Adobe Changing Course? Sort of....

<p>Long ago I took a long look at using proprietary formats such as .PSD.</p>

<p>I understood that I could not escape the problems inherent in getting 'raw' data in a proprietary format 'IF I WANTED RAW DATA' which in my case is NEF (Nikon Electronic Format). However, since there is no guarantee that Nikon will be around in perpetuity, and just a few of my photos may have staying power (I hope), and I don't want future generations to have to guess whether they can open my original files -- an issue fraught with today's librarians -- I decided to simultaneously shoot JPEGs, always and never just shoot 'raw' (proprietary) alone, just for the fear that someone in the future might do away with it, Nikon might merge, go away, or some such.</p>

<p>If you think that's far fetched, consider this.</p>

<p>Fifteen years ago, how many people thought Kodak would be going bankrupt; Minolita, etc. would be out of the camera business? </p>

<p>How many people have seen the current news that it is projected that by year's end Olympus may no longer make cameras since their downward sales and financial slide appears unstoppable, and they may disappear as a brand manufactured by the company of the same name?</p>

<p>In some future world, the same could happen to Nikon -- maybe Sony buys them out, or Samsung, or the Sony-Samsung megamerger, or some company we never heard of, and somehow all the proprietary formulae for all those NEF (proprietary raw) Nikon files of my various cameras I've used gets buried away deeply in someone's servers (like being lost in an digital attic or stored with the Arc of the Covenant in that vast government warehouse), and when future photo historians come to open your or my current photos to show or work on once again in raw (in my case, again NEF) format, they'll just be unopenable and lost forever.</p>

<p>A life's work lost, if I'm shortsighted now. </p>

<p>The same for you, if you value your work as I do mine.</p>

<p>I thought of this almost ten years ago when I first heard of 'Raw' formats and learned they were proprietary.</p>

<p>Leica tried to do something about it with its digital files by adopting Adobe's nonproprietary open standard, but nobody went along, and worse, anybody who converted their files on downloading would be suspect if they entered a contest and was asked for their 'original file' - and only could produce a 'converted' file. </p>

<p>What decision would contest judges make about the file's authenticity? Rules didn't say when one member raised the issue.</p>

<p>I just decided for shooting when I can I'll shoot JPEG along with raw (NEF). JPEG is firmly entrenched, documented, and it's owned by the world. It's not likely ever to disappear.</p>

<p>And when it comes to processing, I save to .PSD format as one option, but for every photo I save in .PSD format, I also save the same version as a 16-bit .tiff version.</p>

<p>Yes, .tiff saves layers.</p>

<p>Layered .tiffs eat hard drive space, but today you can buy a four terabyte hard drive for the price of a one terabyte hard drive ten years ago, or I buy 3 tb hard drives for about $100.00 regularly using 'price match' at a local famous national electronic retailer, now with USB 3.0.</p>

<p>It's extra work to save in multiple formats, but then I value my work in part as history and part as a legacy (some of it at least), and I don't want it to become valueless through some corporate decision-making at Adobe, maybe the demise of Adobe some day, maybe through its merger with Apple, Microsoft, Google, or even some company we haven't heard of that revolutionizes everything in ways we can't even imagine yet.</p>

<p>.TIFFs in: .PSD out.</p>

<p>JPEGs in; NEFs (raw) OK for now, but never trust them as the ONLY source. They are proprietary and subject to their formulae being lost or surcharged far into the future, rendering your collection unopenable. Shoot dual formats, and make NO exceptions.</p>

<p>Today's librarians have long been stuck on how to deal with the proprietary format problem not only with photos but with all digital media.</p>

<p>And not for lack of good cause.</p>

<p>I've solved it for myself as best I can.</p>

<p>I back up and back up and back up and back up on hard drives and also to the cloud.</p>

<p>But with the cloud, I keep recalling one service that 'guaranteed' and 'insured' to its members the service would keep their photos. </p>

