Thank you Adobe!

Ever since I've started working professionally on the creative industry more than 10 years ago, Adobe software has been the standard by which every designer measured their software skills. For the most part this still holds true nowadays, but the tides are changing rapidly it will probably be too overwhelming for Adobe to handle.

I just wrote a post about why I'm not renewing my Adobe subscription and why I feel nowadays it's a waste of money in many cases.

Please take a look and let me know what you think!

http://luispedrofonseca.com/thank-you-adobe/

Cheers!

 

I am likely very soon to get an Adobe CC subscription. But I find few things more annoying than Adobe's shift to a subscription model. The only people that it helps are those who buy every single version of the software that comes out, and I'm not one of those people. I much rather own the software and update at my own discretion.

 

There is a psychologist named Michael Stone and he developed a scale of evil regarding certain mindsets and personality configurations. The highest score is 22 and is reserved for the absolute worst of the worst inhuman beings.

Now if there was a scale of evil that graded companies the same Adobe would actually make the scale explode. Adobe is run by seriously depraved assholes and their psychotic business practices are responsible for a norm that has devastated overseas software pricing and turned the EU and practically any other country, excluding the USA, in to a cash cow of easily exploitable revenue that guarantees the huge majority of end of year profits for Adobe, 70% or more, was taken from their pricing models for non native sales.

Adobe, on the scale of business psychopathy, has reached the apex. It doesn't even seem to be slowing down as each year the blatant fraudulent price fixing gets worse and consistently they always get away with it.

 

I totally disagree. It has made the products more accessible for me. If you were to buy the products outright you are definitely making huge saving.

While as a user of 2 products you are in a situation where buying might seem to make more sense as soon as you use 3 you are clearly better off than the old way. I have found myself now using lots of adobe products I wouldn't of used for price reasons (inDesign, Premiere, after effects) while getting the products I wanted (photoshop and illustrator). Overall the cloud has been great for me and I know I have good tools which are regularly updated.

While you might not like the move, the uptake for it has been a boom for adobe and I am sure has plenty of people who previously other alternatives jump to them because they can justify a monthly fee.

I think some people forget just how much adobe products cost!

 

This begs the discussion whether Adobe Products are still worth as much as they actually cost.
Adobe knows extremely well how many people are depending on two key things: workflow and compatibility. Both are Adobe specific. I know Photoshop like the back of my hand and I know that everybody and their friggin dog supports their formats in one way or another. Most of the 'refinements' Adobe introduced to Photoshop weren't major, any more over the last years. They were nice but my essential toolset has probably been in place since CS2. Most of it even since Photosop 6. So they need to justify why it is worth buying into their programs further. And how do you do that? Make the products timed - make people buy into it for the rest of their lives. What was de facto standard already (because people bought the licenses anyways) has now become even stricter.
Don't get me wrong here - software leasing can be a very good thing to do if you get a choice. I am probably going to rent Maya LT for a year now to see how it fits me as an extended 3D package. If it's worth it - after that year I might buy a perpetual license. I do have a choice and I know that this perpetual license will be there for me as long as I can make it run on my computer not only for as long as I can or want to afford it. And that is worth the extended price (compared to upgrading every version in comparison to constant leasing) to me.

Again. While it is true that Adobe products were pretty expensinve you could also ask whether they were still worth that money or whether adobe could have reduced that to a lower price on today's market without losing market share. I don't know the real answer to that of course as I have no insight into Adobe's inner workings.

But hey - just a side not: You might not remember but there was a time ... 12 years ago ... when Maya still cost $16.000. Compare that to today's prices - and do it on the market as a whole.

 

I have always thought adobe products cost more than perhaps they were worth from my point of view. However unity falls in the same box now. Work I have done with it has paid for the licences otherwise I probably wouldn't have it at 4.5K (plus another 2.5 or something for the 5 upgrade). Makes my adobe costs seem insignificant.

The thing is Adobe is a professional piece of software aimed at professionals not indies. Pretty much every creative job where I work requires skills in some Adobe products. They also give it to education providers dirt cheap to ensure students learn the Adobe products.

I do agree there are ways to do it cheaper, but you might have to sacrifice on workflow and will be a blow if on your portfolio if going for a job.

