Adobe - Creative Cloud Update

[Isaac]

As long as they have confidence that they can continue enticing us to stay hooked, this should be a no-brainer for them, and the maximum likelihood is that most of us will sign-up under those conditions and we will stay hooked.

Adobe public statements present confidence that most customers who've previously wanted the new stuff enough to actually upgrade will again move to CC for the new stuff, and former customers who've previously been happy without the new stuff will continue with their olde PS or eventually buy CS6.

I suppose we should remember that ~500,000 early adopters already are paying subscription.

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

I suppose we should remember that ~500,000 early adopters already are paying subscription.

If that figure is correct and their global customer base is somewhere in the region of 12,000,000 (read this number online several times, so maybe not too far out), then 500,000 represents only around 5% of their customer base who have currently signed up to the cloud - if this is true, then they really are betting everything including their shirts, that the other 95% are going to sign up as well.

I cannot see a company of Adobe's size and global reach, taking such a gamble without having a good idea of what the outcome will be, so I must be missing something here and these numbers give a representation that is just too simplistic.

Dave

[Isaac]

If that figure is correct...

"Adobe ended Q1 with 479 thousand paid Creative Cloud members, an increase of 153 thousand when compared to the number of members as of the end of Q4 fiscal year 2012." First Quarter Financial Highlights

and their global customer base is somewhere in the region of 12,000,000 (read this number online several times, so maybe not too far out)

Please share the source for that ballpark number. (Is it supposed to be every customer of any Adobe product ever, or...?)

[Ken Richmond]

[
I cannot see a company of Adobe's size and global reach, taking such a gamble without having a good idea of what the outcome will be, so I must be missing something here and these numbers give a representation that is just too simplistic.

Dave
[/quote]

Much has been missed in this discussion of Adobe's objectives.  For at least a decade Cisco and IBM have been promoting "cloud" collaboration and have published positive surveys of executives lauding its benefits.

A  subscriber's local installation of Adobe software will eventually erode into cloud based computing (as opposed to simple data uploads) so that creative technicians and their project directors will not be restricted to any particular platform.  They apparently envision widely distributed effort on creative projects that are conceived, developed and completed entirely "in the cloud" using tablets, smart phones and even, sometimes, computers.  It would not be prudent for a photographer to rely upon the availability of locally installed software for more than two or three years as Adobe's concept is fully implemented.

Adobe's interest in photographers is understandably attenuated.  Outside of the large commercial shops, photographers do not collaborate that much.  They might send out 8 mb jpegs for retouching, or AD approval but that, obviously, is not the collaboration that Adobe envisions.  Adobe wants to provide both tools for the design of, say a web presence, and also the metrics for determining the success of the web marketing program.

Curiously, within the Adobe's Cloud discussion and EULA there appears to be a belief that the digitally creative types are going to be sharing techniques, processes, ideas and examples altruistically and unhesitatingly Facebook style, outside of their own enterprise.  Adobe sees advertising opportunities along side the technician's uploaded, editorialized explanations and illustrations of work in progress.  

There is no other way to account for the described difficulty Adobe perceives in the maintenance of perpetual licenses together with the cloud subscriptions when they are both, for the time being, installed locally.

Ultimately, with the availability of so much free or cheap stock, Adobe recognizes that photography is not a very significant element in anyone's future profit scheme.  I mean, if you want a tiger in the website illustration, does one dispatch a photographer on an expedition?

Nuther' words, there does not seem to be much reason to count on Adobe addressing the wishes of the self-selected CNET "surveyed" who want perpetual licenses for what is really an illustrator's program.  Do photography with the camera, like the old days, and for illustrations, hold your nose and join the cloud.

Ken Richmond

[Mark D Segal]

This line of argument ignores four potentially important factors that could possibly weigh-in more than proportionately to the affected share of the customer base: (i) corporate reputational risk, (ii) the time-value of keeping the peace; (iii) the fact that the loss of customers is a bite straight out of the bottom line - so it has leverage whether the number is large or - within reason - smaller; and (iv) the dynamic impact of inducing more competition to one of their flagship products (a good thing in any case), a risk they may decide worthwhile attenuating with a more copacetic commercial approach. Let us see how it plays out over the coming weeks.

