The Adobe Marriage is Over

DE
Posted By
dan_elliott
Dec 10, 2008
Views
1845
Replies
48
Status
Closed
Just want to put this out there. In the ancient days, when a husband and wife were through, the man would publicly say to his wife, "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.", three times, and the covenant was broken.

I’ve been faithful to Adobe since pre-Photoshop 6 days. I’ve bought and installed and used almost every Adobe brand at one point or another for my business, from Audition to Premiere to Illustrator and all the little in-betweens, dealing with glitches and reinstalls and patches and system hangs… I’ve upgraded all of my computers, spent thousands keeping up with the latest hardware and graphics cards, RAM, you name it, just to stay in a relationship with you.

All these years later, after such a long relationship, I have to say I’ve been duped one too many times. I’m no longer faithful to you because you are no longer faithful to me. I’m no longer drinking the Cool-Aid. Chalk it up to too the $$$ lost in production, the minutes and hours that just slip through our hands in forums, the one-too-many support tech’s telling me, "You know, you just need to uninstall everything and run a clean sweep." I Especially liked the guy last week who told me through his many sighs and his short impatience that I was basically not worth his time.

This morning I’ve retrofitted my computers back to CS3, after spending almost 60 hours this week, just on you, in the middle of our Christmas rush, sifting through forums, talking on the phone with Adobe support, getting nowhere while my clients wait. There’s no more time for counseling.

I won’t bite anymore, Adobe… I’ll use your product, your older product, because I have to. but my affection for you, my desire to understand your ways, has been leeched away.
I’m tired of being your guinea pig. I don’t know who you’re catering to these days, but it’s not the little guy who hold you up, the guy in the trenches trying to keep his trade afloat and support his family in a spiraling economy.

And it’s my fault. I readily admit. I bought it all, hook line and sinker. I should have used the money I spent for CS4 to give my kids a better Christmas. I know that now, on the other side of a cold and blue, Scrooge-of-a-shoulder. I’ll take that responsibility. But…
No more.
No more.
No more.

Like I said, just want to put this out there…publicly.

On to Christmas, and enough of the Bah Humbugs. There are brighter, more important things. Eternal things. And Thank you! Really. You’ve been a perfect example to me that all things are truly just passing away.

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
it’s not just adobe. many MANY big companies need to read this well written post.

the customer is no longer right. the customer barely matters any more. the customer’s dollars are what matter. good will means bunk to big companies. if they can trick and dupe you into an upgrade, rather than do it through good customer service, that’s how they’ll do it.

<sigh>
P
PeterK.
Dec 10, 2008
And look where it got the car companies? Well not all of them, just the big 3 American ones that subscribe to the idea of if you build it, they will come, despite poor quality and service. Maybe Adobe is angling for a bailout? You know, take their chances at putting out a product that they think is good for Adobe, as opposed to the product that their consumers want?

Example: how many people think it would be a good idea that, after someone buys an Adobe Suite of products, and feels that in the next version not all the apps are worth it for them to upgrade, they would be given the ability to upgrade an individual app?

Answer: I can bet that probably every single consumer of Adobe products would like to have that flexibility. But Adobe doesn’t think so. Do you see the incongruity here? What part of customer service does Adobe not understand, and why would they make the decision that locking people into a suite is better than giving them what they want? It’s just plain corporate idiocy to snub the very people putting money into your wallet. That’s just one example. There’s more, but what’s the point? None of the Adobe people making these decisions probably even know this forum exists.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
That argument is getting very old and has nothing to do with the sad state of customer service in all industries.

You want individual apps, then buy individual apps. The choice is yours.

Bob
P
PeterK.
Dec 10, 2008
You’re missing the point. My example has EVERYTHING to do with customer service. Read my post again.
I’ll sum it up for you in a way that you may understand. Adobe has the right to make it’s upgrade policies any way it pleases. And the customer has the right to buy into their products and those policies, or not. Now if they really cared about their customers, what upgrade policy would they have?
This is my point. Adobe has been treating the customer with less regard and ignoring what would be best for their customers.

