Adobe Announces 2015 Creative Cloud Updates, New Integrated Adobe Stock Service

[twietee]

While the subscriptions are evil/subscriptions are awesome and Adobe are greedy/why can't u afford $60 arguments are boring as hell, I've befall owing your ongoing side discussion about archiving and access with some interest.

Unfortunately we're only just starting to get to grips with digital archiving in a meaningful way, and to do it properly requires a comparable amount of "effort" to physical archiving. If you think of archival paper copies of things, they require particular grades of stock and ink and expensive controlled environments to maintain minimal levels of degradation.

achieving the same with your digital archives also requires work: saving archive copies in open formats as well as proprietary where possible; saving "exports" as well as source files (e.g. well-understood flat file formats like JPEG or flat .tiff, PDF, WAV or MP3 audio etc) and, for materials that you NEED to retain edit access, periodic reopen/re saves to new file formats or applications.

You mentioned that your lost CAD files were ArchiCAD? I don't know much about CAD but if you were able to export DXF/DWG, I think you'd still have reasonable access to those old files. It's a lot of effort required though, to always export archival versions of stuff. I know I don't do it...

Permanence isn't easy, even now!

Good read and I completely agree with your post. I'm not really knowledgeable about archiving, but know it's a science in itself. And a highly interesting one at that I may add.

DXF/DWG, you are right but I wasn't expecting these kind of difficulties 'back in the day' when I was just starting doing things/drawing more seriously, so didn't do it as rigorously as one should have. It's just a 'personal' loss so not that big but made me quite wary of the issue in general. Importing DWG/DXFs, as you will know yourself, comes up with issues itself but at least works (most of the time, have plenty of those that Illustrator flat out refuses to open for example too though).

Really an aside discussion. But it still boggles my mind as to why it's so difficult to make files accessable. And since quite some time now everybody and their mother creates files. We can go to the flea market / or auction houses and get photoalbums probably 100 years old but doubt that we can even open our own stuff 30 years from now.

Processing power really shouldn't be an argument so the most rational explanation would be 'on purpose' to 'move forward'..but there may be an other explanation.

You may have a link or so to a site/forum regarding that? Would really interest me in general.

 

[ginkobiloba]

I
Also, I don't know if you've used any of these so-called alternative apps in a production environment, but they are notoriously unreliable and non-compatible in active workflows. Adobe is king for a reason. I would never ever work with any freelance designer who did not use Adobe apps.

uh... FCPX, Fusion, Nuke , Avid, Autodesk smoke... I wouldn't call these "alternative ". These are the standard apps that are used in the film industry. It's Premiere and After Effects that are the "alternative". No one cuts major feature films and special FX on Premiere and After Effects. It's so rare that is actually makes the news when that happens.
These apps ( except for FCPX ) were priced out the league of After Effects and Premiere users. But after the latest announcements and price drop from BlackMagic, TheFoundry, the game has just completely changed.

As for Illustrator and Photoshop, you obviously never used Affinity Designer if you think they are "unreliable". Its speed and stability made it impossible for me to go back to Illustrator. And it looks like their Photo beta is heading that way too.

 

[Itzamna]

As for Illustrator and Photoshop, you obviously never used Affinity Designer if you think they are "unreliable". Its speed and stability made it impossible for me to go back to Illustrator. And it looks like their Photo beta is heading that way too.

1) Unless you are a one man shop that do everything by itself, you never work alone... Collaboration is a major key. As someone already said it, i would never hire a freelancer to work with my studio that was working with Sketch or Affinity Designer. Corel or Adobe, nothing else.

2) Photoshop and Illustrator are a very mature programs. Affinity Designer has yet to surpass the test of time...

 

[KuttyJoe]

I've been using Illustrator CC 2015 this morning. I don't see even a tiny increase in speed. And the new zoom level of 64000% is not really noticeable. I was starting to think that I needed to do something extra to access the new zoom level. But that's it. I compared it quickly to CorelDraw and I understand why I thought nothing had changed in Illustrator. CorelDraw zooms to 250,000% A one point line will cover your entire screen. Serif's new Afinity Designer is also like this. I wonder why this is like some kind of challenge for Adobe. I don't tend to need that much zoom level, but I sometimes need more than I can get in Illustrator. This update is exactly why I don't want to subscribe. There's nothing in this update that interests me. Adobe knows this. They know that for many of us, Adobe software was already good enough for our work, 10 years ago. So how could they get people to continue to upgrade? Rent it instead of selling it. Eventually, we will have to upgrade, and when that time comes, renting will be the only option. Adobe just has to wait us out.