<p>Then one day, overnight or over a weekend, all the photos were downsized to thumbnail size and some executive was awarded a big bonus (probably) for saving on server memory size and transmission costs since small files cost far less to transmit, and that was especially so at the time that decision was made a few years back. </p>

<p>Seems that that company didn't really destroy the photos, only their functionality, and then only for the more serious users.</p>

<p>In any case, someone figured out the 'insurance' reimbursement on one cloud plan that touted 'insured photos', and it came to cents per photo.</p>

<p>Anyone want to sell their photos for pennies apiece in case a cloud server guarantees and insures them but insures them? Members (some of them) learned the hard way.</p>

<p>Remember 'Digital Railroad' which was used by many professionals to store and sell their photos? It was both a 'cloud storage and retail outlet' company geared to professionals with some wonderful work stored on it by some very accomplished artists -- some foolish enough to use it as their sole repository for their work. Artists and that includes photographers, are not always the most forward thinking individuals.</p>

<p>That company was the 'next best thing to sliced bread' as it was touted to me. 'You should put your photos there,' one famous photographer and software inventor told me, as I could both store them there and sell them from DR site.</p>

<p>Well, a year of so later, 'Digital Railroad' (cloud storage and photo retailing intermediary) went bankrupt.</p>

<p>Under bankruptcy court supervision, an attempt was made to notify the photographers that their photos stored on its servers would be destroyed, but a certain number of the photographers were sick, had passed away, were traveling, moved, changed e-mail, etc.. <br /><br /><br>

One day the bankruptcy judge entered an order that the servers of 'Digital Railroad' be wiped so they could be sold, and I believe they were sold after being digitally wiped clean.</p>

<p>Inevitably some serious work was lost forever.</p>

<p>Any company offering 'cloud' services could end up in such a predicament or any one of the various predicaments I've described above.</p>

<p>My solution is multiple hard drives (safer than CDs and less burdensome while more permanent), in multiple locations, (thousands of miles apart) then largest jpegs to a cloud service, knowing that the cloud service is only as permanent as the payment they get. Clouds generally won't save anything that is proprietary such as 'raw' format, and those files are HUGE and slow to upload. If you have a million photos, as I may have, storing all to cloud becomes time and cost prohibitive. Only worked on photos make it to the cloud, and then only the JPEGs of course as my 'cloud' service does not take .tiffs, and it would take forever and a few years to upload as many as I'd like to save, (again, just the 'worked on' versions, at my Internet speeds).</p>

<p>Remember what happened to 'street' great Virginia Maier who fell on an icy walk, ended up in a nursing home, and just before she died, her entire Rolleiflex collection was auctioned off from a storage facility, only to be found to be some of the GREAT street work of the last century by the new buyer of some of the work, creating a run on her vast stored and auctioned negatives and prints (and some cinemas too).</p>

<p>As to storing 'free' on Flickr one terabyte, it's far too cumbersome now to use for serious storage - perhaps that'll become more of an option in the future, as Yahoo, despite Wall Street's bitching, is somewhat firmly grounded financially, and one's photos have a reasonable expectation of staying there a while. </p>

<p>But beware, because any new executive could make ONE BAD DECISION of a lifetime and make an irrevocable decision that destroys the value of your collection (like downsizing), etc.</p>

<p>It's taken me the better part of a year and a half over slower internet connections to upload just the 'worked on' parts of my collection to the cloud service I have chosen, and I find it would probably take four times to eight times as long to download back the entire same collection, as there is no easy way just to download the entire thing -- only photo by photo -- an enormously time consuming job for 24-inch jpegs even on a fast Internet service and also enormously labor intensive.</p>

<p>I've thought about the problems inherent with proprietary formulae a lot and the same about the way corporations are structured and corporate decision-making is made -- especially in the USA and especially so in the software industry which does not have a particularly long-range mode of thinking -- it's not a mode that spans generations - we're lucky if the time horizon is a year or three in the future for today's software and digital geniuses.</p>

