Adobe's New Upgrade Policy - Not good news!

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Psmeg

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Well, it looks like Adobe have updated their upgrade policy and (surprisingly) it isn't good news for the customer.

Scott Kelby has put together an open letter to Adobe to try to stop this latest money making tactic, but as many know, Adobe really doesn't listen to it's customers concerns when it comes to pricing.

The info Posted by Scott and a link to the open letter are below:

An Open Letter to Adobe

I just posted an open letter to Adobe on my blog today regarding what I feel is an unfair upgrade policy for users on CS4 or earlier who will essentially be locked out of Photoshop CS6 and the CS6 Creative Suite, and left with no choice but to buy the product at full retail unless they upgrade to Photoshop CS5.5 in the next 40 days, and then upgrade again to CS6 when it comes out.

There's more to the story: Here's the direct link: http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2011/archives/22903
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Pretty sure that their upgrade policy has always been two versions back. They are now releasing a .5 upgrade every 6 mths.

Why should a software company provide you with a discount to their latest software just becuase you bought a version of there software 2-3 years ago??

They offer a discounted upgrade if you keep up to date with versions.
 
Why bother to upgrade? They haven't introduced any significant improvements apart from Content Aware Fill for years - and you can get that with Elements 9 for £60 - £70 if you simply can't live without it. Adobe have reached a plateau. Photoshop is a stunningly brilliant programme, far and away the best thing on the market for editing, but I have no intention to go beyond CS4 for the foreseeable. I reckon that Elements 9 or 10 represent the best value, most useful tools anywhere in the photography market today.
 
Jon - Elements certainly is good value, having been sold yesterday for £30 on Amazons Black Friday and at PC World ! (guess who got a copy)
I have also just upgraded my ACDSee Pro3 to version 5 - a quick email to them to ask if I was entitled to a discount got the price down form $240 to $99. Two years ago they also sold me a 6 licences for Pro 3 so that I could hand them out to the kids on a course I run for and let me have them for less than the cost of one upgrade - now THATS customer service (and its also a cracking basic editing program much like lightroom !)
 
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jon ryan said:
Why bother to upgrade? They haven't introduced any significant improvements apart from Content Aware Fill for years - and you can get that with Elements 9 for £60 - £70 if you simply can't live without it. Adobe have reached a plateau. Photoshop is a stunningly brilliant programme, far and away the best thing on the market for editing, but I have no intention to go beyond CS4 for the foreseeable. I reckon that Elements 9 or 10 represent the best value, most useful tools anywhere in the photography market today.
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I guess it depends on if you are a casual user or someone who uses more of the features. Their 3D stuff is pretty good in the full edition, as is the forthcoming focus fix they previewed earlier this year. Content aware fill is useful at times, as is sometimes the lens correction, but mostly I do that in lightroom.
Speed improvements are noticeable over CS4, but the downside is you do need a grunty machine to run it.
Student upgrade price isn't bad, but you're probably right there isn't a major number of feature changes. I think the focusing fix feature may be the next versions big thing.
 
Byker28i said:
I guess it depends on if you are a casual user or someone who uses more of the features. Their 3D stuff is pretty good in the full edition, as is the forthcoming focus fix they previewed earlier this year. Content aware fill is useful at times, as is sometimes the lens correction, but mostly I do that in lightroom.
Speed improvements are noticeable over CS4, but the downside is you do need a grunty machine to run it.
Student upgrade price isn't bad, but you're probably right there isn't a major number of feature changes. I think the focusing fix feature may be the next versions big thing.
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Focus fix wasn't quite as we perceived it, adobe admitted this week it was a stunt and doesn't really exist in this way it was shown, they blurred pictures, showed them in reverse naughty naughty
 
I'm a professional user - I use CS4 Extended for work every day, and teach mostly using Elements 9.

Rather than asking people to update for what is in effect a single tool (and good though Content AF can be, it's hardly a game changer) why can't Adobe start inviting people to submit Actions and other fixes and sell them as plug-ins, with a royalty going to the developer? Or something. This works well with aps for phones.

