Heads Up - Photoshop Upgrade Policy/Licensing Change

OffTopic

Didn't see that anyone posted about this yet, Adobe recently announced that they are moving to a subscription based model for everything in the Creative Suite including Photoshop...$49.99 per month for an annual plan for an individual... yes $600 per year for the right to use Photoshop in the cloud because you get access to all of the tools; you cannot choose to pay only for the use of Photoshop.

If you are old-fashioned like me and still want to have a copy on your own computer, the current perpetual license model is changing so that going forward you will be required to have the most recent previous version to qualify for upgrade pricing. You must have CS5 or CS5.5 to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 is released next year. To take out some of the sting :huh Adobe is currently offering a 20% discount through the end of the year. If you are still using CS4 you have a few weeks left to upgrade to 5 or 5.5 or you will be required to pay full price for CS6.

You can read about it on Adobe's blog here.

As a 17 year user of Photoshop I am not a happy camper. Will be interesting to see how this plays out for them since I'm sure they are pricing many current users out of the market.

Dan7312

Right now you can subscribe to an individual product, is that changing? Do you have a link to the announcement? Edit, yes you did include a link, thanks

Currently Photshop by itself is $49 on a month to month basis but $35 a month if you subscribe for a year. CS5.5 standard, the smallest CS is $100 on a month to month basis and $65 a month if you subscribe for a year. Other versions cost more of course.

I recently needed an extra copy of Premiere for a couple of months and it was (I think) $70 a month.

You don't really run off the web, you still install the product like you always would. Its just that the licence expires after a month or year if you don't renew it like a trial does.

OffTopic wrote: »

Didn't see that anyone posted about this yet, Adobe recently announced that they are moving to a subscription based model for everything in the Creative Suite including Photoshop...$49.99 per month for an annual plan for an individual... yes $600 per year for the right to use Photoshop in the cloud because you get access to all of the tools; you cannot choose to pay only for the use of Photoshop.

If you are old-fashioned like me and still want to have a copy on your own computer, the current perpetual license model is changing so that going forward you will be required to have the most recent previous version to qualify for upgrade pricing. You must have CS5 or CS5.5 to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 is released next year. To take out some of the sting Adobe is currently offering a 20% discount through the end of the year. If you are still using CS4 you have a few weeks left to upgrade to 5 or 5.5 or you will be required to pay full price for CS6.

You can read about it on Adobe's blog here.

As a 17 year user of Photoshop I am not a happy camper. Will be interesting to see how this plays out for them since I'm sure they are pricing many current users out of the market.

Dan7312

Now that I've looked at the link you posted

It looks like $50 on annual basis for Master Collection. That way less than the $150 a month they it costs now. I use both Photoshop and Premiere. I haven't updated or used Illustartor in quite a while just because I could get by without it but would rather have it available, so this could work out to be a savings for me. It doesn't include Lightroom though.

I didn't see anything that said the current individual product subscriptions will go away though.

OffTopic wrote: »

Didn't see that anyone posted about this yet, Adobe recently announced that they are moving to a subscription based model for everything in the Creative Suite including Photoshop...$49.99 per month for an annual plan for an individual...You can read about it on Adobe's blog here.

As a 17 year user of Photoshop I am not a happy camper. Will be interesting to see how this plays out for them since I'm sure they are pricing many current users out of the market.

DavidTO

It's $50 per month on an annual plan. That's $600/year.

DavidTO

An open letter to Adobe from Scott Kelby.

Richard

At 50 bucks a month, that's like buying a full license every year. Adobe would have to radically speed up its pace of innovation for me to play by those rules. I've been content with upgrading every other release till now, and it's not inconceivable that I would just stay on CS5 forever--or at least until GIMP surpasses it--rather than feel ripped off. As currently proposed, I don't think it's going to fly, and I would expect a "clarification" from Adobe Real Soon Now.

The official announcement contains this paragraph:

For customers who prefer to remain on the current licensing model, we will continue to offer our individual point products and Adobe Creative Suite editions as perpetual licenses. With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.