<p>I'm girded for keeping my photos intact past my lifetime, under the assumption that a few of them might have some worth in the future, if only as history, and if as art, then who wants them destroyed through short-sighted thinking on my part?</p>

<p>Do your thinking now if you want to keep your photos to see another generation . . . . and implement your best plans now.</p>

<p>You can always adapt as better methods come along.</p>

<p>john</p>

<p>John (Crosley)</p>

<p>Long ago I took a long look at using proprietary formats such as .PSD.</p>

<p>I understood that I could not escape the problems inherent in getting 'raw' data in a proprietary format 'IF I WANTED RAW DATA' which in my case is NEF (Nikon Electronic Format). However, since there is no guarantee that Nikon will be around in perpetuity, and just a few of my photos may have staying power (I hope), and I don't want future generations to have to guess whether they can open my original files -- an issue fraught with today's librarians -- I decided to simultaneously shoot JPEGs, always and never just shoot 'raw' (proprietary) alone, just for the fear that someone in the future might do away with it, Nikon might merge, go away, or some such.</p>

<p>If you think that's far fetched, consider this.</p>

<p>Fifteen years ago, how many people thought Kodak would be going bankrupt; Minolita, etc. would be out of the camera business? </p>

<p>How many people have seen the current news that it is projected that by year's end Olympus may no longer make cameras since their downward sales and financial slide appears unstoppable, and they may disappear as a brand manufactured by the company of the same name?</p>

<p>In some future world, the same could happen to Nikon -- maybe Sony buys them out, or Samsung, or the Sony-Samsung megamerger, or some company we never heard of, and somehow all the proprietary formulae for all those NEF (proprietary raw) Nikon files of my various cameras I've used gets buried away deeply in someone's servers (like being lost in an digital attic or stored with the Arc of the Covenant in that vast government warehouse), and when future photo historians come to open your or my current photos to show or work on once again in raw (in my case, again NEF) format, they'll just be unopenable and lost forever.</p>

<p>A life's work lost, if I'm shortsighted now. </p>

<p>The same for you, if you value your work as I do mine.</p>

<p>I thought of this almost ten years ago when I first heard of 'Raw' formats and learned they were proprietary.</p>

<p>Leica tried to do something about it with its digital files by adopting Adobe's nonproprietary open standard, but nobody went along, and worse, anybody who converted their files on downloading would be suspect if they entered a contest and was asked for their 'original file' - and only could produce a 'converted' file. </p>

<p>What decision would contest judges make about the file's authenticity? Rules didn't say when one member raised the issue.</p>

<p>I just decided for shooting when I can I'll shoot JPEG along with raw (NEF). JPEG is firmly entrenched, documented, and it's owned by the world. It's not likely ever to disappear.</p>

<p>And when it comes to processing, I save to .PSD format as one option, but for every photo I save in .PSD format, I also save the same version as a 16-bit .tiff version.</p>

<p>Yes, .tiff saves layers.</p>

<p>Layered .tiffs eat hard drive space, but today you can buy a four terabyte hard drive for the price of a one terabyte hard drive ten years ago, or I buy 3 tb hard drives for about $100.00 regularly using 'price match' at a local famous national electronic retailer, now with USB 3.0.</p>

<p>It's extra work to save in multiple formats, but then I value my work in part as history and part as a legacy (some of it at least), and I don't want it to become valueless through some corporate decision-making at Adobe, maybe the demise of Adobe some day, maybe through its merger with Apple, Microsoft, Google, or even some company we haven't heard of that revolutionizes everything in ways we can't even imagine yet.</p>

<p>.TIFFs in: .PSD out.</p>

<p>JPEGs in; NEFs (raw) OK for now, but never trust them as the ONLY source. They are proprietary and subject to their formulae being lost or surcharged far into the future, rendering your collection unopenable. Shoot dual formats, and make NO exceptions.</p>

