Adobe Introduces Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud

azajohns said:
Probably wishful thinking but I hope they've managed to get some consistency across their products. Each application they have feels like its from a different company (of course many of them were from Macromedia originally but still). Keyboard shortcuts, pallet tools, menu items, general GUI design, it's all been a mess for years. As a long time print designer who only recently began learning flash and DW, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to throw my laptop out of the window over some stupid little GUI issue.
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Couldn’t agree more. I always create keyboard shortcuts sets that match up but it’s not ideal. From the brief overviews on Adobe’s site, it looks like Illustrator got the dark interface option but Indesign didn’t. Hope I’m wrong.

The feature updates to Illustrator, Indesign and Acrobat seem minimal to me, but I’ll upgrade my Design Premium to get Photoshop primarily.
 
I've upgraded the last couple of times, currently running CS5.5 web premium. As far as I can tell, this Creative Cloud seems like a decent deal (when stacked against upgrading every year, at least).

The current offer is £29 p/m for existing customers here - which equates to roughly the cost of upgrading my same package. However, with the subscription model, I'd also get access to all the other software such as After Effects & InDesign.

The subscription also allows you to run it on 2 systems (previous licences were a little dubious on this - stating you could run it on 2, but not at the same time).

Aside from not actually 'owning' the software, it seems like a no-brainer to me - unless I'm missing something?
 
Well I got in in on a deal for Master Collection for 180 bucks two months ago which Adobe honored


So upgrading for 525 isn't a bad deal......
 
bdkennedy1 said:
How many people love leasing a car?
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Errr tens of millions of people around the world. It's one of the most popular methods of car ownership in many countries. You chose the wrong example bud.

You seem to completely miss the point of one of the best features of leasing - you always get the most recent version. Buy a version, and you're stuck with it until you pay the upgrade price. Lease it, and you automatically get the newer one when its available.

Many people lease cars in the same way. You pay part of the value of the car over 5 years and then return it to the dealer, and get a new one. If you want to buy it outright, you can pay off the balance after the 5 year period is up.
 
jontech said:
Well I got in in on a deal for Master Collection for 180 bucks two months ago which Adobe honored


So upgrading for 525 isn't a bad deal......
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So you can upgrade from an upgrade?

Can you upgrade from a student to a full commercial version? say I buy a student version of CS6 and then upgrade to the full commercial version CS6.5 when it is released?
 
Yvan256 said:
And why wouldn't it mean 75$ per month per machine? It's targeting businesses!

IMHO, the more you should things to "the cloud" the more you lose control over your system.
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Can you rephrase what you are saying in the 2nd paragraph so the meaning is clear? (It appears from the description here that the apps are available through their cloud and would not have to be downloaded to individual machines. I am not sure that would be practical.)

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Snowshiro said:
Errr tens of millions of people around the world. It's one of the most popular methods of car ownership in many countries. You chose the wrong example bud.

You seem to completely miss the point of one of the best features of leasing - you always get the most recent version. Buy a version, and you're stuck with it until you pay the upgrade price. Lease it, and you automatically get the newer one when its available.

Many people lease cars in the same way. You pay part of the value of the car over 5 years and then return it to the dealer, and get a new one. If you want to buy it outright, you can pay off the balance after the 5 year period is up.
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Many advertised leases are for 3 years, not for 5 years.

People I have known who leased for personal use, not business use, regretted they had done so when the lease period ended. Those fees were killers!
 
AdeFowler said:
The feature updates to Illustrator, Indesign and Acrobat seem minimal to me, but I’ll upgrade my Design Premium to get Photoshop primarily.
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Feature updates to Illustrator always seem minimal, yet it still has paid updates as often as the rest of the suite. It is the main package I use, so I think I'll be sticking with CS4 for quite a while (I only upgraded to that because it was Universal).
 
Hmmm... that's an expensive bug fix for 5.5...

Seriously, I hope they do a better job this time than last time. I've been massively disappointed with 5.5's performance and stability and am going to take a fair bit of persuasion to go to 6.

