adobe Adobe Photoshop and Creative Suite to become subscription-only products

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Adobe Photoshop and Creative Suite to become subscription-only products

Camera shake reduction comes to Photoshop, Adobe upgrades and rebrands entire Creative Suite

Adobe is making a major move into the cloud. The company has just announced the next version of its flagship digital editing tools, Creative Suite, and for the first time the new products will only be available through the company's online subscription service. Adobe previously offered standalone editions of each product, which users could choose to keep or upgrade as new editions were released, but now the only way to receive major feature updates to the product series will be to remain subscribed to the $49.99 per month service.

The company is giving its application suite a new, but familiar name to emphasize the change: Adobe Creative Cloud will be replacing Creative Suite 6, the version released last year. The product series has been on a yearly release cycle since 2011, and this latest upgrade includes new features for nearly every product in the series, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro, all of which now have their name appended with CC, instead of CS.

All of the apps in Creative Cloud will be replaced with the newly upgraded ones when Adobe releases them on June 17th. The company will continue to sell standalone copies of Creative Suite 6 applications for now, but it will not continue to update them with new features.

As the products' new naming scheme suggests, Adobe is enhancing the cloud integration between all of its services. The company says that a new desktop companion app will be able to automatically keep every app up to date. It's also integrating many of the apps with Behance, a site that allows artists to present their work and receive feedback from others. Adobe purchased the website in December, and it will now use the Creative Cloud companion app as a way to notify users of any comments made on their work.

Though Adobe is drawing a focus to its cloud services, it isn't actually changing much about them. Instead, this series of updates is tailored toward streamlining the interactions between apps and websites, rather than adding cloud-centric features. But for Adobe, the subscription requirement could help to stem the continual threat of piracy, while also making its products both more accessible to new users and more expensive in the long run.

As usual, the best known app of the suite ? Photoshop ? is receiving a number of major features to help repair photos that didn't turn out quite right.

The most impressive feature of the bunch is a tool that the company says will be able to remove blur from photographs that was caused by camera shake. The company demonstrated the tool for The Verge using a photograph of a painting hung in a museum ? though we haven't had the chance to play around with it ourselves, when demonstrated by Adobe the tool did an impressive job at recovering detail that had been lost. The company first showed off the feature in 2011, and more than a few photographers with unsteady hands will be happy to see that's finally shipped

Adobe is also including two other additions to help keep photos sharp. The company says that an improved version of Photoshop's automatic sharpening algorithm will better detect what you're trying to sharpen. In a demonstration, Adobe presented how the tool determined that it should focus primarily on certain foreground objects, rather than adding unneeded grain and detail to softer objects in the background as the tool did in CS6. The app's upscaling tool is also said to create more detailed images than before. When enlarging an image, small features that might normally become softened should better retain definition after the update.

The rest of the suite is seeing a number of improvements as well. In Illustrator, users can now apply basic alterations to individual characters of text and then change each letter later on while the changes remain applied. The company has also built an iPhone app for Kuler, an Adobe web service used to build and share color swatches. The new app detects a set of colors using the iPhone's camera, and then sends that color sequence into Illustrator itself. Other video-focused applications in the suite are receiving updates that allow settings to be synced across workstations.

Source: The Verge

[ShareShiz]

Ahh I was just about to post this, but couldn't find Back Page.

More news at Cnet http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57582735-92/adobe-kills-creative-suite-goes-subscription-only/

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Just read through this after you posted it on Twitter, I think this is a great move for Adobe, Here where I work they are already using the Subscription model for use of Adobe products the only problem i have with it is, this i great for business but not very good from the home based photoshop users. the cost is too much however, i suppose with the smaller initial cost its not so bad.

[ShareShiz]

Am I the only one that installs Adobe CS every 29days ? And am I the only one that thinks this sucks.

[siah1214]

Well phooey. What am I supposed to do about my computer labs that use the software?

[Phouchg]

Gah, I so hate this "cloud" buzzword misnomer. It just won't go away anytime soon, it seems.

So, anyway, they're grown tired that the best part of Reddit etc. crowd uses Ps for all their 'shopping needs, but nobody ever coughs up. No subscription is going to change that! Folks will either find a way (like, for example, retail clones have been replaced by "steamrips") or suffice with CS6 as the "last usable version /s".

[articuno1au]

$600 a year. Well I wouldn't pay that for it.

I'd consider splashing for a license and then using it for the next 10 years, but I won't do it like this >.>

[chrisj1968]

I have a subscription. Itworks out great for me as I don't have an up front amount of capital to lay out for the DVD media. but the updates work awesomely.

[COKid]

Let's no kid ourselves. This is all about piracy. What percentage of current Photoshop users actually paid for their product?

20%?

[Melfster]

I really doubt this will stop piracy of Photoshop.

[HawkMan]

Let's no kid ourselves. This is all about piracy. What percentage of current Photoshop users actually paid for their product?