(And Chrysler (GM, Ford, whatever), have every right to put out cars with short warranty periods lacking in quality or features that the consumer would like to have.)

You want individual apps, then buy individual apps. The choice is yours.

Not a consumer-friendly choice at all. There is NO reason why someone who buys a suite shouldn’t be allowed to upgrade a single app afterwards. If there is a reason, I’d like to hear it.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
The reason is simple. Its the same reason why the price per bottle of beer is cheaper in a case than it is if you just buy one. And if you buy one bottle and bring it back for a deposit, you only get the money for one bottle, not an entire case.

If there was no way to buy individual apps I’d agree with you. On the contrary I think the way things are set up is very consumer friendly…you can buy all apps at a very significant discount or you can buy just the ones you want and pay a whole lot more for the extra freedom to upgrade individual apps as you see fit.

And again, I do agree that state of customer support in all industries leaves much to be desired but this has nothing to do with customer service and everything to do with customer choice.

Bob
P
PeterK.
Dec 10, 2008
you can buy all apps at a very significant discount or you can buy just the ones you want and pay a whole lot more for the extra freedom to upgrade individual apps as you see fit.

Or Adobe could make it so that you could buy a suite at a discount and still have the ability to only upgrade the apps you need afterward, but they don’t. The customer is not a fortune-teller, and doesn’t know if they’ll need every app upgrade in the future. The fact is, they probably don’t. If they cared more about what their customers want, Adobe would offer that flexibility, but they don’t.

Your beer bottle analogy is not analogous. Here’s a better one (man, I hate doing analogies, but here we go.)
Say one bottle costs a dollar, and if I return it to get another one, I get a 10 cent return deposit on my next bottle (that’s equal to using your previous version of Photoshop to upgrade to a new one). Now say I buy a pack of 6 bottles for a discount price of 5 dollars, and if I return them, I can get a subsequent pack of 6 for 4.40 after the return deposit.
Now I’d like to be able to return one of the bottles from the 6-pack and considering it’s equal to the same bottle that’s in the pack, still get my 10 cents back and buy the one dollar bottle for 90 cents. Adobe isn’t letting me. They’re saying I have to buy a new bottle for the full dollar, or stick to buying another 6-pack for 4.40. Like I said, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t allow you the same upgrade/discount path if you decide to only go for one of the bottles afterwards.
DE
David_E_Crawford
Dec 10, 2008
Just don’t say candyman 3 times
JM
J_Maloney
Dec 10, 2008
Beetlejuice beetlejuice beetlejuice!
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
and of course the suite is a money maker/marketing gimmick that replaced the bundles, in which you COULD update each component separately and skip the others, just as peter and dan said. which is what i did in keeping illy and photoshop. i’m screwed out of ever getting back into premier because i’m locked out due to the "new" 3 version back upgrade policy. now that i have a computer that can actually handle video editing, i’m using windows movie maker, cyberlink and nero instead of adobe.

bob, no one’s saying they don’t see the point from a business, strictly money making point of view, (at least i don’t think so… did someone say beer? :)) we’re saying from a customer friendly or at least neutral point of view, it’s not right.

and further, it seem that they’ve gotten a little tighter as they bought up the competition. now that they don’t have to compete with macromedia there are fewer choices around, they can pretty much do as they please, as far as they dare.

the trick seems now to be – "how far can we push our customers pissed off point before they become ex-customers? let’s maximize that." instead of "how can we make every single customer we have satisfied and happy, thus ensuring they spread the adobe word far and wide? let’s maximize that."

seems they used to go out of their way to do the latter. lately it’s been all too much of the former.

are they making more money? forgetting the macromedia stuff, probably… short term. what about long? will all the pissed off people amount to a losing strategy? who knows.
EB
Erbs_Bischof
Dec 10, 2008
Dan, that´s truly touching post and bloody well written. My advice: Dump Photoshop and all your other design tools for good, convert to MS Word and make a fortune with novels.

