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Author Topic: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update  (Read 126880 times)

Ralph Eisenberg

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #340 on: June 19, 2013, 06:53:27 am »

This is certainly a compelling argument.


Hi John,

I don't agree, now that they do not sell perpetual license boxed products anymore since CS6. Looking at the current European pricing, it's 1 US$ == 1 Euro +23% VAT. That currency exchange alone is currently a 33% higher price for an electronic download. I didn't realize that European bytes were more expensive than the ones in the USA? Of course the reason for that is NOT that doing business is exactly 33% more expensive in Europe, but that they get income tax benefits from doing ('off-shore') business (formally) from Ireland. That understandably urges them to make more profit here where the taxes are lower, than in the USA. You may be aware that there is quite a bit of discussion going on about tax heaven constructions in Europe.

Question becomes, do we Europeans want to pay more than necessary, just for Adobe's tax/profit reasons? Given the demonstrated level of contempt for me as a long time customer, and for a large segment of the imaging industry, that is not hard to answer. Not if I can avoid it.
 

Speculation is always a nice pass-time, but nothing speaks louder than real actions ...

Cheers,
Bart
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #341 on: June 21, 2013, 05:56:40 pm »

Don't know whether anyone has noticed that Microsoft generated an amount of frustration similar to that of CC when they announced reinforced DRM of the new XBox game console?

Fortunately for Xbox users, MS mgt was smart enough to acknowledge they had been wrong and back tracked quickly. The DNA of companies can be seen in such times.

Adobe's mgt must be feeling increasingly lonely.

Cheers,
Bernard

kers

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #342 on: June 21, 2013, 06:49:16 pm »

Speculation is always a nice pass-time, but nothing speaks louder than real actions ...
Cheers,
Bart

I think i just tap the optical line of the GCHQ; as it seems they have it all.
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Dustbak

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #343 on: June 22, 2013, 12:03:21 pm »

Maybe by now the subject has been beaten to death, but here's the thing as far as I'm concerned. I always owned a legitimate copy of Creativeve Suite. I've never bootlegged or pirated anything Adobe or any other software for that matter. But the cost of Adobe products was always a hefty premium for me as a very small business (i.e., sole proprietor) even as I highly regarded the quality of the Adobe products compared to other options. I didn't skip every other major update, but I didn't always adopt the latest Adobe offering the very minute a new major CS suite number became available. I wasn't Adobe's best customer, but I wasn't Adobe's worst customer.  I controlled my costs for Adobe software by buying into the latest upgrade when I could afford to do so. At all times my business prospects, not Adobe's, dictated that decision. Adobe just told me I must pay every month, and Adobe just doubled my annual cost for the essentially the same upgrade pathway I've been using for many years (let's not quibble about instantaneous minor monthly updates compared to 18 month or thereabouts major updates). I don't know whether I will accept this new licensing fee going forward. What I can say for certain, is that while in the past I thought Adobe's price to be a premium, I now consider it excessive. I'm actively exploring my options whereas I didn't spend much time doing so in the past. Is that a good thing for Adobe? I don't know. It depends on how many people now feel like I do about the new cost of remaining on Adobe provided software, and whether the revenues from that population of endusers outweighs Adobe's clever price increases. If enough endusers are prepared to adopt different software/hardware strategies to accomplish their designated tasks, then Adobe's new revenue model will be just like Coca Cola's marketing model when it tried to switch it's customers to "New Coke". That said, Adobe's most affluent customer base may fall in line in just enough numbers for Adobe management to declare victory. Time will tell.

I am exactly in the same situation, you have perfectly described where I am at at this moment too.
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Wayland

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #344 on: June 22, 2013, 06:17:25 pm »

The option I'm exploring is Photoline.

Seems to do everything I need just as well as Photoshop.

It actually does some things even better and it costs a fraction of the price for a perpetual licence.

There's an update soon which looks like it will be very good indeed.
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chez

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #345 on: June 22, 2013, 07:21:49 pm »

The option I'm exploring is Photoline.

Seems to do everything I need just as well as Photoshop.

It actually does some things even better and it costs a fraction of the price for a perpetual licence.

There's an update soon which looks like it will be very good indeed.

I think when you dig into a lot of these PS wannabes, you'll find them lacking in many aspects. Plug-ins play a huge role in PS and many of these wannabes just do not have the support.

