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Eddie Liccardo

Adobe Creative Cloud, I Hate You...Wait, I Get All Those Adobe Products?


Earlier this year Adobe officially moved away from perpetual licensing to subscription plans for all of its products and boy, the creative types sure did freak out. It seems like the biggest complaint for many (including myself) was the lack of choice that came with Adobe’s decision.


Another provocative argument asks, what’s to stop them from increasing the plan pricing? I supposed we’d quit on Adobe and start using comparable, competitor applicat…Oh…


The Adobe Creative Cloud team obviously knew to expect the uproar and was completely confident that the new subscription based licensing would be adopted regardless. Why? Adobe products are invaluable and considered an industry standard in the creative community.


With some time to digest the change and test out all the new features that come with subscription licensing the majority of reviews have been positive for the following reasons:


1.     Lower price point to entry

2.     Access to a majority of Adobe’s products and services

3.     Updates on an ongoing basis

4.     Sync and restore settings from the cloud

5.     Upload and collaborate projects in the cloud


I was very much against the licensing switch since the only Adobe applications I use on a regular basis are Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. On the other hand, I was also not upgrading my software consistently to avoid shelling out money for upgrades that weren’t worth the trouble. Now, with access to the latest version of 20+ products that are frequently improved without additional fees, I’m officially on-board.



In fact, unlimited access has given me the chance to test out applications and services that I A) Did not know about or B) Knew about but had no intention of paying for. For example, a Creative Cloud subscription includes the ability to create and publish an unlimited amount of iPad apps with no additional fees from Adobe (you still need a developer license from Apple). I’ve already gotten a chance to start a project using this service and am excited to see what I manage to create without any native iOS development skills.


Adobe may be arrogant for forcing this payment model on its large base of loyal customers but the fact remains that people signed up anyway and Adobe knew that would happen. In a recent press release Adobe reported over 700,000 subscriptions by the end of Q2.


That said, they have admitted to upsetting a few people. There is even an official response from the Creative Cloud team recognizing the “concerns” of the community. Don’t expect details on what they plan on doing but at least Adobe listened, a little.

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