The thing that worries me about leasing software is there's no impetus for the developers to improve things. The money keeps coming in regardless.
 
chrono1081 said:
Some schools have it even cheaper. I picked up CS5 Production Premium for $300 when I was in college.
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I am an education professional and purchased CS Design Standard on March 9 for $69 direct from Adobe. If I had purchased it two weeks later it would have been eligible for a free upgrade to CS6. The regular price from Adobe was $299, but they had an 80% off sale for a few weeks. The Cloud thing is $30 a month for education. CS5.5 doesn't allow scanning from my all-in-one, because the scanner plug-in is 32-bit (canon) and PS5.5 is 64-bit, although Acrobat is 32-bit.
 
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This is why I always pirate CS suites. Apple gets sued over stupid $10 ebooks on a market they don't even have a majority control in but nobody sues Adobe for raising CS prices to over $2600 every few years in a market they clearly control??! Give me a break.
 
azajohns said:
Probably wishful thinking but I hope they've managed to get some consistency across their products. Each application they have feels like its from a different company (of course many of them were from Macromedia originally but still).
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AdeFowler said:
Couldn’t agree more. I always create keyboard shortcuts sets that match up but it’s not ideal. From the brief overviews on Adobe’s site, it looks like Illustrator got the dark interface option but Indesign didn’t. Hope I’m wrong.
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FCPX & Motion vs. Compressor?
4D4M said:
Seriously considering jumping ship if I can find some viable alternatives. My CS4 is starting to feel its age and runs badly on Lion, but £952 to upgrade is a bit steep for me.

So what are my options?

Dreamweaver --> Coda
Photoshop --> Pixelmator? (Does it do CMYK?)
Illustrator --> ???
Fireworks --> ???
InDesign --> ??? (Don't say Quark, I abandoned them 10 years ago!)

I use all of them for professional purposes but just for everyday design, not really cutting edge stuff. (Photoshop and Illustrator have capabilities that I don't even know about!). If I can get some replacements that cover some of the ground, I might be able to get away with using them.
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Illustrator is the only one that I use that doesn't have an acceptable alternative (unless you need CMYK in PS, in which case Pixelmator falls short too). But, then again, I can pretty much do all I need to do in InDesign using Pages! :eek:
jackc said:
Sounds like you should lobby your Congressman for protection if you can't compete with Mom and Pop
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They don't have congressmen in the UK :rolleyes:
 
TheChillPill said:
I've upgraded the last couple of times, currently running CS5.5 web premium. As far as I can tell, this Creative Cloud seems like a decent deal (when stacked against upgrading every year, at least).

The current offer is £29 p/m for existing customers here - which equates to roughly the cost of upgrading my same package. However, with the subscription model, I'd also get access to all the other software such as After Effects & InDesign.

The subscription also allows you to run it on 2 systems (previous licences were a little dubious on this - stating you could run it on 2, but not at the same time).

Aside from not actually 'owning' the software, it seems like a no-brainer to me - unless I'm missing something?
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You are dead right... I am a 5.5 production premium user but have dabbled with other apps not in my package in the past. Having all of them for the same price as upgrading my 5.5 production premium licence to cs6 is definitely a no brainer.

The only drawback is having to download it rather than getting a box version... i like having a the discs to install from, but hey, i can always back the installers up to dvd or bluray.

EDIT: Has anybody found a way to get the introductory pricing as a 1 year up front subscription rather than a monthly payment??
 
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I found this on MacWorld UK:

Creative Cloud costs £38.11 per month with an annual contract. Current owners of CS3 or later suites or products can get this for £22.23 per month. On a month-by-month basis, Creative Cloud costs 57.17.

All prices exclude VAT. Adobe says CS6 will be out before May 22.​

I wonder when the introductory £22.23 p/m plus VAT will increase after signing up for it. I’m seriously considering the Cloud option but need to know more.
 
Ridiculous

Slightly improved software that hasn't changed much in 15 years for 10x the price of the competition?! No thank you Adobe -- probably the most ridiculous unfocused IT company in existence...
 
anim8or said:
Has anybody found a way to get the introductory pricing as a 1 year up front subscription rather than a monthly payment??
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I think the introductory offer will only be available as a monthly option as I suspect it will go up to the normal price after maybe 3/6 months.
 