I guess from my point of view for less than hours work a month I get the full suite of Adobe products which for me (and I get almost half of the cost back in tax write off).

 

I actually like the subscription service, although perhaps they should've still kept buying the software as an option.

From my point of view, buying even just one piece of adobe software before the creative cloud service, I had to save up a ton of money (I forgot how much photoshop was, but it was a couple hundred). Since I'm a student and not making that much money, this is very difficult. However, with the creative cloud, as long as I have some sort of steady job, I basically don't need to worry about it. I generally have less money then I would without it, but it's a fair price to pay for a tool I use almost every day.

And the fact that the creative cloud covers all adobe products is insane. I would never dream I'd be using programs like premiere and audition, because I'd have to shell out another couple hundred just for those programs, or buy the old "creative suite" packs that were insanely expensive and not worth the money if you're only going to use the extra programs very rarely. However, although the creative cloud monthly payments are going 99% to just photoshop, they also cover almost 30 other programs. Because of creative cloud, I've actually used programs like Illustrator, Flash, Premiere, Audition and After Effects, which I'd never have access to without it.

If you don't think the CC is a good deal, look at it this way. A Unity Pro subscription is $75 a month. That's more than double the price for CC, and that is just for one program, as opposed to the 30 you get with CC (and a lot of the CC programs are as complicated and robust as Unity). Look at in another way: I'm a college student with sporadic employment that works part time and is not paid very much, yet even for me the CC is not prohibitive at all at $30 a month. If you are a professional, I really see no reason why $30 a month should be difficult for you to pay, especially with the value you get from that. I just don't.

 

I personally feel Adobe's products have been too expensive to purchase outright. This is just based on my personal income and what I feel is reasonable.
What amazes me is, people feel it completely justifiable to toss out thousands for things like Photoshop and 3DSMax, but complain about a few hundred for Visual Studio.

 

Biggest issue I see with adobe is that there are minimal differences between versions. The biggest reason I see to buy a new copy of photoshop would be because of an OS upgrade and the old version doesn't work.

There aren't too many other IDE's that have a price tag though. It does show microsoft's age when the ability to develop for windows is sold separately.

 

Then look at it this way: if you now stop paying Adobe you have nothing left to edit with. There's always two sides to the medal.

 

I have been paying for and using Adobe products professionally for the last 10 years, but unless my hand is forced, CS6 will be the last product I would have payed them for. As I mainly work in motion graphics, Adobe tools are the standard goto tools, especially After Effects which is the only product where they have that has no competition. For everything else there are plenty of alternatives. For example Photoshop can easily be replaced by Photoline, Pixelmator, Krita, Paint Shop Pro, Corel or whatever takes your fancy...

Those that defend the subscription model haven't given much thought to the fact that Adobe has you in vendor lockin forever, and as soon as you stop paying they will have taken your project files hostage. Granted, PSD is fairly universal and can mostly be opened in other packages, but your Illustrator, AE, Premiere projects files will only ever see the light of day again as long as you pay up to the Adobe mafia!

If you work in 3d games, Photoshop is becoming less and less relevant with tools like Zbrush, Substance, 3d Coat etc especially as the PBS pipelines are rapidly making the old school way of creating textures less relevant. If you do 2d games, there are so many alternatives from Krita to Spriter that are viable these days, and I can't really see any need for Adobe tools. Don't get me wrong, I still use a lot of PS and AE, but even the old CS3-CS4 versions would be fine for the most part, let alone CS6 which will be fine for a long while yet...

 

This is fun: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-photoshop/

 

If it were not for my big crush on Resharper, I'd be ok using Visual Studio Express.

 

Lets get the international pricing misconception right and lets use two current example:
Adobe complete CC substitution and Apple mac book air.

Mac book air : $899 in the US, $1243 in the UK at today exchange rate. a 38% higher cost.
CC $49.99 in the US and £46.88 in the UK ($77.82) 55% higher cost

So Apple and Adobe must be ripping off the UK people and pocketing tons of extra money, right?

Well actually most of the difference take the form of the VAT.

