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back to article Adobe kills Creative Suite – all future features online only

Adobe had been expected to demo Creative Suite 7 at its MAX conference down in smoky Los Angeles on Monday, but instead announced there'll be no more versions of its boxed software and that the Creative Suite brand will cease to exist. All CS apps updates will only be added to its Creative Cloud suite, and Adobe showed off some …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Give me your money!

    Not quite sure about Adobe's "cloud" branding. The software is exactly the same as before. It installs on your computer, the licence is locked to that computer unless you deauthorise it. The "cloud" appears to be just the way Adobe have worked out to ensure they extract money from users every month instead of those pesky people who refuse to upgrade their software every year,

    Make no mistake, this is just a scheme to squeeze money out of the end users. They may as well brand it "Adobe remote wallet opening device".

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    1. Shakes
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Give me your money!

      Very true. I purchased CS 6 three months ago, after evaluating both offerings. It took me a while to figure out that Creative Cloud really doesn't have a lot of "cloud" to it. You'd instinctively expect something running on the web, but it's just a subscription program, in the end. Not sure if the marketing drones at Adobe were wise to call that "cloud".

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Give me your money!

      Been paying this for nearly a year now, "upgraded" from PS 5 - Quite pricey in France. You do not need to be always on to use this, though it does need to call home form time to time. Unfortunately, this has happened to me several times when on the road with no internet. Not fun when trying to edit some photos with the application when paying a special offer price of 36,89 euros per month. Thank god my copy of LR5 was bought!! I don't remember what the new price will be (I tried to find it but they seem not to want to share this easily with me), but think it is over €50 per month!

      I think I have no choice but to pay for one more year, but it is time I start to look for an alternative to LR+PS workflow, including someway of easily importing over 200k photos edits to a similar program to LR (not the edited files in PS, rather any edits I made in LR that are not applied until I export).

      So Adobe has my cash for at least 12 more months (may not be possible to switch, though I hope it will) - providing I can find a software suite that is rich enough in functionality for me to use that runs on mac (don't like Linux and not about to move all my software to open source just because one provider is now too expensive). Willing to pay providing the software is good.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Give me your money!

        Exactly my biggest worry. I'm a fellow snapper and sometimes you're out on the road with only GPRS for very, very basic internet, sometimes if you're deep in a valley shooting for a day or two you have no connection at all. So if I want to load an Adobe product back on the laptop after it breaks down, I can do that from a USB dongle right now, in future I'm stuffed! Somehow I can't see my GPRS connection shifting 2-3GB of download particularly swiftly!

        Adobe think that everyone uses their kit in an office on lightning fast fibre connections, sorry but some of us are out there in the field with only a mains connection every couple of days and very limited internet.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Give me your money!

      "Make no mistake, this is just a scheme to squeeze money out of the end users."

      Yes, that's what he said: "cloud".

      The whole POINT of cloud computing is to force a rental system on users.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Give me your money!

        Not just that, but allow access to software regardless of location.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Stop

        @Robert

        The whole POINT of cloud computing is to force a rental system on users.

        No, its not.

        The whole point of cloud computing is to provide redundancy in a way which is impossible to achieve when working with hardware-only solutions. Just because these <del>idiots</del> marketing people continue to turn it into a commercial slugfest doesn't mean that this is what cloud computing is all about. FAR from it.

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    4. ColonelClaw
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Re: Give me your money!

      Here in my office we're not sure whether to cry or slit our wrists. We are a creative company that uses Adobe products for 3 out of our 4 main packages (Photoshop, After Effects & Premiere), and our initial estimates means we'll be spending at least twice as much as before. Our 4th main package, 3DSMax went subscription-based a few years back, but even corporate behemoth Autodesk still allow you to buy standalone, and use the software after the sub runs out.

      Wow Adobe, what utter bastards. I think we'll let the 'Tap play this one out

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iazv-tIy5Js

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    5. Matthew Smith
      Reply Icon

      Re: Give me your money!