The competition is already moving in the same direction. Like Adobe, Corel is starting out with the option to buy or rent, but new features keep coming to the rented version rather quickly now. And Corel allows you to actually install the update even though you can't use the features. You can kind of "see" what you're missing. The future is looking even more expensive than ever.

 

[KuttyJoe]

1) Unless you are a one man shop that do everything by itself, you never work alone... Collaboration is a major key. As someone already said it, i would never hire a freelancer to work with my studio that was working with Sketch or Affinity Designer. Corel or Adobe, nothing else.

2) Photoshop and Illustrator are a very mature programs. Affinity Designer has yet to surpass the test of time...

And honestly, I would not expect Affinity Designer to ever reach the level of Adobe software. It's not aimed at professionals. Serif products are usually aimed at prosumers and hobbyists and the feature sets reflect this. Affinity products are beautiful and attractive, but severely lacking in pro level features. Having said that, I still hate Adobe for what it's doing and I try my best to make use of other products.

 

[jtrauscht]

uh... FCPX, Fusion, Nuke , Avid, Autodesk smoke... I wouldn't call these "alternative ". These are the standard apps that are used in the film industry. It's Premiere and After Effects that are the "alternative". No one cuts major feature films and special FX on Premiere and After Effects. It's so rare that is actually makes the news when that happens.
These apps ( except for FCPX ) were priced out the league of After Effects and Premiere users. But after the latest announcements and price drop from BlackMagic, TheFoundry, the game has just completely changed.

As for Illustrator and Photoshop, you obviously never used Affinity Designer if you think they are "unreliable". Its speed and stability made it impossible for me to go back to Illustrator. And it looks like their Photo beta is heading that way too.

You're absolutely right about FCPX, Avid, etc. I'm not talking about those. However, After Effects is still heavily used in animation and many video production environments. As for Affinity Designer, I'm standing by what I said. In my 20+ years of experience, I cannot think of a single professional-design workflow that does not base itself on an Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign platform, unless you count QuarkXPress, which is effectively dead. Nobody is going to upend their work environment to go with a pro-sumer level app because they don't like a subscription model. Chances are that they've already been accustomed to subscription models with other software packages if they are in a video production or 3D environment.

 

[ginkobiloba]

And honestly, I would not expect Affinity Designer to ever reach the level of Adobe software. It's not aimed at professionals. Serif products are usually aimed at prosumers and hobbyists and the feature sets reflect this. Affinity products are beautiful and attractive, but severely lacking in pro level features. Having said that, I still hate Adobe for what it's doing and I try my best to make use of other products.

"And honestly, I would not expect Affinity Designer to ever reach the level of Adobe software. "

Of course it will !! Illustrator was released 28 YEARS ago ! Affinity Designer was released a year ago, and it already has 70% of Illustrator features . So, imagine what it's going to be in a year from now.
I think if they sold it for 400$, you would find it very professional
They are selling it way too low. That's why some people can't take it seriously.
Do yourself a favor, download the free demo and test it for yourself before saying it's aimed at prosumers, because it's not ( Maybe the regular Serif products are, but not the new Affinity line of products )

 

[Itzamna]

Of course it will !! Illustrator was released 28 YEARS ago ! Affinity Designer was released a year ago, and it already has 70% of Illustrator features .

Precisely because of that A.Designer will never reach AI. It will always be behind AI copying it and adding a few things that might or not be useful (like the 13293123213x zoom) just to seem that they are not copying and are innovating.

As i said, AI and Photoshop are very very mature programs, A. Designer is not and has yet to pass the test of time.

So, imagine what it's going to be in a year from now.
I think if they sold it for 400$, you would find it very professional
They are selling it way too low. That's why some people can't take it seriously.

Probably, a year from now, they will be in the same place where the others that shown up through the years are. Updates coming slower and slower and the app reaching a stalling point.

And no, the price is not the reason, the reason is that, as you said, AI or Photoshop are in the professional world for decades and during those decades many "Affinity Designer" kind of apps came and disappeared as faster as they shown up.


For the better or for the worse, Adobe is HUGE and has the monopoly... Companies like Serif have small to no chance to become big in the professional world.