In the US prices do not include tax, but the UK price does account for the 20% VAT.
So lets remove the VAT (money you pay directly to the UK government, not apple or adobe)

We now have a price of $49.99 vs £37.5 for Adobe CC
and $899 vs $994 for the macbook air. (at todays rate)

To be noted, the pounds went up by 10% in the last year over the USD, and this cover entirely the price difference of the macbook. And make the CC subscription be within 10% of its US price...

If pricing CC at £37.5 make Adobe the worse human being on the planet, I wish I lived where you lived...

 

the price is just stupid... screw em..
and 3ds max too.

 

Beware, I'm gonna shamefully vent now!!!

I have been a regular Adobe customer for many years until CS5, but my hate towards them grew until I exploded. First they started treating their customers worse and worser, then they decided to use "special prices" for Europe without any reason (at the time VAT was NOT included), then they decided to charge for a version 5.5 which had nothing new but if you didn't buy it you lost the discount on the next full version, while in the meantime they killed Flash because they clearly had no idea what the hell they bought from Macromedia. To hell with them, forever and ever.

Maybe now the prices include VAT, but when they started deploying those much higher European prices VAT was not included. If you didn't have a company/VAT-account (which luckily I had) you had to pay "exhorbitant price + VAT". Scammers.

 

Assuming the 500,000 early adoption rate quoted from Adobe ( which means they probably have waaaaay more now) they are making 20-30 million a month(which is probably way more in reality) which I think is the bottom line for Adobe. Sure the model doesn't work for some people, but for the corporate/professional developer sector it works.

I was on the bad end of Adobe international pricing too in Australia where we don't have a VAT too. The cloud has made international pricing more transparent which is good.

zbrush has been mentioned here. I really want that but for me that cost is way too high. I wish that came with my adobe cloud lol

 

I still use Paint Shop Pro 9. It was a sad day when Corel bought JASC.

Haven't used Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator since they were Mac only products.

Is there some killer feature in Photoshop that I'm missing out on?

 

I bought my Zbrush license 10 years ago and have never paid an upgrade fee...in my book that makes it the biggest bargain of any software I have ever bought! There are rumors that the next upgrade to v5 will be a paid one, but the crazy thing is that I actually want to give them money, and I know that I am not alone in thinking this. Considering they are the standard in 3d sculpting, they don't have to do this and could quite easily charge for every upgrade.

Granted, Pixologic are an anomaly in the way that they do business and the product that they create, so they can't really be compared to any other commercial software company. You certainly can't go wrong if you buy a license from them, as they are one of the few companies that you know will never screw you over. Adobe on the other hand...

 

isnt photoshop and 3ds max just like... what rolex is to watches? ..
i mean its like just so people can say "I paid alot for it! im a PRO!!!!!" loool ... or am I missing something?? haha, I know its not just that simple, but with all the competing free, or comparatively almost free programs, its getting that way right?

 

Yes totally in some ways. But obviously the rolex is a better watch and has it's pluses. However you can still tell the time which a crappy watch. I think it is the same here. People obviously want photoshop. If that is all you want there are other good options. If you want stuff like indesign, after effects etc. then the real value comes. I use quite a few products which makes it easy for me to see lots of value.

I think the kicker is if you ever want a job they are going to generally expect proficiency in adobe products.

 

No it's not. A rolex tells you the same time as a Casio and you can read the same time from your rolex the same way you could read any functional watch from anybody on the street. You know that it's not that easy.

Max, Maya and Photoshop all have the advantage of being de-facto standards for people who want to exchange files (or even knowledge). Look at what files people want if it's not interchange formats. It's .max, .psd, .ma ...
Look on Google or Youtube for help or free training and explanation for Max, Maya and Photoshop. Your question - no matter how absurd - will probably be asked and answered by someone somewhere already.
Actually the pricing on Adobe products - as much as I personally think they really were overpriced especially for when I started out and did not make any money on them - is the least of my concerns with today's practises of Adobe. I'd pay for upgrades and full versions. It's pretty obvious by now but the problem I have with CC is the amount of power this gives Adobe over their customerbase combined with blindness or ignorance of people who only look at the price and shrig everything else of as "well - it's just like that".

