Adobe Abandons Creative Suite, Announces Full Switch to Creative Cloud

[David McGavran]

I just tested this again before I posted, I am on cs6 version 11.0.2.12 on two different machines ... neither can see redcolor3 and monochrome as options when i look at the "RED R3D SOURCE SETTINGS" in after effects. I also have done a google search on redcolor3 and redgamma3, no answers there aside from going to the beta pages to copy that file, I have wasted more then a few hours on this.

That is why I said CC. CC has tons of new features including monochrome and red color 3. Check this link for most of them:

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/04/the-next-version-of-premiere-pro.html

(Edit: Available on June 17th)
Cheers
dave

 

[Mike Smith]

dito. but let me spell it out for you: a used licence of, say, creative suite cs2, that's been used every day is still in "perfect condition". it might have been surpassed by loads of new versions but it's still absolutely the same thing the original buyer got when he bought it in the first place. whereas a used red one that's been in the field for years will show wear and therefore obviously loses value. the question wether it makes sense to buy outdated stuff is a completely different one.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Iʻm with you guys on sympathy for the Adobe Reps, but Iʻm not buying the damage control. Again, what about the existing users? If a customer bought the CS6 Master Collection one year ago (or today) for $2599, theyʻll need to roll that loss into any realistic calculations.

Yep. Feeling it.

I don't envy what the Adobe reps must be going through right now...

Anyway, I have to agree, they should be offering something a bit more tangible to anyone who has purchased any seats of CS6 (predominantly the Master Collection) within the past few months. Have to echo your sentiments, I think the damage control efforts are not addressing a few of the various concerns some of us have. Such as those of us who are Volume License customers... I'm being told that the solution is to do CC for teams. Um, no, that doesn't address my concerns or my needs. I have little use for the cloud features. My team is all right here on 10Gbps and 20Gbps interconnects. Last thing we're going to be doing is sharing stuff at < 5Mbps upload speeds to the cloud when it's all right here on our SAN. $20/month to run Photoshop only (or any other individual app)? I have two systems that the *only* Adobe apps they run are Photoshop and occasionally Acrobat, two other systems that mostly run InDesign and Illustrator. Even with that, I probably only need Photoshop on each maybe 3 or 4 days out of the month. But it's going to cost me $40~$60/month to keep what I have there. Or at least it will once I decide I need to upgrade those Photoshop and InDesign and Illisturator licenses.

I have a finite budget each year for new software and software upgrades. I can't upgrade all my seats every year. I have a couple systems running CS5.5, a few running CS6 and one setup still running CS5. Plus the Photoshop only seat, Illustrator only, InDesign only... If I have to start paying for CC on all those workstations, and ultimately I will as it becomes necessary to upgrade some of them, and it already is, then it digs into the annual software budget by quite a bit.

What about Volume License program installation allowances -- 2 Mac and 2 PC installations per seat??? Poof, gone.


All that said, I totally understand Adobe's decision to move entirely to cloud licensing. The unfortunate truth is that the move is rather heavy-handed and doesn't seem to take all types of users into account. I'm not worried about what is going to happen over the next year so much. With the CS ownership incentives and not needing to upgrade all my software to CC licenses, I'm going to come out about the same as I have the past few years. What remains to be seen is just how often the software is updated. And if the updates are worth the extra expense this is going to add for a lot of us. Also how soon I'll need to migrate all my seats to CC to keep them reasonably up to date and functional as I need. Ultimately I see having to eliminate Adobe software installations from some of our workstations because it just isn't going to be worth the $20~$60/ month price depending on what software is being used where. Adobe software accounts for about 1/3 of the software we use.


For an indie user who owns a single seat of CS6 Video or Master Collection and who routinely pays for the upgrade when the new version launches every 12 months or so, the CC model works just fine. For others, I'm still not convinced. If CC made sense for us, we would have already switched.

 

[shashbugu]

If your goal is to help, give us a purchase option. All those wanting to send feature requests, please create your own thread. This one is about Adobe abandoning Creative Suites. See thread title.

