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Adobe Creative Cloud Upgrade – Is it Worth It?

Adobe Creative Cloud
8.0
9
Performance
6
Price
9
Ease of Use

Pros

You get ALL the major software Adobe makes including Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, After Effects CS6, etc. You also always get the newest versions.

Cons

Only con is the monthly cost, but it's reasonable.

Overall

A good deal for a lot of cutting edge toys.

November 28thmy 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 TechnicaKen RockwellLester 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.

Go To Adobe Creative Cloud »

Added: Check out this really good Q&A by Scott Kelby where he explains a lot of the details of the subscription, debunks a lot of misinformation that’s being thrown around, and gives some really good advice, especially for photographers.

Posted 9 years ago on 28 November 2015


About Parker

Parker Benjamin is the owner of DMAD and has been writing for the web for over 10 years. He is passionate about design, Wordpress, travel, language learning, fine dining, and online marketing. Note: Some links on this site are monetized by affiliate programs - see disclosure for more details.


77 thoughts on “Adobe Creative Cloud Upgrade – Is it Worth It?

    • I have it and I am not a fan. When I bring up Photoshop CC often my plug ins disappear and I can not get any answers from Adobe. I keep getting an endless loop of Forums that do not answer my questions. They only time you can reach a person or get an answer is if you want to change your credit card! Would not recommend for that reason. No customer support what so ever.

      • Chuck says:

        You wrote the exact review I would have. Same experience, but more complaints since they dropped phonegap support from DW and single tablet apps from indesign.

  1. j says:

    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.

    • Art S says:

      You can buy Adobe CC and pay a one time low flat price without paying the monthly Subscription fee and it will contuine working without stopping. IT IS AVAILABLE ONLY BY CALLING (305) 761-7617. The company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau since 2001 so it is genuine Adobe Software.

  2. J. Blake says:

    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).

        • Jeff Maloney says:

          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.

    • therak says:

      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…

  3. Robert Ricketts says:

    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

  4. alix says:

    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.

  5. Aaron says:

    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.

  6. Ben Mesa says:

    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??

  7. Brittany says:

    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.

  8. fastasleep says:

    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. :)

  9. Andrew says:

    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.

      • William says:

        Max you have made the point several times that it is worth it if you are making a living form the software then the price is fine and that’s great for people already using Adobe products.

        I’m in South Africa so maybe this is not relevant, but $49 p/month is just under R 500/month. As a student this is about 10% of the money that I have to spend per month. Or 20% of my rent. Now I am not an average person in South Africa or the US, but I am a student.

        I would like to think most people learn to use this kind of software in high school or college. How am I supposed to justify paying 10% of my income on a product that I can not use yet? (This is money that I need for other expenses like food.)

        While the online help and extra products are great I fail to see any rational person paying for a product they don’t know how to use and will never own (that is how this works right, you pay to use it every month and don’t own the software?).

        How have we been tricked into thinking this is a good offer? How was this price decided on?

        I really don’t know why this strategy has been adopted. Basically it is not affordable for students even with student discounts. At least not to South Africans I can’t speak for anybody else.

        The strategy adopted by Autodesk for many of its products is more appealing, free student licences that allow us to learn to use the products so that when we graduate we buy the same software for your companies. Best way to get people hooked on your product is to give it away till they become dependent and are willing and able to pay more.

        I think the current price of adobe products is too high for new users and the amount of new users in the middle to lower income markets is likely to decrease. In 5 to 10 years time this will be felt as the new users find alternative more affordable options and never learn to use adobe.

        • steve says:

          Hi William,

          There are student subscriptions for a lot less than the $50/mth spoken about in this thread. Last time i checked, here in Australia it is $14.99/mth.

          AND

          you can try out the cloud subscription for free too. I recommend trying it out before you subscribe :)

  10. W. J. Buchholz says:

    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.

  11. David A says:

    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!

    • William says:

      only saw this after my first comment.

      I can say this is happening in South Africa among students and possibly in business (I am a student so can only talk for students).