Sympathetic!
Erbs
J
jcates
Dec 10, 2008
If there is a reason, I’d like to hear it.

Interoperability.

You don’t expect Photoshop CS4 to work as well with Illustrator 10 as it does with Illustrator CS4, do you?

There are benefits to using a Suite as opposed to a set of individual apps (dynamic link, reduced overall price, etc.), otherwise there would be no point to the Suite’s existence.

The ability to upgrade a single app from a suite should be nothing more than a pleasant passing thought. That would do nothing but create more confusion, paperwork and overhead. You think their customer service is bad now? Think how bad it’ll be when they’re all even more overworked and stressed.

Granted, I have my own gripes with Adobe, but I knew what I was getting myself into. As for the OP’s compaint about lost business because of software issues during the holiday rush, it’s the OP’s fault for upgrading to relatively unknown core operating software at a time of year when there is little to no time to train or become familiar with the new software.

The OP admits his fault, yet blames Adobe for ‘duping’ him this time. And last time, and the time before that, and the time before that ad nauseum. Stop blaming a company for your own bad choices.

And for Pete’s sake, Robert, leave beer bottles out of this.

And a quick correction for the OP: it’s not ‘I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you;’ it’s ‘I break with thee. I break with thee. I break with thee.’ and then you throw dog poop on their shoes. (please, someone tell me they remember that)
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
. That would do nothing but create more confusion, paperwork and overhead.

sorry to disagree man. but i disagree. 🙂

And for Pete’s sake, Robert, leave beer bottles out of this.

yea, it’s hard to concentrate with all the beer references "floating" around…
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
But Adobe is a business and it has to make money. That means making decisions that might tick off a few customers but not most. When you have that many, you’re not going to bat a thousand.

I see the occasional post like this one but there’s no big uproar over it and I do think it’s a fair policy to both Adobe its customers. The savings for the suite is substantial. In return for that big discount, you lock yourself in. It’s not like it’s a big secret.

This is like the people who locked into heating oil contracts in June and now want to get out of them.

And as for your hobby…I hear Premier Elements is pretty good. <g>

Bob
P
Phosphor
Dec 10, 2008
"As for the OP’s compaint about lost business because of software issues during the holiday rush, it’s the OP’s fault for upgrading to relatively unknown core operating software at a time of year when there is little to no time to train or become familiar with the new software."

A’yup. ALWAYS do the shakedown cruise on a non-production system. It’s just good general wisdom.
J
jcates
Dec 10, 2008
sorry to disagree man. but i disagree. 🙂

And I have a great deal of respect for you, but think how this conversation with Adobe Customer Support would go:

you – I wanna upgrade my Photoshop.
adobe – Ok. What version are you upgrading from?
you – I purchased CS1 Design Premium and upgraded Photoshop to CS2, Illustrator to CS2 and CS3, Indesign to CS3, and Acrobat each time there was an upgrade for that.
adobe – Ok. You chose to split your suite starting 3 versions ago so that means the third generation division upgrade pricing is now in effect for your license [super laywer-speak follows] Your Photoshop CS4 upgrade from third generation division pricing will be $??? (whatever $35 lower than normal list is)
you – {silence}
adobe – Sir?
you – {tirade}

Newton’s Laws kick in here. Something similar to your keybd.gif. 🙂 Everybody dies and Klaatu’s job gets easier.
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
but there’s no big uproar over it

true, but every release there seems to be more and more. do they add up?

I hear Premier Elements is pretty good

sigh. yea. we’ll see… 🙂
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
no, it should go:

me: I want the latest illy, premire, photoshop. i don’t use indesign or dreamweaver as much as i though, so i’m done with that one.

them: thank you for shopping with adobe. may i have your credit card number?
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
and here’s an actual non-resolution to an upgrade question:

dave milbut, "cs3 extended to cs4 (non-extended) upgrade still not worked out… hopes dim" #1, 6 Nov 2008 6:35 am </webx?14/0>
JJ
John Joslin
Dec 10, 2008
Somebody on the Macintoy side got that resolved to their satisfaction dave.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
Now Dave has to buy a Mac. <g>