<p>Today's librarians have long been stuck on how to deal with the proprietary format problem not only with photos but with all digital media.</p>

<p>And not for lack of good cause.</p>

<p>I've solved it for myself as best I can.</p>

<p>I back up and back up and back up and back up on hard drives and also to the cloud.</p>

<p>But with the cloud, I keep recalling one service that 'guaranteed' and 'insured' to its members the service would keep their photos. </p>

<p>Then one day, overnight or over a weekend, all the photos were downsized to thumbnail size and some executive was awarded a big bonus (probably) for saving on server memory size and transmission costs since small files cost far less to transmit, and that was especially so at the time that decision was made a few years back. </p>

<p>Seems that that company didn't really destroy the photos, only their functionality, and then only for the more serious users.</p>

<p>In any case, someone figured out the 'insurance' reimbursement on one cloud plan that touted 'insured photos', and it came to cents per photo.</p>

<p>Anyone want to sell their photos for pennies apiece in case a cloud server guarantees and insures them but insures them? Members (some of them) learned the hard way.</p>

<p>Remember 'Digital Railroad' which was used by many professionals to store and sell their photos? It was both a 'cloud storage and retail outlet' company geared to professionals with some wonderful work stored on it by some very accomplished artists -- some foolish enough to use it as their sole repository for their work. Artists and that includes photographers, are not always the most forward thinking individuals.</p>

<p>That company was the 'next best thing to sliced bread' as it was touted to me. 'You should put your photos there,' one famous photographer and software inventor told me, as I could both store them there and sell them from DR site.</p>

<p>Well, a year of so later, 'Digital Railroad' (cloud storage and photo retailing intermediary) went bankrupt.</p>

<p>Under bankruptcy court supervision, an attempt was made to notify the photographers that their photos stored on its servers would be destroyed, but a certain number of the photographers were sick, had passed away, were traveling, moved, changed e-mail, etc.. <br /><br /><br>

One day the bankruptcy judge entered an order that the servers of 'Digital Railroad' be wiped so they could be sold, and I believe they were sold after being digitally wiped clean.</p>

<p>Inevitably some serious work was lost forever.</p>

<p>Any company offering 'cloud' services could end up in such a predicament or any one of the various predicaments I've described above.</p>

<p>My solution is multiple hard drives (safer than CDs and less burdensome while more permanent), in multiple locations, (thousands of miles apart) then largest jpegs to a cloud service, knowing that the cloud service is only as permanent as the payment they get. Clouds generally won't save anything that is proprietary such as 'raw' format, and those files are HUGE and slow to upload. If you have a million photos, as I may have, storing all to cloud becomes time and cost prohibitive. Only worked on photos make it to the cloud, and then only the JPEGs of course as my 'cloud' service does not take .tiffs, and it would take forever and a few years to upload as many as I'd like to save, (again, just the 'worked on' versions, at my Internet speeds).</p>

<p>Remember what happened to 'street' great Virginia Maier who fell on an icy walk, ended up in a nursing home, and just before she died, her entire Rolleiflex collection was auctioned off from a storage facility, only to be found to be some of the GREAT street work of the last century by the new buyer of some of the work, creating a run on her vast stored and auctioned negatives and prints (and some cinemas too).</p>

<p>As to storing 'free' on Flickr one terabyte, it's far too cumbersome now to use for serious storage - perhaps that'll become more of an option in the future, as Yahoo, despite Wall Street's bitching, is somewhat firmly grounded financially, and one's photos have a reasonable expectation of staying there a while. </p>

<p>But beware, because any new executive could make ONE BAD DECISION of a lifetime and make an irrevocable decision that destroys the value of your collection (like downsizing), etc.</p>

