Adobe Photoshop Photography Program offer soon to expire

 The Adobe Photoshop Photography Program, offering the Creative Cloud versions of Photoshop and Lightroom for $9.99/Month expires in the New Year so if you intend to become a creative cloud user you must act soon. You no longer need to have owned a previous version of Photoshop to take advantage of the offer.

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. 

Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud)

 So back last year Adobe launched their new version of Photoshop CS6 (PS CS6) and intended to only offer users who were current (CS5) a reduced upgrade price, well the backlash from the PS user community was huge and Adobe had a change of heart and extended their upgrade pricing to CS3 and newer versions until December 2012. Their new business model has been met with even more disdain and it doesn't appear that Adobe is going to blink this time.

 When PS CS6 was launched Adobe also introduced their Creative Cloud (CC) subscription service which contained their entire creative suite of products including PS. Users could buy their products as a standalone license or subscribe to their CC and pay a monthly fee to use their entire suite of products. Adobe has said that the response was very positive for their subscription service and they currently have a user base of 500K subs. Users who were paying thousands of dollars to keep current with the suite of development tools thought that this new service was great deal, and it likely is if you use 3 or 4 products, but what if you're just a photographer? Well even some of Adobe's people are now saying the deal isn't a deal even with the new CC launch just announced.

 Adobe is now saying that they will no longer support a stand alone version of their suite products, this includes PS. If you want to stay current you will have to pay them a monthly fee to use their latest and greatest products. When Adobe announced this new business model it was confusing to say the least and even now there is a lot of misinformation floating around the photography community. So if you are like me who uses PS and Lightroom (LR) what does all this mean:

- PS CS6 is the last standalone licensed version you can own. Going forward you must pay a monthly subscription fee of :
          - $10/month 1st year for owners of PS CS3 or newer, $20/month after 1st year.
          - $20/month if you do not own PS CS3 (or newer).
          - $30/month if you want to subscribe for a single month or months less than an entire year.
- The PS CC  will be downloaded just like your existing version, however once you stop your subscription the software will no longer function on your machine.
- You do not have to be connected to Adobe via the internet to use  PS CC. The software needs to be able to contact Adobe at least once every 30days for a single month subscription or once every 99 days for a yearly commitment.
- You can still purchase the latest version of PS CS6 from adobe, although they have gone out of their way to hide the link here it seems you may have to pay full price $600.
- Adobe has said that they will continue to support and fix bugs with PS CS6 to at least one more OS release for both platforms (Windows and Apple). They will also provide updates to camera raw to support new camera models, however new features will not be included.
- Lightroom 5 (LR5) will continue to be available as a standalone product outside the cloud, at least for now, who really knows what Adobe has planned?
- Photoshop Elements is another way to go if you do not to subscribe to the cloud products or can't afford PS CS6.

 Users are upset to say the least, myself included. Will I subscribe to CC, NO!!  I'm thinking about not even updating to LR5 because I do not know where that product will end up in 6 or 12 months. Adobe told everyone to update their older versions of CS to CS6 before December, or they will be left behind, and people did thinking that they'd have to pay full price for CS7 otherwise. Well in just 5 short months the bait and switch, there is no CS7, nicely done Adobe.

 The monthly fee of $20 may not sound like much to someone who is making a living off of their photography, but there are a lot of hobbyist like myself who do not make a dime off of their work and never intended to. They enjoy photography as a way to express themselves and get out and enjoy nature etc. I think Adobe will soon realize that like myself there are a lot of users who will live with the current CS6 product and hope that someone else comes along with a competitive product.