      So far people are using CorelDraw and Gimp (I don’t know student who has bought something like CS6 MS, some people have outdated versions of Photoshop or Illustrator that they bought on special, probably sat in the shop for some time).

  12. David David says:

    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!

    • brad says:

      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.

      • Giorgio says:

        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.

    • mary says:

      I agree. I am only a hobbyist. I have used and upgraded Adobe products since 1999. But this cost is outside my budget. Sadly, when my CS6 gets too old to function well on my computer I will have to look elsewhere for products to purchase for use in graphic design. Adobe needs to accommodate all of its users, not just the professional ones. There should be an option other than Creative Cloud.

  13. ty says:

    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.

  14. Andre Gant says:

    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.

  15. hans albers says:

    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.

  16. Rick says:

    Cloud ain’t going to ever happen on my computer. Adobe, you made great products and I’ve always paid for the up-grades over the years. Sad, that Cloud is the direction you have created and decided to go with. I feel like I’ve hit a wall and need to start over OR just give up and move on to something other that commercial photography and design work.
    Bye Adobe… It used to be a pleasure…

  17. g says:

    Yes, but those of us who have a blog/website – we have to pay monthly or an annual usage for that. We also have to pay monthly for our internet and we are charged regardless if we are online for ten minutes a month or 50 hours. So why do people bark at Creative Suite? I can now afford all the other sweets in the candy store and have the latest versions. I have Ps CS3 so I’m way behind and can’t even download stuff like Exposure 5. It was time for an upgrade and CC is a good deal, for now.

  18. Rodney says:

    I think this is a good thing. I’m hoping that this is the final nail in Adobe’s coffin. We all deserve better, folks. They’ve continually obliterated very promising small companies with better software (Macromedia for instance) every time that those companies became a threat. The end result for us users was that we were stuck with Adobe products. Hopefully now there are enough folks pissed off that choose vote with their dollars. Buy software from other companies folks. Software will get better in a hurry if there’s a market, and honestly Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign aren’t that great. I’m looking forward to the changes that are bound to come.

  19. This is a decision that I look at when deciding whether to buy or lease a car. Leasing a car, IMO, is a pretty stupid decision for many reasons and a good one for very few. Over the course of the lease you actually pay more than if you were to have purchased the car, plus it encourages over consumption and living beyond one’s means. Just like paying $50/mo for all the applications SEEMS like a good deal, very few will actually gain that value. But the price tag of $50 is much more appealing than say slapping down $1300 for the design standard package. Which at $50/mo you break even in 2 years. for those that upgrade every 2+ years they are loosing. Everyone else is in the same boat overall.

    For Adobe this is a good financial decision and is probably aimed at reducing piracy and increasing total revenue. There are great cloud alternatives to file sharing so essentially you are really paying for the privileged of using their products on a monthly basis.

    I do think this will alienate some of their customers and open the door to some of their competitors. I for one will try some of the alternatives and if it seems like it will take longer for me to learn their product then I will be stuck with Adobe.

  20. Dave Kroha says:

    I find it very fascinating that no one in this chain has mentioned much about Abobe Muse as adding any value. I am a visually-oriented creative Pro that likens coding to waterboarding (except at least you get to lay down and close your eyes while during waterboarding). Over the past 15 years, I have researched and then hired whatever technology-savvy resource seemed to offer the best fit for my clients.

    Over the years, I have been promoting/hiring Open Source Gurus to create us sites in WordPress, MODX, etc. But I have found that SITE modifications AND learning to use the CMS is NOT as easy as promoted.

    I am wondering if anyone else has considered or used MUSE to regain the much dreamed about control of website development. Does this thing work? Does it have a future? Once created, can sites be easily modified?

    I realize this chain was dealing with the issue of whether or not Adobe CC is worth it – but I really think that the addition of MUSE and the online storage (though small) offers an added value that – coupled with the fact that your software will be always current – makes it a kind of no brainer. Also – a year ago, my office was broken into, and we were wiped out – desktop iMacs, laptops, back-ups, and even our server all gone, We rebuilt slowly, but some of the most frustrating part (aside from $$$ in lost projects – no off-site at the time) was reloading software. I think having this service would eliminate a LOT of the risk associated with such loss.