      "Make no mistake, this is just a scheme to squeeze money out of the end users. They may as well brand it "Adobe remote wallet opening device". Yeah, and the pint of milk I bought from the newsagents this morning had a price tag attached to it. Pesky thieving capitalists wanting my money for their product.

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      1. AJ MacLeod
        Reply Icon

        Re: Give me your money!

        So, you have to pay for a new cereal bowl every month, plus a monthly charge on your mug? No, thought not. You bought those tools outright, just the same way that plain old software ought to be sold (if it must be sold at all.)

        This IS just a greedy short-sighted money grab by Adobe.

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    6. Atrophic Cerebrum
      Reply Icon
      Megaphone

      Re: Give me your money!

      The software is a lot slower on the same hardware comparing CS6 to CS5, I'd imagine the new version will be slower still and probably drop support for OSX 10.6.8 (the last decent production version of OSX). InDesign is the best application in the suite and if they have any sense it will include externally referenced style sheets like CSS.

      Any reg readers out there who are developing alternatives please reply in this thread if you need any professional users of design tools to help make new ones suitable for professional work I'd gladly help. There's no way I can professionally advise my clients to purchase business tools that are at the mercy of an internet connection and regular updates that don't play with existing tools that get the work done.

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    7. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Re: Give me your money!

      I view this as a business opportunity for competing products as long as those competitors remain stand-alone.

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  2. ecofeco Silver badge
    FAIL

    Somebody PLEASE!!!!

    PLEASE build competing software! Adobe has taken something once good and ruined it for everyone and I do mean EVERYONE.

    And build it for Linux, too.

    From here on, I will never pay another Adobe product.

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    1. sjsmoto
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      Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

      GIMP? I run it on Ubuntu, It's fine for what I need to do. I don't miss Photoshop at all.

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      1. Rob Carriere
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        Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

        For a Photoshop-only situation, that may work. Although, as close as I can figure it out, Gimp is still missing some features that my graphics friends consider indispensable, such as a seamless PDF process.

        And Gimp is comparatively mature. Any studio is also going to want Illustrator & InDesign & friends. Good luck finding adequate competition there.

        Somebody like me on the other hand, who just needs to occasionally slap a bitmap into submission, I've switched to Gimp years ago and never looked back. So this is going to be a serious case of YMMV, but I suspect the majority of the professional CS users will be stuck like a yacht in the middle of the Sahara.

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        1. Gritzwally Philbin
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

          Yes, and isn't it interesting that Adobe has such little respect for the numerous professional CS users that they shiv them in this fashion. God forbid someone makes art pay and Adobe doesn't get it's cut.

          The arrogance of this is breathtaking. What raging cocks.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

            That's what you get for using proprietary software and not thinking about your own freedom.

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      2. PhilipJ
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

        My guess is that mspaint.exe would be fine for what you need to do as well.

        Gimp is the 80ties version of Photoshop. And it has been that way for almost 20 years.

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        1. t.est
          Reply Icon

          Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

          GIMP cant even compare with the 80's Photoshop. I used Photoshop and Illustrator in the late 80's.

          GIMP is far from that level of usability.

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          1. Bronek Kozicki
            Reply Icon
            Pint

            Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

            I quite like it. I mean, the direction that proprietary software is heading to.

            Make no mistake, I like owning a license, especially if it comes with perpetual support/free upgrade option. This is exactly what open source gives me (but some small proprietary applications provide this as well, although without self-support option).

            So basically we are put before a choice: regular payments to software developers (under "cloud" branding) or use alternative software for free, perhaps supporting the developers on voluntary basis. This puts me, consumer, in nice and clear situation.

            Of course, this might be a death toll to proprietary software. So be it - as I said, this is heading in the right direction.

            Oh, I forgot to put explanation why I like it. Until now it was difficult to explain what "customer capture" actually means. Microsoft, and now Adobe, made it so clear that only dumbest of businesses will fail to understand the cost of operating proprietary software.

            A beer to "fifth column" at Adobe.

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          2. csumpi
            Reply Icon
            Mushroom

            Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

            "GIMP cant even compare with the 80's Photoshop."