Bob
P
PeterK.
Dec 10, 2008
the conversation could go more like:

customer: I bought the Premium suite of CS3, and I’d like to upgrade Photoshop. Adobe: Just Photoshop?
customer: yes.
Adobe:Ok, that will be $(upgrade price), and I’ll have to issue you a new serial number for your Photoshop, since it will now be a standalone app separate from the suite.
customer: ok.
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
(edit: @jj) ya. that’s good to hear. wonder if it’s official? maybe time for another chat, just for clarification. it would stink to have to go through an unlock call every time.

myself i’ll probably go extended when i jump anyway.
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 10, 2008
Now Dave has to buy a Mac. <g>

that would make me feel all dirty and stuff… 😉
J
jcates
Dec 10, 2008
since it will now be a standalone app separate from the suite.

And what is Adobe to do when that customer calls back and wants to upgrade their suite to the most recent version?

Say they have the CS3 Design Premium and upgrade PS only to CS4 under the situation you describe. CS5 is released a couple years later and they decide they want the whole suite again. They want the suite upgrade price. Should they be given that price since they split their previous suite license?

No.

Under the situation you describe, there would be a separate suite upgrade price since they upgraded one app from the now 2-versions-old suite (and what of the now stand-alone PS license?). This creates a laundry list of upgrade pricing and serial numbers that requires more staff, paperwork and hours to maintain all the while confusing customers because it is now much more difficult to know what their price will be. Which will lead to more unfuriated customers because they will feel like they’re being screwed by this convoluted system. Customer support calls increase requiring yet more staff and more overhead which invariably leads to higher base prices for products.

Snowball.

End of the day, customers want options but they prefer simple. Confuse the hell of them and they’ll wander elsewhere or resort to buying from pirates because they offer a simple solution.

Adobe got bloated when it bought Macromedia. Made sense in the short term, but a better option would have been for a parent company to be set up to control Adobe and Macromedia separately as partners so they could work together while making their own products. This keeps up and Adobe will be the Citibank of software (MS will get there first, though).
BC
Bart_Cross
Dec 10, 2008
Well after almost two decades, my relationship with Adobe is still solid.

The only exception was InDesign 1 which was absolutely horrid and I don’t think that anyone disagrees with that. Once you were able to get the 1.5 update for $30 everything calmed down and it has been a stellar app every since.

Have CS4 Master Collection but I still don’t understand why Lightroom was not included in it.
KP
Kwan_Parker
Dec 10, 2008
What a wonderful thread . . .

My bargain Dell 730 H2C has been delayed for the third time . . . this morning (twice given new "estimated" dates). I don’t even bother dialing up and talking with the Dell not-fluent script readers in India.

Support . . . of whatever kind . . . has been flushed down the toilet.

I learned that . . . in horror . . . when I had problems with CS3 installation issues and understood the Adobe technical support knew less than I did. I’m definitely a hunt-n-peck kind of guy. I resolved my problems here in this forum.

Kinda expressing a rant about my two favorite companies . . .

Won’t know how CS4 Master Collection works on my new computer until Dell resolves their problems and delivers the darn thing.

Might be my last Dell purchase. With respect to Adobe, don’t think I have the same choice. But then, under Windows XP Pro, I’ve not had any problems with CS4 🙂
P
PeterK.
Dec 10, 2008
And what is Adobe to do when that customer calls back and wants to upgrade their suite to the most recent version?

Say they have the CS3 Design Premium and upgrade PS only to CS4 under the situation you describe. CS5 is released a couple years later and they decide they want the whole suite again. They want the suite upgrade price. Should they be given that price since they split their previous suite license?

No.

YES!