It's become like the gimmicks that the camera makers use to try to get people to buy new. Face recognition? Red-eye reduction? All those silly `scene settings` on compacts? Nothing but gimmick.
 
cameradaft said:
Focus fix wasn't quite as we perceived it, adobe admitted this week it was a stunt and doesn't really exist in this way it was shown, they blurred pictures, showed them in reverse naughty naughty
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Got a link to back up that claim?

That's not what was being said a month ago. They synthetically blurred the last of the three images in the demo. The first two were blurred in camera and the third (and arguably least important) was blurred using shake data from another photograph , but was also de-blurred using the software during the demo.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2011/10/18/adobeclarifies
 
cameradaft said:
Focus fix wasn't quite as we perceived it, adobe admitted this week it was a stunt and doesn't really exist in this way it was shown, they blurred pictures, showed them in reverse naughty naughty
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They admitted after getting caught out!
 
Musicman said:
Got a link to back up that claim?

That's not what was being said a month ago. They synthetically blurred the last of the three images in the demo. The first two were blurred in camera and the third (and arguably least important) was blurred using shake data from another photograph , but was also de-blurred using the software during the demo.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2011/10/18/adobeclarifies
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From Adobes own website.
"UPDATE: For those who are curious – some additional background on the images used during the recent MAX demo of our “deblur” technology. The first two images we showed – the crowd scene and the image of the poster, were examples of motion blur from camera shake. The image of Kevin Lynch was synthetically blurred from a sharp image taken from the web. What do we mean by synthetic blur? A synthetic blur was created by extracting the camera shake information from another real blurry image and applying it to the Kevin Lynch image to create a realistic simulation. This kind of blur is created with our research tool. Because the camera shake data is real, it is much more complicated than anything we can simulate using Photoshop’s blur capabilities. When this new image was loaded as a JPEG into the deblur plug-in, the software has no idea it was synthetically generated. This is common practice in research and we used the Kevin example because we wanted it to be entertaining and relevant to the audience – Kevin being the star of the Adobe MAX conference!"

It has since been shown that people in the crowd scene have no movement blur in the legs (even the ones walking) so theres some doubt about that image too.
 
I have to agree with Adobe here too. If we want software developers to make increasingly better products then someone has to pay for it. As consumers we have the choice to buy or not. I'm sure if Adobe see a big decline in sales for these more expensive products they'll do something about it.

Personally, I have no real need for all the stuff that CS5 does and couldn't justify the expense. Fortunately they do some cheaper products which suit my needs, so I chose them instead(y)
 
No no no. That the problem, dont you see?? Why will you not think of the children :shake:

STAFF EDIT : Removed quoted content which was in breach of TP's prohibited content rule: Encouraging / admitting to illegal activity.
 
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Type1 said:
No no no. That the problem, dont you see?? Why will you not think of the children :shake:
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That may be but Apple have pretty much shown that if you sell it at a reasonable* price then people will buy it not 'acquire' it.

*your definition of reasonable may vary but Aperture is ~£50, not £237.60 (currently on sale admittedly) Also Final Cut X is £200 Premier Pro is £810....
 
Exactly. I bought Lightroom 1 full price, got Photoshop cs4 and lightroom 3 on student prices, just over £200 for them both, then upgraded to CS5 on student prices.
 
maninsuitcase said:
That may be but Apple have pretty much shown that if you sell it at a reasonable* price then people will buy it not 'acquire' it.
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You can tell you aren't talking about hardware here :p lol

All that will happen is:

Those that insist on photoshop will update as normal, others will move to free software like GIMP while the remaining people will pirate it.
 
Type1 said:
No no no. That the problem, dont you see?? Why will you not think of the children :shake:
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I presume you mean to imply that software piracy is influencing Adobe to increase retail prices to protect their income?

I think that to assume Adobe have to increase prices because of piracy is rather naive.

I'd find it more believable that piracy allows Adobe to increase their prices and that for this reason Adobe don't really do all that much to make it difficult to get hold of their software without paying for it.

After all, when your software is the software that the majority of photographers, videographers, web designers and graphic designers have in their homes and have learned the intricacies of then you are free to pretty much name your price when you come to sell that software to companies and businesses that need the legitimate packages.
 