 

[jtrauscht]

"And honestly, I would not expect Affinity Designer to ever reach the level of Adobe software. "

Of course it will !! Illustrator was released 28 YEARS ago ! Affinity Designer was released a year ago, and it already has 70% of Illustrator features . So, imagine what it's going to be in a year from now.
I think if they sold it for 400$, you would find it very professional
They are selling it way too low. That's why some people can't take it seriously.
Do yourself a favor, download the free demo and test it for yourself before saying it's aimed at prosumers, because it's not ( Maybe the regular Serif products are, but not the new Affinity line of products )

Remember Aldus/Macromedia Freehand? Arguably a better user-experience than Illustrator at the time, but even before Adobe bought it and killed it, the vast majority of professionals banked on Adobe. Why? Because Adobe wrote the book on PostScript, color management, and getting your files to print on press as you expect them to.

Remember QuarkXPress? A superior layout program over anything that anyone else had to offer, but they got lazy, and took their user-base for granted. Quark never budged on their $900 SRP even when their product started getting long-in-the-tooth. After Adobe's purchase of Aldus, and knowing that PageMaker was inferior to XPress, Adobe did the unthinkable and went after XPress. InDesign 1.0 was not yet a Quark-killer, but it was an impressive first offering. It took time and considerable resources to viably unseat Quark from it's roost. Resources that Serif more than likely cannot come close to touching.

Remember SuperPaint? It was an all-in-one vector/bitmap app, too. Dead.

There was a time when people were using a variety of design apps that had varying user commands and controls. Elements needed to be prepared certain ways for things to work correctly together. It was confusing bouncing between apps. Adobe has created an ecosystem (much like the Mac platform has) in that there is a common user experience across apps, and the apps and files work nearly seamlessly with each other.

So, with all that great stuff and long-standing, proven commitment to the user base, the anti-subscription people want me to drop them for a wannabe app that was literally born yesterday because Adobe dares to ask for $60/month for their entire suite of apps instead of $300-upgrade fees for each app? Not – a – chance.

Tell you what ... When I start seeing job ads with candidate requirements to have Affinity Designer experience instead of Adobe experience, then I'll start thinking about it.

 

[chirpie]

Tell you what ... When I start seeing job ads with candidate requirements to have Affinity Designer experience instead of Adobe experience, then I'll start thinking about it.

For what it's worth, AD is compatible with AI, PS, and Freehand. At least watch this video if you haven't used it in a while...

Worst case scenario, you use AD, it goes belly up, and you use the copy you have to save a file that opens up in AI and you continue on. Not much risk there.

And anyone who is great in one of these programs will be just fine in the other after minimal exposure.

 

[Itzamna]

Not even a year ago Sketch was the new 15 minutes star on the vector and web design world... Today you can count with the fingers of two hands the major companies that use it.

 

[shaunp]

These threads always make me laugh, as virtually nobody speaks about the new features it's all about the subscription instead.

So here's me throwing the cat amongst the pigeons. If you can't afford Adobe software or have some principal that means you won't subscribe then find an alternative - nobody is forcing you to use Adobe software. If you think their software is so bad, then go write the applications yourself and publish them on the Appstore.

If you are a non-commercial user there are no compatibility issues tying you to Adobe software. Okay students might be an acceptation, but you get discounted pricing. For everyone else, the subscription model is cheap, especially the photography subscription - it's the price of a beer in some parts of London, and any decent freelancer will cover the cost in less than half an hour, even the full subscription cost would be covered in this time, if not you are in the wrong game.

Right now I couldn't be happier with Adobe, they have made it easy for me to move from Aperture both in terms of ease of use and cost. The only thing that would make me happier is if one of their PR girls came and gave me some special attention.

As for the features, I'm keen to see what performance improvements Metal gives. I'd like to extend the life of my 2013 rMPB and my nMP with D700's should now fly. The stock integration tools look interesting too. So rather than being negative is there anything that anyone actually likes about the new update?

 

[Benjamin Frost]

These threads always make me laugh, as virtually nobody speaks about the new features it's all about the subscription instead.

So rather than being negative is there anything that anyone actually likes about the new update?

It doesn't look like it.

As Adobe have a monopoly, there is no incentive for them to improve the suite. If they sold it, they would have, as people would buy upgrades if there were good improvements. But with a subscription, they have you hook, line and sinker.

I'm glad I don't work in that profession; I can't imagine being so restricted with software.

 

[inkswamp]

I most certainly am not kidding. And I am a business customer – happy with Adobe's not-expensive subscription model and reliable and tested software that does not "blow chunks."

