason I’d need DW is for making tables (see: email template design), but to stay on the edge would be very helpful.
PS: if you need good multi-file find & replace, try BareBones’ TextWrangler. Still free and world-class (except lacking retina support so far).
Thanks for sharing your opinion (and TextWrangler recommendation).
Seriously???? Nail in the coffin for Adobe in my opinion. Lots of problem scenarios with cloud only.
1. Does it always work offline?
2. If i go 5 months without needing to use it, why I am still paying for it every month?
3. If I leave Adobe subscription what happens to my DNG files?
4. What happens when I buy new Canon in 2 years & CS6 does not support the RAW file? I need to buy Adobe sub to open my RAW files?
5. When I die how will my heirs deal with my PSD, RAW, and DNG files? Do they have to start buying an Adobe sub to open the files?
6. What about Lightroom and it’s catalogs over the next 30 years? Am I now permanently married to funding Adobe every single month of my life?
It sounds like they drank the same Kool Aid Microsoft is with their Office 365. We can’t have people on XP and Office 2003 forever! Ballmer and Gates need to put gas in their Ferrari’s after all.
Actually – Corel’s Painter is a great contender to replace Photoshop. And Xara (a UK-based company) makes a great product to replace Illustrator…. check out the Xara products at Xara.com… and go to youtube and search for Painter 12 videos…
I’m looking into Adobe Indesign and Photoshop to use at our American Legion Post. I put together the newsletter and take a lot of pictures so these programs would be wonderful. I appreciate your review of the Creative Cloud. I think this would be a better option for us since spending thousands would be too expensive. Thank you
What I worry about is not wanting to subscribe next year (if the price goes up) and not being able to open my recent files with older version software that I already have.
I think that’s a fair concern. It seems to me that Adobe has gotten a lot better at backwards compatibility over the years (at least that’s been my experience).
Right now, I’m only interested in PS, AI, DW, and Acrobat. (I really wish they would merge the functionality of ColdFusion Builder into Dreamweaver, since DW is supposed to be their flagship IDE). For THOSE apps, I would pay $20/mo. Usually I pay once every other version. I have CS5 now, and since Adobe moved product releases to half a version every 12 months (CS 6.5 coming out mid 2013, CS7 slated for mid 2014), that’s 48 months between product versions.
For $20/month, I would get the latest versions of that software. I just cannot see why Adobe isn’t ala carting their software. Yeah, $50/mo is fantastic IF you need the Master Collection, but many of us don’t need/want all that.
So the comment I have is: should I start-up then discontinue my subscription do the apps stay on my system in that current version or do the apps go the way of the subscription??
if I were to discontinue it would be after a year or so…
I’m pretty sure you can no longer use the apps if you don’t have an active subscription.
All of the Creative Cloud software has to access the internet at least once a month to validate your license. Once you cancel your subscription the software will no longer work.
Very true!
So… I’m an up-and-coming graphic designer. I currently use PhotoDraw (an extremely old designing software), but want to get something new and inventive – without having that HUGE price to go along with it. I’m still learning all the ins-and-outs of design, but want to know, in your opinion, if this would be something good for someone like me who is just starting out? For just $50/month you can have access to all the Adobe software (listed above)? Seems like a stellar deal to me – if I’m understanding correctly!
Yes Brittany, it is a pretty stellar deal, especially if you don’t have the stack of cash to drop all at once like you used to have to. If you’re going to be doing graphic design you’ll need to be using Photoshop & Illustrator so I’d say go for it. Good luck.
If you want to combine PDFs, you could’ve just opened Apple’s Preview.app which comes free with your Mac. Between that and it’s editing/form-filling/signature features, I never, ever open Acrobat anymore. Good riddance.
Not a criticism, just a word of advice. :)
Good tip, thanks!
Same here. been using preview for close to 3 years now. Have it open automatically out of indesign. Indesign handles all of your settings on export anyways.
I just found out that Adobe will not alow me to upgrade my CS4 suite that I have 2500 tied into and is only two versions back, my thoughts are that anything good does not need. To forced upon the costomer. In the past you could upgrade anytime. Adobe has become a bully it has grown to behemoth status and as more get on the cloud it will raise its price 70 80 or more per month. My upgrade would have been 400 bucks but the cloud would cost me 600 a year and after a year I don’t own anything so then your stuck paying another overpriced monthly fee. I also ask how much of that software on the list do you know how to use? Not much I bet.
If you’re making a living being a graphic designer or doing photography / design work then it’s definitely worth it but if not, then I can undersand how it might not make sense to invest in a monthly payment like that.
