Survey: Did cheaper Photoshop subscriptions win you over?
Some special promotions have significantly lowered the price of Photoshop and Lightroom subscriptions through Adobe's Creative Cloud option. CNET and Jefferies are surveying customers about the issue.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Adobe Systems has been more aggressive of late with its subscription plans, and we'd like to know if you think they're worth it.
That's right: It's time for the fourth Adobe survey in a series that CNET and analyst firm Jefferies are running to try to gauge customer sentiment about Adobe's products and its transition to a subscription company.
Click the link above if you want to take the survey, but here's a preview of one part: We'd like to know if you signed up for Adobe's Photoshop Photography Program.
The program is a $10-per-month deal for Lightroom and Photoshop that's available to people who bought Creative Suite 3 or later and that runs through the end of 2013. But over the last week, Adobe also offered a Black Friday variation that was open to anyone, not just earlier CS owners. That addressed a common complaint with the program, though only for a week.
Update: Adobe extended the Black Friday promotion to December 8.
The $10 monthly price is a good deal compared with the $20 Adobe had been asking just for Photoshop alone, after a first-year $10 promotional price ran out, and it could get some laggards to climb aboard Adobe's release train. But it doesn't address a fundamental problem some people have with Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription programs: If you stop paying, the software stops working. That's less an issue with Lightroom than Photoshop, because at least for now, Adobe still sells the latest version with a traditional perpetual license.
The limited-term photography-specific plan was something of a course correction for Adobe, which has been trying to address customer concerns about the Creative Cloud. However, it's not backing away from the subscription plan overall.
Adobe introduced its Creative Cloud subscription plan in 2012 and in May announced that most of its future software would be released only under the plan, chiefly its $50-per-month plan that grants access to everything that was in the Creative Suite -- Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign, and several other packages -- along with some services for online publishing and cloud-based file syncing and sharing.
For those who don't like the Creative Cloud, Adobe is still selling perpetual licenses to its CS6 products, but those will grow gradually more out of date as Adobe releases updates to its CC products.
As usual, we'll be publishing results from the survey so you can see details for yourself.
For a little history, you can check our earlier survey results from March 2012, December 2012, and May 2013.