I don't know if you remember how much this stuff used to cost not too long ago. After Effects alone was a grand. Photoshop was $700. Illustrator was $450. InDesign was $500. If you wanted the Design Suite plus After Effects and Dreamweaver, your bill was well north of 3 grand. The Master Collection (which is what I used) was 2 grand just for the upgrade. THAT, my friend, was outrageously expensive, and precisely the reason why I am so grateful for the very reasonable subscription rate of $60 per month.

Also, I don't know if you've used any of these so-called alternative apps in a production environment, but they are notoriously unreliable and non-compatible in active workflows. Adobe is king for a reason. I would never ever work with any freelance designer who did not use Adobe apps.

Proof that Adobe is making a killing on people who can't do math. It's like people who borrow at "reasonable" interest rates and think they're not losing money.

The purchased apps are only more expensive if you upgrade every time a new version is available which many, many people simply do not do and do not need to do. In fact, every business I've ever seen prefers stability in their toolset over jumping on each upgrade. My current employer was still using CS2 before they were forced this year into monthly payments. The subscription method forces you to continue paying whether you use the latest versions or not. The math is grade school level simple. In the long-run, you're paying significantly more in the subscription model than purchasing outright.

And yes, the latest versions of Adobe's software blows chunks. Just yesterday, I had to restart my Mac because Adobe's background desktop service was eating up significant amounts of my CPU time and had caused my Mac to slow to a crawl. And I'm not the only one seeing this: https://support.muse.adobe.com/thread/1848045?start=0&tstart=0

Never had this nonsense with earlier versions of Adobe's apps.

 

[LethalWolfe]

As Adobe have a monopoly, there is no incentive for them to improve the suite. If they sold it, they would have, as people would buy upgrades if there were good improvements. But with a subscription, they have you hook, line and sinker.

If Adobe had a monopoly there would no incentive to improve anything because they could just sit back since there would be no competition. Subscription vs non-subscription isn't relevant. For example, more than once in this thread people have referenced Quark Xpress rising to a very dominant position in the 90's and subsequently coasting because they had no competition. Avid, in the editing world, had a similar arc up until the mid/late '00's. They didn't face much competition either and used that position to be able to charge 10's of thousands of dollars per seat for Media Composer (I remember when Avid dropped prices and people were genuinely excited that the starting price was now 'only' $25k per seat). Neither Quark nor Avid had a subscription model, but they both were able to bend users over a barrel since there wasn't any viable competition.

For market segments, such as video/film editing, where there is healthy competition there is no way Adobe can coast because people will just move to Avid or FCP X (or maybe even Resolve if it's editing features keep improving). Subscription or not, it doesn't matter because there is competition. For market segments where Adobe has more of a lock (i.e. photography and print) Adobe doesn't have to fight as hard not because of the subscription model, but because of the lack of competition. Even for photography though Adobe is so worried about upsetting that base that they've made a special bundle just for them (the $10/mo Photography bundle).


EDIT: Fixed some spelling errors. Sure there are more.

 

[shaunp]

It doesn't look like it.

As Adobe have a monopoly, there is no incentive for them to improve the suite. If they sold it, they would have, as people would buy upgrades if there were good improvements. But with a subscription, they have you hook, line and sinker.

I'm glad I don't work in that profession; I can't imagine being so restricted with software.

I don't feel restricted. I'm happy with what I've got, but just out of interest how do you feel restricted you could always move to another product or write your own? If you were that unhappy with Adobe you'd do that rather than making pointless noise on here.

 

[inkswamp]

I don't feel restricted. I'm happy with what I've got, but just out of interest how do you feel restricted you could always move to another product or write your own? If you were that unhappy with Adobe you'd do that rather than making pointless noise on here.

Pointless noise? I don't understand what it is about Adobe that inspires such knee-jerk rudeness when someone dares to criticize them. Their software is terrible nowadays and it costs significantly more to use it than it one did. Why is that so hard to see?

And moving on to another product? The fact is that Adobe's creative suite has spent the last 10 years muscling out most of the competition (deservedly so, until the last few years) and now they're using that dominance to squeeze more cash out of their users. There aren't a lot of viable replacements because, as I said, the market has been dominated by Adobe.

On top of that, many businesses have employees who have backgrounds in using the Adobe applications to get their work done. It would cost loads of time and money to retrain people to use other software. It's a huge expense either way.

I only hope some company sees the opportunity sitting there waiting to be jumped on. There's no shortage of people who would dump Adobe in a heartbeat. Me included.

