Adobe Photoshop

<p>Adobe Photoshop, Creative Suite will no longer be available in Shrink-wrap boxes with CD's. You will have to order on-line, and download the software (and probably the manuals, too). This will probably be part of their rumored "subscription service" where you get automatic updates, and pay a periodic fee for the rest of your life. $700 for a download ? ! ?</p>

<p>No surprise. The game industry had to change the distribution and rights management paradigm or die. That's why Steam was developed.</p>

<p>Ideally a download-only and online based rights management, piracy-resistant paradigm for Adobe would reduce costs. If it does, the transition should be smooth. If not, it'll be rougher going, especially since photo/graphics editing tends to be a solo performance and isn't dependent on an interactive community like gaming does.</p>

<p>The pricing for Lightroom is very competitive and the occasional discounts persuaded me to buy LR 4.x rather than spend the same amount of money on an affordable pixel level editor like Elements or Paint Shop Pro.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Who cares about a physical CD and box? There wasn't much in there before (a printed manual, for example).<br>

I've been buying through downloads for a couple of years.</p>

<p>The switch to a purely subscription service is more worrisome. The first step is making the upgrades more expensive (ex. only upgrade from the most recent version) so the cost of the subscription is closer to the upgrades.</p>

<p>big deal. the world has been moving away from CD's for years. how many times have people posted 'I can't find my CD for xyz'. Well, problem solved. I can still download some old version of PS directly from adobe.com</p>

<p>No, it's not $700 for a download. It's $700 for the intellectual property, coding, QA, marketing etc etc. The CD is about $0.50. Surprisingly, the software developers at adobe like to put food on their family's table and raise some some kids.</p>

<p>>>>>Who cares about a physical CD<<<<</p><p>People who don't want to rely on internet access for everything and, similarly, people who want to use sofware no longer supported.

<p>An annual subscription fee of around $50-$100 might actually expand Adobe's base of Creative Suite users. I wouldn't buy the full fledged version at the current one-time cost, even if I could use it offline indefinitely. But for an annual subscription fee comparable to Amazon Prime, sure, I might go for that.</p>

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<p>No, it's not $700 for a download. It's $700 for the intellectual property, coding, QA, marketing etc etc. The CD is about $0.50. Surprisingly, the software developers at adobe like to put food on their family's table and raise some some kids.</p>

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<p> <br>

Well said!</p>

<p>I think this might have more to do with it than anything else. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-03/oracle-can-t-stop-software-license-resales-eu-court-says-1-.html</p>

<p>From the article:</p>

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<p>Software copyright owners can’t oppose the resale of “used” licenses that enable the use of software downloaded from the Internet, the <a href="http://topics.bloomberg.com/european-court/">European Court</a> of Justice said today. Oracle is trying to prevent Munich-based UsedSoft GmbH from selling computer software and licenses no longer used by the original buyer.<br>

“Even if the license agreement prohibits a further transfer the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy,” the court in Luxembourg said in a statement advising the German judges who will ultimately rule on the matter.<br>

Oracle said the ruling ignored the value of innovation and intellectual property to <a href="http://topics.bloomberg.com/europe/">Europe</a>’s economy. The <a href="http://topics.bloomberg.com/redwood-city/">Redwood City</a>, California-based company said in an e-mailed statement that customers faced unnecessary risks by buying second-hand software licenses without knowing if the originals were purchased legally.<br>

UsedSoft said the ruling also applied to computer programs sold by Microsoft Corp. and <a title="Get Quote" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/ADBE:US">Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE)</a><br>

“This decision is a milestone for free trade in Europe,” said Peter Schneider, the managing director of UsedSoft. “This is particularly good news for customers who can finally benefit from low software prices without restrictions.”</p>

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<p>So the only counterpoint to that is of course everyone on the planet going to a subscription service model.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>I guess the amount of people that don't want to rely on the net is now small enough that the bottom line is that physical disks for programs are no longer supported. Coercive? Sure. But that's the business model now. There are actual upsides to it. For paranoid types who want to stay off the grid, will be a little more difficult to work around it. Its like complaining about a tidal wave, its not going to stop it.</p>

<p>$50-$100/year? I'll bet it will be closer to $250/year.</p>

<p>Howard, I know all about coding and intellectual Property because I’ve been in the tech world longer than you have been alive. The point is that you pay this price for downloading the software (can take quite a while depending upon your connection), hope that it wasn’t corrupted, that the check sum worked, and you don’t have a backup. And, the potential pitfalls go on forever, including the quality of on-line support (when 100 million people are trying to log in).</p>

<p>Stanley, unless you're about 80 years old, that's a false statement. </p>

<p>It's essentially a given tthat any CD shrink-wrapped 'version' is obsolete the moment the box is opened.</p>

<p>Howard, 80 isn't very far away.</p>

<p>Lex, you bought Lightroom 4?</p>

<p>I'm thinking about going that route myself just to get the new Raw processing PV 2012 so I don't have to upgrade Photoshop to get it in ACR. What discount did you get and where can I find it? Coupon?</p>

<p>How's LR4 running on your current system which I remember you saying was not the latest greatest speed demon. I've got a 2010 MacMini and don't want a big slow down compared to CS3 ACR especially in preview redraws and editing tool responses.</p>

<p>Wonder what the file sizes are going to come to buying full upgrade downloads. Updates have been under 100MB which is tolerable on my 1.5mbs DSL connect. 1GB would be near torture.</p>

