I'm just wondering why a lot of people seem to be so hateful towards Adobe Photoshop CC. I went to amazon and thought about purchasing it via their monthly subscription and the reviews are horrible, now there aren't very many reviews but the ones that are there are very negative towards CC. Any thoughts?
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Adobe Photoshop CC
- Thread starter pilotkid
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People got very upset that they had to start paying monthly rather than one time license fees. The plan originally forced you to either have one application or everything. Many users didn't upgrade every time which meant that they could manage when they paid. Others were using (illegal) hacked versions which CC very much clamps down on. The price particularly for the Photography programme is very good now but people still worry that in a few years Adobe might push up the price. In reality as long as you keep your raw files and save to file types that are universal (such as tiff) then you would be able to leave Adobe's products whenever you wanted.
Beyond the politics Photoshop is the most powerful and comprehensive image editing application available but it isn't particularly user friendly and has a steep learning curve.
Beyond the politics Photoshop is the most powerful and comprehensive image editing application available but it isn't particularly user friendly and has a steep learning curve.
Hardly. After reading this, I hopped on Piratebay and did a search for Photoshop CC. Sure enough, it's cracked to hell and back. That, at least, hasn't changed at all since the big subscription move.
Well I see Adobe profits have certainly changed. Gone right up.
Personally I don't like paying for anything in instalments if I can help it.
And yes nobody knows what Adobe will do with the pricing in the future. But I bet they won't go down!
Like I say every time the subscription issue comes up, I can see it's advantages, but I'm still not 100% sold on it. That said, I signed up for the $10 a month PS/Lightroom bundle yesterday just to say I gave it a fair shake. The way I see it, I'm paying $120 for a $100 piece of software, and a year long upgrade to my current version of Photoshop, which would've cost me about $200ish otherwise (though that's a one time charge). If I end up not liking it, I haven't lost that much money, no more than my Hulu subscription I just cancelled.
...and I guarantee I'll use PS a helluva lot more than I watched Hulu.
Yeah, that is the one biggest problem I have with it, especially since there isn't anything else out there that can really compete on even ground with the creative suite. It really is Adobe's market, unfortunately. And without competition, they can do whatever they want.
I really enjoy all of the Creative Cloud apps so far, they have some nice updated features even compared to CS6. I was on the fence for a good couple of months while I had access to my schools CS5 Masters collection, but finally gave in knowing that as a Student I pay 20$ a month for the whole suite which isn't bad at all.
As it's been said already, I think the biggest thing people are complaining about is that CC is subscription based. What percentage of people who have an Adobe program installed on their computer have actually bought it?
As it's been said already, I think the biggest thing people are complaining about is that CC is subscription based. What percentage of people who have an Adobe program installed on their computer have actually bought it?
I own CS6 Photoshop along with an older version of Lightroom. I don't use the latter anymore but if I wanted to, I can. This cannot be said of CC. If you stop paying, you stop access to the application. I use CS6 Photoshop mostly for photo restoration work (along with some plug ins). I'll continue using it because it does exactly what I need it to do and though I'll miss out on upgrades (because Adobe is gently* pushing us into the CC model), I can continue being productive. I honestly hope that a true competitor for Photoshop comes out that costs under 300 dollars and is "mine to keep" so I can get out of the Adobe near monopoly.
After reading your guys comments I decided to give the $9.99 bundle of PS CC and Lightroom a chance, from Adobe's website. Amazon wanted $19.99 a month just for PS CC. I have 30 days to cancel it for a full refund and I have to pay 50% of the remaining years cost if I cancel early after the 30 day full refund policy. I figure I have nothing to loose. Its a cheap(or at least I think so) way to expand and learn photoshop(I have very little experience with it). I realized what you guys said, most of the negative comments about PS CC are about the new subscription and not physically owning it, not the actual software itself. I'm still interested in hearing more comments about it though. Thanks for all your help, much appreciated!
If anything Adobe have made it easier with CC as once its cracked thats it, no need to find another crack when a new version comes out.
The biggest mistake Adobe ever made was letting anyone have access to a trial of their $1,000+ software.
Photoshop CC is great. Wonderfully fast.
Creative Cloud on the other hand forces one to pay a LOT more for Photoshop. At $50 a month, that's already $600/year. By the time the next version of Photoshop comes out, you would have spent $1200, whereas the previous single license would have cost ~$800 for an upgrade from the previous version.
Creative Cloud is only cheaper than the old pricing model if you are buying the suite for the first time. Adobe took advantage of this; it knew most people pirated the Creative Suite, so it made the suite affordable for people buying it legally for the first time, but as a consequence it forces previous customers to pay out their nose for new software.
Creative Cloud on the other hand forces one to pay a LOT more for Photoshop. At $50 a month, that's already $600/year. By the time the next version of Photoshop comes out, you would have spent $1200, whereas the previous single license would have cost ~$800 for an upgrade from the previous version.
