Today, Adobe announced the Photoshop Photography Program, a special Creative Cloud (CC) product bundling that will make some photographers smile! If you are a Lightroom and Photoshop user, and you have a registered copy of Photoshop CS3 or later, for $9.99 per month, you will be get access to Photoshop CC AND Lightroom 5, ongoing feature upgrades and updates, 20gb of cloud storage and Behance ProSite. According to Adobe, this is not a 12-month introductory price which will double when the 12 months is up, but the “standard,” ongoing price. However, this offer will be available until 12/31/13.
If you’re like me, and have already subscribed to the one-product Photoshop CC and also purchased Lightroom, it’s not exactly clear how or IF we will be made whole for our recent Lightroom 5 purchases or upgrades. We’ll see! I’m sure this will be the big question for many of us. I tried to get an answer from Adobe, but was not successful. If you’re a Lightroom only user, this is not a savings for you. But if you use both Lightroom and Photoshop, Adobe has finally done something that makes economic sense for the user. For $120 (or more precisely, $119.88), I don’t have to buy $79 upgrades to Lightroom every 12-18 months and I have access to the latest version of Photoshop. Not bad!
Rather than trying to explain the details of the Photoshop Photography Program, here’s the link to “Adobe’s Q&As” on the topic. Look for the heading titled, “Photoshop Photography Program Offer.”
Alan, you are such an asset to our club. I’ve been struggling trying to figure out how to hurdle this two product dilemma and remain current. Your timely post is SO appreciated. Thank you.
Bob,
Your comment is very thought provoking. After thinking about it a bit, here’s my 2 cents.
If you are a LR user, and occasionally use PS but decide not to upgrade PS, then at some point your Process Versions will become out of sync and it will become more difficult to jump over to PS to complete your edits.
If you are a LR user, and occasionally use PS and you decide to upgrade, but at a future time decide that you no longer want to pay Adobe an annual fee, then you will still be able to access all your old images in LR … you just won’t be able to “Edit in PS.” The big unknown is whether LR will also be cloud-based, in which case you may have nothing if you drop you license.
Alan alludes to an Adobe “Exit Program” for those no longer wanting to maintain their CC license. That would be a nice gesture, but I checked their web site and didn’t see any mention of it. Perhaps Alan has seen such a reference in other readings or had other conversations.
Thanks for your update. As a heavy user of Lightroom and “light” user of Photoshop, their current arrangement “isn’t a bad deal.” I really appreciate your counsel and advice.
Alan,
With Adobe’s cloud offerings can you still use the apps even when your internet connection is down?
Thank you Alan. Having lost my internet connection for three days during last week’s electrical storm my only sanity was PS and LR, and so I was wondering what a cloud environment might feel like. Feels good.