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'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. 

Lightroom 5 Beta Features

Lightroom 5 beta version has been released, here are some of the main features that have been added:

- Clone and Heal tool now available right inside Lightroom, one of the most sought after feature users have wanted.
- Spot removal tool now provides a B&W view which enhances your ability to see the spots in a sky for instance.
- Slideshow allows you to mix stills and video clips.
- Auto perspective correction tool available as part of the lens correction adjustment area.
- Ability to create smart previews on import, which allows you to edit images stored on disconnected drives.
- Overhaul of the vignetting tool, now becomes a radial tool which can be applied based on an area or areas selected by the user, not on the center of the image as was the case with earlier versions of Lightroom.

Lightroom 4 and Photoshop ACR v7.0

 Early adopters of Lightroom4 (LR4) like myself are receiving  pop up warnings when trying to export Edit into Photoshop CS5. The Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) version used in LR4 is ACR 7.0 however Photoshop's ACR hasn't been updated yet resulting in the following warning:

This version of Lightroom may require the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in version 7.0 for full compatibility.

Please update the Camera Raw Plug-in using the update tool available in the Photoshop help menu.

 The suggested method of updating doesn't work because again you can't update to something that isn't available yet!! Not sure what Adobe was thinking? Looks like a rush to market with little fore thought of the consequences.

 Adobe's response to user's question are:

Camera Raw 6.7 (currently available on Adobe Labs: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/ca... ) provides compatibility between Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5. The final release of Camera Raw 6.7 through the Adobe update mechanism will be available in the very near future.

Camera Raw 7.0 (currently available on Adobe Labs as party of the Photoshop CS6 beta: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/ph... ) provides seamless compatibility between Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6. The final release of Photoshop CS6 will be available later this spring. 

However some users are still having issues after updating to ACR v6.7. Some who have updated to v6.7 still get the warning, others are complaining about noticeably brighter images in Photoshop rendered images "Open Anyway" compared to those that were rendered in LR4 which appear to match the original. Jeff Schewe recommends rendering in Lightroom prior to Photoshop editing, or to instal ACR6.7 with the caveat of dealing with the know issues. I will move forward with Lightroom rendering rather than dealing with all of the unknowns of ACR6.7.

Lightroon Ships at Half Price

Adobe's Lightroom 4 has been released and for the first time in Lightroom’s history, Adobe has lowered the price from $299 down to just $149 for the full version, and only $79 for the upgrade. Also remember that NAPP members receive a 15% discount.