20%?

That's optimistic. However while I generally don't agree that the whole "they would'nt have bought it anyway" excuse is a valid on and often false. In the case of photoshop however, it is indeed true, mostly because of the price, the millions who use pirated PS couldn't afford it for their use. Granted, for the vast majority of them, they don't need PS and there are cheaper and free alternatives that may even be better. But still they ae cutting off a large amount of amateur photographers and learners who would upgrade to a paid version when they can.

But yeah, this is pretty much all about piacy and increased profits, most PS users don't need the cloud. And don't remember for Adobe, subscription for a lot of their users mean more income, as users who would before skip a few version now have to pay a lot more to keep using.

[moloko]

CS6 will see an increase in torrent downloads.

[game_over]

Looking forward to this,

Just read through this after you posted it on Twitter, I think this is a great move for Adobe, Here where I work they are already using the Subscription model for use of Adobe products the only problem i have with it is, this i great for business but not very good from the home based photoshop users. the cost is too much however, i suppose with the smaller initial cost its not so bad.

Everyone knows a student, there should be lots in every family.. I'm getting it for just over ?22/month on the discount, i think it's well worth it with behance prosite, typekit, 20gb storage and bleeding edge updates... looking forward to the 17th june.

[threetonesun]

That's optimistic. However while I generally don't agree that the whole "they would'nt have bought it anyway" excuse is a valid on and often false. In the case of photoshop however, it is indeed true, mostly because of the price, the millions who use pirated PS couldn't afford it for their use. Granted, for the vast majority of them, they don't need PS and there are cheaper and free alternatives that may even be better. But still they ae cutting off a large amount of amateur photographers and learners who would upgrade to a paid version when they can.

But yeah, this is pretty much all about piacy and increased profits, most PS users don't need the cloud. And don't remember for Adobe, subscription for a lot of their users mean more income, as users who would before skip a few version now have to pay a lot more to keep using.

Photoshop piracy probably always helped Adobe. It's basically just a demo for home users, who then go in and convince the companies they work for to buy a license and renew it every release.

[Argi]

"Creative Cloud" ... lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv6CUbFvC2Y

[djdanster]

Shantanu Narayen is a scumbag.

[Quillz]

I'm actually a fan of the educational pricing for Creative Cloud (~$29/month), so this change doesn't really bother me too much. But, assuming I keep paying, will my apps be automatically updated to the latest versions, or will an entirely new subscription be required?

[f0rk_b0mb]

I guess I'm sticking with CS6 then.

[Hum]

Looks like this is the end of Photoshop

[excalpius]

It has NOTHING to do with piracy, folks.

Remember that Adobe decided a long time ago that it made more sense to charge 10,000 customers $1,000 than to charge 100,000 customers $100 dollars. It's the same total revenue but a LOT less customer support, etc. and thus far lower costs (= more profit!).

This forced their pricing model towards businesses that MUST have it and therefore must pay, while ignoring the rampant piracy among people who couldn't afford it anyway. They knew that these people would be learning the software, which would then force businesses to buy it for their employees, etc.

A win-win for Adobe.

It should be interesting to see how this works for them.

[Timan Veteran]

June can't come soon enough, subscription time! Shame they've made it so hard to pretend to be a student. They need more than an @edu addy these days. Would save 30$ a month (currently 20$)

[Quillz]

June can't come soon enough, subscription time! Shame they've made it so hard to pretend to be a student. They need more than an @edu addy these days. Would save 30$ a month (currently 20$)

What else do you need now? Last year, I think an .edu address was all I needed.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Well this sucks for my personal situation.

I used to do nothing but design. My career path led me on a different path, I am now a technologist.

With that said, because of my design background, I still do the odd design related project here and there. It is very rare, maybe 10 times a year.

That 10 times was enough to get my work to purchase a CS6 upgrade. We already had CS5.

It is not going to be enough to get them to do this subscription. I know as I already asked my Boss.

For my personal use, I do not use Photoshop enough to warrant purchasing this for myself.

I break it out like once a week, and usually it is just to do some quick image correction or the occasional Neowin signature and Avatar.

So yeah, looks like I will be sticking with CS6 for a long time, unless I change my career path again, which stranger things have happened.

[Growled Member]

This should practically kill PS for home use. I wouldn't pay for it via subscription. PS is the best, no doubt about it, but alternatives are almost as good and some of them cost nothing (like the Gimp.)

[game_over]

June can't come soon enough, subscription time! Shame they've made it so hard to pretend to be a student. They need more than an @edu addy these days. Would save 30$ a month (currently 20$)

I don't think i even needed a .edu email address, i was required to scan and upload some documents i think it was my works ID and letter head paper.. i used my secondary business email address with no relation to education...i'm sure some people could doctor an ID, letter head scan and even a fake domain if they were that desperate for the discount.