            You speak the truth and get downvoted. I'll jump in here to ease your downvote count:

            The GIMP sucks. It's more than a decade behind Photoshop. It's not even comparable to Photoshop, you could probably say that it's a good replacement for MS Paint. Except its UI sucks even more.

            Bring on those downvotes.

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      3. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        @sjsmoto

        "GIMP? I run it on Ubuntu, It's fine for what I need to do. I don't miss Photoshop at all."

        If GIMP is fine for what you need to do, then you ain't doing much.

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        1. Flywheel
          Reply Icon
          Thumb Down

          Re: @sjsmoto

          "If GIMP is fine for what you need to do, then you ain't doing much"

          <bitch>

          Or maybe even try and get the exposure and composition correct in camera? It ain't rocket science..

          </bitch>

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          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. Powerpointmonkey
            Reply Icon

            Re: @sjsmoto

            "<bitch>

            Or maybe even try and get the exposure and composition correct in camera? It ain't rocket science..

            </bitch>"

            I'm a part time wedding photographer as well as an IT guy. One of my recent brides was paranoid about the fact that she had a small double chin when she smiled and she wanted me to edit it away - A straightforward task in Photoshop. Could you show me what combination of in camera exposure and composition settings would achieve the same effect?

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            1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: @powerpoint monkey

              Try to ensure that the bride always looks up slightly; it tends to make the double-chin disappear.

              However, the stupid *^*$%·s that think that photoshop just does exposure and colour balance know as much about real-life usage as my gardener knows about the pros and cons of string theory vs. loop quantum gravity.

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              1. Tom 38
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                Re: @powerpoint monkey

                "GIMP is no use for the professional Adobe Addict, because GIMP is no use for the professional Adobe Addict."

                Until people start using it as a replacement for PS, it will never be a replacement for PS. If it doesn't do what you want, don't smugly tell all your hipster friends that GIMP is a useless POS, tell the GIMP developers what you need, maybe even contract someone to add the missing feature.

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            2. Chet Mannly
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              Re: @sjsmoto

              "One of my recent brides was paranoid about the fact that she had a small double chin when she smiled and she wanted me to edit it away - A straightforward task in Photoshop. Could you show me what combination of in camera exposure and composition settings would achieve the same effect?"

              #1 - shoot from slightly above the bride so she is looking up, it will stretch and flatten the skin under her chin

              #2 use a white bounceboard/reflector in front (which you should be doing anyway) to even out any shadows under her chin.

              Sounds like you are a VERY part time wedding photographer.

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          3. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @sjsmoto

            "Or maybe even try and get the exposure and composition correct in camera? It ain't rocket science.."

            You're obviously one of those people who's happy to takes their shots, a little tweak of contrast, a little tweak of hue/sat and you're done. Some of us shoot RAW and do very selective corrections, sometimes down to the pixel level. If you shoot RAW correctly and "expose to the right" what you're talking is absolute crap, because "exposing to the right" immediately pushes the image to a very bland exposure state to ensure all the highlight and shadow detail is captured by the sensor to minimise any detail loss. It is then a necessity to pre-edit the RAW for preparation for entry into Photoshop for the proper editing.

            I shoot landscapes to a very high standard published in magazines, sell prints to ad agencies and solo customers, I'm still a only a hobbyist/semi-pro trying to make it full time pro. An average image will start off as a basic 30MB full-frame RAW by the time it's done and dusted will have been edited for at least an hour minimum sometimes up to 2-3 hours. It will be about a 1.5GB PSD with anywhere up to around 10-15 layers of adjustments, both from internal PS tools and other plugins, to ensure that the image is worthy of printing up to at several feet wide at least. When you print anything bigger than A3 you'd better have done a damn good job of editing every tiny detail correctly because any tiny problems will stick out like sore thumbs to the viewer and that's a lost sale.