If they are so good...why was everyone using PS?
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #346 on: June 22, 2013, 08:26:08 pm »

I think when you dig into a lot of these PS wannabes, you'll find them lacking in many aspects. Plug-ins play a huge role in PS and many of these wannabes just do not have the support.

If they are so good...why was everyone using PS?

They are not good enough today. The question is what we can do to make them good enough btwn now and the time when we won't be able to use CS6 anymore.

My answer is to devote to the purchase of licenses of these wannabees the money we would otherwise have spent on CC.

Cheers,
Bernard

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #347 on: June 22, 2013, 08:40:11 pm »

I think when you dig into a lot of these PS wannabes, you'll find them lacking in many aspects. Plug-ins play a huge role in PS and many of these wannabes just do not have the support.

Hi,

Photoline supports the usual Photoshop plug-ins just fine, as do several other alternatives ...

Quote
If they are so good...why was everyone using PS?

Good question, maybe out of ignorance, post-processing wannabees, pirated copies, lack of promoters with an agenda, etc. ?

Cheers,
Bart
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Rhossydd

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #348 on: June 23, 2013, 04:11:27 am »

If they are so good...why was everyone using PS?
Habit
Whilst the upgrades could be missed for a version or two, the cost when something compelling was added wasn't high enough to cause much concern, so few PS users looked elsewhere.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #349 on: June 23, 2013, 04:45:24 pm »

Habit
Whilst the upgrades could be missed for a version or two, the cost when something compelling was added wasn't high enough to cause much concern, so few PS users looked elsewhere.
I agree. Once you have put in the time and energy to learn what you need from PS, it's hard even to consider looking elsewhere.
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Rhossydd

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #350 on: June 23, 2013, 04:53:06 pm »

it's hard even to consider looking elsewhere.
However the other side of that is that once you're comfortable with image editing with Photoshop, you probably have the all the important skills to use another package. All you need is to cross-train, some packages will be harder than others, but the underlying skills and knowledge can still be utilised.

Adobe shouldn't be too complacent that users won't take their expertise and use it with different products in the longer term.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #351 on: June 23, 2013, 07:18:49 pm »

I agree. Once you have put in the time and energy to learn what you need from PS, it's hard even to consider looking elsewhere.

Eric,

As you know, things change. PS is not just the UI we are used to, it is also a product belonging to Adobe. Even if the UI has not changed, PS has changed dramatically, and probably forever, on June 17th. It is not anymore the great piece of software we have grown to like.

I think it is very similar to what happens when a non democratic regimes is voted in a country. Things look the same around us, it is very tempting to pretend we don't know and keep living in a less free environment, but the underlying reality is deeply different... and we know it isn't good.

Who will react if we don't?

Cheers,
Bernard

Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #352 on: June 23, 2013, 08:28:50 pm »

To clarify my earlier comment a bit: For me, giving up PS will be somewhat painful, as old habits die hard. But I am certainly already starting to investigate most of the alternatives that have been mentioned on LuLa, and I expect to be ready to switch when it's necessary.

With some trepidation I'm sticking with LR for the time being, in the hopes that it won't also go the subscription route. I have C1 already as a usable alternative if necessary. And I have always kept a flattened tiff of every processed image that I think has value, so switching won't be too hard. And when I go back to an older file to make new adjustments, I usually start all over again from the raw anyway.

Eric M.

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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #353 on: June 23, 2013, 11:05:25 pm »

To clarify my earlier comment a bit: For me, giving up PS will be somewhat painful, as old habits die hard. But I am certainly already starting to investigate most of the alternatives that have been mentioned on LuLa, and I expect to be ready to switch when it's necessary.

Thanks for the clarification Eric.

Cheers,
Bernard

kers

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #354 on: June 24, 2013, 05:17:41 am »

The new Mac pro has arrived just in time.
It works on 10.9 as so does Photoshop CS6
So here we have a future proof combo for the next five years at least that can handle gigabit files without a sigh.
( the only problem i see is if adobe does not support the new GPU-cards in CS6 but only in CC)
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kirkt

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #355 on: June 25, 2013, 12:08:01 pm »

I think when you dig into a lot of these PS wannabes, you'll find them lacking in many aspects. Plug-ins play a huge role in PS and many of these wannabes just do not have the support.

If they are so good...why was everyone using PS?

As a few people have noted, Photoline supports adobe-compatible plug-ins.  I have been using Photoline, as well as Photoshop and each has their strengths and weaknesses for various tasks.  Here is an interesting note on the download page of Photoline:

Quote
PhotoLine is only liable to german copyright and patent laws. If the program is downloaded from non-german foreign countries, Computerinsel GmbH does not take over responsibility for resulting copyright and patent violations.

from:  http://www.pl32.com/pages/down.php

Interesting.

