Adobe extends Photoshop Photography Program deal

 Adobe has announced that the $9.99/month Photoshop Photography Program is now available to everyone, they have removed the previous product ownership requirements. Users who commit to a one year subscription (billed monthly) will get the Creative Cloud versions of Photoshop (PS) and Lightroom (LR) including future updates, 20 Gigs of storage and a Behance ProSite membership. Visit Adobe for more information.

Adobe Security Breach

 In case you were not aware Adobe announced today that their computer system had been hacked and some customer user account information including: User Id, encrypted password and credit card information had been accessed. Accounts that have been involved  (30+ Million users) will receive an email on how to re:set their deactivated accounts, which will require a password change.

  Remembering the numerous passwords we all have today can be cumbersome, but you should never ever use the same user id and password for multiple companies / systems / accounts. If you have accounts elsewhere that use the same UID/Password as Adobe's, I'd suggest that you change them up also. Use upper & lower case and throw in some special characters (?,>,$,%,# etc...) if possible. The longer and more random the password the better.

 Some people who have been slamming the Creative Cloud have been saying on line since this was announce that.... "See I told you another reason why you should stay away from CC" and other such rubbish. Ok... most of those same people have also been saying that they upgrade regularly and CC is not for them. I have to ask, how did you do your last upgrade? I suspect it was online with the Adobe store, and your information is likely as vulnerable as the CC members. This is not the 1st time a large corporation has been hacked, Sony went thru this a while ago and it likely won't be the last. I'm sure Adobe's recent subscription only business model decision made them a target, but I also suspect that the CC subscription service likely didn't make them any more vulnerable than before.

 I have two Credit Card accounts one for everyday brick and mortar purchases and a second with a very low limit that I use for all of my on line activity. That way if my account does end up being hacked, and the bank says I'm responsible I'm only on the hook for a small amount. People tend to freak a bit when this stuff happens but it is encrypted and when you go to a restaurant you often hand your card to a perfect stranger who walks off and does who knows what with it while away from the table.

Adobe's Photoshop Photography Program

The Photoshop Photography Program is a new packaged price for the creative cloud versions of Photoshop (PS) and Lightroom (LR) that Adobe announced during Photoshop world (Sept’13). This was their response to the overwhelming backlash from the photography community who thought that the $20/month price point for essentially a Photoshop rental was way too much when compared to the old price when updating the standalone license approx. every 18 months. I agreed with the majority of Photoshop only users and said I’d never subscribe.

  So Adobe will now RENT (yes it is still a rental model Bus. plan) you Photoshop and Lightroom for $10/month under this new program as long as you own a Photoshop CS3 or a newer license and agree to subscribe for a yearly membership before 31-Dec-2013. This reduced price is not an introductory price which will increase after the 1st year, it is a reduced membership plan for who knows how long. Adobe has said that the price will remain as long as you retain your monthly payments. If you decide to unsubscribe, and rejoin sometime later your monthly fee will revert back to the original $20/month plan. 

 I had said I would never subscribe, but I have decided that at $10/month this makes sense for me. In the past I have updated both applications soon after they were launched. I’d always wait until early adopters had identified any major bugs before I updated but soon after the dust had settled I was handing over $200+ for PS and $80 for LR. In fact I had just updated to LR5 when this announcement was made. I asked Adobe for a refund and since I had purchased LR within 30 days, they gave me a full refund which paid for the 1st 8 months of my CC membership. I have always wanted access to some of the PS extended features, but to upgrade from my standard version was alway too expensive, now I have an extended version which is another reason for my subscription decision. 

Scott Kelby did a very good job of explaining why Adobe made the leap to a subscription business model on his Grid Live pod cast available on the Kelby TV web site. I wont go into the details but it comes down to Adobe being able to roll out new features quickly to users and still meet the tax law requirements they operate under. The tax law states that new content could only be rolled out if customers paid a nominal fee for them. This happened with creative suite 5.5, the new features couldn't wait for a tradition 18 month roll out, so for $45 they made the content available with a half version update. Instead of waiting for application roll outs every 18 months, under this subscription model they can make them available to users sooner and still meet the requirements of the USA tax code. Scott states that regardless what you think about Adobe's business model, protest all you want they will not return to a stand alone license model. To provide content and stay relevant in this world of quickly changing technology they can't go back. 

I'm still skeptical about Adobe keeping the monthly subscription fees at the current $10/month level and I'm still not carzy about renting software. I'm sure like everything else the price will increase, when and by how much only time will tell. But for me at this price point this made sense, it may not be for you and that is your choice.