As you can deduce from this thread the purchase option is not entirely gone. It depends on who is buying. From the FAQ's Enterprise and volume license buyers will get upgrade support directly from Adobe. Everybody else can go F themselves. I'm personally not against Adobe gouging us with their subscription and making a quadrillion dollars, I have absolutely no problem with that (looking at their stock price obviously that is not working) How a company wishes to do business is their own prerogative. My main concern which should be yours as well, is "value for money". What do we get for our monthly subscription? After you've watched all the good shows and movies on Netflix you're left with the Bollywood and Telemundo section. You pay $8.99 a month waiting for something good to pop up. We don't want that with Adobe. We love the the mercury playback, but we want better tools and effects that work with the mercury playback.

Adobe has not thought out the whole rental idea, that is a serious loss leader.

 

[shashbugu]

1. They are separate applications because of the range of use. We have installations where there are say 500 journalists who don't need to have the complexity of Premiere using Prelude for logging and ingest. Then there are 100 editors who need the full premiere but don't manage the encoding side. Then there is a group of machines doing the encoding that use AME. Plus the 20 graphics guys using AE but don't want to learn Premiere. PPro has the full AME inside it if you don't queue and now in this release AE fully supports AME for background encoding. The video teams have really worked closely with some of the biggest broadcast companies in the world to make sure our tools fit the most workflows.

2. Now I am sad Being one of the original Dynamic Link engineers We continue to improve Dynamic Link. CC versions have a bunch of performance and stability improvements. We have great stuff in the pipe here.

3. We have now moved the Lumetri color engine into Premiere. That was the first step. To think we moved all of speedgrade into Mercury GPU in less than a year is quite a feat from the eng side. Just another step in the integration...

Cheers
Dave

We will sit out on the sidelines with CS6 and wait to see what the future offerings of CC will be. We'll want to see the frequency in updates, value of new productivity feature sets etc.

 

[Christian Edwards]

Some eula legalities:
http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130508_1a-Adobe-legal-agreement.html

 

[Phil Holland]

More is coming in the future with lumetri. Can't spill all the beans . Camera Raw is still pretty slow for the ppro pipeline but we are always looking into it. Let me check on 16 bit tif part of me thinks we got this into CC

Thanks Dave. I really like a good bit of Speedgrade and Lumetri is really smart. Happy to hear more is coming from that side of things.

I think a good chunk of folks are dying for more support with 16bit image sequences.

Cheers and looking forward to the new versions. For existing and long time costumers the upgrade path is pretty damn affordable. Much less expensive than the last upgrade rounds. I like that concept.

 

[Bruce Allen]

I have little use for the cloud features. My team is all right here on 10Gbps and 20Gbps interconnects. Last thing we're going to be doing is sharing stuff at < 5Mbps upload speeds to the cloud when it's all right here on our SAN. $20/month to run Photoshop only (or any other individual app)? I have two systems that the *only* Adobe apps they run are Photoshop and occasionally Acrobat, two other systems that mostly run InDesign and Illustrator. Even with that, I probably only need Photoshop on each maybe 3 or 4 days out of the month. But it's going to cost me $40~$60/month to keep what I have there. Or at least it will once I decide I need to upgrade those Photoshop and InDesign and Illisturator licenses.

All that said, I totally understand Adobe's decision to move entirely to cloud licensing. The unfortunate truth is that the move is rather heavy-handed and doesn't seem to take all types of users into account.

Here's my theory: Adobe's CEO doesn't care about all types of users. He wants to optimize for the majority of users and the markets Adobe wants to target - and outliers can get stuffed.

The scary part is: even if Adobe bends now... who's to say their CEO won't change the deal again in 3 years' time?

Right now we can say "no" because we can still keep on going with the current version. Then we won't be able to say "no" because our apps will stop working.

I expect their CEO to continue to adjust the deal over the years in order to get the optimal result. I'm scared that at some point in the future, the optimal result for Adobe will be a very non-optimal result for me.

I'm beginning to guess that, as much as I love After Effects, etc, I'm not really in any of their target market categories. Most of the features they have been adding don't seem to apply to me at all - this should have been a sign to me. I'm beginning to think that I'm an outlier in their pricing scheme as well. And I completely expect that CEO to strike a deal that works for Adobe and the majority of customers, but screws over the outliers. And Murphy's Law says I'm going to be an outlier.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Andy White]

As we have some Adobe guys here

I don't know if this has been asked before... but can you run a CS6 licence (perpetual type), on the same system as a new CC licence?