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            1. Chet Mannly
              Reply Icon

              Re: @sjsmoto

              "You're obviously one of those people who's happy to takes their shots, a little tweak of contrast, a little tweak of hue/sat and you're done. Some of us shoot RAW..."expose to the right" what you're talking is absolute crap"

              How on earth would you know how he shoots? Expose to the right 1 stop, then have import settings that automatically correct 1 stop of exposure on import - takes no time at all.

              BTW how is this relevant to Adobe's pricing? You said yourself you do that before using photoshop.

              Or are you just trying to prove what a super photographer you are just because you shoot RAW?

              "An average image will start off as a basic 30MB full-frame RAW by the time it's done and dusted will have been edited for at least an hour minimum sometimes up to 2-3 hours"

              OK shoot 2000 shots at a wedding and try that - you'll be editing until next century, and the couple will be divorced before you deliver their wedding photos.

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        2. sjsmoto
          Reply Icon

          Re: @sjsmoto

          I didn't say I was, hence the question mark. GIMP provides the subset I used in Photoshop anyway. It's free and runs on Linux, like the person asked.

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        3. John Bailey
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          Re: @sjsmoto

          "If GIMP is fine for what you need to do, then you ain't doing much."

          Funny thing is.. Neither are many of the most vocal Photoshop fanboys. They want the same software the pros use, but are unwilling to pay for it.

          I'm ordering a really big bucket of popcorn.. And going to delight in the anguished cries of the entitled.

          Gimp is fine as what it is. A quite capable bitmap editing application. It is not, nor has it ever been presented as such by anybody with the authority to do so.. A Photoshop replacement.

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      4. t.est
        Reply Icon

        Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

        And you do CMYK properly?

        Just please don't ever mention GIMP, or Linux for that matter in these discussions. It's not fitting to discuss in a filthy manner with grownup's. Keep it in the boys room if you have to talk about it.

        There is very little that can even get close to Photoshop's professional level. There are programs that do better than PS. But they are programs designed for specific tasks not general pixel manipulation software's.

        The best PS competitor for home users and semi pro users I've seen is Pixelmator. Still it can't compete with PS for a number of reasons. Yet it performs better than PS on some tasks.

        But when it comes to Adobe, it's all about their suit. The combination of Photoshop, Illustrator and In Design. Nothing outperforms that combination.

        Unfortunately Adobe is not Adobe anymore, it became the new Macromedia after the acquisition of that company. The development of Adobe as a company is actually really saddening, for those who been in the business from the early days and can see the transformation.

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        1. Frank Bough
          Reply Icon

          Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

          I use Pixelmator too and like it. It's not Photoshop, but it feels like with an big injection of cash and features it could forge a new path. Apple has the money, but do they have the inclination?

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        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

          "And you do CMYK properly?"

          That's the printer's job, not mine. And I've not had any problems in the last decade. Spot colour is more of an issue than CMYK, really.

          Photoshop is very over-rated - users tend to count the features it has rather than the features that they use/need. InDesign is a gem, though.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            FAIL

            Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

            "That's the printer's job, not mine."

            No it fucking not.

            A printers job is to reproduce the original as closely as possible. If your proof is shit, so will you print.

            Source:

            Was a printer for a decade and had my fair share of dickhead designers to deal with.

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            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

              "A printers job is to reproduce the original as closely as possible. If your proof is shit, so will you print."

              If I hand you an RGB photo (gosh, those are SO rare) and a colour profile and you can't get a decent CMYK then the problem is at your end.

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      5. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        @sjsmoto

        GIMP is a very fine product and great for some basic adjustments but I'm afraid that if you're very serious about photo editing then Photoshop is the only option, even Elements doesn't cut it for pro level photo editing.

        If GIMP is all you need then fair enough but some of us need the very subtle and powerful features that only PS offers, and no Elements does not cut it either, the tools are very limited and the ability to have dozens of multiple layers and very refined selection adjustments which Elements cannot handle.

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      6. The BigYin
        Reply Icon

        Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

        GIMP is not 100% PS compatible as it does not render 100% of PS's layers/objects/filters with 100% accuracy, 100% of the time; which would be a mandatory requirement to act as a PS replacement in a professional shop.