As far as why people use Photoshop and not viable alternatives, well marketing is probably one reason.  Photoline is capable, but it's a couple of people doing their thing, not a marketing machine using the proliferation of Photoshop into professional and academic settings to get it into users' consciousness early and often.  Photoshop is a fantastic product, so it is a matter of making it the one people think of first - to teach, to learn, to write books about, to have conferences about, to make video tutorials about, to have professional organizations about using it, to demand it in a professional environment, etc.

After all of the discussion, I have subscribed to CC to see how it all will work out in my usage.  So far, an update to CC was issued the day after I subscribed.  I have action sets and panels that I use that are being updated by the authors, so nothing monumental in that regard.  Overall it appears stable and there is very little difference, from a usability standpoint, compared to CS6.  It appears that the way plug-ins are installed may have changed, and I would imagine that as more people adopt CC, developers will deal with niggling issues and install problems (via the Extensions Manager).  For some reason my CC tile cache was set to "1" by default (maybe it read this from some preferences file somewhere?) and it caused images not viewed at 100% to be noticeably aliased.  I figured it was a GPU kind of issue but eventually found some Adobe support docs that suggested re-setting the tile cache to "4" as a possible solution to video issues.  It worked on my MacBook Pro with a AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB card.

I also received a notification, prior to subscribing to CC, that a PSCS6 update was issued a few weeks back.  I followed the link provided in the Updater to read about the issues it was intended to resolve.  The link redirected me to:

http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/06/photoshop-cs6-13-0-5mac-13-0-1-2win-perpetual-license-updates-now-available.html

where people began posting their problems with the updater - it crippled their current install and the Adobe rep kept repeating that the update failed because "That error usually indicates that a required file has been deleted or modified by another program or the user. The solution is to run the CS6 installer again to repair/replace the missing/modified file, then run the updater."  Ultimately most folks were required to completely uninstall and reinstall PSCS6 to enable the update.  Once the install was successful, some folks noted that the bug fixes did not fix what they were claimed to fix.  Then the Adobe blog got hacked.  Not good.

Just curious if any CS6 users have successfully updated to 13.0.5 on a Mac or 13.0.1.2 on  PC with this update?  I have skipped it.

kirk

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Malcolm Payne

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #356 on: June 25, 2013, 02:10:26 pm »

(Kirk) The 13.0.1.2 CS6 upgrade worked for me on two separate PCs (Win 7 Pro & Win 8, both 64-bit) with no installation issues and no obvious problems to date.

Malcolm
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tuthill

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #357 on: June 25, 2013, 03:36:38 pm »


Just curious if any CS6 users have successfully updated to 13.0.5 on a Mac or 13.0.1.2 on  PC with this update?  I have skipped it.

kirk



13.0.5 updated flawlessly on both my 2009 Macbook Pro and 2011 Mac Mini.
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kirkt

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #358 on: June 25, 2013, 04:20:56 pm »

Thanks to you both - I was curious if the complaints on the Adobe blog were isolated weirdness (I have colleagues who also experienced the error) or a widespread phenomenon.

kirk
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Alan Gilbertson

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Re: Adobe - Creative Cloud Update
« Reply #359 on: June 26, 2013, 01:49:07 am »

Perhaps I'm an outlier -- a sole proprietor, freelance designer and photographer who depends on many Adobe products to make a living. To keep up with what my clients need over the past 5 years since I went freelance, I've had to get highly proficient with web, interactive, digital publishing and motion graphics quite in addition to the standard print tools. For me, as for most designers, Photoshop is just one tool out of many -- "a great plug-in for InDesign" is how it's often described. I've also never considered Adobe software expensive, especially compared with professional-grade tools in other fields. One seat of Maya or AutoCAD costs more than two seats of the entire Master Collection, for example. Given their dominance, Adobe could easily charge far more.

I subscribed to the Creative Cloud when it launched, and I've been more than happy. I have a CS6 Master Collection perpetual license, too, but there were advantages to the CC approach and I had already decided to stick with it going forward. Besides the nice, predictable monthly budget, the whole installation, upgrade and management process has been seamless. Anyone with experience installing Adobe software knows THAT is a major advance in its own right.