Creative Cloud is only cheaper than the old pricing model if you are buying the suite for the first time. Adobe took advantage of this; it knew most people pirated the Creative Suite, so it made the suite affordable for people buying it legally for the first time, but as a consequence it forces previous customers to pay out their nose for new software.
Yep, but that's the full 'CC' price rather than Photoshop itself.
(Out of interest, is the discounted Photoshop/Lightroom bundle still available in the USA? It's still £8.78 pcm in the UK, 'for a limited time only')
CC is a horrible, horrible model. I actually bought CS5.5 Design Premium when I was feeling flush a few years ago, and I'm very glad I did. What does Adobe expect someone who publishes (say) a monthly non-commercial newsletter to do? Fork out $50 a month for a day's worth of InDesign / Photoshop / Illustrator? What about the web-curious person who'd like to investigate Dreamweaver, but doesn't have enough free time time to cram that investigation into a 30 day trial period? It's madness.
Further madness: an Acrobat licence is currently $299; Acrobat Pro is $449.
I appreciate how we both hate CC, but the full CC suite price is but one of many examples that I can give.
The full CC program, $50/month, gives access to pretty much the entire suite. It is as close the program gets to the previous "Master Collection." For two years of usage you pay $1200; note this is the same price it took for one to upgrade from the CS3 MC to CS5, and more expensive than the CS4-5 upgrade.
Looking at other previous bundles that Adobe used to offer (Design & Web Premium/Standard, etc.), we see that the upgrade cost from the previous version is $600, give or take $100. With the new CC program Adobe no longer offers any bundle similar to these. As a result anyone using these bundles is forced to go with the full CC plan of $1200/two years.
Not expensive enough? Let's consider single-app costs. One must pay $20/month for Photoshop CC under the single-app CC plan. This stacks up to $480/two years. Compare that to the upgrade prices from the past, which used to be only $200 for a single license upgrade. For people who have been using the Creative Suite, it's quite clear that it more than doubles the cost of legally owning Adobe software...
Source: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/adobecs5pricing_4-12-2010.pdf
Yep, reasonably priced 'Design Standard' and 'Web Standard' packages would do much to dampen the hostility. As would shorter term rentals: pay an annual $25 subscription to join The CC Club and be able to rent (say) Design Standard for $2 an hour / $5 a day. Might be my memory playing tricks, but I'm *sure* I recall there was some application which had a similar pricing structure 10-15 years ago. You basically checked in and checked out via modem and were billed accordingly...
This is only my opinion, having been a Photoshop user since the very early days, and upgraded every 2nd release. I'm currently on CS5, but I may have to upgrade to CS6 as Adobe refuse to include RAW algorithms for my camera in anything less than CS6.
Photoshop is pretty much capable of anything now, graphically speaking. As such, I feel new versions would offer less compelling reasons to upgrade as they have done historically. Adobe's switch to subscriptions takes a lot of pressure off them to introduce new features. Even when they do introduce new features, they can now farm them out to the subscribers' systems, effectively having their customers pay to perform their beta testing for them. All the advantages appear to be in Adobe's favour.
I understand their frustration with pirated software, but the pirates are unlikely to stop pirating and subscribe, so the honest users of Adobe's products are penalised for the sins of others, whilst Adobe's development team can sit back and watch the profits roll in.
Photoshop is pretty much capable of anything now, graphically speaking. As such, I feel new versions would offer less compelling reasons to upgrade as they have done historically. Adobe's switch to subscriptions takes a lot of pressure off them to introduce new features. Even when they do introduce new features, they can now farm them out to the subscribers' systems, effectively having their customers pay to perform their beta testing for them. All the advantages appear to be in Adobe's favour.
I understand their frustration with pirated software, but the pirates are unlikely to stop pirating and subscribe, so the honest users of Adobe's products are penalised for the sins of others, whilst Adobe's development team can sit back and watch the profits roll in.
Simply don't need the huge cost of a PS purchase (used to be in the $600 range) or the monthly fee of their cloud.
If you are running Mac especially, you have options. Use Aperture as your DAM (digital asset manager) to create and manage you photo library and do basic non-destructive edits. Lighrtoom is an alternative.
If you want more elaborate photo editing capabilities there are the plugins from Nik, OnOneSoftware, Topaz, Helicon, and others. If you really want to work on the pixel level with a general graphics program, there is Pixelmator. Remember it was Pixelmator that Apple used to demo Mac Pro...not an Adobe product.
http://www.apple.com/aperture/resources/plugins.html
The good news is that we have excellent choices for photo editing. We don't have to have a large expensive general purpose graphics program.
If you are running Mac especially, you have options. Use Aperture as your DAM (digital asset manager) to create and manage you photo library and do basic non-destructive edits. Lighrtoom is an alternative.
