Pros and Cons of the Creative Cloud Subscription Model
Feb 1, 2017
Pratik Naik
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I owe Adobe most of my life. Without them, I would honestly not be where I am today, being able to do what I love every single day! Over the years, it has also gone through a multitude of changes. Since my life is tied directly to Photoshop, I pay very close attention to them!
The Adobe subscription model has been one of those interesting changes. When it was first announced, it was met with push-back from the community. Eventually, we all (mostly) obliged and jumped in. What benefits would we get? Would this push for more innovative updates for creatives? Would an uptick in reliable income make developers more relaxed in coming up with new features?
[Editor’s note: thanks Pratik for this great analysis, you can see more of his thoughts here]
Those were the questions that I could see echoed, among others about cost vs benefit.
Just today, I came across this article from IEEE Spectrum that follows up on that frame of thought from co-creator Thomas Knoll.
Transitioning to the subscription model:
Engineers [working on Photoshop] were very much in favor of the transition. Previously, they had to come up with new features every two years, and these features had to demo well, because you had to convince someone to buy a new version based on those features. Then some percentage of user base would upgrade, some wouldn’t, so we had to support multiple versions with bug fixes and adding new camera support.
Shifting incentives:
The new model encourages users to stay current with the newest versions of software, and engineers like that because when they create a feature it gets to users right away.
It also changes incentive for engineers. Previously, the incentive was to create features that demo’d well. Now the incentive is to create features people actually use and don’t want to do without. I think it’s a better incentive to have engineers making a product more valuable to its users than to make eye candy for a demo.
It sounds about right, they had to really focus on new features to get people to buy the product. The downside is the resources needed to fix bugs across multiple versions and platforms.
Now, as we’re (mostly) all on the same page, the features that get created can be immediately implemented. The stability has increased and it has been very reliable for me. I haven’t seen many new features that I have been wowed over.
The changes and features that have benefited me the most after 2014 have been the re-implementation of the legacy healing brush, bringing back the refine-edge (hidden option), and the redesign in the minimalist template. I can definitely do everything I do in my workflow on CC 2014.
So why do I keep paying for a monthly subscription? Well, I am an instructor so I have to keep current with the new versions. The stability is also great. Aside from that, I don’t have a ton of reasons aside from staying current.
Did the subscription model create stagnation in innovation with tools within Photoshop or has ability to come out with useful features for creatives become much harder?
After all, there’s only so much more you can come out with at a certain point. I honestly can’t think of much, but I am sure you probably have an idea or two. That’s a question that I probably don’t have the answer to, but I assume it’s more of the latter in regard to running out of ideas.
Also, it could be that the focus has primarily become more towards graphic designers over photographers. Looking at the “what’s new” page, you’ll see a majority of the new features pull in that direction. So even though there’s lots of new features, we all interpret the relevance differently. I would love to hear from other creatives to see if this is accurate.
The price point was a big benefit to many. Instead of having to buy it outright, the monthly cost of $9.99 (in the United States) really made it accessible to a wider scope of people who wanted to purchase it. This doesn’t mean everyone liked not having the ability to outright buy the program. The single app price of $19.99 was appealing too. It’s what made me buy a subscription to Premier Pro. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have been as interested in it.
What do you think? Does the model prove more useful to the consumer, Adobe or both?
About the Author
Pratik Naik is a high-end retoucher, photographer, and retouching teacher under his Solstice Retouch brand, he also runs the succesful Retouchist Blog. You can catch Pratik on social media on his Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook. This article was also published here and shared with permission
We love it when our readers get in touch with us to share their stories. This article was contributed to DIYP by a member of our community. If you would like to contribute an article, please contact us here.
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9 responses to “Pros and Cons of the Creative Cloud Subscription Model”
Truly a useless article that could be shrunk down to 3 sentences for a greater effect.
This is the sort of report you turned into your 4th grade teacher because you ignored the assignment and started & finished it on the bus ride to school the morning it was due.
You minimize the most important factor. $10 a month means paying much more over time than we used to pay for permanent OWNERSHIP of PS.
But doesn’t that make it alot more accessible to alot more users? Photoshop would be about 1k without a discount, so for the subscription it’s like $10 a month over an 8 year period, for both Photoshop and Lightroom room
However, for the more casual, non-pro user such as I, it is a relatively steep price for a continually updated LR. I have little use for PS. I’d prefer to pay an incremental micro-payment on a per-use basis for PS or separate subscription prices for the two products.
I don’t think there is much difference in pricing. I did the math before deciding to sign up for CC. If you are a professional, you need the improved functionality and robustness and had to upgrade every year at some $500 or more. For me, I upgraded PS every 3 years or so, which is roughly $500 / 3 or about $160 per year. So, if you upgrade less often than every 4 years, this is more expensive, but then you are a casual user who probably doesn’t need CC and can do with Elements or such.
“the incentive was to create features that demo’d well” by that I believe they mean, ‘that we customers actually wanted’ rather then what we get now, minor bits and pieces…
The TCO has gone up for Creative Cloud, especially for businesses who have to roll out and test it in a Enterprise environment especially with the number of bugs that CC has. Also it’s a form of vendor lock-in. Adobe has no competition to talk of, and even if you managed to swap files you lose the non-destructive editing. For photographers they get a great deal for everyone else, you get ripped off. I upgraded the Creative Suite, usually Design Standard on a 3-4 year cycle in conjunction with my camera. It became a stable and reasonably robust application. CC is a mess in comparison with half baked features and workflow changes and/or breakages in quality. I would end up paying more in that same period through subscriptions than if I paid the upgrade fee, to me that’s non-starter and why I’ve started migrating as much as possible away from Adobe going to CaptureOne for RAW editing and reviewing other options available.
CS wasn’t perfect, but it was a fixed target for a set period, now Adobe releases beta software on the masses and expect them to pick up the mess.
There are a number or arguments on benefits and drawbacks. I personally didn’t care for most of the new features, so seeing those spread out and more targeted is surely a benefit on both sides. What I am hoping for, but don’t see that happening, is that Adobe would take a closer look at improvement requests and new functionality requests, most of which are minor and not a new feature. This is a great time to catch up on these and truly improve the software to be silently rolled in, but I still see broken stuff taking 6 months to be fixed. If it is minor, it waits longer…
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