<p>This makes me appreciate the fact that Photoshop CS5.5 does what I need to do. The rest of that Creative Suite actually pretty much the same story.</p>

<p>I usually skip every other upgrade, but having to license the software indefinitely is NOT what I need, so I'll see what happens for the next version.</p>

<p>In this day and age, CD's are dirty and expensive. Download is far greener.</p>

 

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<p>"Lex, you bought Lightroom 4?"</p>

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<p>Yup. Got the trial versions for both LR 3.x and 4.0 last spring. Took the full 30 days just to get acquainted with LR's editing features - not quite enough time for me to grok the organizing/archiving stuff, which I'm still working on.</p>

<p>After the trial versions expired I went back to using my old software, including Nikon's software. By the end of 2012 I was fed up and realized I needed something better. I wanted more consistent results for editing my Olympus and Ricoh files so they didn't look radically different from my Nikon files.</p>

<p>The main improvement I'm seeing with Lightroom is better continuity in my editing sessions because the editing tools are so well integrated. For example, for years I used the standalone version of Noise Ninja or Noiseware, which required converting to TIFF for editing in Paint Shop Pro. That process locked me into a look that might not be ideal for a photo after additional editing revealed too much or not enough noise reduction. So I'd have to start over or put up with compromises.</p>

<p>The compromises were such that I'm going back over my Nikon D2H raw files and gradually redoing hundreds of them in Lightroom. D2H files show chroma noise in shadows even at the base ISO 200. The results are much better and more consistent.</p>

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<p>"What discount did you get and where can I find it? Coupon?"</p>

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<p>I don't recall which discount I took advantage of but it was in November, for just a couple of days. Since then I've seen a couple more discounts. If you download the trial version and get on the Adobe mailing list they'll notify you when discounts are available.</p>

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<p>"How's LR4 running on your current system which I remember you saying was not the latest greatest speed demon. I've got a 2010 MacMini and don't want a big slow down compared to CS3 ACR especially in preview redraws and editing tool responses."</p>

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<p>Your Mac Mini should be good enough for raw files up to 12mp or so. My main photo editing PC is a minitower with AMD 3.something GHz quad core, 4 GB RAM and a 5500 RPM 1TB hard drive. Hardly a speed demon but plenty fast enough for my 10 megapickle files. Occasionally I do a little editing on my laptop, a 1.6GHz AMD with 4GB RAM. It's noticeably more sluggish but still adequate for 10mp raw files.</p>

 

<p>Don't know, I feel more comfortable with a CD incase something goes wrong. With a CD you can still run the program from your hardrive even if your computer is down or infected with some type of virus. You can put the disk on another computer or even your laptop if you got enough GB. Apple is just trying to save money by elimanating the CD and the paper Manual. Yeah sure, you can find it all on line... What's next " you can just go to our website don't even bother calling us sucker wer'e too busy playing golf" </p>

<p>The monthy fee for Adobe's creative cloud that includes ps6 is 30 bucks a month, or $360 a year. That's still a little steep for a lot of folks. Its more than an upgrade every couple of years. I just found out that there is no upgrade option for going from CS4 to CS6, and the full price would be $699! The only other option would be the monthy fee option, or going to Lightroom or Elements. For me, I mainly need ACR to keep up with new cameras. I don't need a ton of PS features that I don't already have with CS4. I won't pay $700 for CS6, or $360 a year for Creative Cloud just to have the latest version of ACR !</p>

<p>Thanks, Lex, for the thorough rundown on your LR4 experience. Reworking images myself for different reasons mainly finding better ways using ACR tools to pull additional detail out of the shadows and highlights using other tools I hadn't thoroughly understood or didn't think would do a better job. I'm sure you're seeing this as well in LR4.</p>

<p>Harry, I feel the same way about getting my software on CD, but then I found I rarely have much trouble with the newer computers where the thought of reinstalling all the updates by starting from scratch from the CD just became less and less appealing. What I do now if per chance anything goes wonky with Adobe software and the OS is to previously have a backed up duplicate of the hard drive (I use carbon copy cloner) to have ready to copy back over just in case after reformatting and starting over with the original HD.</p>

<p>I've never had to do that, yet, but that's my plan for now.</p>

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<p>This will probably be part of their rumored "subscription service" where you get automatic updates, and pay a periodic fee for the rest of your life.</p>

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<p>It's not rumoured, it's a current option. And I disagree with everything beyond "probably". I purchased Photoshop online about a year back, basically getting an email confirmation with a serial. No big deal.</p>

<p>Adobe's Creative Cloud is $50 a month. If you are a licensed user of CS3 or later you can get a discount on the<em> first year</em> for $30 a month. There are a lot of powerful tools there, but it comes with a price.</p>

<p>I just checked (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html) and the monthly fee for PS6 is $19.99 (for a one-year contract). $240/year is a bit more than the current upgrade fee of $200, so I don't see the benefit right now. I would assume the upgrade fee will increase or the monthly license will drop (guess which one this cynic is expecting...) to bring them in-line with each other.</p>

<p>Geoff, there is no discount/upgrade to CS6 unless you already have CS5. With CS 4 and below you have to pay full price of $699! Well, I played around with the pricing and it does look like you can do the subscription for a year for the $19.99/month. This was unclear the first time I looked into it. </p>

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<p>With a CD you can still run the program from your hardrive even if your computer is down or infected with some type of virus.</p>

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<p>It hasn't been possible to run Photoshop or most any Adobe product off the CD in years. Virtually all pro-level software requires an installation, if nothing else but to set system preferences and cache.</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>