To the cloud?

Sidney

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Sidney
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Hello All,

Just wanted to know what your thoughts are on this. I have had a free copy of CS6 for a while now (legally obtained btw), and have brought Lightroom since the third edition. Both are a vital part of my workflow and with every new edition I quickly adopt the new features which typically increase my efficiency beyond recognition.

Recently, Adobe have released Photoshop CC, and although the features wouldn't have been enough for me to go out and spend £££ if it was boxed as CS7, I have been wanting to go to the cloud for a while now anyway.

I am only a teenager with a low paid, part-time job, so naturally the cost of the product is my highest priority. Under the old CS system, I would have had to have paid £250 for Photoshop (student edition) and £60 for Lightroom. That’s £310 together, with a product cycle of 18 months. So, £620 every 3 years. Under the CC version, I am paying £810 every 3 years. So economically, I lose out under the new CC system.

So, what does that extra £190 pay for? Well, I get use of all of the Adobe apps, including (to my surprise) the iPad apps. I also get the 20gb of cloud storage, which although is handy, it’s too small to back up my images on there, and the most I need for everyday stuff is about 5gb, so I don’t really see its purpose.. (I must add that 100gb on Dropbox would cost £195 very 3 years, so for 20gb it would only cost £40 every 3 years). However, as much as use of the all apps is good, I do not NEED them and would never willingly pay for them.

What other options are there. One very tempting one is the Lightroom + PS Elements model. However, PS Elements has a release cycle of every 12 months, not very 18 like Lightroom. PSE costs £45. So, over three years, that’s £255 for Elements and Lightroom: a whopping £555 saving over the CC version. The trouble is, I make use of most of Photoshop's advanced features, and feel that I would be sacrificing my work with Elements (although it does house about 90% of the features I use, I know I will be longing for the advanced features as soon as I install the b****r!

So, what do you think? It is worth jumping to the cloud. One thing I will say is that although in the long run it is more expensive than the CS model, people like me can access it far quicker now (before I would have had to save up), and that is a good thing. Also, the future looks good, with a Lightroom iPad app which will almost defiantly change my workflow for the better. But the numbers are really unappealing, as much as I think about it, I really don’t know if I can justify the extra £555. I am stuck on this one, anyone got any advice?

Cheers,
Sid.
 
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Well I have CS6 and LR and I will be sticking with this until I am forced to change.
What are you going to gain by shelling out for CC now?

If you really need all the extra programs and apps then only you know if it is worthwhile
 
I'm not sure about the cloud, I seem to recall reading somewhere that if you sign up and for whatever reason you don't pay the subs then you loose access and are left with nothing.
I gave it some thought and decided not to bother and stick with CS5 (and that is beyond my capabilities for photo editing let alone everything else it does).
I have a gut feeing , and its no more than that, that over time lightroom will expand to do most things that the photoediting bit of photoshop does, otherwise adobe are going to loose out big time in respect of amateur photographers as really Photoshop is overkill in most cases.
Don't know if this helps as its just my thoughts

Best of luck with whatever you decide

Chris
 
We won't be changing to cloud, theres just not enough new in CC to be worth the money IMHO.
 
For backup I pay £12.50 a year for unlimited storage!
 
Thank you all for your replies.

What are you going to gain by shelling out for CC now?

Effectively nothing with Photoshop, but a fair bit with Lightroom 5. But as new Photoshop features are dribbled in it will seem more worthwhile.

I have a gut feeing , and its no more than that, that over time lightroom will expand to do most things that the photoediting bit of photoshop does,

As a photographer, I totally agree. In terms of photography I do almost all of my post-processing in Lightroom (and with the new healing brush tool I will be in LR even more). But, I do quite a lot of experimenting with text and effects and more recently 3D, kind of more design-based stuff. I suppose the good thing about CC is when I find that Lightroom fulfills all of my needs, I can just cancel my subscription.

We won't be changing to cloud, theres just not enough new in CC to be worth the money IMHO.