<p>It's taken me the better part of a year and a half over slower internet connections to upload just the 'worked on' parts of my collection to the cloud service I have chosen, and I find it would probably take four times to eight times as long to download back the entire same collection, as there is no easy way just to download the entire thing -- only photo by photo -- an enormously time consuming job for 24-inch jpegs even on a fast Internet service and also enormously labor intensive.</p>

<p>I've thought about the problems inherent with proprietary formulae a lot and the same about the way corporations are structured and corporate decision-making is made -- especially in the USA and especially so in the software industry which does not have a particularly long-range mode of thinking -- it's not a mode that spans generations - we're lucky if the time horizon is a year or three in the future for today's software and digital geniuses.</p>

<p>I'm girded for keeping my photos intact past my lifetime, under the assumption that a few of them might have some worth in the future, if only as history, and if as art, then who wants them destroyed through short-sighted thinking on my part?</p>

<p>Do your thinking now if you want to keep your photos to see another generation . . . . and implement your best plans now.</p>

<p>You can always adapt as better methods come along.</p>

<p>john</p>

<p>John (Crosley)</p>

<p>Sorry for the double post. The second contains edits and is the one to be read. </p>

<p>I was unaware it had been posted or would have tried to edit it.</p>

<p>Forum maintainer, please take note and delete first post.</p>

<p>john</p>

<p>John (Crosley)</p>

<p>How does that relate in any way to the question in the OP? Especially when you say:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Clouds generally won't save anything...</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

and it's been pointed out above that nothing is in "the cloud" in CC, it's just an unfortunate naming that indicates the program has to verify with an Adobe server regularly. </p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Expect he's way off IMHO. Having access to the newest proprietary processing has always been an issue and a subscription didn't change that one bit.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Exactly, Andrew - a complete non-issue in terms of being a new situation to be in, as I say in my first contribution to the thread.</p>

<p>The <em>only</em> new thing here is the <em>sense</em> of a lack of permanent ownership in the new pricing model. Everything else is just meaningless noise.</p>

<p>Glen, this isn't <em>about </em>"trusting" Adobe or anyone else - sorry, but that's just more FUD. Either you like what Adobe is offering in terms of the new pricing regime, or you don't.</p>

<p>Trust doesn't influence <em>any </em>of my software purchase decisions: I don't "trust" (or not) ACDSee, Picturecode, Phase One or Corel either - I buy their software because it is useful to me, not because I have some sort of emotional attachment to the idea that the companies concerned want to do right by me.</p>

<p>I'd be on the new $9.99 (or £7.14 here) deal in an instant except that my Photoshop licence is via my employer, which excludes me from it: again, not because I "trust" (or not) Adobe, but because in my view it's a fantastic deal. Trust is simply not the issue here.</p>

<p>I do however have confidence that Adobe's software offerings are of very high quality, and that <em>does</em> matter to me. But I also know that this is true of other software, so I'm not <em>vested </em>in Adobe.</p>

<p>Playing notions of "trust" (whatever that even <em>means</em> in this context) into this discussion is as meaningless as the load of old toot that Tim has been dishing out about Adobe holding our images hostage - it's hyperbolic, emotive, wrong-headed and irrelevant.</p>

<p><strong>Interestingly, I was recently invited by Corel to complete a survey, as an owner of their (Godawful) AfterShot Pro software; one of the questions in there was whether I would be prepared to move to a subscription pricing model <em>a la </em>CC: so as others have pointed out, it's not just Adobe that has a taste for this approach...</strong></p>

<blockquote>

<p>The <em>only</em> new thing here is the <em>sense</em> of a lack of permanent ownership in the new pricing model. Everything else is just meaningless noise.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That sums it up to perfection! </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Playing notions of "trust" (whatever that even <em>means</em> in this context) into this discussion is as meaningless as the load of old toot that Tim has been dishing out about Adobe holding our images hostage - it's hyperbolic, emotive, wrong-headed and irrelevant.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The only thing I don't trust about you, Keith Reeder, is your reading comprehension. I didn't say anything even close to what you think I said about Adobe holding our images hostage.</p>