Type1 said:
Pretty sure that their upgrade policy has always been two versions back. They are now releasing a .5 upgrade every 6 mths.
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Sorry Neil, but I think you need to have a check of your facts on that statement. If you look at the current upgrade policy of the Creative Suite, you can purchase a tiered upgrade as far back as Macromedia Studio 8. ;)

What Adobe are now saying is that you will ONLY be eligible to upgrade from the previous version, or purchase a full licence (i.e. from CS5 to CS6). This takes the current average upgrade price for jumping 2 versions from around £600+ VAT to £1500+ VAT.

Also, the .5 upgrade is generally being touted as a major bug fix (like SP1, etc. on Windows). To have to purchase an upgrade for the privilege of obtaining fixes to applications that have bugs is not really acceptable. We are then being treated as glorified, paid beta testers! :eek:

Generally, there aren't enough new features between versions to warrant an upgrade, and now Adobe have decided to penalise its customers by removing its current tiered upgrade system.
 
maninsuitcase said:
That may be but Apple have pretty much shown that if you sell it at a reasonable* price then people will buy it not 'acquire' it.

*your definition of reasonable may vary but Aperture is ~£50, not £237.60 (currently on sale admittedly) Also Final Cut X is £200 Premier Pro is £810....
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The reason Apple can do this is because of the mark up on their hardware. Their software is a small percentage of their overall sales and can therefore afford to make minimum profit on that side of things. Same thing happens with supermarkets; they sell certain products very cheap because they are able to charge a lot of money for others. Adobe don't have that hardware side of things to back up their bank balance and therefore 'need' to charge more for their software.
 
I do see both sides of this argument to be honest.

Having used PS CS and CS4 for photos and other stuff relating to 3D I am quite keen to keep using PS as it is what I have bought into in terms of time and learning, books etc. I find myself with a choice of having to shell out now and presumably CS6 at some point in order to avoid paying £600 again! It does kind of feel a bit like a gun to my head forcing me to pay when i don't want to - especially now before xmas.

Anybody know if LR will be included in their Photoshop subscription package? If so, then this might be worth a look. I am assuming an individual can buy into these schemes.

But as someone pointed out you could only upgrade from I think 2 realeases behind so I am forced to at some point anyway. Guess in my head I am just scared of having to face a big bill of £600 (I'm just a hobbyist in both 3D and photos) again - it was a big deal when I plunged for PS the first time!

Maybe I need to make the decision now and decide that PS is for the big boys/pros and look at alternatives. I love LR and will keep using that - I do 90% of my photo stuff in LR now anyway.

Not sure what good alternatives there are now in terms of image creation, manipulation and texture creation...anybody know? Last time I looked it was Paint Shop Pro, Corel Paint and Fractal Painter :) Like I say it's been a while!

Maybe this is an opportunity for another app to enter the sector for keen hobbyists!
 
I can understand current customers wanting to receive some special treatment when a software company releases an upgrade. Customers like to be appreciated.

However, I think it's entirely possible to utilize older versions of the software that you already own instead of running out to purchase the newest version. There is so much that you can do with CS4 already! If the CS6 changes turn out to be something you just can't live without then maybe Adobe deserves to get full price for their effort.

There's also bargain shopping for CS5.5 on ebay or something now if you really think you're going to want to bump up to CS6 right away.

D Alishouse
Boulder Photography | Destination Wedding Photographer
 
fixedimage said:
I presume you mean to imply that software piracy is influencing Adobe to increase retail prices to protect their income?

I think that to assume Adobe have to increase prices because of piracy is rather naive.

I'd find it more believable that piracy allows Adobe to increase their prices and that for this reason Adobe don't really do all that much to make it difficult to get hold of their software without paying for it.

After all, when your software is the software that the majority of photographers, videographers, web designers and graphic designers have in their homes and have learned the intricacies of then you are free to pretty much name your price when you come to sell that software to companies and businesses that need the legitimate packages.
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Not solely, but piracy has a huge impact on the cost of software. I work in software audits / sales so I know this to be true.

For anyone who still buys boxed products of Adobe, dont.

http://www.adobe.com/uk/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/upgradeplan/
 
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