Let me answer this as though I were a corporation that cared about my customers and treated them fairly, because I knew somebody would bring up this issue as though it were a problem too difficult to solve…

….I give the customer credit for having that app and discount the suite appropriately. Or, in other words, I just charge them the regular suite upgrade price! They paid for a suite of products, they still own that suite of products, the only difference is that Photoshop is a more recent version. Assuming that Adobe will continue to offer the same upgrade price going up to 3 versions back, then it makes no difference if various apps were upgraded separately or which version of a suite app you have, as long as they’re within 3 versions of each other. An upgrade to a whole new suite would cost you the same.
If you’ve gone beyond 3 version differences, it wouldn’t be hard at all to tell someone "you pay the suite upgrade price, plus x dollars for a new full version of Illustrator because yours is more than 3 versions old."
Customer support is a fact of doing business, and offering flexible upgrading would not be hard at all. The ONLY reason the rigid upgrade paths were introduced was nothing but sheer greed, because Adobe felt it could make more money that way.
If you can’t afford to keep your customers happy, then you can’t afford to keep them.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
And if you can’t afford to buy the tools you need for your business you shouldn’t be in that business.

There’s plenty of flexibility already and I for one think it’s about time that Adobe started using tiered pricing. It rewards those that upgrade more often.

Bob
J
jcates
Dec 10, 2008
…because I knew somebody would bring up this issue as though it were a problem too difficult to solve…

Didn’t say it was too difficult to solve. Said, basically, it’s not worth the time, money and effort to implement it in a practical way for Adobe and its customers.

The path you describe will irk just as many people as the recently introduced tiered upgrade pricing (myself included) and with some crossover between the groups. I can understand tiered pricing to a point, but for every version? No. Perhaps this would be where the 3-versions old rule should apply: X price for up to 3 versions ago, Y price for older than that; not X, Y and Z price for 1, 2 and 3 versions ago and full price for beyond that.

Anyway, I digress.

If you can’t afford to keep your customers happy, then you can’t afford to keep them.

Correct.

I may make one more purchase, CS4 standard suite probably, but after that I can’t say I’ll make any other purchases of Adobe software. Although I may try to find a legit copy of CS3 instead.

The pricing schemes and prices alone have exceeded my anticipated budget and figuring out the best way to get a deal exceeds my tolerance threshold as well. So, best just not spend the money at all.
KP
Kwan_Parker
Dec 10, 2008
There’s plenty of flexibility already and I for one think it’s about time that Adobe started using tiered pricing. It rewards those that upgrade more often.

How so?

I upgrade either immediately on the offering or within a month or so.

CS3 support sucked. Big time.

Since I upgrade "more often," how might I be rewarded by tiered pricing?

Meaning, if I understand you, if I pay more, I get a support technician who knows more?

Adobe software ain’t cheap . . . to start with.
J
jcates
Dec 10, 2008
how might I be rewarded by tiered pricing?

If the price for upgrading from CS3 to CS4 was lower than it would have been without the new tiered pricing.

How it’s set up now, no one is being rewarded; some are being penalized for not giving Adobe money more frequently and the rest are paying what they would have anyway.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
They’ve left CS2 and CS to CS4 pricing the same as from CS3 until March. After that the price goes up $200. It’s an introductory deal.

I doubt very much you’ll see that when CS5 comes out.

Bob
DE
David_E_Crawford
Dec 10, 2008
If you pay more: you pay more.

You will get the same technician reading off the same cards. As time wears on so does the updating of the cards due to fixes being passed on. Technician knowledge stays the same but the cards they read off of are more up to date.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 10, 2008
Adobe software ain’t cheap . . . to start with.

Then don’t buy it. But for $599 you get new versions of Illustrator, Photoshop Extended, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks and Bridge. How you can consider that expensive is a bit beyond my comprehension especially if you use this stuff to make a living. And honestly, if you can’t afford $599 every 18 months or so you’re in the wrong business.

That said, I’m basing that on U.S. pricing. I believe the folks in Europe and other parts of the world have a pretty good beef.

