From June 17th all new Adobe products will be subscription only. No more one time purchases. http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/t...creative-suite-software-online-only-6C9801124 Opinions? I think students will be massively hard hit by this, as a the only educational discount is on the full creative cloud subscription and will be £15.98 per month. Annually, that works out about the same as the one off cost of a student price for Photoshop as a stand alone program, but this will be ongoing to be able to use it. Also... as creative cloud apps are downloaded and run locally, not actually cloud apps, I think this will actually increase piracy.
The chances of a student actually paying for this is going to be nearly nil. I think adobe have grabbed the wrong end of the stick here and should have followed many other companies examples with a dedicated student version, either for a much lower cost or for free (much as I loathe to say it, like Autodesk). I can't see this as anything other than an attempt by Adobe to price gouge small and medium size firms into upgrading more often.
while adobe's discount doesn't put it within student prices imo, it is a significant discount: http://www.software4students.co.uk/t/brands/adobe
Bugger.... in this forum, or elsewhere? I only searched software. Mods... close if appropriate, or merge. Apologies. However.... re: students. Almost all of my current students have purchased PS CS6 from the Adobe Educational store.
How much do Adobe really care about students pirating Photoshop I wonder? I'd say that just about every architecture student has a copy of photoshop installed on their machines, but I highly doubt many have paid for it, and the same is most likely true for other university courses. However because students are familiar with using Photoshop, it keeps it as the industry standard, resulting in companies choosing it over its rivals because their employers are trained in its use. Autodesk understand the importance of this, and as such I can legally get a free fully featured copy of their entire software collection, be it AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage, Inventor etc. etc. As long as companies and professionals pay for the software they really shouldn't worry about students or your average home user who installs photoshop to adjust a few photographs, and tbh they probably don't. A Photoshop user is better than a gimp user (etc.) even if they haven't paid for it.
Not unexpected. Software subscription models provide continuous revenue for companies, but I don't look forward to the day when everything is subscription based with no alternative. It'll be hugely expensive for the end user. As far as Photoshop goes, it took our place long enough to get CS5. We have it rolled out across 80 odd machines and the students have taken to it like a metaphor involving ducks. I can't imagine trying to get the site onto a 'cloud'* system with educational firewalls, educational system restrictions and Cornish Internet. *Cloud - someone else's server farm.
Quick question re. all this. I have Dreamweaver CS5.5, being a student (albeit an old one) I can get CS6 for £76. Alternatively I can get Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium for £216. I do use GIMP atm but I have been wanting to get Photoshop at some point (was just waiting for the new release :/) Do you think it's worth it to a) upgrade to Dreamweaver 6 from 5.5 and b)worth getting the CS6 suite while I still can? Not really liking the sub model. At least office 365 (for students) was £60 for 4 years (2 PC). Chears
The student versions weren't ongoing... at least the Autodesk stuff wasn't... The student licence for Maya only lasted 13 months... so you essentially had to buy a new copy for each year of your course... That said I *acquired* my copies of Photoshop and Maya [and 3DS Max... and Zbrush...] as even with the student discounts I couldn't afford them at the time...
Subscription headache, I hope it fails. Adobe has got to the top, with market saturation after nearly killing off all it's competition and now wants to milk everyone dry. Piracy of commercial software actually helps them sell it! A whole generation of students pirate applications in order to get better, which is turn means once their in industry the companies pick up the bill for a legal license.
This is my thinking as well. People who buy the full version with each upgrade will probably see some savings. However, they only save money as long as they continually use (read: purchase) the software. As soon as they unsubscribe, they no longer have access to the tools. I'm hit by this. At home I still use Photoshop CS3 for a number of reasons. Not only is Photoshop expensive, but I haven't had a need to upgrade to a newer version. I'm one of the people who upgrades very infrequently, so in my case a perpetual subscription model would make Photoshop more costly in the long term. The next time I look for new tools, I may take a harder look at some of the cheaper alternatives. I'm still unsure if I like the subscription model that the software industry seems to be embracing. There has always been a blurry line between 'ownership' and 'licensing' with software, but this move seems to make it quite clear.
That might be true, but they bring out a new version every year, so you can just install the newer version and carry on. I've had a free copy of AutoCAD and 3ds Max Design installed since the start of university, and it's now five years later and I'm in the final stages of my Masters degree. I find it very useful that if I need a certain feature from one of their products I can quickly download a copy and install it completely hassle-free. I've utilized this to use the following programs over the years: AutoCAD, 3ds Max Design, Ecotect, AutoCAD Map 3D, Inventor and Softimage. There's quite a few new tools in CS5/6 that are pretty awesome. Having a backup and recovery system is a long-time missing feature, although it's implementation could be better imo. The content-aware fill is an incredibly handy tool as well, although doesn't always work as well as they'd lead you to believe. GPU acceleration is another boost to performance. Ultimately though, I'd still be able to produce the same quality work on CS3, so if I paid for Photoshop, I probably wouldn't have upgraded either.
That only work when the uni updates every year too... Which mine didn't... Autodesk stuff [maya particularly, though i did have similar problems with Max] was useless when it came to backwards compatibility... If I'd bought the student copy [at the time Maya 2008] I couldn't do any work at home because none of the Uni PCs [Maya 8] would open the files... Would have killed for a free copy of anything at uni...
I don't do any work on uni computers, so don't have any issues with that. AutoCAD has perfectly good backwards compatalibility. I have to save my files for laser cutting in AutoCAD 2000 format.
Sadly we didn't have much of a choice in that regard... one of the many contributing factors to my spell at uni being, looking back on it, a complete waste of 3 years... now... back on topic...
The area where I personally see this is going to be damaging is for student media. Our student TV station has just spent a lot of money upgrading to CS5.5, but we now have that for as long as someone knows where the install CDs are. In the future we will no longer have the option of making a long term investment
You don't even need the cds, as long as you have a valid legal key it doesn't really matter where the files come from. Personally I'm slightly ok with the subscription thing, it means a lot of money overall but at least it's affordable. No way I could have ever bought a full suite outright, I've only once had that much money in my bank account. I could handle £36 a month though. Trying to figure out if it's better to do that and have instant access to your software than to have nothing while you saved but then have the suite for as long as you like... What I think they should be doing is allowing people to not upgrade once they bring a new version out. Attach some 'admin' fee or whatever if they must, but disconnect you from the cloud and keep your software running.