Say the current Premiere (with Labs support only for last years Red colour science) 'and' a CC (ie CS7) Premiere that, we've been told, has full-on support for the latest colour science (and will be the only way you'll get Dragon on Premiere, one presuems).

 

[Dr. Sassi]

Hi David,

I have one question, and perhaps I miss something. I shot the music video (see link in the bottom area) as a multi cam shot. The RED implementation worked great. As music videos have the song as backbone, the timing is a given.

In this way, the multi camera/angle editing tool is certainly a great way to work. Very efficient and straight forward.

My problem, after I was done with it in PP-CS6, I tried to export it via XML. Which I got not to work at all. I got only one stream of the many streams I had used to create it. The exported file was cut exactly where I had my edit points, but always the same single stream, no switch at all to anything else. Relatively useless. (Lets say I had streams called A,B,C,D. The edit was e.g., ABCDBABDC, but I got AAAAAAAAA only, I hope that makes sense)
Yes, it took me only an hour to rebuild it, but any change in PP CS6 needed then a manual copy to the parts that I had in my XML file.

Will this be fixed one day (or did I something wrong?)

I will not say a lot right now about the CC, except that I hope things will change soon; I couldn't care less about CC or its entire options (I'm investing currently time in FCPX again, after last Monday's announcement) . So lets focus on what is important, that the software is useable.

My best wishes.

Sassi

 

[Dave Blackham]

So for year subscriptions there is something like a 99 day grace period before you need to have it ping the network. There are other options if you go teams or enterprise license. I would call your local adobe reseller, they can help answer those specific questions.

Cheers

Dave

99 days is no where near long enough. If this isn't deployable on the location machines this effectively prevents us using the software on the studio machines even if there were some local licence workaround on these systems, if we can use it on the location or studio machines we also can use it or recommend it to colleagues on educational machines. I can only strongly urge some thought is given to this....

 

[Mike Garrick]

Maybe everyone should read the EULA...................... Christian posted ^^^^^^^. (post no 326)

See how everyone feels about that .

 

[Timothy Eaton]

Just a note to the Adobe guys to say that the value equation (especially with respect to Premiere and R3Ds) has dramatically increased. Premiere 4.0 was a train wreck, but 6.0 and the current CC version have been quite stable. Added features and usability, particularly Red usability, have generally been very well targeted. Kudos to the software development team and managers who listened and responded.

I mean no disrespect to posters who are objecting to the CC subscription plan, but my guess is that I will end up spending less money than I have in the past on the Production Suite, but will now have access to the entire Master Suite. At the same time, if what Adobe is proposing plays out, I will enjoy more frequent feature updates and have the ability to work on two computers simultaneously.

I like Steve Sherrick's suggestion to let the dust settle a bit before making any drastic changes. For those who feel the need to jump ship now, let us know what other solutions you find, how much they cost, and how well they work.

For those who view this as a nefarious plot, I can only say that I always assume that corporations are in business to make money. Screwing their customers, however, is inconsistent with that goal. It will be interesting to see whether the marketplace ends up rewarding Adobe for what I believe is a forward thinking plan, or punishing them with fewer subscribers.

Best of luck to all going forward,

Tim Eaton

 

[Dave Blackham]

Some eula legalities:
http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130508_1a-Adobe-legal-agreement.html

Judging by whats written in this link it would be difficult to sign up to an agreement if any one point was in the agreement, Ive not checked Im just taking it at face value for now. The big one in my view is if Adobe are down or some other issue has transpired such as the ISP is having issues that day, or any other hiatus not being under facility control then the facility would be down. Thats not good for clients or business, could be many thousands per day lost and on going. Any one have any work around for this senario ?

 

[Jeff Whitehurst]

Judging by whats written in this link it would be difficult to sign up to an agreement if any one point was in the agreement, Ive not checked Im just taking it at face value for now. The big one in my view is if Adobe are down or some other issue has transpired such as the ISP is having issues that day, or any other hiatus not being under facility control then the facility would be down. Thats not good for clients or business, could be many thousands per day lost and on going. Any one have any work around for this senario ?

Also relevant is that the EULA is of course subject to change. Not attempting to launch any conspiracy theories here, just kind of a big problem if Adobe gets sold or changes course yet again. In the contract-only model, you either agree to the new EULA or never see your work again.