I agree, the economical argument for photographers just isn't there. Check out this though, it made hopeful for the future of creative cloud. http://kelbytv.com/thegrid/2013/05/02/the-grid-episode-94-tom-hogarty-from-adobe/

For backup I pay £12.50 a year for unlimited storage!

Interesting, but is it truly "unlimited". I have seen a few services which have been advertised as "unlimited" but in the small print it seems their definition on "unlimited is quite different to mine! Would you post a link to the service?

Thank you all for your replies, am still undecided at time of writing.

Cheers,

Sid.
 
It's LiveDrive and is truly unlimited. To get it at the bargain price go to 'ByFartheCheapest' - I currently backup up files from 2 computers all for the price and have done for over a year.
 
It's LiveDrive and is truly unlimited. To get it at the bargain price go to 'ByFartheCheapest' - I currently backup up files from 2 computers all for the price and have done for over a year.

Probably good value and I'm sure a good service and worthy of consideration, I assume you also backup a hard copy somewhere? I would hate to think of them going bust.
 
Probably good value and I'm sure a good service and worthy of consideration, I assume you also backup a hard copy somewhere? I would hate to think of them going bust.

Yeah - I backup to a NAS as well!
 
I am only a teenager with a low paid, part-time job, so naturally the cost of the product is my highest priority. Under the old CS system, I would have had to have paid £250 for Photoshop (student edition) and £60 for Lightroom. That’s £310 together, with a product cycle of 18 months. So, £620 every 3 years. Under the CC version, I am paying £810 every 3 years. So economically, I lose out under the new CC system.

You're getting off relatively lightly. As a pro user of PS and LR, adobe tax used to average out at about £100 - £150 a year for me. Now they want £210 a year for PS alone plus the £50 - £60 for LR. Or I can pay £562.88 a year for the whole thing.

The thousand I've already paid Adobe gets me a discount for the first year only.

It's fine for Scott Kelby to shout about the amazing value it offers but

  1. US prices are about half the UK ones for no obvious reason
  2. It's not good value if I have to pay for stuff I don't want

I'll buy LR5 and stick with CS6. That works well and won't stop working. Though the evil/dumb way they implemented ACR will bite me eventually as new cameras come out.

Time to look at Capture 1.
 
[*]US prices are about half the UK ones for no obvious reason
[*]It's not good value if I have to pay for stuff I don't want.

Two good points. I really cant understand why Europe has to pay so much more! Even when tax is deducted, it still costs thirty-something percent more in the UK. It cant be trans-atlantic shipping, nor supply and demand (supply is infinite) so the only reason we pay more is because adobe thinks/knows we will.

The student discount helps me out a lot though. I was considering just buying a boxed Lightroom every 18 months and just have Photoshop in the CC, but it turns out for me with the discount, its only £2-3 more expensive to just have the whole of the cloud, so that would be what i'd do if I don't decide to go with elements.

Thanks for all your responses so far,

Cheers,

Sid.
 
The student discount helps me out a lot though. I was considering just buying a boxed Lightroom every 18 months and just have Photoshop in the CC, but it turns out for me with the discount, its only £2-3 more expensive to just have the whole of the cloud, so that would be what i'd do if I don't decide to go with elements.

That's no coincidence. Adobe will have had long meetings with some very smart people about this. The current buzz in marketing is bundling aka selling stuff you don't want for just a little bit more than the stuff you do. Most people end up paying the extra "just in case" they want the extras.
 
That's no coincidence. Adobe will have had long meetings with some very smart people about this. The current buzz in marketing is bundling aka selling stuff you don't want for just a little bit more than the stuff you do. Most people end up paying the extra "just in case" they want the extras.

Yes, this is a very clever move by Adobe.
 
Updated my original post. Creative Cloud only offers 20gb of storage not 100gb. The deal just got even worse!

Sorry for the confusion.

Cheers,

Sid.
 
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