CC and software leasing in general gives companies an even stronger psoition to do just what they want and when they want it. Changes to CC prices and services are subject to change at any time and at any time there is no plateau of status quo you bought into. When you buy a piece of software (regional legal restrictions apply) you agree to use the software by the teerms and conditions you've got. That's your promise just as the EULA is their promise to you. This EULA does not change for the software you own (again - regional legal restrictions may apply).You aren't fine with an EULA or price change for a future version - don't buy it and look for alternatives. While you do that you can still use your piece of software you licensed. What happens when Adobe makes changes you don't agree with? What happens when the prices increase and you are not fine with it any more? What happens to your CC software after you are not fine with a decission any more?

Yes - I know I am focusing on the negative here. This is very deliberate as some people seem to be only focusing on the positive sides. Subscription does have it's positive sides but it has to be fair for both parties.

You want to know how to do subscription based services right? Look at what Epic is doing right now. Look at companies offering service agreements to keep your bought software up to date for a flat fee (you can keep using the latest version after you stop paying) - Maxon are doing this as an example. Look at companies offering a perpetual license along the substription - Unity does it. Hell even Maya LT does it.

Oh yeah - also call me crazy but I do like to recieve nice boxes of the software I'm spending more than 1000 Euros on, if possible.

 

unreal pricing is awesome. Has made me get unreal!

I think Adobe isn't going to change so you need to make a call if it is right for you.

The problems you are have are with the model as a whole. I am not sure how the model isn't fair as they are very upfront.

 

Being upfront has nothing to do with being fair. Just saying.

 

I, too, am not satisfied with the Status Quo of Adobe products, especially Photoshop. I think the first version I ever used was PS v5 in 2000. It was friggin expensive back then, so it is now. Subscription or not. I used maybe 10% of the feature set then, I use maybe 1% now. I'd argue that 99% of the user base uses 1% of the feature set. I haven't purchased a new version since CS4.

I use Pixelmator from time to time. More importantly, I do all of my game-related, Wacom tablett stuff with Artrage Pro. I can't recommend this thing highly enough. If you are looking for a tool to draw/paint game related stuff, try this.

I am pretty sure that most Adobe (Photoshop) users could replace PS with some more specialised tool, like I did. Problem is, Photoshop skills are thought after, since that's the buzzword that people know. And it's thought after on resumees.

As far as other Adobe products go, I don't know. I was a Final Cut Pro user, and Adobe Premiere slowly surpassed it, no doubt. FCP X might have changed that, but I never used it (even though I'd like to try it).

I've used InDesign when it was called Aldus PageMaker, back in the late 90ties. Oh, the memories. InDesign is great, but once again you have the 99%-1% problem mentioned above. Haven't touched it in years.

Generally speaking, Adobe's GUIs are not the worst on the planet (try Microsoft Office or Graphisoft's ArchiCAD for that), but they often feel crammed, slow and outdated. Install the full Adobe suite and you just packed 30 applications, big and small on your machine. Insane.

 

Being upfront has a lot to do with being fair.

It means you can make an informed decision. If it is your choice, and you choose to do it/not do it. I don't see how that isn't fair.

 

Fair (not my definition, I took one from internet): "in accordance with the rules or standards".
Upfront: "frank".

History has tons of examples of upfront but enormously unfair politics. Adobe too. Like being upfront by telling customers that a new 5.5 version has practically nothing new but not buying it will make you lose future upgrade discounts, and thus being horribly unfair.

I'm angry at Adobe so I have to vent! I have to! At the cost of being ridiculous! Grarrrgh! :B

Also, I don't know if they're really upfront. Maybe they are now, but surely they weren't when I was a customer (they actually told tons of lies instead), so I would never believe them.

 

so based on your definitions upfront could certainly be part of being fair, especially in this situation.

I guess your anger is making your points irrational. Maybe they did tell you lies, which wouldn't surprise me. There is nothing unfair about the cloud subscription. It is their product they can choose to price as they want. I don't believe they are being deceptive or tricking customers with it. I don't know what part you think isn't fair (as opposed to you just disagree with and want a different pricing model).

You might not like it so you don't have to buy it. You have the old versions you purchased which will continue to work in the form you purchased them.

