Adobe Systems this week announced that its popular Creative Suite, which bundles Photoshop, Illustrator and a number of its other products, will be available only by subscription through Adobe’s cloud service, Creative Cloud. No more boxes and disks.
Although Creative Suite was really designed for graphics professionals, this news affects hobbyists because the stand-alone $700 version of Photoshop will also be available by subscription only, but at a subscription price of $240 for a year.
There are a few advantages to using a cloud service, Adobe said. It simplifies sharing and collaborating on projects. If you have customized your settings on one computer, you can access them from any computer. It also means that updates and upgrades are easier for Adobe to carry out.
But calling it a cloud service is a tad misleading. When you subscribe to the service, the software is downloaded to your computer. You can work on images and illustrations even if you don’t have Internet access.
You need to connect occasionally to get updates and to make sure your account doesn’t expire, although an Adobe spokesman said he was unsure how often that connection would have to be made.
There are many price plans, based on the number of products you want to use, which products you have owned before, and how long you are willing to subscribe.
For instance, for the full Creative Cloud Service, which includes all the software in Creative Suite 6 plus 20 gigabytes of free storage and other improvements, it costs $75 a month for a month-to-month subscription. If you are willing to commit in advance for a full year, it’s $50 a month. If you owned Creative Suite 3, 4 or 5, a subscription is $30 a month for the first year if you commit to a year’s subscription. If you owned Creative Suite 6, it’s $20 a month for the first year if you commit to a year’s subscription.
There are similar discounts for single products. For instance, if you had Creative Suite 3 or later, you can get Photoshop alone for as little as $10 a month for the first year.
Adobe said it will continue to sell a boxed version of Creative Suite 6, but will no longer provide software updates for it. The price will remain $1,300 to $2,600, depending on the version.
Lightroom 4, a powerful photo editing program that is sufficient for most photographers, is still sold in a box for $150. Lightroom 5 will soon be released in a boxed version, but the price has not been announced.
