New Adobe upgrade policy criticized

By On 22/11/2011

The new upgrade policy that Adobe recently announced is widely criticized. Until now, you can upgrade to the latest Adobe Creative Suite products if you own a previous product that is not more than two versions older. So if you own Photoshop CS3, you can upgrade to Photoshop CS5 for a special price. Starting with the next version (CS6, due next year), Adobe changed this and only offers upgrades from the previous version, in this case CS5. If you do not own CS5, you pay the full price for CS6 when that comes out. Not only is this a very customer unfriendly move, it’s also very late. It means that people who do not own CS5 already, are forced to upgrade now to a version they apparently didn’t need, only to be able to get the upgrade price for CS6 in a few months from now. Even Photoshop guru Scott Kelby, who lives and breathes Adobe, is openly criticizing this policy. That should mean something…

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6 Responses to New Adobe upgrade policy criticized

  1. Bob K. says:
    28/11/2011 at 10:58

    http://www.dpreview.com/news/2011/11/22/AdobeUpgradeCriticism#comments

    Check the comments out. Most here are pretty much planning on dropping Adobe products from their workflow. They will keep current version, then when that is no longer supported, they will move on. Greedy policy from a greedy company!. This will be Adobe’s downfall. Money is all they care about. Especially in these bad economic times!. The economy doesn’t only affect Adobe!. God forbid if there developers and share holders can no longer make six digit figures. Join the rest of the world!.

  2. Bob K. says:
    28/11/2011 at 11:00

    Of course Scott Kelby is upset. Less customer base, and less people to buy his books.

  3. Johan W. Elzenga says:
    28/11/2011 at 11:24

    Quite frankly, I doubt these people saying they will stop using Photoshop. Right now, there isn’t really an alternative, at least not for Photoshop professionals (there are plenty for casual users), and Adobe knows that all too well.

  4. Bob K. says:
    29/11/2011 at 05:42

    From the many photography sites and forums I have researched. Many will say that Gimp and Paint Shop Pro are good enough alternatives, even for professionals. Gimp will be getting over 8bit color support with GEGL, as well as CMYK in the near future. Paint Shop Pro already has 16bit and HDR, etcc. Plus PSP accepts most of the plugins Photoshop uses. Most professionals no longer rely solely on Photoshop, since Lightroom, Capture One, etcc. Meet their needs. Even the free Raw Therapee, as well as the new Dark Table are getting plenty of use. Tell me what features Photoshop CS5 has that the competition doesn’t. Request those features to the Gimp project, and see what comes of it. I’m mainly talking features, not integration with other products, we all know that that adds to bloat, support, nice books, etc. Just features.

  5. Bob K. says:
    29/11/2011 at 05:56

    I would really like to know what other pixel editors “professionals” use, besides Photoshop, and why. And what are the main reasons for not using others, if that’s the case.

  6. Johan W. Elzenga says:
    29/11/2011 at 14:56

    I’m not here to defend Adobe, or to promote Adobe products. I do think however that Photoshop is still the standard for professional image editing and I don’t think that is going to change any time soon. It’s not that other applications do not offer most of the features of Photoshop. It’s how well these features work and how much time it costs to learn a new program. Time to learn a new program costs money too. I’m sure many Photoshop professionals feel that way too. Another thing is that many (if not most) Photoshop professionals always use the latest version anyway, so for them nothing has changed.