So we won't be forced into the cloud subscription model, but we will need to be on CS5/5.5 to get upgrade pricing for CS6. It remains to be seen whether they will require you to be on CS6 to upgrade to 7, etc. Again, unless they add more features in new releases than they have to date, it probably won't be worth it to me to get every single release.

This announcement seems so unfriendly to Adobe's current customers that I rather suspect it is a ploy designed to make the actual pricing scheme seem reasonable when it's established, even though it probably will increase the cost of using Photoshop significantly.

Dan7312

The $50 a month is for the master collection, which is a $1400 upgrade and $2600 without an upgrade. Since adobe comes out with a new version every 2-3 years that works out to a bit more than buying the upgrade each time it comes out.

Photoshop upgrades have been running about $200 and also seem to come out every 2-3 years. But the monthly annual subscription for Photoshop is $35, so that works out to a bit more than what it costs to upgrade to the new version of Photoshop every time one comes out too.

It is a big increase in cost if you typically don't upgrade except once every two or three versions. If you typically keep up with the latest version though I'm not so sure it will be that big a change in cost.

I know a lot of people upgrade infrequently and Adobe's policy of doing upgrades on copies that were 3 or 4 versions out of date was pretty good and it looks like that's really what is going away.

I doubt Adobe will drop having an upgrade price for next versions though. And I really don't think Gimp will take up the slack. Adobe's grip on media creation is really strong.

I think Adobe sees that they have to drop doing upgrades on products that are more than a single version out of date for their subscriptions to be successful.

Richard wrote: »

At 50 bucks a month, that's like buying a full license every year. Adobe would have to radically speed up its pace of innovation for me to play by those rules. I've been content with upgrading every other release till now, and it's not inconceivable that I would just stay on CS5 forever--or at least until GIMP surpasses it--rather than feel ripped off. As currently proposed, I don't think it's going to fly, and I would expect a "clarification" from Adobe Real Soon Now.

The official announcement contains this paragraph:
So we won't be forced into the cloud subscription model, but we will need to be on CS5/5.5 to get upgrade pricing for CS6. It remains to be seen whether they will require you to be on CS6 to upgrade to 7, etc. Again, unless they add more features in new releases than they have to date, it probably won't be worth it to me to get every single release.

This announcement seems so unfriendly to Adobe's current customers that I rather suspect it is a ploy designed to make the actual pricing scheme seem reasonable when it's established, even though it probably will increase the cost of using Photoshop significantly.

jww

Thanks for the heads up! YIKES!

I currently have the CS5 Master collection, but I have rarely upgraded every single year as it is just so expensive and sometimes I don't feel it is worth the $$ for the amount of features. . I upgraded from the CS3 Web Design this past time to get the Master Collection and thankfully what I had still counted as I wouldn't have wanted to pay full price!!

Glad to see Scott Kelby get involved. I agree they should stair step the prices giving you some credit for 2 year old software, especially at the rates they charge these days. For example, I couldn't see getting CS5.5 just because I got CS5 a bit later than most.

Dan7312

Just a thought, would more people see this if it were moved to Digital Darkroom? It seems like it could fit in there too.

OffTopic

Dan7312 wrote: »

Just a thought, would more people see this if it were moved to Digital Darkroom? It seems like it could fit in there too.

I debated where it would get best visibility....mods feel free to move if you think this would be better posted in Digital Darkroom.

Funny thing...I received the e-mail from Adobe asking me to participate in the subscription pricing survey, but never received any notification from them about this announcement. Found out about it on G+.

For anyone currently on a subscription plan, I found this on their website:

I am a current Creative Suite Subscription Edition customer. Is there any impact to my current subscription now that Adobe Creative Cloud membership has been announced?

There will not be any immediate impact to your existing subscription. You will be able to continue to enjoy your subscription to the software titles you have selected. We will announce more information about Adobe Creative Cloud as it becomes available.