<p><strong>My time and effort I spend building non-destructive edits are not for rent.</strong></p>

<p>"If you are currently subscribed to the $9.99 photoshop deal, you have to cancel to get the new one."</p>

<p>I don't think so. AFAIK, those who are currently subscribed to the $9.99 mo CS 6 option are automatically upgraded to the new combo of PS and LR, etc. <br>

<br>

"What gets me a little is that the deal will end December 31 - sounds a bit like desperation on adobe's part. Now I have to decide if I really want to be up-to-date at all times..."<br>

<br>

Well, it's a limited time offer to customers that qualify. Nothing unusual about that, companies do this type off thing all the time. We're all familiar with weekly grocery store ads, and some stores, Safeway for instance, have special, personalized, pricing on some items for some customers. Those weekly ads typically last 7 days, then the prices return to normal, and of course with grocery stores we see a new ad a new list of products that get special pricing, for a limited time. <br>

<br>

Newspaper and magazine subscriptions have gone up sharply from what they were years ago. The publications cannot survive in today's market by charging prices from yesterday's market. Adobe has no way of knowing how long they will be able to offer this new PS/LR subscription service at the $9.99 price, but they do lock it in for a year. Adobe has no crystal ball anymore than anyone here does. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Sheesh! That should read "$9.99 mo CC 6 option" not CS 6 option. Oh well.........</p>

<p>Just because Adobe asks you to "subscribe" doesn't make them a "service" such as a newspaper or magazine. To be sure, news articles and magazine articles are consumed and have a "shelf life." (They are usually timely.) Adobe is only a tool-maker. Their tools are not consumed, however they wish they were a service and they want you to believe they are a service. At best, they want you to believe their tools are so special that you should rent them with a long-term commitment on your part, so they can "project," as to use their crystal ball. It's obvious to what end.</p>

<p>Consider a software developer building a single crop tool for your entire operating system. A single brush with all the brushes you find to import. A single pen tool that's the same in Photoshop as it is Illustrator as it is in Quark Xpress or OmniGraffle or After Effects. In other words, why can I not go to a single tool box and choose one text tool and use that across a few different apps? When that day comes, am I expected to subscribe to that functionality? One tool at a time or some "set" of tools. For how long? A micro-hour, a day, a month, etc.?</p>

<p>Later. I'm going to my garage.</p>

<p>Renting tools is a long-standing model though, Stephen.</p>

<p>If we agree that Adobe is indeed a "tool maker", why <em>wouldn't</em> they consider what amounts to a rental model for their "tools"?</p>

<p>On a related tack: I wonder how many people banging on about CC pay a regular periodic "rental" for their SmugMug or Zenfolio galleries, or their website hosting, without so much as batting an eyelid?</p>

<p>It's <em>exactly </em>the same as CC: stop paying and the website goes away.</p>

<p>But that's OK?</p>

<p>I fail to see <em>any </em>difference <strong><em>except that they're used to the idea</em></strong>...</p>

<blockquote>

<p>At best, they want you to believe their tools are so special that you should rent them with a long-term commitment on your part</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Which places the onus directly back onto us: we either deal with the new pricing model, or we take <em>personal responsibility</em> for identifying alternatives, which strikes me as a far more mature and purposeful reaction to Adobe's decision than the interminable whining from some quarters on internet forums about the nasty corporation doing nasty things to us...</p>

<p>I'll say it again: Adobe isn't holding a gun to anyone's head here, and anyone who says otherwise is either - to be kind - pushing an agenda which has nothing to do with the real issues; or simply hasn't got the first clue about what's <em>actually</em> going on.</p>

<p>Or both...</p>

<p>I'm done arguing the toss over this utter non-issue. </p>

<p>Those of you who want to characterise yourselves as <em>victims</em> of Adobe's vindictive machinations go ahead and continue to complain about your hair shirts, which Adobe is apparently forcing you to wear.</p>

