Adobe Creative Suite 6
No other software maker can offer such a
comprehensive set of pro apps. Each element of Adobe’s Creative Suite has its
competitors; some, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, dominate their sectors,
while others are neck-and-neck with established rivals, like InDesign and
QuarkXPress, or Premiere and Final Cut Pro. But as a package, the suite is
unique in providing everything in one integrated bundle.
Adobe
creative suite 6
The catch is that it costs a bloody fortune.
You might think the era of 99p App Store
purchases would have forced Adobe to rethink charging $1,050-odd per program,
especially when that program has had a dozen releases to recoup its original
development costs. But the App Store has been around for four years, and
Creative Suite’s pricing has only drifted upwards. If you want pro software,
the message seems to be, you’ll have to shell out pro prices.
With Creative Suite 6, however, Adobe has
at least come up with a way of making the outlay less painful. Launched at the
same time as the latest versions of all its apps, Creative Cloud is (among
other things) a new way of delivering software that converts the one-off cost
into a monthly fee. And what’s groundbreaking about this for Creative Suite is
that there’s no choosing which apps you need or can afford. For one fixed
price, you get every pro app - including the high-end video production tools
that print and web designers wouldn’t previously have shelled out for, and the
Extended version of Photoshop. You’re fully equipped for just about every job
in the creative industries for just under $70 per month.
That’s a coffee a day, or the kind of
amount many of us pay for an iPhone contract, or Sky. As a work expense, it’s fully
tax-deductible, and you can claim back the VAT, too, if you’re registered,
bringing down the actual cost to as little as $35.
For a set of tools on which your creative
livelihood could be based, it seems like a pretty fair deal. But let’s look a
little closer.
Traditionally, adobe has released new
versions of its applications when they were ready, and each had its own release
cycle. Since the inauguration of Creative Suite in 2003, all its major apps -
with the exception of Lightroom – have been released simultaneously at roughly
18-month intervals. There’s always been some flexibility, though: CS5.5 was
released only 12 months after CS5, for example, but with no update for
Photoshop.
In June 2011, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen
announced that henceforth Adobe was moving towards an annual release cycle. For
users who need to stay on top of the latest developments, that means a hefty
regular investment. At $5 plus VAT, the full Creative Suite Master Collection
represents a huge purchase for first-time buyers, and the $715 upgrade is a
significant outlay to be contemplating once a year.
If you need only some of the apps, cut-down
versions of the suite are also available. The cheapest option is Design
Standard, which includes only Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat X
Pro, at $1,860 inc VAT. After that comes Design & Web Premium, previously
two separate products, which adds Dreamweaver, Flash Professional and Fireworks
and includes the Extended version of Photoshop, at $2,715. Full details are at
adobe.com/uk/products/creativesuite/ buying-guide.html.
Creative Cloud aims to simplify and rationalise
all this, but does it actually make it cheaper? For a monthly fee of $55 plus
VAT, your subscription buys you instant download access to the entire range of
Adobe creative software: not just every application in the Creative Suite
Master Collection, but also Lightroom 4 (officially known as Adobe Photoshop
Lightroom 4) and all the tablet apps Adobe has recently launched, including
Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas.
You also get two extra apps, Muse - a
controversial web design tool aimed at designers rather than coders - and Edge,
a new web animation tool, not based on Flash, that generates HTML 5 output.
Both have been in beta testing until now; it looks as if Muse will officially
become a finished product, while Edge remains a ‘preview’.
You don’t need to download all the apps at
once - although if you do, the total size is a hefty 6.5GB. Each program can be
installed, and indeed removed, as and when needed. One subscription covers
installation on two machines, so you don’t need to pay twice for your desktop
and your laptop. And either of these can be Mac or Windows; both versions are
included in the same licence (though not in that download size calculation).
Because Adobe has its distribution centre
in Ireland, VAT is charged on Creative Cloud membership at 23%, rather than the
UK’s 20%, so the total comes to $70. Al though priced by the month,
subscriptions are sold by the year, so you’re committing to an outlay of $845.