I'm so confused, what exactly is creative cloud. Is it a subscription based application that includes all applications exactly as they would be if you bought the creative suite. or are they limited versions? can you dl them and use them as desktop applications if you don't have an internet connection, or are you required to use a web interface to use them, in which case does adobe own your work....is the original work housed on your machine? OR is it a supplemental service that requires you to purchase adobe cs and this just bridges adobe through the cloud.

so this means i don't have to buy a hard copy, just pay a monthly fee and i get everything, as if i bought a hard copy?
 
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Preordered my upgrade.

Gods, Photoshop CS5.5 was utter ass. I've been using the CS6 beta and it's been pretty stable from what I've seen, tho you'd think they'd have fixed the text load lag by now. :(
 
mashinhead said:
I'm so confused, what exactly is creative cloud. Is it a subscription based application that includes all applications exactly as they would be if you bought the creative suite. or are they limited versions? can you dl them and use them as desktop applications if you don't have an internet connection, or are you required to use a web interface to use them, in which case does adobe own your work....is the original work housed on your machine? OR is it a supplemental service that requires you to purchase adobe cs and this just bridges adobe through the cloud.
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You download the full apps as normal. After that, no constant internet connection is required to use the apps, but I suspect an occasional connection will be needed to check for a valid subscription. This is one of my fears e.g. I’ve got a deadline to meet and Adobe have a server problem and my software suddenly stops working because my subscription can’t be validated.

See http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/creativecloud/faq.html
 
Moonjumper said:
With the number of upgraded features in each version, it feels more like CS1.6.
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I suppose it depend on what software you use the most but for me the upgrades to after effects are well worth the upgrade price or the subscription.
 
If you're a creative professional, you will have no problem whatsoever earning back $50/mo with Adobe's software. If you can't, then chances are you're not a creative professional (or at least not a very good one).

If you're a hobbyist, then I agree that $50/mo is probably steep for you. But then, Adobe isn't making software for hobbyists. I think it would be awesome to do woodwork as a hobby, maybe make some furniture or do a few renovations around the house. To do so would require an investment of about $5,000 in heavy duty equipment. Is Black & Decker a "greedy, evil company" because they won't cut me a "hobbyist deal" on a table saw?

For those of you who can't afford CS6, check out this site for free alternatives. None of them are nearly as good as Adobe's versions, but you get what you pay for, right?
 
MrNomNoms said:
So you can upgrade from an upgrade?

Can you upgrade from a student to a full commercial version? say I buy a student version of CS6 and then upgrade to the full commercial version CS6.5 when it is released?
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Yes, you can upgrade from a student version to the full retail version. I just chatted with someone over at Adobe about this. It costs the same whether you're upgrading from a student version or a retail version.

If anyone skipped CS5.5, right now you can get CS5.5, and they'll let you download CS6 for free once it's been released. For me, that means $649 will get me from a student version of Design Premium CS4 --> CS5.5 --> CS6. Not such a bad deal.
 
You know, the more I think about this "hobbyist" line of argument, the more it irks me. Since when have hobbies been cheap? What does it cost to put your kid in dance classes every month? What does it cost to suit your kid up for football? How much does the average golfer spend on a monthly basis? Do you not pay green fees if you aren't a professional?

$50 a month for a hobby? Pretty cheap by most standards, especially when you consider the number of options that are open to you: video editing, photo-retouching, illustration, animation, web design, etc.

It seems to me that the internet has created a sense of entitlement, that if you can't hold it in your hand, it should be free.
 
This is pretty exciting news. I'm interested in Edge, which is one of the few new products they have released that seems to offer NEW functionality. But aside from that, all I care about is Photoshop and Illustrator. Flash is obviously DOA– even though I think it's fun to work with. InDesign is for print– 'nuff said. Dreamweaver? I'll write it myself, thanks– though it also has some nice features.

All I really want is a $19.99 a month fee for just Illustrator and Photoshop. I think I'd actually pay for that.
 
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