<p>Me, I learned from the demise of RawShooter all those years ago, not to rely solely on one piece of software or on a single software provider...</p>

<blockquote>

<p>On a related tack: I wonder how many people banging on about CC pay a regular periodic "rental" for their SmugMug or Zenfolio galleries, or their website hosting, without so much as batting an eyelid?<br /><br />It's exactly the same as CC: stop paying and the website goes away.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No, Smugmug and Zen are like billboards where your advertisement (work) is displayed. When your rental term is up, your work comes down but you still possess the tools to create another ad. Or at least you did until now.</p>

<p>As I said early on, this model is not for me. The EULA alone, at least as originally written, is nothing I'd ever agree to. However, I'm not gnashing my teeth or wringing my hands. Adobe's machinations will have zero effect on me. Best of luck to the rest of you.</p>

<p>Does any one know why the monthly payment plan is the only option? What about a yearly payment option?</p>

<p>"Does any one know why the monthly payment plan is the only option? What about a yearly payment option?"</p>

<p>When Adobe first announced CC they also announced alternative ways to pay for it, including the option of paying by the year. Adobe would be the best source to ask what choices are in effect now with this new offer. </p>

<p>To follow up on my recommendation to contact Adobe in the above post, I did it myself. It was a waste of time, sad to say. I talked to the Adobe order line 1-800-585-0774, and they had no answer to the question about the annual payment option except to say that I should see what is offered next week when the offer becomes active. </p>

<p>I have not come here to bash Adobe, but, they have not got their ducks in a row over this new CC option. One would think that the sales reps would be familiar with payment options for products, but if one did think that they would be wrong. </p>

<p>Not only that, but my own CC Manager does not even show LR as an app that may be purchased through CC, even though it is available from CC, and the sales rep did a Sgt. Schulz claiming to "know nothing!". I'm not too concerned about the LR app not being listed in my CC Manager window at all, as it will probably get resolved next week when the new offer becomes active. But, I was concerned that the sales rep knew nothing about much of this CC operation for an app that he could very well have needlessly sold me if I had not been aware of what is coming next week. Com'on, Adobe, get with the program! </p>

<p>We subscribe to magazines and professional organizations and even Photo.net on a yearly basis. What would be the difficulty in offering CC on a yearly subscription and send out a friendly email after 11 months to notify you that it is time to renew. Adobe has no problem sending us emails now. I would be perfectly happy with that arraignment. I searched all through Adobe's website for a mention of a yearly subscription but could find no mention of it if it exists.</p>

<p>A question about this LR/PS CC combo bundle has been nagging at me concerning subsequent upgrade numbering changes from the regular CS perpetual license model to CC version numbering (i.e., 14.x.x.x, 15.x.x.x.).</p>

<p>If I sign up for this LR/PS subscription and pay regularly for lets say two years where in that length of time I've upgraded to several version numbers for each app and decide to end the subscription, do all the versions get turned off going back to the beginning of the subscription two years ago? Or just the last/current upgrade version downloaded?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...do all the versions get turned off going back to the beginning of the subscription two years ago?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes. You'd have to fall back on a perceptual license (CS6) if you owned one.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>You'd have to fall back on a perceptual license (CS6) if you owned one.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Or CS3, CS4, CS5 - whichever was the latest version that you purchased before the subscription model became active.</p>

<p>And that is exactly what I don't like about the subscription - you are paying rent and as soon as you stop you realize that you don't own a thing. Despite the fact that after a few years of paying the subscription you paid a lot more money than a full version of photoshop and lightroom had cost before. I am not saying that the $9.99 isn't a fair price - I am only saying that after a certain time period when you decide to drop the subscription, you should be allowed to use what you have at that point - you just wouldn't get any further updates and upgrades. </p>