To entice existing users (from CS3 onwards), Adobe is offering the first year
at $40 per month inc VAT, a total of $490. After a year, it goes back up.
Students and teachers who qualify for
Adobe’s education pricing can get Creative Cloud for $35 per month including
VAT, again on a yearly contract. (Education pricing applies to personal
purchases by students and staff; desks within an institution are priced
differently.) That’s a fraction more than a 50% reduction.
But when bought outright, the Student and
Teacher edition of the Master Collection costs just $855, compared to $4,000
including VAT for the retail version -a saving of nearly 80%. You’d also have
the software to use as long as you like. On subscription, you’ll have paid the
same price in just over two years, but you won’t have any software to show for
it unless you keep on paying.
The
Creative Cloud software ‘phones home’ at intervals, requiring you to be online
at least every 30 days so that it can do so
We don’t understand why Adobe thinks
education customers who pay every' month deserve a substantially smaller
discount than those who only pay once.
So what happens when your subscription
expires? Ah, there’s the rub. The Creative Cloud software ‘phones home’ at
intervals, requiring you to be online at least every 30 days so that it can do
so. And if it finds no active subscription at that time, all the apps you’ve
downloaded will just stop working. Unlike a standard purchased licence, which
lets you use the software installed on your hard disk as long as you please,
buying into Creative Cloud means paying every month.
So what if, say, you move on from the
graphic design business to some other area of work, but a year later you need
to amend an InDesign document that you produced using your Creative Cloud apps?
Adobe also offers a month-by-month membership (as opposed to an annual
contract) for a $105 one-off payment, including VAT. It’s not cheap, but it’s
intended for those who need the tools only occasionally. Of course, if you’d
simply bought the software, it wouldn’t arise.
The
Adobe Typekit collection
Although we’ve been comparing its cost to
that of buying Creative Suite editions, Creative Cloud offers more than that.
For a start, you get more software than in the Master Collection, which doesn’t
include Lightroom, Muse, Edge or the iPad apps. It also allows Adobe to release
updates as and when they’re ready (although major suite releases will be once a
year), bringing new technologies to members on an ongoing basis.
As an online service, Creative Cloud also
enables a seamless transition between Adobe’s tablet and desktop apps. An image
created in Photoshop Touch on your iPad will be instantly available to
Photoshop on your Mac, so you can download it and continue working on it.
Adobe’s Cloud can be used to store files, images and work in progress, with a
generous 20GB of storage included. Adobe says there’ll be a Creative Cloud Team
version, launching later this year, with more options to share and collaborate.
Muse, the new' web authoring program, uses
Creative Cloud to publish sites, and subscribers can also use Adobe’s Business
Catalyst tool to create hosted ecommerce websites. Creative Cloud membership
also gives you access to the Adobe Typekit collection, allowing over 700
additional typefaces to be used as web fonts on your sites. An individual
Creative Cloud membership gives you access to the Typekit Portfolio level, the
first paid level of the standalone Typekit offering. Creative Cloud Team will
bring access to the Business level.
App creation, including the delivery' of
iPad and Android magazines created using InDesign’s Digital Publishing Suite
tools, will also be enabled through Creative Cloud, with single-issue
publication licensing included in the cost of membership.
A free membership of Creative Cloud will be
available to anyone who wants to take advantage of its syncing features, but
doesn’t need the paid-for Creative Suite apps. This includes a more modest 2GB
of storage.
Upgrade pricing across the apps and
editions is too complex to allow simple comparisons, and the fact that VAT is
charged at 20% on the suites but 23% on Creative Cloud subscriptions makes it
that much harder to work out where the best value lies. The calculation would
also vary' substantially depending on whether you’d be buying for the first
time or as an upgrade, whether you’d plan to buy every subsequent annual
upgrade or skip some, and whether you’d need the Master Suite or one of the
cheaper options would suffice.
