It's not Creative Suite anymore... news from Adobe

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Trevor Dennis

Brian, a point I have made in other forums, is that some of the features in recent Photoshop upgrades have saved me many hours of processing time. The RAW processing engine in Photoshop CS5 was good, but I'd feel crippled without ACR7. Same thing with the Content Aware features. Heck, some of those don't so much save time, as make it possible to do things you simply couldn't do in earlier versions. The cost of a single app subscription could easily be earned in a single day. In fact, the cost of a full range subscription ($600) shouldn't be too hard to recoup. On that basis, I am sure my Photoshop upgrades have easily paid for themselves over the years.

I suspect it really depends on what you're using your Photoshop for. If you're making full use of it's capabilities it becomes worthwhile, however, if you're using it for basic graphic or image manipulation it might be harder to justify upgrading every year.

It may be a case selecting the correct subscription for your needs. You may find that just having Premiere and A.E. covers most of your needs and GIMP meets your Photoshop requirements. It depends on how often you're using each application and the market you're working in. A short term subscription on a individual application may also work.

I know the use of the cloud for collaboration has been discussed for a number of years, how useful it is may vary depending on individual work practises and if decision makers rather be down in the hotel bar or watching your latest cut. .

[Simon Wood]

Originally Posted by Jim Michael

FCPX may have gained some cred, but Apple has shown it's interest is in being a consumer products company now and can't be depended on to maintain a sensible software migration strategy. Buying a bunch of licenses for a media organization should probably get a manager fired.

That argument is getting really old. People were saying that 2 years ago when FCPX was launched. In the meantime people have been cutting video with FCPX from day one, and Apple has been releasing regular and free updates continuously since then to make the product better.

FCPX is one the best selling Apps on the App store, it has pretty much every feature editors wanted, and its very fast and quite stable.

At $299 it also happens to be one of the least expensive options out there.

Add in Motion at $50 and you have a complete bargain of a package. Bear in mind that Apple does not penalize people from other countries, so users in the UK and Australia are essentially paying the same amount as people in the US for the software.

Motion makes it easy to design templates; so there is a huge eco-system of 3rd party plug-ins for FCPX, as well as plug-ins from the major developers like Red Giant etc.

Pixelmator is not as good as Photoshop, but at it does most day-to-day tasks that the majority of casual Photoshop users use, and at $15 its a steal.

So FCPX at $299, Motion at $50, & Pixelmator at $15 works out at a grand total of $364 for a full video & Photo and effects editing package with a perpetual license. Throw in Resolve Lite for grading if you need it for free.

Horses for courses, but I wonder why people are still complaining about FCPX?

[Jim Michael]

I don't question the capability, only the ongoing support for a product that may get EOLed with little warning by a fickle company. Consumers forget and businesses mitigate risk. The entire NLE sector provides an interesting risk analysis.

[Trevor Dennis]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

It may be a case selecting the correct subscription for your needs. You may find that just having Premiere and A.E. covers most of your needs and GIMP meets your Photoshop requirements. It depends on how often you're using each application and the market you're working in. A short term subscription on a individual application may also work.

That's more or less how my collection of Adobe apps has grown, but now two single app subscriptions brings you $5/month short of the full CC package, so it makes sense to subscribe to just one, or them all.

[Rob Morse]

Here is a link to a new survey on Creative Cloud. I would urge everyone to fill out.
Survey: Is Adobe Creative Cloud subscription worth the price? | Business Tech - CNET News
It's a quick survey, and if we don't let them hear our voices though every means possible, we can't bitch about it.

[Pete Bauer]

I ran through that CNET survey. Quick? Yes. Superficial? IMO, definitely. Oddly, it seems more like a marketing survey than a real "pulse of the people" inquiry, but if nothing else it may help a CNET author produce an article.

Maybe Adobe is aware of, or will notice, that survey. In any case, I know Adobe and just about every other video/cinema related concern follow DV Info Net very closely. I believe the discussions here are much more powerful than a 2 minute surveymonkey thingee for a computer web site.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Kevin Monahan

You can use them at the same time with the new EULA coming out. See the FAQ "Getting Started" section which states you can do this: Adobe Creative Cloud ? FAQ

Thank you, Kevin. That's brilliant.

It's excellent that products will run for 90 days if not synced with Adobe.