        Oh, and GIMP doesn't have CMYK support (bug 123598), so it's a non-starter as a PS replacement.

        This is simply a case of PS being the de facto standard, and that means you have to support it and its features (which will be hard due to patents).

        That all said, GIMP is fine if that's all you use and all you need. Nothing wrong with GIMP. It's just not PS.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

          "GIMP is not 100% PS compatible as it does not render 100% of PS's layers/objects/filters with 100% accuracy, 100% of the time; which would be a mandatory requirement to act as a PS replacement in a professional shop."

          Well, it's a requirement today. In a few years, given that Adobe have just committed suicide, it won't be.

          "Cloud" (ie, rental) computing was the norm in the 60's and it was shit then; it's still shit now.

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    2. Gray
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

      'Tis embarrassing when the twats shoot themselves in the foot. It's simply incomprehensible when they shoot themselves in the head!

      With MS committed to their Win8 lemming-plunge, and Orifice 365 annual subscription payments; and now with Adobe rushing to Balmerize their flagship suite, it can only serve as an injection of rocket-juice to boost the Penguin ascendency. One could predict a new movement, similar to The Document Foundation, to enlist the creative community. Somewhere must lurk a corporate nemesis with a firehose able to erode the Adobe bricks supporting those cele$tial a$pirations?

      I'd look for a LibreCreative suite rising up to counter Adobe's corporate hypoxia. Air gets pretty thin up there in the clouds, Sparky! Fools run out of oxygen and perish before they realize they've made a fatal error.

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    3. Muckminded
      Reply Icon

      Makes me SaaD

      As in Software as a Disservice.

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    4. Beau
      Reply Icon
      Go

      Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

      Have a look at IrfanView & Paint.Net.

      Between the two of them you can do a lot, rather than use Adobe. Please remember they much appreciate donations.

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      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Not That Andrew
        Reply Icon

        Re: Irfanview?

        While Irfanview is a great little image viewer with some handy batch editing abilities, and Paint.Net is a great alternative for people who think GIMP is a stupid name for a piece of software, neither they nor GIMP are a serious replacement for Creative Suite. I use Paint.Net regularly but I am not a graphics professional, so it is more that adequate for my needs.

        For a graphics professional, I imagine that Corel's products like PSP and Painter, are the only ones that approach parity with Adobe's. I have no idea If they would be adequate, they seem to have stagnated recently, but I get the impression that many of Adobe's products have too (or possibly just reached maturity). Possibly this is why Adobe are moving to the subscription model. When there are no significant new features in your new product, there is no real reason to upgrade.

        PS: when you resize and image larger, it still only has as much detail as the original image. No matter now good your tool that adds semi-random noise is, it still just gives the impression of more detail.

        PPS: Paint.Net doesn't do CMYK, which is something GIMP added only recently and only after much persuasion.

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        1. TheOtherHobbes
          Reply Icon

          Re: Irfanview?

          No, they don't. Corel is where old software goes to die after being mauled by marketing morons. By the time they've added all the 'features' they want, you're left with something ten times the size of the original which does half as much and is horrific to use.

          Sadly, there is no realistic competition to CS for professional users. It would be really, really good if competition existed, but taken as a whole, nothing comes close to CS - for now, anyway.

          Considering the development cost, it probably never will. It's more likely CS will simply become irrelevant as other design techniques become popular. CS is basically still about editing for print. As code becomes more prominent, it will have less to offer.

          But I'm not expecting that to start happening for at least five years, and more likely ten.

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          1. Smallbrainfield
            Reply Icon
            WTF?

            Re: Corel is where old software goes to die ...

            Cobblers. It's decent software, we use it in parallel with CS and it does most of the same jobs just slightly differently.

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    5. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

      I think you should all return to the good old days of pencil and paper. Let's see Adobe push out a cloud version of that!

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    6. itzman
      Reply Icon
      Childcatcher

      Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

      try GIMP and Scribus.

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    7. Atrophic Cerebrum
      Reply Icon

      Re: Somebody PLEASE!!!!

      I'll help.

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