If you were buying in to CS6 from scratch,
it would cost from $1,840 to $3,965, depending on the suite version. The annual
Creative Cloud membership, at $845, is a lot less, but of course you have to keep
on paying at the end of the year. To upgrade the suite when the next version
appears, assuming the price stays the same, would cost $390 to $705, giving a
total price for the first two years of $2,230 to $4,675, compared with $1,690
for Creative Cloud.
Adobe
CS6
If you’re upgrading from CS5, assuming like
for like (for example, Production Premium CS5.5 to Production Premium CS6),
you’ll be paying the upgrade price from the start, whether for a CS6 suite or
Creative Cloud. In the first year, this would cost you $390 to $705 for the
suite, compared with $490 for Creative Cloud - so the subscription still works
out cheaper unless you only need the basic Design Standard bundle. Over two
years, you’d pay $780 to $1,415 for the suite, compared with $1,335 for
Creative Cloud, making the outright purchase cheaper for any option except the
Master Collection. Of course, you might also choose not to upgrade your suite,
leaving you with outdated software but a considerable saving that Creative
Cloud doesn’t permit.
Because the Creative Cloud upgrade rate
only applies for the first year, the longer you keep subscribing the more your
outlay will creep ahead of that for the conventional purchase, even assuming
you bought every upgrade. Creative Cloud does provide several apps that not
even the Master Collection includes, but you’re not getting them for free.
Acrobat
X Pro
No wonder Adobe is pushing Creative Cloud
membership hard. The company sees it as the future of software delivery, a way to
put the brakes on software piracy, and a guarantee of continuing revenue. At
present, Adobe insists it will continue to supply the core CS apps in the
traditional manner to users who prefer a one-time licence fee. But it doesn’t
take a software industry visionary to see that, if Creative Cloud is the
success Adobe hopes it’ll be, it’s likely that in time all Creative Suite
licensing will move to this method. If and when that happens, Adobe will be
free to jack up subscription prices to whatever level the market will stand.
Of course, this is mere speculation. Adobe
may well continue to offer its apps through both channels for the foreseeable
future and refrain from stinging us all for more cash later. After all, they’re
the good guys, right?
Over the next 24 pages, we’ll review every
major app in Creative Suite 6 in depth. We haven’t included Muse or Edge, which
are still in development and will be covered in detail at a later date. Adobe
Bridge, the asset manager that works across the suite to organise your media,
has no major changes, although it’s now 64-bit native to maximise performance.
Encore, the DVD and Blu-ray authoring app, is included as before as part of
Premiere Pro; it’s now 64-bit. Lightroom 4, which becomes part of the Creative
Cloud deal, is the same version we reviewed in MacUser, 30 March 2012, p26.
Acrobat X Pro, included in all versions of the suite, is also unchanged. We
looked at Photoshop Touch in MacUser, 16 March 2012, p46. Back issues are
available at bit.ly/mubackissues.
|
|
Design Standard
|
Design & Web Premium
|
Production Premium
|
Master Collection
|
Creative Cloud
|
|
Photoshop
|
x
|
|
|
|
|
|
Photoshop Extended
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Lightroom
|
|
|
|
|
x
|
|
Illustrator
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
InDesign
|
x
|
x
|
|
x
|
x
|
|
Acrobat X Pro
|
x
|
x
|
|
x
|
x
|
|
Flash Professional
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Flash Builder
|
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
|
Dreamweaver
|
|
x
|
|
x
|
x
|
|
Fireworks
|
|
x
|
|
x
|
x
|
|
Edge
|
|
|
|
|
x
|
|
Muse
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Premiere Pro
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
After Effects
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Audition
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
SpeedGrade
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Prelude
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Encore
|
|
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Media Encoder
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Bridge
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
|
Storage & Sync
|
|
|
|
|
x
|
|
Business Catalyst
|
|
|
|
|
x
|
|
Typekit
|
|
|
|
|
x
|
|
Story Plus
|
|
|
|
|
x
|
|
Subscription
|
|
|
|
|
$70 per month
|
|
Full price
|
$1,840
|
$2,690
|
$2,690
|
$3,965
|
$845 per year
|
|
Upgrade price
|
$390
|
$535
|
$530
|
$705
|
$490 per year
|