  21. Robin OC says:

    Apparently Adobe has NEVER asked a career designer how we support our clients and make a living. The cloud is not only a not-secure environment, but you can also ask how reliable internet connection is. Adobe is taking lessons from other failed, gone-public companies and using strategies of the same government that raises your taxes without representation.

  22. Jerad W. says:

    I’ve never used any of these products but I decided at $50/mo it was worth checking out. I don’t really need the software but maybe I will discover something new and a talent I never knew I had. You don’t know until you try!

    Cheers
    J

  23. Vince Deporter says:

    I’m a pro illustrator, so the $50 is a reasonable price for me, although it’s definitely a hike in my budget, as I am not a rockstar artist. But really, it’s reasonable.

    So I’m considering making the jump, knowing full well this is a “death do us part” deal.

    My ONLY question at this point:
    Is it true that opening and closing the software sluggish and slow — and does that follow in the speed of filtering etc…?

    Thank you for considering my concern…

      • Vince Deporter says:

        Thank you Max. It should be good then, since I have a spanking new Mac Mini. On my older Macbook, nothing is quick… :D

        I draw comics, and I also do a lot of photography, and the new features are awesome.

        So thanks again! :)

  24. Brad says:

    I spoke with Adobe today and decided to sign up for the Cloud. The rep I spoke to made it very clear to me that in a few years there will be no other options than the CC.

    • Karen says:

      I’ve also decided to subscribe. As a freelance graphic designer, I use InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat every single day, and coming up with a huge chunk of change to upgrade is not always feasible. I think the subscription price is reasonable, and I’m excited to try Muse. I’ve seen a few sites made with it and they look/operate great. There are also other programs included in the subscription that I’ve never used because of the price issue, but now I’ll have my chance.

    • RAY says:

      @Karen, Does the fact that is illegal make any difference to you? The “2-seats” are restricted to the same user on different computers. Besides, if you are a professional, the student discount does not apply.

  25. chad says:

    Creative cloud is a rip off and I can’t wait until a viable alternative shows up. On a positive note since dropping dreamweaver my hand coding has improved tremendously.
    I hope Adobe goes the way of Quark.

  26. Donald says:

    My issue is this:
    I purchased CS 5.5 for ~1500, and planned on upgrading to CS6 for 300. Assuming it would be two years before CS7, I would then spend another ~300.
    So, that’s 2100 for 4-5 years of use. Hefty, but in my mind VERY worth it for the power that comes with Adobe’s software.

    Now, let’s imagine I instead purchased the CC. I use Media encoder, Premire Pro, Encore and After Effects regularly, and Illustrator and Photoshop occasionaly. so, I obviously need the full Prod suite.
    At 50 per month, that means I’m spending 600 each year. That same four years? 2400. Then 3000, 3600, 4200, etc.

    Now, I already paid 1500. They want to offer CC to me for a discounted price of 30 per month. Which is 360, 60 dollars more than upgrading to CS6.

    I feel screwed. I have been preaching Adobe’s wonders for the last several years, but I feel empty inside at hearing this news. I am not happy or excited about CC.

  27. peripatitis@yahoo.com says:

    This feels like paying rent, or getting a cut from every pro’s action.
    It doesn’t make very much sense imho, the whole cloud idea.
    The only way for this to work would be with a huge reduction price
    (something like 5$ per month)

    I much prefer what apple did with logic, drastically reduce the price and
    deny any further update.
    Thus you decide to buy the new version if you need the new features, if you don’t
    you can work with what you already have.

  28. kenKysir says:

    Loved Adobe but its time to move elsewhere.

    This pricing, this model reminds me of the model print journalism has used. Let them use it cheap. Get them hooked. Make sure they have created tons of material in their format and over time you gradually increase price and reduce backward compatibility. As Rod Serling said in one of his Twilight zone episode about the aliens who come to earth to “serve man” Recall his admonition….its a cook book. Don’t get on this ship.