So while currently you can subscribe to just Photoshop for $35 a month on an annual subscription, it's not really clear if that option will be available going forward.

Dan7312

I think that's the $64 question. It's so hard to predict how a company is going to price/market things going forward. Nobody inside the company will say anything until things are officially public.

In fact, based on the $50 for the master suit the monthly for just Photshop should be around $12 (one third of 35). Currently the monthly for master suit is $150. I wouldn't hold my breath though:nah

OffTopic wrote: »

So while currently you can subscribe to just Photoshop for $35 a month on an annual subscription, it's not really clear if that option will be available going forward.

David_S85

PS is out of my future plans. This seals it.

How about Elements 10 for about $70 and then use a lot of (mostly free) plugins to emulate the features that are in the big Photoshop. Looks like a clear choice for me going forward. I'll just make a 16-bit TIFF out of my RAW editor and port it into Elements if I need more control.

Cameron

David_S85 wrote: »

PS is out of my future plans. This seals it.

How about Elements 10 for about $70 and then use a lot of (mostly free) plugins to emulate the features that are in the big Photoshop. Looks like a clear choice for me going forward. I'll just make a 16-bit TIFF out of my RAW editor and port it into Elements if I need more control.

Watch, they'll probably neuter Elements further and make that less viable...

Sam

Maybe I am not reading all this correctly, but the only difference I see is that you only be able to upgrade from the previous version instead of two versions back.

I read Scott Kelby's open letter to Adobe and think they should hire him. Good rational, ethical thoughts.

I do have some concerns however. With the upgrade path limited to only the last version and the high complete price it would force users to upgrade every version change or loose any viable upgrade path. I can see how this could lead to new versions only having minor improvements not really worth the upgraded price.

Adobe could be shooting it's self in the foot. This could lead other software companies to rethink entering the photo processing arena. Also not to be ignored, pissed off users can always buy bootlegged copies.

Treating current users as owned and captured assets will backfire.

Sam

DavidTO

Sam wrote: »

Maybe I am not reading all this correctly, but the only difference I see is that you only be able to upgrade from the previous version instead of two versions back.

I read Scott Kelby's open letter to Adobe and think they should hire him. Good rational, ethical thoughts.

I do have some concerns however. With the upgrade path limited to only the last version and the high complete price it would force users to upgrade every version change or loose any viable upgrade path. I can see how this could lead to new versions only having minor improvements not really worth the upgraded price.

Adobe could be shooting it's self in the foot. This could lead other software companies to rethink entering the photo processing arena. Also not to be ignored, pissed off users can always buy bootlegged copies.

Treating current users as owned and captured assets will backfire.

Sam

Dan7312

Sam wrote: »

Treating current users as owned and captured assets will backfire.

Sam

I'll be the Devils' Advocate here...

I think the net effect of what Adobe is doing here for someone who always upgrades is a not too big increase in price, whether they buy the copies or subscribe. I think the $600 a year for the Master Suite is a bargin, but I understand for someone who doesn't need the whole suite it is not.

As far as for those who only upgrade every 2 or 4 versions it's a fairly big increase in price. But I think Adobe's current upgrade policy was very liberal to a point where I've always wondered how the made money on it. In fact I think Adobe may be looking at how they can remain profitable and viable going forward. I also think that they see the subscriptions as a better model going forward and would like to price people out of the owned copy.

When I used to develop Autocad applications I had to buy Autocad just like everyone else. If I skipped a version I had to buy upgrades for all the versions I skipped. So this really isn't unprecedented. But it looks like Adobe's policy will be even more strict.

I do Windows development now and the development tools subscription from Microsoft is $4000.00 a year. It used to be that they didn't have a tool subscription and when it first came out I jumped on it because it just made things so much easier than actually buying individual copies of things I would always upgrade anyhow. Of course when Microsoft started subscriptions they were only about $400 a year

I think we will have to wait to see how the details shake out. It may well be that Adobe is walking away for people who only upgrade once every few versions. They have the numbers probably already know what they might be walking away from and feel that they will lose little by doing this.