 

[Jeff Whitehurst]

Here's my theory: Adobe's CEO doesn't care about all types of users. He wants to optimize for the majority of users and the markets Adobe wants to target - and outliers can get stuffed.

The scary part is: even if Adobe bends now... who's to say their CEO won't change the deal again in 3 years' time?

Right now we can say "no" because we can still keep on going with the current version. Then we won't be able to say "no" because our apps will stop working.

I expect their CEO to continue to adjust the deal over the years in order to get the optimal result. I'm scared that at some point in the future, the optimal result for Adobe will be a very non-optimal result for me.

I'm beginning to guess that, as much as I love After Effects, etc, I'm not really in any of their target market categories. Most of the features they have been adding don't seem to apply to me at all - this should have been a sign to me. I'm beginning to think that I'm an outlier in their pricing scheme as well. And I completely expect that CEO to strike a deal that works for Adobe and the majority of customers, but screws over the outliers. And Murphy's Law says I'm going to be an outlier.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Bruce, youʻre spot on IMHO.
The company is clearly only concerned with their mission to create this new world of opportunity in the cloud. Existing users who didnʻt sign up for and who donʻt want that platform, apparently not so important. After viewing many recent and past statements by Adobe concerning the cloud, itʻs easy to see they are working towards a future that will either require constant internet connectivity, or at least the software wonʻt be very useful without it. Thatʻs why they need a buyout option in this, so a user can jump ship and keep working if the software ever becomes unsatisfactory. Instead, they just want to push us off the cliff into a permanent subscription now, and yet we have no security in where all this is really headed.

Multiple comments on this and other threads around the internet ask "what about existing users who invested thousands". Crickets, even though they say theyʻre there to answer their customers concerns. The first post by Adobe on this thread said "I'm sure that some of you feel strongly enough to go elsewhere, but i hope this at least clarifies some points." Thatʻs pretty cold, and not the only place you see this attitude. However, I think itʻs helpful as well, as it signals the attitude we can expect going forward. I donʻt blame anyone personally, not even the CEO. With a move this drastic, I doubt any of them want to be the first one that voices their concerns. I get the definite sense though, that this move was poorly planned and their inflexible stance is ruining itʻs chance of success. That has me worried, because I too feel like the offerings at Adobe donʻt include that much for me, and I mean right now. If this is step one, and they act this way now, what does that signal for the next step, or 5 years from now, long after CS6 stops functioning, and the reality of the contract model is evident?

We believe that Creative Cloud will have a larger impact on the creative world than anything else we’ve done over the past three decades. It is our single highest priority to enable deep integration between our tools and services. One of the implications of this is that many of the new features in our CC applications require access to Creative Cloud, as will many of the updates we are planning for the future. In order to accelerate the rate at which we deliver new features and services, and to ensure that we do so with the highest level of quality, we are focusing all of our efforts on Creative Cloud.
http://www.adobe.com/cc/letter.html

 

[Ben Scott]

I've never read so much pr department twaddle in my life. Everyone in this thread knows what they want/need from an edit suite. Just like with Apple and the FCPX debacle, when a company tells you that the way you work and the way you pay for the way you work is wrong the hackles start to rise. Now we're being told paying for less security and less access is going to improve our working experience. It's as cynical a move as I seen from a software company and for them to suggest is anything else is disingenuous as best.

There is nothing I want or need from the cloud in relation to my day to day editing. In fact there is nothing I want from the cloud at all, aside from being able to send dropbox links...

 

[Martin Stevens]

IMAGINE

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there’s no more DVD-ROMS
Or Perpetual Licenses for you
No more software to buy or sell for
And no Boxed Sets too
Imagine all the people
Living and Editing in Peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday Adobe will join us
And the world will live as one

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Some eula legalities:
http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130508_1a-Adobe-legal-agreement.html

So...

terms can be changed and must be accepted,

account data must be input how and whenever asked for,

online service may be unavailable,

services may be discontinued without notice and liability,

material can be deleted for any reason,

services to user can be suspended for any reason and without any liability,

account may be suspended without notice and liability,

software automatically updates on your computer without your knowledge,

whoever has any claims or disputes must fly over to Santa Clara.



Interesting.

 

[Robert Hart]

Cutting real film on a Steenbeck does not now seem quite so painful. What you see is what you get --- and keep.