Adobe has announced that future upgrades to most of it’s popular programs including Adobe Photoshop will, from June, require a monthly subscription. Current standalone versions will still be available for the time being but these will not be upgraded.An Adobe spokesman has said that this move will free Adobe from it’s traditional 18 to 24 month upgrade cycle and give customers access to improvements as soon as they become available.
A year ago Adobe introduced Creative Cloud which was the first step in providing Adobe’s products as a subscription service. As part of the move designations for new software products will change from CS to CC. CC products are promised to provide a much closer integration between the various software tools. You will continue to install and use the creative applications on your desktop just as you always have, but the apps will increasingly be part of a larger creative process centered on Creative Cloud.
If you are a new Adobe user pricing is at $49.99 per month.. This will give you:
- Full versions of our most popular desktop applications — Adobe® Photoshop®, Illustrator®, Acrobat®, and more
- Full access to services to help create mobile-ready content and apps
- 20GB of cloud storage for file sharing and collaboration
- Annual commitment; billed monthly
If you have an existing CS3 or later product you can upgrade and save 40%, monthly subscription of only $29.99 per month. If you have a CS 6 product this is reduced further to only $19.99 per month for the complete suite. For this you will get:
- Get the complete plan for individuals at an upgrade price (same features as above)
- Requires Adobe Creative Suite® 3 or later serial number
- Annual commitment; billed monthly
Single Apps with 20GB of cloud storage will be available at $19.99 per month.
(Note for Canadian customers pricing is only available in $US)
A 30 day trial of all Apps is available at https://creative.adobe.com/apps
The new CC products will be available on 17 June and as soon as they are I will be testing the new Creative Suite so look out for more details soon.
UPDATE – There seems to be a huge customer backlash at the announcement of creative cloud. To read more see http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/breaking-from-tradition-photoshop-cc.html