 

[shaunp]

Pointless noise? I don't understand what it is about Adobe that inspires such knee-jerk rudeness when someone dares to criticize them. Their software is terrible nowadays and it costs significantly more to use it than it one did. Why is that so hard to see?

And moving on to another product? The fact is that Adobe's creative suite has spent the last 10 years muscling out most of the competition (deservedly so, until the last few years) and now they're using that dominance to squeeze more cash out of their users. There aren't a lot of viable replacements because, as I said, the market has been dominated by Adobe.

On top of that, many businesses have employees who have backgrounds in using the Adobe applications to get their work done. It would cost loads of time and money to retrain people to use other software. It's a huge expense either way.

I only hope some company sees the opportunity sitting there waiting to be jumped on. There's no shortage of people who would dump Adobe in a heartbeat. Me included.

I'm not defending Adobe, I think the need to have constant security updates to Acrobat Reader is an utter sham, but I'm happy with LR and PS and I think the subscription model is great. What I don't get is the number of people who bitch about a situation then do nothing about it. If it's that bad and you feel there is no competition , then go create your own. What is stopping you from doing that? Other than your time it would cost you nothing to write the software and publish it these days. I eagerly await the publication of your new app....

 

[inkswamp]

I'm not defending Adobe, I think the need to have constant security updates to Acrobat Reader is an utter sham, but I'm happy with LR and PS and I think the subscription model is great. What I don't get is the number of people who bitch about a situation then do nothing about it. If it's that bad and you feel there is no competition , then go create your own. What is stopping you from doing that? Other than your time it would cost you nothing to write the software and publish it these days. I eagerly await the publication of your new app....

This "create your own app" response is a weirdly passive-aggressive way to argue this. You don't want to look like an Adobe apologist but then you're suggesting anyone who doesn't like the way Adobe does things should go to completely unrealistic lengths to fix something that (as I explained in detail above) would be prohibitively expensive even if that were an option.

Adobe has made themselves the de facto creative suite company and now they've changed the way they sell their software to generate more profits without adding any significant value to said software. People have an absolute right to complain about that and that doesn't change just because nobody wants to go to the ludicrous extreme of producing their own software in response. What a silly suggestion.

You really don't see any problem with what Adobe's doing lately?

 

[kalsta]

Same here. I really dont care what others think about the business plan behind CC. All I care is that I can use the tools I need to make artwork for my clients. The CC platform works great for me, lots of updates, acces to everything etc etc. If its not for you than dont go for it. Simple. Easy.

And go for what instead? There is no choice, other than stay on CS6 (which I'm currently doing), or look at the alternatives (which I'm starting to do).

PS. If you say your a freelance "Professional designer" or what ever, and cant effort the monthly sub of 60 euros, u really have to scratch your head.

Scratch away, but some of us know when we're being duped.

The real 'gotcha' with this model is what happens if you ever decide to stop subscribing. Have fun saving back into IDML for every InDesign file you ever created so you still have access to your own files.

As a wise someone once said, 'Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.'

 

[Itzamna]

The real 'gotcha' with this model is what happens if you ever decide to stop subscribing. Have fun saving back into IDML for every InDesign file you ever created so you still have access to your own files.

As it happened with 90% of the proprietary files in the computer history... Until recently you could only open Word files in word and even today, you can open them in various programs, but there are several compatibility problems. Plus, often different word versions would not be fully compatible with the others or older versions of the program could not be installed in newer OS.
Thats nothing new here. The ones that have CS6 can still keep using it, the others are well aware that PSD or AI or whatever are proprietary. But even so you can open them (psd and ai at least) on many third party apps. Sure there will be compatibility problems, but again, it has been like that since... ever with proprietary files.

Plus, how often do you open older files? I have all of my works, since i've started, on my hdd's, but i haven't opened a file older than 6 months in years...

It doesn't look like it.

As Adobe have a monopoly, there is no incentive for them to improve the suite. If they sold it, they would have, as people would buy upgrades if there were good improvements. But with a subscription, they have you hook, line and sinker.

I'm glad I don't work in that profession; I can't imagine being so restricted with software.

That "no incentive to update the suite" is around since 2012-2013 when they introduced the subscriptions. And since them we had one or two major update every year to every app they have, plus a few smaller ones. We have now 10-20 mobile apps that work with the desktop apps and we have several other services like Typekit.

So far they are improving it...