Notably absent from this thread are two factors that more or less forced Adobe into a subscription model in the first place, and the possibility that there are might be sound human and technical reasons for it. The first is legal, the other two derive from the decision that professional customers would be much better served if all of the products in Adobe's line-up worked together as a suite, rather than as disassociated individual products. We tend not to think about it much, but I have enough years of management experience to know that the logistics and coordination involved in getting more than fifty teams, spread across the US, Europe and assorted bits of Asia, to all finish their release cycles at the same time is mind-boggling. But the suite approach made that essential.

Adobe's wake-up call was the digital publishing revolution, kicked off by the success of the iPad. Customers (me included) were screaming for tools that the Creative Suite didn't have. The accelerating pace of change in video and web technology was already creating a strain; Adobe had been forced to shorten their release cycles from two years to eighteen months to keep their products relevant. Now their digital publishing and web tools needed immediate upgrades also. The obvious answer would have been to push out a feature upgrade, but legal reasons to do with revenue recognition (for which you can thank Enron and others) prohibit adding functionality to an already-shipping product. I don't know all the details of the mad scramble that ensued, but I do remember that it was a scramble, from which we got CS5.5. If you wondered why there was no upgrade to Photoshop or Illustrator in 5.5, now you know: it was all about ePub and Digital Publishing. Subsequently, Adobe announced they would be shifting to a yearly upgrade cycle. From their perspective, it was essential.

Consider the human strain on the engineering teams who have to meet these kinds of deadlines. Arbitrary deadlines have a way of stressing people out. People rushed and under stress are more error-prone. Every suite version has shipped with "known issues" that showed up too late to fix before release, and features the teams wanted to implement but had to defer for lack of time. If you know anything about software engineers, and Adobe engineers in particular, you know that this situation was probably doing nothing to improve morale.

Assume (because by my observation it's true) that from the top down, these people are focused on making the best tools possible for professional creatives. Assume, too, that management necessarily cares about their people, who are plenty talented enough to find jobs elsewhere. Management certainly knows Adobe has to innovate like crazy just to stay in the same place, but they can't burn out their best people with impossible development schedules.

A subscription model solves "How do we keep customers up to date without burning out our most creative engineers?". Personally, I think it was a pretty ballsy decision. It couldn't have been cheap. When they announced Creative Cloud in 2011 no-one -- I mean nobody -- I talked to at Adobe knew if it was going to be a success or a major flop. There were a lot of nervously-optimistic conversations going on at MAX that year. I also remember the delight and astonishment a few months later, when Creative Cloud launched and was an instant hit.

Fast forward a year. Cloud delivery really did work well, updates had been finalized and pushed out via the cloud, more and more customers were signing up, and it became clear they had a hit on their hands. With no suite-wide deadlines to meet, the different engineering teams could schedule their feature builds and QE work to fit the need -- form following function rather than the other way round. Don't think that blood pressures weren't going down all over the place.

Consider the whole DVD manufacturing and packaging evolution that has to happen every time there's a new set of boxed products -- two design suites, two web suites, a video suite, a master collection and every individual point product. All that is now gone, and good riddance I'm sure. Replacing it is the ongoing cost of maintaining all that cloud infrastructure. Like the subscription itself, a one-off big cost is replaced by an ongoing smaller one.

It is a BIG mistake, imo, to assume that a departure as radical as Creative Cloud could be thought all the way through for all possible scenarios in as little as a year. It's going to remain a work in progress for a while yet. I don't accept, because it's contrary to all my own experience, that anyone at Adobe wants to screw over their customers. That's just paranoia, frankly: popular in some quarters, but myopic and misguided. I've seen plenty companies where that was true. The signs are unmistakable: customer service goes down the tubes, all the best people leave, the company tanks frighteningly fast. If anyone remembers Ashton-Tate, that was the perfect example. I don't see any of those signs at Adobe.

I think a subscription model was unavoidable, just as I know there will have to be accommodations for not-very-well-thought-out situations. Photographers who use only Lightroom and some Photoshop, and who feel dumped on by the subscription-only model are a case in point.

Perhaps photographers are a minority public for Photoshop, which is used in every design, film and video studio as well as in forensics, astronomy, medicine and many other fields, but if there's one thing I've learned in the years I've been involved with Adobe products it's that their people do listen, and do genuinely care how useful their products are to all their constituents. The best approach from the customer point of view is to make the case, clearly and without venom, why a subscription model doesn't work. Don't assume, though, that your particular situation is intuitively obvious to an outsider, applies to everyone or is being deliberately ignored.
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