<p>Of course, the problem with that is that if you decide to renew the subscription at a later time you would need to get all the upgrades that were missed - essentially for free. Unless adobe let's you back in for a fee that depends on how long you've been out - where there is a will, there is a way.</p>

<p>Spare a thought for Australian consumers of Adobe products. <br /><br />For decades, Adobe has been consistently charging us up to twice what you pay in the US for exactly the same software. There was even a recent Federal government enquiry into the practice, known as "price gouging". At the same time, the Adobe CEO came here to announce CC, conveniently choosing to totally ignore journalists' questions on gouging, as if it had never happened.</p>

<p>I notice that this $9.99 is a US only price. In Australia, we are required to pay $20/month for a single application and no cheaper offer has been made. Why? It's the same "Creative Cloud" - or maybe it could be called a "Profit Maximising Smokescreen".</p>

<p>While I think the software is great, the prices Australians pay are extremely inequitable.</p>

<p>The price in Australia for the new program is $9.99AUD. That's not significantly different than the US price.</p>

<p>It looks like Adobe's MBA-geniuses are trying to turn an embarrassing mistake into a marketing triumph that proves yet again their genius infallibility.<br /><br />Originally, the MBA-geniuses apparently cared only about enhancing the revenue stream from professional graphic designers. They expertly devised a rental scheme specifically to delight that target market, since it is indeed an excellent deal for them. <br /><br />Being geniuses, the MBAs knew and expected that photographers would be unhappy with what, for them, would be a very bad deal. But as they decided photographers were outside the target market, and thus irrelevant to the plan for enhancing Adobe's revenue stream, the expected dissatisfaction could be safely ignored. It's strictly business, after all. Any MBA knows it's perfectly fine to shaft loyal long-term users if that's deemed necessary for business. <br /><br />Despite their unquestioned genius, the MBAs somehow failed to anticipate the extent and volume of the tantrums those expendable photographers would throw all over the Internet. That was creating an embarrassing PR problem for Adobe. It was even more embarrassing to the MBA-geniuses, who cannot tolerate even the suggestion that they're capable of error. <br /><br />This wasn't the first time Adobe's MBA-geniuses had to vaporize an embarrassing gaffe. When Adobe bought Pixmantec, they decided that the users who had invested in RawShooter Premium were irrelevant, and told them they were simply out of luck. But the MBA-geniuses failed to anticipate that those users would not quietly accept being sacrificed to Adobe's greater glory. After a few weeks, the MBA-geniuses decided that RawShooter Pro users would receive a free copy of the new Lightroom 1.0. In one stroke of genius they transformed a thorn in Adobe's side into a group of enthusiastic gamma testers. <br /><br />So the MBA-geniuses went back into their conference room and came up with plan that would not only vindicate their infallibility, but convert those once-irrelevant photographers into enthusiastic rent-payers who provide a useful secondary revenue stream. <br /><br />And they may have succeeded at erasing their mistake, since the $10 monthly rental of Photoshop and Lightroom seems a very good deal indeed. Of course, like any landlord Adobe always has the right to raise the rent and change the terms and conditions whenever the MBA-geniuses decide it's in Adobe's best interest. But let's not think about that. Let's just celebrate the triumph of the infallible MBA-geniuses and joyfully join the secondary revenue stream!</p>

<p>Ted,</p>

<p>Did you flunk out of an MBA program or were you turned down for a position at Adobe?</p>

<p>I fail to see where the anger comes from. Adobe made their decision. They modified it to the benefit of photographers. No one has to join the program. It isn't as if you are being drafted into the military. It is a volunteer army.</p>

<p>I can understand people not liking this change. I can understand people not joining the program. What I can't understand is the anger. There must be something deeper going on. I just don't get it.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>i am very annoyed with Adobe that I cannot take advantage of what it an brilliant offer as I cannot buy Adobe Products in Cambodia (or Laos or Vietnam) I had to buy through a friend abroad.</p>