17 thoughts on “Adobe Creative Cloud from a freelancer’s perspective”
Good points.
The best mistake Adobe ever made if you ask me. They forced a discussion on alternatives to their suite of apps and likely lit a fire under all the smaller software houses looking to scoop up customers and treat them right.
I am in the same boat. I will use my CS6 as long as I can, mean while I will evaluate alternatives.
There are alternatives to all of Adobe’s products, most are popular enough to use for web and multi-media producers. For print, there are alternatives, but many are not up to snuff or widely acceptable. InDesign in particular has only one real competitor (Quark XPress), and it’s really not widely accepted anymore.
All of Hicks’ points are valid, unless you’re the sort of person who labels him a “bad” customer, simply because he didn’t buy every new version of every product Adobe releases.
in my recent switch to an indy developer, I took a look at the pricing for creative cloud, then I took a look at the pricing for sketch and pixelmator. Not a hard decision when each app costs less than one month’s rent of creative cloud.
Not widely used maybe, but definitely accepted. I have never worked at a printing company that does not accept Quark and can not imagine telling a customer that we will not or do not accept Quark documents.
I am curious though as to what you do with what you create. Do you send it to a printer or some other company? I am wondering how well it will be recieved. Can you make an eps that will work as well as PS or Illustrator, for instance.
no plans on printing.
Yeah I’ve seen and heard people make similar points repeatedly – that apparently if you haven’t been buying upgrades every year you are a customer worth losing. I’m sure those selling alternative tools will welcome the business of these people though.
The issue is that Adobe could have everybody on board on each release. Just make there pricing more accessible, and allow users to skip a version with out penalty.
CMYK and Spot color support. When alternatives reach that point, Adobe will be in trouble. This is really the true contingency with the switch to alternatives, and the main motivation behind Adobe coercive rent-software model. They know they can get away with it. At least for now.
Adobe needs to keep the price for us CS owners at $29.99. $49.99 is too much. I’ve started using Pixelmator for raster creation. I could dump the rest pretty easily.
Me being currently a student id be much better to purchase cs6 design premium in the long run. I despise subscriptions and deeply consider that cc is nothing major. The vast majority of tools i use are always in cs6 i never used the new features aside from adobe colour theme which you can use your mobile adobe capture phone app instead that completely substitutes it
Thats called being an informed consumer; and every big company hates that.
So has happened now with your evaluation process right now? Whats your conclusion?
I had to bite the bullet and get on board with the Creative Cloud. InDesign has no alternative, nether does Photoshop as far as CMYK and spot color support.
Good points.
The best mistake Adobe ever made if you ask me. They forced a discussion on alternatives to their suite of apps and likely lit a fire under all the smaller software houses looking to scoop up customers and treat them right.
I am in the same boat. I will use my CS6 as long as I can, mean while I will evaluate alternatives.
There are alternatives to all of Adobe’s products, most are popular enough to use for web and multi-media producers. For print, there are alternatives, but many are not up to snuff or widely acceptable. InDesign in particular has only one real competitor (Quark XPress), and it’s really not widely accepted anymore.
All of Hicks’ points are valid, unless you’re the sort of person who labels him a “bad” customer, simply because he didn’t buy every new version of every product Adobe releases.
in my recent switch to an indy developer, I took a look at the pricing for creative cloud, then I took a look at the pricing for sketch and pixelmator. Not a hard decision when each app costs less than one month’s rent of creative cloud.
Not widely used maybe, but definitely accepted. I have never worked at a printing company that does not accept Quark and can not imagine telling a customer that we will not or do not accept Quark documents.
I am curious though as to what you do with what you create. Do you send it to a printer or some other company? I am wondering how well it will be recieved. Can you make an eps that will work as well as PS or Illustrator, for instance.
no plans on printing.
Yeah I’ve seen and heard people make similar points repeatedly – that apparently if you haven’t been buying upgrades every year you are a customer worth losing. I’m sure those selling alternative tools will welcome the business of these people though.
The issue is that Adobe could have everybody on board on each release. Just make there pricing more accessible, and allow users to skip a version with out penalty.
CMYK and Spot color support. When alternatives reach that point, Adobe will be in trouble. This is really the true contingency with the switch to alternatives, and the main motivation behind Adobe coercive rent-software model. They know they can get away with it. At least for now.
Adobe needs to keep the price for us CS owners at $29.99. $49.99 is too much. I’ve started using Pixelmator for raster creation. I could dump the rest pretty easily.
Me being currently a student id be much better to purchase cs6 design premium in the long run. I despise subscriptions and deeply consider that cc is nothing major. The vast majority of tools i use are always in cs6 i never used the new features aside from adobe colour theme which you can use your mobile adobe capture phone app instead that completely substitutes it
Thats called being an informed consumer; and every big company hates that.
So has happened now with your evaluation process right now? Whats your conclusion?
I had to bite the bullet and get on board with the Creative Cloud. InDesign has no alternative, nether does Photoshop as far as CMYK and spot color support.