  29. Randy says:

    I think Adobe is shooting itself in the foot long term. I pray a good alternative will come along and give Adobe a run for it’s money or at least claim alot of the “ma and pa” users it will lose along the way. Greed is a bitch

  30. Karin Heckl says:

    I stumbled across this article while researching how in the heck fonts in CC work? I am a designer and have used the Creative Suite for years. I have several thousand fonts installed on my computer. When I use CC to open a document created in CS6, all of my fonts are missing and when I look in the drop down font list, there are only about 60 fonts there. I have nearly two thousand fonts installed on my computer. Am I missing something or does CC render your installed fonts unusable?

  31. Tevin H says:

    If you are a person who dabbles into more than just the Photoshop department and illustrator, then the switch is definetely NOT worth it and no doubt you got it legally because you will be using it for years on end thus the updates are worth the cost. BUT within 2 years you already went above cap on price compared to previous version cs6. And more than likely only serious desingers will buy. Most others who dabble for fun will get it for free. So unless you truly make a living off of this, if you wanna be legit, best thing to do is to find a facility that allows you free access to Adobe products (if you are in NY like me, that is far easier done than said).

  32. britta says:

    Getting Creative Cloud is like signing up for an exorbitant multi-year cell phone contract. Once they get you, they won’t let you go, even if you are not getting the value they promised. After being a subscriber for 2 years, a bug cropped up and one of CC’s subroutines started using up 80% of my CPU, crippling my machine. I didn’t notice it at first, but soon the CC apps would not load, so I could not use them. I called support and or started chats repeatedly over the course of three months, during which time I uninstalled and reinstalled the main package multiple times. Each support call I had to wait >5 minutes on hold to get someone and then they would just schedule to call me back. But they never called back at the time stated, calling instead at odd hours when I could not answer. Even the chats would often tell me that i had to hold for an operator. When the operator came on there was no sound so if I was in another browser tab, they would just say “oh well, sorry we could not help you because you are not there” and hang up the chat after like 1 minute. So anyway, I paid $50/mo for several months while getting negative value from the app. Finally, when a tech support rep called me back an hour after the schedule time he walked me through a very odd set of steps deep in the Adobe files that corrected the issue. He said he did not know why the bug happened. I asked for money back for the months that I had had my support ticket open. They offered me only two months back out of four that I had paid for service but not been able to use it and would not compromise when I asked for at least 3. I finally demanded to be released from my contract. I will not do any further business with Adobe a company that knows it can charge you even when they are not providing value. Their customer support is horrible and entirely outsourced overseas. The entire experience makes me just not want to sign up for any more monthly Saas services, knowing that this company is providing leadership for a generation of Saas businesses that are going to learn from them to gouge customers no matter what.

  33. Ray says:

    I do not feel CC is worth the cost because I find Adobe Illustrator CC/2014 is full of bugs and I am constantly falling back on CS5 to get my work done. I cannot speak for other programs in the suite, but since AI is my primary tool, I find the monthly charge for faulty software unacceptable.

  34. Christine Ramey says:

    I do not feel that it is worth the money. It’s a waste of time. If they can’t make the system easier to use, they will never get my money again. I’m a photographer, and I see everyone using it, and thought I’d try it. Only to find out that I signed up for a year contract on it, and now that I need out, they are socking me with a $40 fee. I don’t think that is fair. I think if you want to cancel you should be able to cancel. I find picmonkey to do a good job with my editing needs. I’m not a professional photographer, but I would not trust this system on your computer. It slows things down, and it is expensive. I don’t like it one bit, and now, I have to change my debit card to get out of the system. That stinks. Do not do it.

  35. It’s an absolute nightmare to cancel – the website just pops up more windows – looping you back to the original window. You have to Google to find a phone number to cancel. 1-800-833-6687
    I can’t recommend them because of this shoddy business practice/customer service.

