I know that I have been vocifereous in my condemnation of Adobe in the past, complaining at length about them trying to shackle users of their Creative Cloud software by using a subscription-based system of payments.

I won't go over all my previous reasons (you can find them here and here) but I must admit that always having bang up-to-date software is a real bonus now and I don't think that I would really be happy using disparate software from a large number of different software devolopers.

I discovered earlier in the year that there is still flexibility with Adobe's pricing package when I got to the stage where I just had to update my copy of InDesign. I'd been using InDesign right from the start, migrating from Quark Xpress to Aldus (later Adobe) PageMaker, before being seduced by the promises made by Adobe for their Quark killer. So began my love affair with InDesign which has continued undiminished to the present day.

However a problem was looming just over the horizon. The version I was using, CS5, was not only a bit long in the tooth but only a 32 bit application and would be unable to run on the next version of macOS Catalina due out in October. I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade - if Adobe would allow me - to InDesign CC, so called Adobe who added it to my current Photography Plan, making a total of £30 per month. The transformation, allied to my upgrade to the latest version of Suitcase Fusion, was startling and all my artwork production workflow was eased considerably.

So far so good. My problem was that I still also had legal versions of Illustrator CS5 and Acrobat Pro X and would dearly have liked to get Premiere to replace Apple's Final Cut Pro X which I find a bit awkward to use. The advantages of using all programs, now 64 bit, from one software supplier mean that there is a marked similarity in the way they work, in the shortcuts and a corresponding reduction in learning time. My problem was that to upgrade everything I would have to shell out almost £60 per month which I was reluctant to do as many of the programs would be used very infrequently.

What to do?

Suddenly last week I discovered that Adobe were offering a special introductory price of £30.34 a month for the WHOLE Creative Cloud suite, so I immediately contacted Adobe and asked if I could update my current plan to the new one. Their initial response was that the special offer was only for new users - not for current ones! However, after ten minutes haggling they agreed to not only upgrade my plan to cover the entire Creative Cloud suite for £30.34 but also to give me three months free! What could be better than that? As you can see from the graphic below, pretty much everything that a photographer, video maker or designer needs is included in the plan. So thank you Adobe for making my dreams come true.

Of course, I would still like the choice of being able to buy the software although I can appreciate the sound business sense it makes for Adobe to offer it this way, as it must surely make software piracy significantly more difficult.

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Embrace My (Adobe Creative) Cloud! Part 3