 

Upfront is not the same as fair. Also I am not sure Adobe ever said that they are not going to increase prices or change EULA. By your definition fairness means that you know there won't be a perpetual license and that you get the current conditions for as long as the company deems fit.
In my definition fairness means respecting the needs of both parties involved. Adobe does not do this. CC is a take it or leave it deal and takes full leverage of Adobe's weight on the world market. People ... even entire industries are depending on Adobe software everywhere.

What is fair about being upfront other than that you know you must pay for as long as you want to use their software?
In fact ... what are Adobe so upfront with?
As I said - software leasing has benefits if done right. Taking options away from the customers is not fair just because you know it.

 

Upfront is not the same as fair I agree. But in this situation being upfront is part of being fair.

As a consumer you have a choice. You can choose one of the other options listed in this thread. That is fair.

When I purchased the cloud, I knew what I was getting. I knew my software would no longer stop if I stopped the subscription. I can't think of one way they were unfair to me in the process. I was happy this that and went ahead and signed up. Nobody in this thread has shown how CC is unfair. There have been good arguments against the model but nobody has shown it is unfair.

There are 2 counter arguments going in this thread that adobe software can easily be replaced and the other which says it can't. I guess you are on the adobe software is far ahead they have monopoly and different rules should apply to them? I believe there are other software companies and if Adobe pricing doesn't work for them those other companies will take that market share.

I think Adobe is saying because of the success of the cloud the perpetual licence development costs are now too much for the company and not profitable(at least in the range that makes it worth keeping them).

 

My anger (which to be frank is not really anger) was making me silly but not irrational, and apparently...

I win!!!!

Joking, and I admit that when I said that "being upfront has nothing to do with being fair" I was wrong. Being upfront has *something* to do with being fair, but while being fair requires being upfront (but there can be exceptions even there), being upfront doesn't require being fair.

That said, I apologize for being a "concept nazi" this evening, but I'm back to being silly (not irrational) and I have to quote once more (just for the sake of argumentation)

Allowing consumers to have a choice really doesn't mean that a software is fair: it's simply the law, since no one can force you to buy something. Now, "fair" utterly depends on the type of choices you're offered. Silly but true.

 

$9.99 a month for Photoshop is about the best subscription deal on the planet.

Hint hint Unity

 

Basically Adobe was undergoing bad financial troubles because people weren't buying upgrades for their products.

So they forced all their users to pay subscriptions because they "overwhelmingly supported it".

It would be nice to see some more competition in this area, like how Blender and Modo are trying to compete with Autodesk. Gimp is pretty good, but it's not seeing a lot of development support.


Microsoft is going through the same thing as Adobe. Windows was already pretty good when it got to around XP or Vista. The new updates just aren't adding that much value.

 

To be fair, though, I'd never have considered a PS purchase before they went to subs. But as soon as I knew about the $10/mo sub I snapped one up. In that regard I do indeed "overwhelmingly support it". I think it easily saves me $10 of time per month, plus it lets me do stuff I otherwise couldn't do as nicely, plus I was never going to pay the high up-front cost before, plus the updates are super handy (even if only for compatibility reasons).

So unless I'm misunderstanding something this is a huge win for a) people like me who never would have bought in otherwise and b) people who had to upgrade all the time anyway. It's also great for startups, because for $50/mo they can get everything Adobe-related they need. It ain't so great for people in the middle.

 

What features in Photoshop do you use that were newly added, or significantly improved, within the last three years?

Maybe there are some of those features if you're a hardcore professional user. But you aren't one of those people, are you?

 

So what are you saying? It's better for him to have purchased a perpetual once off license for thousands? Over having to pay a small monthly subscription?

I'm trying to understand your point.

 

Do we even know if Photoshop is worth that much anymore? I mean, maybe it was when useful features were actually being added. I guess we'll never know, since you aren't even allowed to buy it standalone anymore. Funny how that works.

Still waiting on that feature list ...

 

The ridiculously accessible subscription license. In turn, that unlocked every other feature. I don't care when they were added because until that license came I couldn't use them.

 

You didn't answer my question. I'm going to repeat it:

What features in Photoshop do you use that were newly added, or significantly improved, within the last three years?

You know, like buttons and stuff you click on a daily basis. Those types of things.