  36. Jana Soiseth says:

    Adobe sucks! Don’t do it! If you don’t have to. Try staying on Adobe 6 as long as you can. I own a small agency and we went to try to cancel to seats, because we weren’t using them and we were paying $300/mth. They wouldn’t allow us to cancel without paying for 50% of the rest of this year for those unused seats. That was a huge chunk of money for our small agency. So, we asked them to take us off the auto renewal, so we could change our plan. They wouldn’t do that either. We have to put it in our calendar to alert us when we can cancel our plan. It is such a hassle. This is our third year on it and we’ve had nothing but problems.

  37. Corey Mohr says:

    I purchased a personal account for Creative Cloud over a year ago. The software works well, as anyone who uses it knows, but the company itself is terrible to deal with. For a year I used the personal account for my own projects, but eventually I started using it more and more for work. I convinced my employer that we needed to update the Adobe software we had a work, and so my employer bought a team Creative Cloud membership – and so, I no longer needed my personal Creative Cloud account. I called Adobe in June of 2015 to cancel the membership and I explained the above to the representative. The rep said, how about we just suspend your account for the time being, that way, if you want to have a personal account again, you’ll be locked in at the low price you’re currently paying, which was roughly 29 bucks a month. I said sure, sounded fine to do to me. What I was not told is that what the representative was actually proposing was that she give me credits for two free months of Creative Cloud and that there was a negative option auto-renewal (negative option means you don’t tell them you want to renew, they just automatically “renew” you). Renew is in quotes for me because prior to this I was on a personal, month to month account paying just $29 a month. Well, the auto-renewal locked me into a 1 year membership at 54 bucks a month, WITH a termination fee if I wanted to end the contract I never agreed to enter into. I noticed this on my bank statement after 3 months of charges from them. When I called to clear it up, they essentially said well that’s just too bad. They then “offered” me to waive my cancellation fee (mind you, I didn’t sign up for a 1 year contract at any point), and told me there was absolutely no way they’d give me back the money over the last three months. When I explained that my employer was now paying for my account plus 4 others at work based on me being a brand ambassador for Creative Cloud, they still didn’t care. When I explained to them that it would make no sense for me to agree to pay for a personal account when I already have an account through work, and that they could see I haven’t logged into the personal account since I called to cancel back in June of 2015, they still didn’t care. It’s not their policy to give refunds and that’s that.

    What a horrible way to do business, and what a horrible way to treat a loyal customer who was promoting your brand. I’m now trying to inform people in as many places as possible that while the software is good, their business practices are not. Beware, monitor your statements, know they there is a negative option for contract renewal, and they will not notify you of fee increases, you’ll just have to notice those on your own.

  38. Jo says:

    Everyone complains about the subscription – but for most users, the one time outlay is really not doable. If you’re running a business and producing work in any one of the Adobe programs, then the subscription is really just one of your running, or operational costs. You pay for internet every month, telephone – whatever, so paying this subscription just forms part of your cost of doing business. Subscription based software is how things are going. Coming from South Africa with a frightfully low Rand of late, the near R900 monthly fee does make me want to hurl. But, I do business with this every month, so that business has to pay for this subscription. The apps are great and they work well. When I’ve had tech issues, the Adobe team has sorted them out. Its easier to be legal and know that you have access to the entire suite of apps / programs, than to hassle with outdated technology.

  39. RJ Riesterer says:

    I’m concerned about buying into the Adobe Cloud for the following concerns:
    – I find their customer support to be VERY poor – any tech problems and you are pretty much on your own which can jeopardize client deadline commitments until you surmount technical road blocks
    – The cloud assumes an excellent 24/7 internet connection, the quality of which which varies wildly in the U.S. (not to mention if you travel overseas for a foreign client and cannot get a good connection – – so forget working while traveling)
    – They’ve shown with Dreamweaver that they will unceremoniously drop functionality. So with a monthly subscription, previous work can quickly become deadwood because of Adobe deprecating functionality and silently slipping such ‘upgrades’ into their monthly upgrades via their subscription service.
    – Until I am assured these are meritless concerns, I hesitate to even consider CC upgrades – I’ll stay with my CS6 for now.

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