And yes, the latest versions of Adobe's software blows chunks. Just yesterday, I had to restart my Mac because Adobe's background desktop service was eating up significant amounts of my CPU time and had caused my Mac to slow to a crawl. And I'm not the only one seeing this: https://support.muse.adobe.com/thread/1848045?start=0&tstart=0

Mac OSX has **** loads of bugs, even older versions like Mavericks or Snow Leopard have bugs... Does that means that OS X "blow chunks"? Google Chrome eats lots of RAM when it's doing nothing, does that mean that Chrome "blow chunks"?

Bugs are part of programming, specially on very complex applications they will ALWAYS show up.

If that's your definition of a poor software, one bug that was eating your CPU time, then you must be always sad with ANY software.

 

[kalsta]

As it happened with 90% of the proprietary files in the computer history... Until recently you could only open Word files in word and even today, you can open them in various programs, but there are several compatibility problems. Plus, often different word versions would not be fully compatible with the others or older versions of the program could not be installed in newer OS.
Thats nothing new here. The ones that have CS6 can still keep using it, the others are well aware that PSD or AI or whatever are proprietary. But even so you can open them (psd and ai at least) on many third party apps. Sure there will be compatibility problems, but again, it has been like that since... ever with proprietary files.

Plus, how often do you open older files? I have all of my works, since i've started, on my hdd's, but i haven't opened a file older than 6 months in years...

You seem to have missed my point. I'm not talking about opening InDesign files in another program. (Good luck with that though!) I'm not talking about opening someone else's InDesign files. I'm not even talking about opening very old files. I'm talking about what happens to all your CC InDesign files if/when you stop subscribing. They are your files (not Adobe's), yet you will not be able to open them.

This is the harsh reality of subscription software. Once you begin, you're locked into subscribing forever. Stop and think about that for a moment. If you cancel, the software you've been pumping money into for years will vanish like the cloud it's named after—it's back to an old version you go, and all the file incompatibility issues that come with it.

 

[inkswamp]

Mac OSX has **** loads of bugs, even older versions like Mavericks or Snow Leopard have bugs... Does that means that OS X "blow chunks"? Google Chrome eats lots of RAM when it's doing nothing, does that mean that Chrome "blow chunks"?

Let's try a little experiment in critical thinking, shall we? Put in your head how much Apple and Google charge for OS X and Chrome. Has the price of those two things gone up or down over the years? How many new features have been added to each? How many incremental improvements? Now, consider Adobe's prices, features and improvements over the same span of time.

Is it becoming any clearer to you?

Bugs are part of programming, specially on very complex applications they will ALWAYS show up.

If that's your definition of a poor software, one bug that was eating your CPU time, then you must be always sad with ANY software.

You're putting words in my mouth. I said none of those things. What I said is that Adobe is charging more for software that has gotten demonstrably worse. I gave an example of how bad their software is now, something that never happened previously with older versions of Adobe's software.

This is the same company that produces Flash and couldn't muster the apparent massive amount of resources required to create a decent version of it for mobile devices. Instead, they've let it languish and it continues to be more of a CPU hog and an annoyance with each new version. Why is this even a discussion?

 

[chaosbunny]

And I'm happy to do so

If that's the case I have a special "thin air" subscription for you! It's only 14,99/month until the end of june, then it's 19,99/month! If you are interested send me a pm. I promise you that you'll get the same use out of it as I would get out of 66% of the apps and services of the CC subscription, nothing!

 

[chaosbunny]

You: <answers phone>Hello?
Me: Hi, I've got a series of projects that I need freelance help on for our new campaign. Should last about three months. Can you send me an estimate?
You: Yeah, sounds great. Hey, I use Sketch, is that okay?
Me: Sketch? Sorry, man. We need files that fit in a standard professional workflow. Get back in touch with me once you're up to speed on the Adobe apps. <click>

Back in 2001-2002 your conversation would have been like this:
"You: <answers phone>Hello?
Me: Hi, I've got a series of projects that I need freelance help on for our new campaign. Should last about three months. Can you send me an estimate?
You: Yeah, sounds great. Hey, I use InDesign, is that okay?
Me: InDesign? Sorry, man. We need files that fit in a standard professional workflow. Get back in touch with me once you're up to speed on QuarkXPress. <click>"

Some people have to start using different approaches, and there has to be a challenge for this awful monopoly that Adobe has created in the design industry. I'll probably stay with CS6 until the affinity suite is complete and make my decision then. Maybe I'll have to get CC sometime in the next years, but right now there is not too much difference to CS6 to justify the price and troubles.

There are even missing features in CC from CS6, like the export function in Bridge.