[john beardsworth]

"Adobe ended Q1 with 479 thousand paid Creative Cloud members, an increase of 153 thousand when compared to the number of members as of the end of Q4 fiscal year 2012." First Quarter Financial Highlights

Please share the source for that ballpark number. (Is it supposed to be every customer of any Adobe product ever, or...?)

The 12 million is shown in these financial briefing slides. 8 million are suite owners, 4 million have point products.

[Rhossydd]

Nuther' words, there does not seem to be much reason to count on Adobe addressing the wishes of the self-selected CNET "surveyed" who want perpetual licenses for what is really an illustrator's program.  Do photography with the camera, like the old days, and for illustrations, hold your nose and join the cloud.

I think you must have seen one of the presentations on Adobe's cloud vision, because your assessment is spot on.

The important question is if subscription works for professionals, will then consider rolling it out to the perpetual licence programs like LR & PSE ?
Let's hope not and Adobe see the value of serving their PL customers differently and do offer a PS light for photographers.

[kirkt]

Nuther' words, there does not seem to be much reason to count on Adobe addressing the wishes of the self-selected CNET "surveyed" who want perpetual licenses for what is really an illustrator's program.  Do photography with the camera, like the old days, and for illustrations, hold your nose and join the cloud.

Ken Richmond

Adobe makes an illustrator's program - it's called "Illustrator."  They also make an image processing program, apparently not for photographers, called "Photoshop."

Go figure.

Adobe is going to do what it is going to do, regardless of the illogical reasons presented to an angry user base - people do not like being spoonfed garbage, so Adobe's attempt to convince us of what is good for us just makes us more irritated, because most of us know what we want, we just cannot have it the way we have become accustomed to having it. While this may be a bitter pill to swallow in the name of carrying on with the tools we know we want, Adobe insists on reacting to our displeasure with patronizing attempts to tells us why the Cloud is what we want, and if we do not want it, well, then we are not "professionals" or whatever differentiation they are trying to establish.

It is what it is.

kirk

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

[Isaac]

Adobe makes an illustrator's program - it's called "Illustrator."  They also make an image processing program, apparently not for photographers, called "Photoshop."

Go figure.

OK -- maybe the market for the image processing program was expected to be graphic designers and artists who create commercial artwork that includes photographs, not the people who take photographs.

[ButchM]

OK -- maybe the market for the image processing program was expected to be graphic designers and artists who create commercial artwork that includes photographs, not the people who take photographs.

Well ... that has been bandied about for some time ... regardless of the intended market for Photoshop ... millions of photographers have adopted Photoshop nonetheless ... also the fact that Adobe never offered any form of disclaimer or imposed any criteria for entry that Ps was intended specifically for graphic designers and artists ... nor did they refuse to accept payment from the lowly photographers that in no small way made it possible for Ps to become what it is today ... and by extension, helped propel Adobe into a multi-billion dollar global concern. Not to mention it would have shut down Scott Kelby stone cold decades ago as the NAPP membership is primarily photographers.

I find it incredulous for anyone, you or Adobe, to be so dismissive by pointing out an intent that really is a meaningless facet that has very little to do with the actual reality of the situation.

I would venture to say, without the revenues that photographers have contributed to Ps and Adobe ... it might even be possible that Adobe would not now have the resources to even consider the CC model.

[kirkt]

OK -- maybe the market for the image processing program was expected to be graphic designers and artists who create commercial artwork that includes photographs, not the people who take photographs.

Could very well be, either by intent of the designer or by the adoption of the tool by the folks that create commercial artwork.  I can imagine that the intent back when Photoshop found its place in the industry -  the industry has probably changed as "photography" has morphed from film and drum scanners to widely accessible digital acquisition.

