The subscription model is an even better deal for students at $30/mo! Imagine taking an elective digital art class: you can rent the software for a couple of months and still afford rent! Even the discounted purchase prices for the student editions are crazy expensive for people that presumably don't have jobs.
I can imagine a scenario where people may want to buy the box, though. If you only need one of the programs, it makes sense to outright buy it, as the cost of renting the whole suite catches up to the single item relatively quickly.
I know @primesuspect's photo workflow weapon of choice is DXO, but Adobe Lightroom 4 is also an excellent resource. @PurpleMonkeyGirl uses it in her side work as a photographer, as do her friends who are full-time photographers. I've used it a bit on a basic level to do white balance and a few other tricks to cover up my inability to understand my wife's camera settings.
I'm pretty disappointed by the lack of Mercury support on AMD GPUs, but I realize OpenCL programming is quite complex, and converting any code from one language to another is a time consuming task...especially when you have to test it extensively. I'm looking forward to the day it's available for all GPUs.
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
Good write up and overall coverage of Adobe's CS6, Brian.
Adobe is certainly making quite the advancement with their products and it's awesome to see, but the rate at which they're rolling them out and the prices they charge for the suites (even the "upgrades) is damned frustrating. It's only been a little over a year since CS5.5 came out and a couple more prior since 4. Are there really HUGE differences between the two mentioned? No, not really (minor "enhancements"). The LEAST they could have done was held off on releasing 5.5 and just roll out THIS package as 5. I like what they're doing and where they're going, but ef paying for another suite when the ones I bought (4 and 5.5) are doing fine and a year from now 6.5 or 7 will be out with one or two "new and enhanced" features for a full CS price. No thanks.
Biggest beef with Adobe is that their files aren't inherently backwards compatible. I was on CS4 and another co-worker was on CS5, and another decided to be an hero and run 5.5. When the guy running 5.5 saved things, it meant nobody else in the office could open the documents. I raged. I'm sure there are ways to make things compatible, but I wish things "just worked" without the added effort.
Because of the crappy above situation, we decided to do CS6 as a service here at my office. Best thing was, we adopted the service and installed CS6 on our Macs and then when we switched to all having PCs, we didn't have to buy new licenses... we just transferred the subs to our new computers. Easy peasy.
For my business, it makes sense to subscribe to this. We get what we need for people who need it, and when we scale back its usage, we haven't invested thousands of dollars in licenses that just sit idle on a hard drive.
I have a sad. While CS6 subscription could save me money, $50/month is too much when I'd only use one or two parts of it infrequently. Doubly saddening, no such model for Acrobat, which I use extensively. And costs about $500 per system and another $150-200 per upgrade.
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BlackHawkBible music connoisseurThere's no place like 127.0.0.1Icrontian
Great article but I would've liked something on subscription model's effect on piracy.
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
Well, Prime mentioned it calls home every 30 days (to a server Adobe has, logically)-- thus license is verified by Adobe monthly with the subscription plan.
I honestly expect that piracy of Adobe's Creative Suite products will continue unabated unless they start releasing stripped down consumer versions for everything like they've done with a few (ex. Premiere Elements)
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
Well, something to think about.... They are now requiring registration to get a product to run more than 30 days as a Trial version. The registration requires an Adobe ID. not only are they doing that, but I can in my adobe ID get the license numbers for my owned products should I lose my media and license sticker-- so they are tying each license code to a specific ID made on thier site, with name and address and phone number. Further the installer raised cain when I reinstalled Dreamweaver on a same box-same owner situation after tech support could not help me. The installer warned me about apparent duplicate install.
So they are cracking down on piracy. If the server checking the install for uniqueness thinks that the software is being pirated, it can tell the software to disable updating also.
I expect more and more of this and more and more automatic cross-checking as the web installs become more common.
The creative suite already phones home. The subscription model will not change the ease with which that protection is eliminated. I think it will entice some pirated users, and drive the users who are sensitive to "renting" their software to piracy. Net zero.
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RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
I have a sad. While CS6 subscription could save me money, $50/month is too much when I'd only use one or two parts of it infrequently. Doubly saddening, no such model for Acrobat, which I use extensively. And costs about $500 per system and another $150-200 per upgrade.
I'm in the same boat. I only need a few of the products. while I do see the value of the Cloud option, with the current savings and expenditures I have to make, I would only be able to keep it up (heh) every few months. So for the foreseeable future, Going with a one time purchase is ideal for me.
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
@RahnalH102 -- I do not know if you are a student still, but if so the Creative Cloud for students is $19.95 a month.
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JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
My two cents: Student pricing, accessing files whenever needed (saved me tons of times) and access to the entire suite (dabbling in a few programs where PS and AI are my main go tos)...totally worth it imo. I was all "eh, I don't need the sub thing, it's $20/mon for no reason, etc..." but after shelling out a couple hundred bucks over the course of a couple years for onsies twosies (and leaving a couple MMOs because lack of time to play), I'm really glad I went this route. $20/mon...yeah, pack a couple lunches during the week and I'm breakin even.
Comments
I can imagine a scenario where people may want to buy the box, though. If you only need one of the programs, it makes sense to outright buy it, as the cost of renting the whole suite catches up to the single item relatively quickly.
I'm pretty disappointed by the lack of Mercury support on AMD GPUs, but I realize OpenCL programming is quite complex, and converting any code from one language to another is a time consuming task...especially when you have to test it extensively. I'm looking forward to the day it's available for all GPUs.
Adobe is certainly making quite the advancement with their products and it's awesome to see, but the rate at which they're rolling them out and the prices they charge for the suites (even the "upgrades) is damned frustrating. It's only been a little over a year since CS5.5 came out and a couple more prior since 4. Are there really HUGE differences between the two mentioned? No, not really (minor "enhancements"). The LEAST they could have done was held off on releasing 5.5 and just roll out THIS package as 5. I like what they're doing and where they're going, but ef paying for another suite when the ones I bought (4 and 5.5) are doing fine and a year from now 6.5 or 7 will be out with one or two "new and enhanced" features for a full CS price. No thanks.
Because of the crappy above situation, we decided to do CS6 as a service here at my office. Best thing was, we adopted the service and installed CS6 on our Macs and then when we switched to all having PCs, we didn't have to buy new licenses... we just transferred the subs to our new computers. Easy peasy.
For my business, it makes sense to subscribe to this. We get what we need for people who need it, and when we scale back its usage, we haven't invested thousands of dollars in licenses that just sit idle on a hard drive.
Is that WuGgaRoO and Jimmy?
So they are cracking down on piracy. If the server checking the install for uniqueness thinks that the software is being pirated, it can tell the software to disable updating also.
I expect more and more of this and more and more automatic cross-checking as the web installs become more common.
Student pricing, accessing files whenever needed (saved me tons of times) and access to the entire suite (dabbling in a few programs where PS and AI are my main go tos)...totally worth it imo. I was all "eh, I don't need the sub thing, it's $20/mon for no reason, etc..." but after shelling out a couple hundred bucks over the course of a couple years for onsies twosies (and leaving a couple MMOs because lack of time to play), I'm really glad I went this route. $20/mon...yeah, pack a couple lunches during the week and I'm breakin even.