I think Adobe’s replacing the Creative Suite with the Creative Cloud makes a lot of sense on some fronts and is going to cause trouble on another. For programming updates, distribution, and immediate tools updates, the change is a real winner. As a business tactic, however, I have my doubts: the current pricing scheme is going to kill their market. I do hope they survive this, but I think they may have a disastrous “new coke” here, just based on the current pricing plan.
When you make a realistic calculation this Creative Cloud turns out to be 3 times more expensive.
When you calculate that most people started out with the “Student Version” of a “Suite” and then upgraded to a pro version to continue upgrading after every 2 versions this “Creative Cloud” is a no good deal at all.
Normally we skipped 2 “Suite” versions, because of the lack of any important updates in the “Master Suite”.
You are forced to pay for a minimum of 1 year. In Europe € 61.49 a month.
I wonder what will force Adobe now to come up with continuous up to date features, because when I look at the past upgrades from CS3 till now it is pathetic to see that hardly any changes are made.
Dream Weaver is a outdated sluggish program that make people working with now a day’s frameworks like Zurb Foundation 4, Bootstrap and many others run to modern HTML editors that cost from nothing to $ 35 .
Not much changes in all the other programs except for Aftereffects and Premiere-Pro.
There is a huge crisis going on in Europe and small businesses have to cut on monthly costs.
We are looking for alternatives now!
I’m a loyal NAPP member and Photoshop user, but I will not go with the Creative Cloud! Too expensive, and Adobe needs to realize there users that just can’t afford to do what they are suggesting! I upgrade each release, but the Creative Cloud takes that option away from me and forces me to upgrade, at a much higher expense! RIP, Adobe!
I agree on the price being about $20 too high on both accounts. But since they have pretty much dominated the market currently and continue to improve on their full line of products/apps, I cannot see where else you could turn to that would make much sense? Just in the amount of time saved for a designer each month is worth $50/month with all the new features of the cloud. Most designers work on 2-3 different computers each day (office, home, laptop) so this is well worth it for them. Adobe just better keep updating with more time saving features with all the extra dough coming in. If I need more than 2gb, I will just sync up my dropbox.
sorry 20gb***
Do you know that if you work on “2-3 different computers each day” the creative cloud license need you to have 2-3 licenses OR constantly call their customers call center to unlock your now-locked software because you surpassed the max amount of “reinstallations” you have?
They want to control how and where you use your software. You have 2 computers? They would like you to buy 2 licenses, even if you are only one user.
Also, the files will be compatible only with cloud in the long run, so when you stop paying it, you loose ALL your files utility.
If you think it’s a nice idea, think twice.
All those things I wrote, are official answers on the adobe forums, you can go there and see how much people are hungry for this idea.
I only use Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator (and Acrobat Pro). I have too much business to handle without having to deal with web or video production or any of their other software. Just don’t need it. But they don’t offer a lesser option it seems. What the heck’s up with THAT!?
I’m guessing I’ll be using my boxed software until ….. well, until Adobe comes out with a better plan or a new software company is born.
So that’s 600.00 per year for software, 350.00 per year for my accounting system, 500.00 per year for my stock photo subscription. . . extortion is priceless…
And Quark users are laughing at us all.
This is definitely a bold move on Adobe’s part. I firmly believe the decision to move to subscription based model is rooted in a little arrogance and a desire to stabilize and better predict revenue increase.
There seems to be a pattern of objections from both professionals and non-professionals.
General consensus from Pros: I make money using these apps so why not?
General consensus from Non-Pros: Too much money!
Legacy compatibility is a huge area of concern for non-pros who are in the middle-ground better being a professional in abilities but not in usage.
It will be interested to see of Adobe tweaks these services in the 1st 2 years.
Once we hated Quark for their arrogance, no competition anywhere. So we ran into adobe's open arms when there was an alternative to Quark. For the price of a Quark license yout got InDesign + Ps + AI + Acrobat! At first they laughed at InDesign–Big fault. And then? Quark was too stupid to buy freehand and/or CorelPanter to build a suite of their own.And what do we have now? Adobe will increase the price, just a little bit at a time, but constantly–and we will pay because we have no alternative. We were digging our own grave.Same sh*t, different smell. History will teach us nothing, becaus all we do we do for money.
Users have many concerns about this dramatic shift …. Adobe is behaving like a monopoly and consumers should be very wary about this move….this video really highlights some of the issues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-hYc_SEDqw