 

I did answer. Directly. The new license is a feature. "Buttons and stuff" aren't all that matter. As I said, the "buttons and stuff" were completely irrelevant to me until they released a license at a price I was willing to pay.

 

So if you owned a copy of Photoshop from 3 years ago, would you still subscribe?

 

What does that have to do with anything I've said?

It's completely irrelevant to me anyway, since I don't own a license from 3 years ago and, last time I checked, the price of even an old license was high enough that I could instead subscribe for several years (by which time my old license would probably be useless).

 

It was a pretty simple question:

So IF you owned a copy of Photoshop from 3 years ago, would you still subscribe?

 

As was mine. Are you here for discussion or to make demands?

Much like Meltdown, I'm struggling to see your point here. Are you trying to make me understand that my life is somehow worse now that I have a $10/mo Photoshop license than it was before? Asking loaded questions isn't helping whatever it is you're trying to prove.

 

It's relevant to this discussion because there are other users similar to you, but who already own copies of Photoshop.


So back to my question:
So IF you already owned a copy of Photoshop from 3 years ago, would you still subscribe?


That's not a loaded question. It's a real decision several people actually have to make ...

 

The fact that they already own copies makes them explicitly not like me. Why would my opinion on the matter be of any significance to you or others?

Also, I have a feeling you missed the last statement in my first post on the matter:

I really still don't get the point you're driving at. What is it?

As for the loaded questions, I was actually referring more to the one about what features I use.

 

Because you aren't that different from other people. A rational decision that you make isn't all that different from a rational decision someone else would make. Or at least you have to go through the same thought processes anyways ...

Yes, I did miss this. That's quite interesting. And it has to do with my point, and that is the new Adobe subscription scheme might not be as good for people on the whole as we originally might think. Paying $120 a year for mostly bugfix updates doesn't seem like such a good value to me. And this is for Photoshop. The other ones are $240 a year if you don't go the full $600 for all apps. You also run the risk of Adobe raising the Photoshop price over $120 (see Netflix).

Of course, as was stated, lots of people currently perceive Photoshop as being worth a lot, so they'll buy in. Question is: what does this do to people over the long term? Will they bleed out more cash than they otherwise would have?

 

Ok, but I am indeed very different from people who at some point decided it was worth $700+ (from memory) for Photoshop. That's a significant chunk of cash which, if I wanted to spend it on tools, I'd spend on stuff related to my primary skill - programming.

The subscription prices, on the other hand, are low enough that even for me as a non graphics guy doing hobby stuff I can see the value being higher than the cost. Would that be the case if I had an old copy lying around? I literally have no idea. I don't know what's changed because I had no reason to be paying attention. Literally all I know is that I saw it for $10/mo, thought "hell yeah", whipped out my card, and started making better stuff. (Not because it's necessarily more capable than GIMP, but because a) it runs way better on a Mac than GIMP and b) it's what I see the guys at work use, so I learn a little by osmosis where with GIMP I can only guess.)

Perspective is also important. You see it as $120/$240/yr for bug fix updates for a thing you already had and paid for - a reasonable enough outlook, but not at all similar to my own. I see it as $10/$20/mo for access to a useful piece of software that I didn't have at all before, which increases the quality of some of the work I do. It's a completely different mindset, because you only see value in what's changed in recent updates (which apparently isn't a lot?) where I appreciate the core value offered by the base tool without regard for what may or may not have changed and when it happened.

As for whether people see it as being "worth a lot"... all that matters is "is it worth at least $20 in a given month?" If yes, it's a win. Moreso if you got the half-price year that's been on offer a few times. To anyone for whom it increases the quality of their work (especially professional work) or saves them a couple of hours a month (again, especially for professionals) I think $20 is a no-brainer.

 

Yeah, the value is quite a bit different depending on whether you already own it or not. Although it's still definitely not free, as it will cost you $600 over five years.

Your coworker comment raises an interesting point. People want to use the software their friends are using, even though the other (free) stuff is almost, but not quite, as good.

 

Whereas it was going to cost me significantly more than that if I got a perpetual license, and I may still have only got 5 years out of it. And for this 5 years I get to be on the same, latest version as everyone else. So, again, it comes down to "features" being more than the "buttons and stuff", and covering the entire through-life experience of actually working with the software.