Here's my 'first impression' report: Adobe Creative Cloud First Impressions. Also, how do you get started?

[Trevor Dennis]

Originally Posted by Sareesh Sudhakaran

Here's my 'first impression' report: Adobe Creative Cloud First Impressions. Also, how do you get started?

Thanks for that Sareesh. That was useful.

[Rob Morse]

Sareesh, I appreciate your blog, but you're only addressing a fraction of the potential problems. Look on the Adobe forums right now. There are people who have lost service for 3 days. I've had the master collection since they started the suite option, so the cost is not the biggest issue. This actually goes far beyond the cost of the service, and the deeper you go, the worse it gets for the end user. This is especially bad for the casual user.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Rob Morse

Sareesh, I appreciate your blog, but you're only addressing a fraction of the potential problems.

Rob, no worries. I can't conjure up problems that I haven't encountered yet!

I'm sure many will have issues, as I expect to have, too. It's for Adobe to sort out its issues with its customers.

They shouldn't forget the exodus of customers from FCP-X to Premiere Pro not very long ago. The same thing can happen in reverse at the drop of the hat. I'm sure that will keep them on their toes.

[Al Bergstein]

I might be missing something in all this analysis, but I'm not yet in crisis mode over the Creative Cloud move (though I reserve the right to be in the future!).

I've read the Adobe FAQ on the move, and it seems not a huge difference than now. Maybe in some future version they'll cross a line for me personally. But this is not the FCP fiasco that Apple pulled. (despite it's current sales on the Apple Store, which is to be expected given everyone using video these days for consumer level work, which FCPX seems to be targeted at).

Would I personally prefer not to have the Cloud forced on me? Yes. Do I think that Adobe is moving their incredibly feature rich product suite forward for us pros, both in the indepedent and major studio world? Yes. How many of us are not connected to the Internet for at least some part of 90 days? Almost zero.

An untold story here, I believe, is the issue of piracy. I know that MSFT is experiencing huge privacy in Asia, and this might be an issue for Adobe, though I'm not sure how it could, given that you need a registered serial number. By forcing people online for subscriptions, they are making it almost impossible to hide production by being offline.

Ultimately, as opposed to my immediate jumping ship from Apple over their amateur job of abandoning their client base, I am content to wait and see how this all plays out. I've not seen anything in the FAQ from Adobe, nor these great indepth discussions, to make me worried. But then, my name is Alfred (G). Now where do I pay MAD for referencial use of their trademark symbol?

[Andrew Smith]

The CC version will sill suffer piracy as much as any other version will. Protection mechanisms can always be defeated.

Andrew

[Al Gardner]

Andrew I don't think piracy has as much to do with this as we might think. As a matter of fact most people that pirate software don't actually use it anyway. So you're not going to turn someone who hardly uses the product into a subscriber anyway.

I think this is a carefully executed plan to get ahead of Apple for once. Apple burned Adobe with the push for HTML5 and Adobe is making a offensive move rather then a defensive one this time. I suspect if Adobe can be first to market with a subscription service they stand a good chance to bring Final cut users back into the fold where Adobe thinks they belong. If I get sucked into paying $50 bucks a month for Adobe, it's pretty likely that's where I'm hanging my hat. it's highly unlikely I'm going to turn around and pay Apple another $50 a month. Make no mistake this is the beginning and not the end of this model.

It's a shame but they are using a cell phone and cable company model on us. And if we don't reject it strongly right now, there will be no stopping it.

It can be done. Netflix got the message. And so did Makers Mark. You have to vote with your wallet.

[Andrew Smith]

I don't think for a moment that it's being done to solve a piracy issue - it's all about a consistent cash flow from the subscriptions.

What I am saying is that it won't at all affect the chances of the software being pirated. Again, "protection mechanisms can always be defeated."

Andrew

[Evan Bourcier]

As someone who was pirating the software because I couldnt afford to drop $2k on the suite and then when CC was announced IMMEDIATELY became a subscriber I think it's a big deal for them. The current setup that they have is CAKE to crack. The subscription is a much harder model. Every college kid I know has a pirated copy of cs6. If it becomes a giant pain to crack the subscription they'll pay the money.


my $0.02.

Also: Been using CC for something like a year with zero issues.