Luckily, Lightroom (for the time being), will be exempt from this online requirement, and will still be offered as a standalone product that can be purchased. I have NO NEED for the Creative Cloud features…I just want continued improvements in Photoshop and Lightroom.

But the enthusiast photographer, or small business graphic artist? This is just highway robbery. They stay ultra current while being able to meter out their software costs over time and drop them when it makes sense to drop them. This isn’t going to harm big media companies…for them, it makes perfect sense. They think I’ll be overjoyed at having to pay the equivalent of $300 to stay current on Photoshop, and then CONTINUE to pay for, well, forever…if I want to keep using the product. So, Adobe thinks that this is a great new frontier of connected collaboration, all while giving a hearty “screw you” to its loyal consumers. If I EVER stop paying that monthly fee….it all goes away, and I’m back on CS6. Now, in order to upgrade, they want to charge me over 50% more for the upgrade, and the best part is: I don’t even own the upgrade. That’s a lot of money for me, but worth it for Photoshop in my opinion. So, that upgrade cost me $13.30 per month to stay on the latest version. I upgraded to CS6 from CS5, which I had purchased 15 months earlier (right when both came out). The only CS program I use is Photoshop, and my upgrade to CS6 cost me $200. $240 a year to be able to USE the program. However, if you only use, say, ONE of the Creative Suite programs, then it’s $20 a month. (until you get to the caveat of long-term ownership, but that might not be a big deal for many).

That’s really not that bad a deal, overall. Sure, it’s $600 a year, but that’s for all the Creative Suite applications. If you are a professional photographer or graphic artist and regularly use multiple Creative Suite programs, and regularly update them all to the latest version, then the $50 monthly fee for the entire Creative Suite isn’t that bad of a deal.

Oh, and that little fine print…the full Creative Suite subscription will require annual commitments, so if you sign up for Creative Suite, you’re looking at $600 every year to continue using the whole suite.Īdobe’s letter sounds all puppies and roses, doesn’t it? And, for many creative professionals, it IS a good thing. Existing CS owners can lock in a reduced rate of $30 per month for one year. Customers can purchase monthly access to single applications for $20 per month each, or the entire Creative Suite for $50 per month.

The nuts and bolts are: Standalone Creative Suite applications will no longer be developed.

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