Bob
EB
Erbs_Bischof
Dec 10, 2008
I jumped from CS Premium to CS4 Design Premium for a mere 800 Euro. Considering the complimental Flash professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks etc. thrown in, that almost felt like cheating Adobe.
With Creative Suite being my absolute SW mainstay it´s a tiny investment, and I´m blown away by the amzing working power that comes with a CS4 nowadays.
Well, as soon as PS runs smoothly, that is.
MT
Michael_Tissington
Dec 11, 2008
For GM you could equally read Adobe … well at least in how they appear to listen.

http://photographyforrealestate.net/2008/12/10/what-real-est ate-photographers-can-learn-from-the-demise-of-gm/#more-504
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 11, 2008
Adobe got bloated when it bought Macromedia. Made sense in the short term, but

ah! agreement! i totally agree.

Let me answer this as though I were a corporation that cared about my customers

good answer!

Customer support is a fact of doing business,

yup. so is figuring out where the breaking point is and coming up just short of that to maximize profits.

If you can’t afford to keep your customers happy, then you can’t afford to keep them.

troof.

Since I upgrade "more often," how might I be rewarded by tiered pricing?

he means you’ll pay the same or more than today for your upgrades, and others will pay X dollars MORE than that.
DN
David_Nicol
Dec 11, 2008
I agree wholeheartedly with the OP, but it’s not about the pricing issue. It’s about the fact that Adobe increasingly rushes products to market without fully testing them. They limit their beta testing to a select group of power users who, because they are advanced users, don’t use the mundane tools that everyone else does. So we get things like a trainwreck called Photoshop CS4. Any Flash users out there? Flash CS4 is by far the worst release of Flash ever, in terms of bugs and stability. And, unlike Photoshop, the Flash guys cling to the old Macromedia culture of NEVER issuing patches to their software.

So what did I get for my money in so loyally and eagerly upgrading to CS4? Photoshop which works like molasses on a winter’s day. Flash which has numerous new tools geared to animators (like me), along with so many seemingly small but serious bugs that it is LETHAL for any animator to even touch that program, and which any average user would have detected in beta testing. Fireworks has plenty of problems. And, well, I never use Illustrator. But my core apps – Photoshop and Flash – have cost me not only money, but time on these forums, time trying to convince Adobe engineers to work on bugs, and huge time lost in projects that failed because of software bugs and had to be rebuilt from scratch in older versions of the software (I’m talking mainly Flash here; I can’t even begin to use Photoshop CS4).

Then I read way too often, on this forum and the Flash forum, posts from Adobe people blaming hardware, blaming third party drivers, blaming the OS. And suggestions like "reformat", dump your anti-virus. On the Flash forum, the Adobe response is mostly, "We deny there is a bug", but open a support case. So I open a support case and all I get in response is awkward workaround solutions, not any acknowledgement that there is a bug. What a piss poor attitude.

I don’t blame Adobe engineers. Clearly if they can fix bugs, they will, if they’re given the chance, and there are a couple in particular who participate in this forum who are sincere in their efforts. How long until Adobe executives see no financial benefit in paying their engineers to fix problems past a certain point? Someone else above said Adobe can’t always bat 1000. Why not? Why shouldn’t they? Their products should be perfect. Would auto executives say, "Oh well, can’t always be perfect" if "only" 1 percent of their buyers were killed or injured because of a manufacturing defect?

I have been warning every animator and artist I know to steer a wide path away from any of the CS4 apps. I want to spend my time creating art, and using excellent software tools to help me…not doing workarounds and refiguring hardware and reformatting and trying to compensate for Adobe’s errors.

My marriage with Adobe is over as well. I’m going back to Photoshop CS3 and Flash 8, the last truly stable versions of those programs.

I read that Adobe is having financial problems because sales of CS4 have been lower than expected. Good. They deserve it. No one should buy their latest products, period.
KL
Katherine_Lawson
Dec 11, 2008
Bob said:

And if you can’t afford to buy the tools you need for your business you shouldn’t be in that business.

Bob, I beg to differ with you. Some of us live in very rural areas, and we have to struggle to eke out a living in places where the only available jobs are bagging groceries, and with only one grocery store, there isn’t a need for many grocery baggers.

