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The Cloud

On Monday, April 23rd, Adobe made a double announcement regarding Creative Suite 6 (no surprise) and the Creative Cloud (also no surprise). There was no surprise because Adobe has been presenting us with sneak peaks of upcoming features for some time, and the Creative Cloud was informally announced back in October at the Adobe MAX in Los Angeles. Now that details are coming in, this cloud has a very silver lining.

The original reception for the CC was not all that bright. There was fear that the applications would be only accessible on the web, what kind of restrictions would apply, where would the documents be stored, costs, updates, etc., etc., etc. The results are in and all worries appear to be for moot. Once you are part of the the Cloud, you can download applications to your computer where they reside.

For the flat fee (more on that in a moment), you have access to everything that Adobe has to offer: not only the Master Suite level of applications, but far more: the Muse, Edge, and even Lightroom, an application that one cannot get from the Master collection. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the Cloud, is that when Adobe adds a feature update to a given application, those who are part of the Cloud can update their application immediately while those who purchase the box will have to wait until the CS-next update, arriving every 12 months or so.

The costs? Not all that bad, in fact they are good. Standard subscriber costs are $49.95 per month based on an annual membership. If you do not want to do a whole year and only want this on a month to month basis, your monthly costs will be higher than that but those figures are not available to me at the time of this writing. If you are a student or educator, the costs are $29.95 per month. Lastly, there is a Team subscriber with extra benefits for $69.95 per month. By the way, if you currently already own any CS3 Suite or later, you can get the first year for $29.95per month.

As I understand it, Educational and Regular subscribers also get

• up to five sites on Business Catalyst
• 20GB free storage for their documents (of any kind, more space can be purchased)
• Access to Adobe Type Kit (web fonts)
• Digital Publishing Suite (Single edition)
• Any application on the CC site for free use

Team subscribers also get

• Greater amount of storage (unknown amount at time of writing)
• 1 hour per quarter of technical support from Adobe (it is unknown at the time of writing) if the other subscribers also get this but less time and/or more infrequently).

In addition, just like the current boxed edition of the Suites, you get two computers per single owner. By this, I mean that if you have a desktop and laptop computer, you can have both computers Activated for use as long as both of them are not being used at the same time. This dynamic would remain with Cloud with one extra benefit: currently if you have a PC desktop and a Mac laptop, you'd have to purchase two different boxes since you cannot get a box that can install PC and Mac software. But the web can. And, let's say you have a computer at work and a computer at home and a laptop that you use occasionally. No problem: you log into Adobe and deactivate one of your computers and then activate your laptop. Upon return from your trip, you reverse the process and you are good to go at home. Meanwhile, you've used the Cloud to store all of the files you created on your trip to download into your home and/or work computer.

The deactivation at Adobe is also a new feature. In the past, if your computer crashed or was stolen, and you were unable to deactivate your Suite, you had to call Adobe and hope for assistance to let you have "one more" activation. Now that you can do this yourself on Adobe's site, a lot of aggravation will be resolved before it starts.

What is still uncertain is will your documents stored in the Cloud be only located in the Adobe Cloud or would they work as documents with DropBox where they exist on your computer and synced to DropBox?

As mentioned, the above fees are good based on one-year contracts. If you leave early there are penalties. Once a month your computer will ping Adobe to verify your payments. I have no information at this time if you are unable to pay by being out of the country or some other valid reason.

Who might this not be for? I suppose if you only worked in, say, Dreamweaver, and nothing else, it probably would be less expensive to just buy the box and be done with it. Even if you only purchased new boxes and no discount for updates, a box would be less expensive. However, Dreamweaver is the kind of application that is very likely to get constant updates to keep up with the web industry. Would it really be wise to limit yourself to updates on your profession only once a year while your competition is getting updates on a constant basis. And, are you really unlikely to never need FireWorks? Photoshop? Acrobat?

Simply, this is a truly wonderful deal. The only thing that could screw it up is if Adobe started to significantly increasing prices in subsequent years. We have no way to know that.

Meanwhile, all of the individual programs will remain for sale as well as the various Suites. There will be one major change with the Suites, the Design Premium and the Web Premium will no longer remain as separate Suites and are being joined as the Design and Web Premium Suite. The price of this will go up a tad due to more applications being offered.

CS6

As far as CS6 goes, that's not really out yet so it's hard to make too many comments. I did a full review of Photoshop CS6 and that can be read here on Applelinks.com. If you want/need more of a CS6 fix, Adobe has a number of short videos showing off a variety of features from a variety of applications here.

The following is the code to the above Applications. The price shown above reflects the new purchase and the update purchase price. One other thing to point out is that two suites have been pulled and one new one replaces them: Before there was a Web Designing Suite and a Design Premium. The two were so close that the distinction between them was not very deep. As such, they have been combined and are a bit more expensive than they were before to accommodate the additional software included within th Suite.

One other dynamic: if you subscribe to the CC AND THEN purchase the various iPad applications from Adobe, you will get a one month credit to your years contract. Sadly, if you've already purchased these, there is no way to get credit for the purchase.

In short

The full value of CS6 remains to be seen. If Photoshop is any indication, Adobe has another home run on their hand but PS has traditionally been at the extreme end of updates that make a difference. More will be known when I see more.

Truthfully I was very wary when I first heard about the Creative Cloud at Adobe MAX. There's something about my owning the box that I feel comforted with. But when you start to compare what you get with the CC and the total cost for the CC, the fears and concerns start to melt away. By all accounts, this seems like a good deal. No, a great deal. While there are still questions, and not all dynamics are known yet, none of the unknowns are likely to be deal breakers.

I do hope it works as advertised because this reads like a great deal and a great opportunity.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.