Afterall Netflix recently did a similar thing recently and that worked out pretty well for them.rofl

Icebear

Hey, Adobe. Why don't you check with the geniuses at Netflix and see how ignoring your customers' legitimate concerns pays off.

tebogan

I smell lawyers in the water
Since Adobe has changed the upgrade policy in mid-stream, there could be an opportunity for some out of work lawyers to work on a class action.

Cameron

tebogan wrote: »

Since Adobe has changed the upgrade policy in mid-stream, there could be an opportunity for some out of work lawyers to work on a class action.

I doubt it. It doesn't invalidate any current license or agreement that anyone has with Adobe. It also doesn't result in you paying any more for what you already purchased. Your purchase of Photoshop didn't come with a guarantee that future upgrades would be at a certain price - or even that upgrades would be discounted at all. They simply changed a very long-standing pricing model for future versions. However, just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's not stupid...

Icebear

I think CS5 may do me just fine for a looonnngggg time

David_S85

I'm waiting for Corel to step up to the plate again and offer something decent for Mac users at a price that is real. PSP X4 is only for PC's, still. :bash

Allen

David_S85 wrote: »

I'm waiting for Corel to step up to the plate again and offer something decent for Mac users at a price that is real. PSP X4 is only for PC's, still. :bash

I've stopped at X2, happy with it on my PC. It was much more fun in the JASC days on the test forum
working out all the bugs. Seems Coral does not care what peeps think.
I don't need the bloated PS to edit photos, PSP does just about everything PS does for that.

David_S85

I still have, and occasionally use, PSP 7.14 from umteen years ago, on my PC netbook. I did also have CS2 Suite, but 90% of the PS was overkill. The computer that was on is now toast. Most of the time I'd just use layer blending, some masking, cloning and especially perspective correction (free transform). All but the free transform was available in PSP a decade ago. And free, or low-cost plug-ins solve that one. RAW files I handle first in Canon's DPP, which is somewhat limited in power.

So any company that wants to do a PSP-like modern program for Mac will have my business in a second.

ian408

Sam wrote: »

Treating current users as owned and captured assets will backfire.

I'm good with CS5/LR3 for some time to come.

DavidTO

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Snapheal

Moving Pictures

Maybe this will trigger GIMP to allow EXIF data in its images.

Zerodog

Wow!!

DavidTO

Good news: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/faq/upgrade-policy.html

David_S85

Moving Pictures wrote: »

Maybe this will trigger GIMP to allow EXIF data in its images.

Huh? They don't, even these days? With open source, how in the world could that have been overlooked?

Ed911

If rental becomes the norm for Adobe...maybe it's time for someone else to step up to the plate...

I, for one, am not enamored with the idea of paying someone a fee for life, if you want to use their products. Haven't liked the concept from the first time that I heard about it.

If you never own the product, you can't stop paying. It's their way of having your pay for using the product...on and on and on.

The better the Adobe products get, the longer their shelf life..., until they reach a point of diminishing return, and I think Adobe is seeing this. CS5 is very capable...so, it leaves me wondering if CS5.5 was a low earner...with little or few people upgrading...and, even though CS6 will, undoubtedly, have some innovations, I've found that in the past, those upgrades/innovations aren't all directed toward photographers needs...leaving me, in the past, to skip some upgrades. If Adobe goes Cloud, then they'll require you to pay a fee, or not be able to use their product...and they'll undoubtedly spin the new cloud product as always keeping you up to date, the best bang for your buck...whether you enjoy the benefits from those upgrades, or not.


Just my two cents.

clickin girl

Yeah, I am not happy with this either! I have CS4 and had to scrape and save to afford it! I think it is ridiculous to spend the money on an upgrade and then turn around within 6 months to upgrade again!
I really like Scott Kelby's open letter to Adobe! I hope they listen!