I live on a tiny island in Maine. I make the only extra money available by doing photography in the summer. Those of us who aren’t trust fund kids from somewhere else can’t afford to rent on Main street, so most of us have our galleries in small unheated buildings, and have to move all of our equipment every winter. Rents and property taxes here are extremely expensive, because they are set for rich summer people and not for natives. The economy is getting extremely bad, because the fishing industry has gone completely down the drain. Everyone is eating lobster in every way they can figure out how to cook it because lobsters are now cheaper than hotdogs. This is no joke. We are completely dependent on the lobster industry, and lobsters are under $2.00 per pound. The restaurants have closed due to lack of business. Things weren’t much better for locals when the economy was better.

I make about $10,000 per year in my business, and it has to help support us during the winter. I also archive people’s photographs and memoirs and things for them. I use Photoshop on a daily basis, and Acrobat and ABBY fine reader to make historical documents searchable. A lot of my stuff is donated to museums and historical societies in this area, but I get paid for archiving for people. I also use InDesign and Illustrator on rare occasions for brochures and things.

The last Creative Suite I bought was CS1. After that, I could only afford PS. This year, I upgraded to CS4 Design Premium (on the special discount from CS1), and bought the full edition of LR. (I’ve never owned a stand-alone version of Acrobat, and it wasn’t that much more to buy the whole suite and get ID and Illy as well as Acrobat than it would have been to buy a full version of Acrobat, and I needed newer versions of ID and Illy, besides, I didn’t want to lose my upgrade path). I will probably never use Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and I absolutely can’t stand Flash. (When I called Adobe, they gave me the 30% discount on LR that was available when you bought it along with PS, even though I bought it with the Creative Suite, and also the free shipping).

Together, they were over $800, which is about 1/10th of what I made in my shop.

This may sound like peanuts to you, but we couldn’t survive without the extra income, and I wouldn’t be able to make as much money by using inferior tools.

I guess my point with this message is that it is very expensive for some of us to have to upgrade to the whole suite. It’s sort of like at church when you are supposed to bow down to the millionaires who give $1,000 at Christmas time, but they consider the old ladies who live on tiny social security checks, and give $5 per week unimportant.
DE
David_E_Crawford
Dec 11, 2008
Great post Katherine. Hang in there!!
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 11, 2008
You get over it in a hurry, Dave, and the darn things run Vista beautifully. Seriously, I love my MacBook.

Bob
FN
Fred_Nirque
Dec 11, 2008
I worry about anyone who makes sweeping statements regarding other peoples’ worthiness to be in business or not. The world differs vastly from place to place, as do business conditions, living standards and what people expect to pay for services. Frankly I expected better from Bob than to be hanging it on those who use Photoshop but are not in a business climate to afford the way Adobe has been going with marketing and pricing aimed at its Los Angeles and New York clientele.

These changes inevitably mean having to spend more for less, whereas elsewhere business climates might be static or recessive. Not everyone lives in Big City USA, and if we all moved there I guarantee that those there who can afford to throw money into Adobe’s bank account willy-nilly would soon get a major reality check from those used to running frugal businesses that are used to charging modest prices to people who are very fussy about their expenditure.

I think the upcoming depression will bring many of the big-town businesses crashing down to earth with a dose of that reality anyway, and as has been pointed out, Adobe itself will not be immune.

For me CS4 was a fix for a very broken CS3 printing, which Adobe finally admitted to after a struggle as tedious as pulling teeth, and begrudgingly added a patch which was almost as bad as the original "fix" for something that wasn’t broke in the first place. That it could have been fixed properly back then is borne out by the fact that it has been for CS4.

If CS4 still runs OK on my new i7 computer when I finally get it, along with the D3 it will be the last that I have any reason to buy new Photoshop or camera for a very long time.
JJ
John Joslin
Dec 11, 2008
The policy-makers and marketeers at Adobe have made a relatively short term financial leap upwards with the introduction of the ridiculous "Suite" concept. This went to their heads, resulting in the greedy, ill-considered, and competition-stifling acquisition of Macromedia. But now the whole thing is becoming unravelled.

