Hi All,
I am returning to photography and was looking for some advice.
I have dabbled with both Photoshop and Lightroom in the past and now coming back to photography I see Adobe are doing a monthly cloud thingy where if i'm right you can have access to both programs.
My question(s) are thus, Do you need a copy of these programs already installed on your system or do you get download versions through the cloud.
You do not need to have copies of those programs installed on your computer in order to sign up for membership.
If you do not have any on your machine when you sign up, you can download them and install them.
If you bought the software on DVD-ROM out of a box, it would be pointless to sign up for their Cloud services.
Look at this as an example, just a rough example and the figures are just made up,
Buy Photoshop on DVD-ROM out of a box for something like £1000 and install on your machine. You paid for it, you use it as much as you like. If you don't use it for months and months, then you're wasting money on something you hardly use, like buying a book you don't even read at all. For those with money, they could buy it right away, but there are people who can't afford the one-off price tag. Bearing in mind, in a couple of years time, you may want their next new Photoshop, so an upgrade version is cheaper (say something like £300) than a full production (which could yet again cost £1000)
Paying for Creative Cloud membership means you download Photoshop for something like say £45 a month (which actually allows you to download some other software too, such as Lightroom, Illustrator, etc.,), therefore in the long run, say after a couple of years, you would have spent about more or less the same amount as if you would have paid for a full priced one. However, when their next version comes out, you could just download and install if you want to, without paying (as you're already paying membership). Trouble is that if you stopped paying membership, you wouldn't access the software until you restart paying. CC is a bit like renting Photoshop instead of buying it. Also, consider that if you stopped using Photoshop for months, you could if you want to, cancel membership.
But on the other hand, anything goes wrong with the website, web servers, although you do download and install Photoshop on your machine and use it, it is if and when your Photoshop needs to access the server to check your membership and can't confirm, that is when you would find yourself unable to use your Photoshop. But out of the box software on your machine, you just use it no matter what. Also, I found out that it seems that, out of the box one-off payment installed on one machine, and any members of your family (or friends or whoever lives with you), each having their own Windows log-on account, can access it. But the downloaded one, on one machine, only you being the one paying membership can access it. Any others via their own Windows log-on, gets to hear you say "Tough luck, you'll have to stick with boring Windows Paint"
Well, hope it helps give you some answers?
