Adobe Creative Cloud and the Photoshop Photography Program

As a digital artist who regularly uses Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe Design Premium products irregularly, I follow Adobe to keep up with their software updates. With the CS6 release of the Adobe product family, which includes Photoshop, Adobe announced their Creative Cloud licensing model. The Creative Cloud has pluses and minuses. For me the principle drawback is the software license. Instead of the perpetual-use license you get when you buy the software's boxed version, the Creative Cloud license limits your use of their product to that period of time for which you have paid the licensing fee.

The Creative Cloud licensing model has certainly generated a lot of heated debate in the Adobe user community. Unfortunately a fair amount of it is poorly informed and betrays a basic misunderstanding of what the Creative Cloud entails. On the plus side, the licensing terms make it possible for people to use Adobe's software on a month by month basis at a fraction of the cost of what one would have to pay to buy the boxed version of the software. On the minus side, there are many users who prefer to pay for the boxed software because of the perpetual license.

For me the question is does the Creative Cloud model make economic sense given "my" circumstances. It's important to note that I am not one of those users who rushes out and buys the new version of Photoshop the minute it is released. My Photoshop upgrade path has been as follows:

• Photoshop 5
• Photoshop 7
• Photoshop CS
• Photoshop CS4

Based on my situation, it did not make sense for me to go with the Creative Cloud. I looked around for alternatives to Adobe CS6 and the Creative Cloud. I wrote about my findings in the article Free Software Alternatives to Adobe CS6

In recognition of the opposition some Adobe users have expressed over the Creative Cloud model and in the spirit of the free market, Corel now has a special offer for those disgruntled Adobe users. The Corel promotional page reads "Welcome CS Users… Looking for an alternative to Creative Cloud?…Try Corel software today for free" For complete details, see Corel's special offer to Adobe CS users

Adobe has evidently been paying attention because they are now providing Photoshop users with a brand new option – the Photoshop Photography Program. Adobe customers who own Photoshop CS3 or higher are eligible for a special Creative Cloud membership offer that is priced at $9.99/month and includes the following features:

• Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud)
• Lightroom 5
• 20 GB of online storage
• Behance ProSite package
• Access to Creative Cloud Learn's training resources
• Ongoing upgrades and updates

Visiting the Behance web site, Behance charges $11/month or $99/year for their ProSite package. Given that this is included in the Adobe Photoshop Photography Program package you are basically getting a Behance ProSite for free. For more, see Behance's ProSite

Adobe's Photoshop Photography Program is a very tempting offer. Fortunately I have until December 31 to make up my mind on whether or not I'll buy in. Additional program details are available at
Adobe's Photoshop Photography Program blog post.

The Art Used to Illustrate This Post

The image I used to illustrate this post is a screen shot of a cityscape that I am working on in Adobe Photoshop. It is just one of my many experiments in digital painting and may never progress to becoming a finished work of art. Only time will tell.

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Friday, September 6th, 2013 at 11:19 am and is filed under Digital Art, Photoshop.