The distinction is irrelevant from a user standpoint, in the sense that all of these people are performing image processing and using Photoshop to do it.  From Adobe's corporate viewpoint, I understand that if the majority of the users are pre-press and commercial graphics folks and they are demanding the cloud, then that's where the tool should go - "photographers" may likely be a small subset of the Photoshop user compared to the industrial users you mention.  

kirk

[Isaac]

Well ... that has been bandied about for some time ...

So it doesn't really work as a way to lampoon Adobe.

[Schewe]

I would venture to say, without the revenues that photographers have contributed to Ps and Adobe ... it might even be possible that Adobe would not now have the resources to even consider the CC model.

Well, I'm pretty sure you're wrong...by Adobe's own numbers photographers make up less than 10% of the user base for Creative Suite...consider that photographers (at least some if not many) only upgraded every other version (or even longer between upgrades) I would say that photographers as a group, have not been very important to Adobe's success. The reality is, photographers as a group have not been terribly important to Adobe. Now, photographers may not like to hear that, but if you want to deal with the situation, it's important to have a grasp of reality...

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Well, I'm pretty sure you're wrong...by Adobe's own numbers photographers make up less than 10% of the user base for Creative Suite

Photographers were using Photoshop (and thus sponsoring Adobe) before the Creative Suite was even introduced in 2003, I know I was for many years already. Because the Creative Suite offered much more than Photographers needed for their business, i.e. Photoshop, obviously (duh) photographers formed a small percentage of all Creative Suite users.

Cheers,
Bart

[ButchM]

Now, photographers may not like to hear that, but if you want to deal with the situation, it's important to have a grasp of reality...

Well ... all the more reason for photographers to abandon Adobe products ... who wants to be treated as insignificant? If we do so ... Adobe won't even notice, eh?

[Mark D Segal]

Well, I'm pretty sure you're wrong...by Adobe's own numbers photographers make up less than 10% of the user base for Creative Suite...consider that photographers (at least some if not many) only upgraded every other version (or even longer between upgrades) I would say that photographers as a group, have not been very important to Adobe's success. The reality is, photographers as a group have not been terribly important to Adobe. Now, photographers may not like to hear that, but if you want to deal with the situation, it's important to have a grasp of reality...

I'm not even sure that metric is important. There are many products and user-types at play, and the commercial reality may not divide so nicely as between photographers and non-photographers. What matters is the percentage of the total client base for all the products that would find it practical/acceptable to subscribe or not subscribe. The lines of division may become more corporate versus non-corporate, but even that may not be informative enough. In any case, it will be a moving situation while people and companies sort out their minds on all this. All that said, we shouldn't either exaggerate or underplay the importance of any one group.

[Schewe]

All that said, we shouldn't either exaggerate or underplay the importance of any one group.

But a user group should understand that it's only a subset of all users in the overall user base. It's also useful for a user group to have a firm grasp on the reality of their importance to the overall user base. Photographers as a group have not historically been a large portion of the overall Adobe use base for any of their products other than Lightroom. And a user group that has been historically slow to upgrade (only upgrading once in a while vs.each and every version) makes their importance even less.

[Isaac]

Well ... all the more reason for photographers to abandon Adobe products ... who wants to be treated as insignificant? If we do so ... Adobe won't even notice, eh?

Actually, I don't need Adobe to stroke my ego.

I use Adobe software because I find it useful, and I'm usually also looking at software from other vendors as-and-when I have the time (Currently DxO Optics Pro 8 ).

[Mark D Segal]

But a user group should understand that it's only a subset of all users in the overall user base. It's also useful for a user group to have a firm grasp on the reality of their importance to the overall user base. Photographers as a group have not historically been a large portion of the overall Adobe use base for any of their products other than Lightroom. And a user group that has been historically slow to upgrade (only upgrading once in a while vs.each and every version) makes their importance even less.

Not saying all that isn't correct. I'm only pointing out - which I think we agree coming at it different ways - while the photographer subset may not be determinative, it's the combined responses of all the other subsets that will determine the success or failure of the business model in the final analysis. We've been focusing on photographers because this is a photography website that draws largely a photographer participant base. I haven't heard or researched how any of the other subsets have been reacting to this change of business model.