The suite concept has become so complicated that even life-time Adobe die-hards are confused with what goes with what and what upgrades what. Far more serious however is the effect of that ridiculously ambitious marketeer dream that a set of top-of-the-range applications, with different teams and different philosophies, could be shoe-horned into a common timescale without sacrificing quality somewhere along the line.

Now the numbers, the only thing that bloody bean counters understand, are telling them what better people than me have been saying for a few years, they are laying off the people they coerced into realising their flawed concept.

My sympathy goes to the real workers in Adobe.
BC
Bart_Cross
Dec 11, 2008
I saved $400 upgrading to the CS4 Master Collection over upgrading to the CS3 MC, which I was considering. Adobe isn’t all that bad. Lovely introduction, if I had a sister I’d………
QP
Q_Photo
Dec 11, 2008
First of all, I am fully aware that companies base their prices upon what the public is willing to pay. Capitalism 101. Adobe may charge whatever they wish for the products. That is simply the way it is.

However, Katherine Lawson does have a good point. I’m very much in the same situation as she is. I live in Florida, not far from West Palm Beach. However, the price of nearly all services are considerably lower in my area as opposed the that area. The downside is that I receive less for my photography services. The upside is that people in my area are more "laid-back" and not quite so demanding.

I used 35mm for my work and over the years obtained many prime lenses and extra camera bodies. Equipment wise, I was set. I started using Photoshop with version 5.0. I purchased every upgrade up to and including CS1. I never considered the cost, I was just excited to get the newer versions. I love Photoshop!

All was good until I made the switch to digital. Suddenly I was (am) spending every available dime on camera equipment, something I hadn’t done for years. I skipped CS2 & CS3 because it was now too expensive. Not so because Adobe was charging excessively, just that I could not afford it. All things are relative.

I now have PsCS4 and purchased a new computer to run it. It works nearly perfectly. I’m happy even though this upgrade (with computer) has been a substantial cost. However, if it wasn’t working as it should I also may be screaming "rip-off". Again. all things are relative…

My thought for the day, stupid though it may be.
Q
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Dec 11, 2008
Unless you use InDesign (which is the CS app that most requires collaborators to stay up-to-date with the same version) most of the work we all do could be done in Photoshop versions several steps back. In Katherine’s post, I saw no mention of why she needed CS4. What was wrong with CS1? Skipping a few upgrades does not set anyone seriously back in terms of productivity and comes to an average yearly upgrade cost around $100-200, even as a suite upgrade. If you cannot afford to budget a portion of an upgrade cost each year then you are using the wrong software and/or in the wrong business. Even a non-profit or hobbyist can handle that cost. Bob’s comment was not out of line. If you really want to be economical, try out free GPL software. < http://osliving.com/archive/graphics-and-photo/photo-editing />
RP
Russell_Proulx
Dec 11, 2008
IMO, CS2 was the winner (rather than CS1 or CS3) as it made Bridge a separate app and added Smart objects as well as a number of other really useful features. Many called it the ‘Digital Photographer’ update.

I found CS3 offered little in the way of improvements except that I could continue using a ACR+Bridge+PS workflow with my new camera bodies. Using the DNG convertor is a time waster (imo) and only serves to remind one that it’s time for an update. But as some have suggested in other threads, Adobe Camera Raw could be sold and updated separately. I should be able to get (pay for) ACR support for new cameras as they appear. When that becomes the ONLY reason someone must update, and that update causes needless grief and wasted time and money, it does not foster goodwill among the userbase.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 11, 2008
Katherine,

While I feel for you, I’m sticking to my statement. There are certain expenses a business is going to incur and in this business software and hardware upgrades are a simple fact of life.

But I’d ask you to think of it in different terms…If I told you you could invest $800 and turn it into $10,000 in a year wouldn’t you do it?

Seriously, I don’t understand why people who use this software to make money complain about the price.

At least you can budget for it. The releases are pretty predictable and so is the price.

Bob

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