If you want more elaborate photo editing capabilities there are the plugins from Nik, OnOneSoftware, Topaz, Helicon, and others. If you really want to work on the pixel level with a general graphics program, there is Pixelmator. Remember it was Pixelmator that Apple used to demo Mac Pro...not an Adobe product.
http://www.apple.com/aperture/resources/plugins.html
The good news is that we have excellent choices for photo editing. We don't have to have a large expensive general purpose graphics program.
My only complaint with Adobe is that they tend to leave major bugs hanging around in older versions of their software. I use 5.5 at work while we're all waiting for our corporate CC accounts to go live. I found quite a few show stopping bugs to which the response has always been "Oh we fixed that in 6/CC, you'll need to upgrade". Even though I'm still not happy about that fact, I guess with CC that will finally go away.
I don't mind the subscription model for software anymore than I mind paying monthly for electricity, water, phone, internet, netflix, spotify, better homes and gardens, etc... I think it stings most people that have this expectation of how software should work (you buy a copy, you own a copy in perpetuity) because thats how it mostly has worked since the dawn of computers due to technical limitations. People don't like change. The reality is that Adobe could release it for $1, to own forever with free updates, complete with source code, and some people would still find a way to complain.
I don't mind the subscription model for software anymore than I mind paying monthly for electricity, water, phone, internet, netflix, spotify, better homes and gardens, etc... I think it stings most people that have this expectation of how software should work (you buy a copy, you own a copy in perpetuity) because thats how it mostly has worked since the dawn of computers due to technical limitations. People don't like change. The reality is that Adobe could release it for $1, to own forever with free updates, complete with source code, and some people would still find a way to complain.
Doesn't seem all that unrealistic to me that Adobe would lower price or offer promotions to attract customers. Photoshop started at $20/mo by itself. I just bought it, directly from them, for $10/mo with lightroom.
Lets recognize that we all can make choices. We all need to respect those choices about how hobbyists, prosumers and professionals run their workflows and their respective circumstances that induce them to make the choice of products.
I would only point out there are emerging issues with the Adobe CC business model. First issue is: Is Adobe a monopoly? Second is Adobe abusive in its monopolistic practices? These seem to be emerging questions inside the broader community, as evidenced by the length of time this discussion has been raging on this forum, POTN, CanonRumors, NikonRumors, MacinTouch and others. Do a search and you can't help but find the net landscape covered by this decision on the part of Adobe. It really got heated when they decided to bifurcate their approach and lit out on the digital photo community, but it was well alive before then too.
For those who are interested in connecting the dots, and reasoning on Adobe's monopoly play - abusive or not, would suggest you take a read of the thread now very heated on MacinTouch. The heavy discussion started in late Feb and continues today.
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/applications/topic3000-020.html
I am now Adobe-less, as of this weekend I purchased for the grand sum of 150.00 OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 8. So, while PS CS6 will still be on board my machines, all my new work from here on will be developed with PPS8. I looked at Pixelmator too, but decided it was not sufficient as it only handles 8-bit.
If you are wondering what format I am using (tiff or PSD) with PPS8 or other questions feel free to pm. As CilcPix knows I am happy to respond.
I have used LR for years from my previous days using Windows (since 3.1o release). I have now started my own serious look at Aperture and ordered a license ($49 on ebay). I have stopped importing photos as DNGs and will stick with the native raw format (import is much quicker as a side benefit). I use Nik Collection, Perfect Photo8 for most extensive editing. If I need to focus stack I have Helicon Focus. And I want to do some strange fun effect, I have Pixelmator. Good chance that very soon, I also will be Adobe free.
I think the best CC Photoshop "killer" would be a fully refaced version of GIMP that is made 100 percent compatible with plug-ins that work with Photoshop. Sadly GIMP while powerful, is still rather suspect and the interface needs more work. Corel too could provide a contender if it also opted to try again for a Mac version.
I use Photoshop CS6 with OnOne and a couple of other plug-in/filters. I also use Capture One Pro. These software meets exactly my needs with the former for restoration work and the latter for handling my RAW files.
Because the hacks who stole it without paying are pissed off. If you paid for it like the rest of us, your complaints are welcome.
As soon as CC came out, I bought the CS6 Design Standard bundle. Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Their old system offered a lot more choice and flexibility. At 18 months, I'll be ahead my way compared to CC, and I'll still have full access to my software. I really don't see myself caring about an upgrade after 18 (or even 36 months), and I don't care to pay for the rest of the CC suite.
I gave in because some of the retina functionality was improved in CC? At least I think it did. Lightroom 5 also has support for newer cameras, I've never been sure if older versions get the updates or not. Anyhow I can see myself moving to Pixelmator one day, but not now. I think they're trying to bundle the whole cloud storage for all your adobe files (except video editing) on their servers but tbh I don't use that.