Earlier this week Adobe announced to the world the existence of version 5.5 of its Creative Suite product line.  Until now Creative Suite has been released on a 24 month cycle and Adobe has only recently revised this strategy to include a significant mid cycle release.  This will help the product line keep abreast of the latest trends and emerging opportunities in between major releases. For CS 5.5 those three focus areas were:

• Create, deliver and monetize rich content and applications for virtually any screen. The suite now supports Mobile Development for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS using technologies such as Flash, AIR and HTML5. It also includes advances in Digital Publishing to produce rich interactive publications, especially for tablet devices. This is intended to complement the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.
• Integrating tablets into creative workflows. Adobe released the Adobe Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow developers to create tablets and phone based applications to interact with Photoshop. Adobe also announced three new iPad applications that demonstrate the creative possibilities of using tablets to drive common Photoshop workflows – Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop.
• Adding powerful new video capabilities. The revised Production Premium suite delivers breakthrough performance, workflow improvements, creative innovations and powerful new audio editing capabilities.

This has resulted in changes worth of a version update being made to the following products:

• Adobe InDesign CS5.5
• Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5
• Adobe Photoshop CS5.1
• Adobe Acrobat X Pro^*
• Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5.5
• Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5^*
• Adobe Flash Builder Premium 4.5^*
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5
• Adobe After Effects CS5.5
• Adobe Audition CS5.5^*
• Adobe Device Central 5.5
• Adobe Media Encoder 5.5

* New product or significant product upgrade introduced by Creative Suite 5.5.

Demonstrations of some of these added or changed features can be found on Adobe TV.

Other applications in the Creative Suite may have received updates (for example, Adobe Photoshop) but these were not explicitly tied to the CS 5.5 release. These updates should also be made available to existing CS 5 customers through the standard Adobe Updates feature. And other products might not have received an update at all. Suites and individual products that are tied to the CS 5.5 release will be chargeable upgrades even for existing CS 5 users, though there are some exceptions.

Adobe also introduced a subscription plan as part of this mid-cycle release, something they have been trialling in Australia over the past year and are now rolling out to the rest of their user base.  To give an idea of how this works I’ve taken pricing information from the Australian Adobe Store and calculated the financial outlay required to keep current with the Master Collection suite, or the individual Photoshop Extended product, over an arbitrary 5 year period. These calculations assume the costs on the Adobe store stay relatively consistent over the period and the products of interest receive updates twice per cycle (i.e. both mid cycle and major version updates).

As can be seen below users that intend to stay current with the latest release can really benefit from subscription plans, particularly when they are using individual products rather than the whole suite. Please keep in mind that not every individual product will receive a significant mid-cycle release (more on that later) so depending on the product chosen the subscription versus outright purchase expenditure crossover point may be earlier than indicated below.

**All prices in Australian Dollars, from Adobe Store – Australia, as at 15 April 2011

*** Upgrading from the last released equivalent version. e.g. from Master Collection CS5 to Master Collection CS5.5

**** Subscriptions types refer to the length of commitment to the subscription. All subscriptions are charged monthly.

To further illustrate this point we’ll consider two scenarios to see how regular upgrades might play out in future.

Creative Suite 5.5 and the traditional photographer

The traditional photographer, and by that I mean a photographer who is solely interested in creating and publishing still images, may require only the Adobe Photoshop product from the Creative Suite. They would make limited use of other products included in the suite offerings so the individual product should prove sufficient for their purposes.

If they aren’t currently a Photoshop user, or are using an earlier version of Photoshop (e.g. CS4), then the tablet features, subscription plan or even the many headline features included in the previous CS5 release might be sufficient to encourage them to purchase or upgrade now   If they are already using Photoshop CS5 it is highly unlikely they will upgrade at this point in time.

The Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 version supplied with CS 5.5 is effectively the same as the upcoming 12.0.4 Photoshop version, except for the addition of the subscription plan facility. Both will support the new Adobe Photoshop Touch SDK and iPad applications being released in May.  Both will support the Camera Raw 6 plugin updates that will be made available through the remainder of the CS 5 release cycle. As such there is no real reason for an Adobe Photoshop CS5 user to upgrade to CS 5.5 unless they wish to do so as part of a cross-grade to one of the suite offerings.

This skews the version cost comparison chart above and dilutes the financial component of the business case for using a subscription plan on an individual product purchase.  It also demonstrates an ongoing challenge Adobe will have – managing the pressure to keep subscription plan users happy by releasing new major or mid-cycle versions of every product, every year.

Creative Suite 5.5 and the contemporary photographer

By contrast a contemporary photographer, and by that I mean a photographer who is interested not only in still images but video and/or publishing as well, is much more likely to be interested in purchasing one of the suite offerings instead of individual Adobe Creative Suite products.

A number of well known photographers such as Chase Jarvis and David duChemin have chosen to expand beyond the traditional photographer paradigm to build their brands and business. Whether they are writing books, producing mobile apps, self publishing ebooks, or using video to provide educational offerings, the contemporary photographer is finding it necessary to cross skill into design and/or video production areas they wouldn’t have thought necessary even 5 years ago.  This makes the Design Premium, Production Premium or even Master Collection suites more attractive as they only need to buy one box to get all of the tools they need to take on these opportunities.

While the Photoshop application itself did not receive a CS5.5 level update this time around, some products in each of the suites did and can be expected to be updated during every Creative Suite release. Design Premium received updates to Acrobat, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Flash products.  Production Premium received updates to Flash, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Audition products. These updates make significant improvements to the ability to target multiple output devices with published content, and the performance and results when processing video. These should make CS5.5 a worthy upgrade for anyone who spends significant time in these products even it they are already using CS5.

Should you subscribe or purchase outright?

So once you have decided to invest in Creative Suite should you subscribe or purchase outright?

On paper the financial cutover point where a subscription plan becomes more expensive than an outright purchase is typically between 3 and 4 years. Whether you are willing to invest up front and continually upgrade for that long to save money in the long term is a question only you can answer.

What that calculation ignores is subscriptions make access to the more sophisticated Creative Suite offerings approachable and justifiable for those who can’t afford the hefty outlay required to purchase a suite outright.

Those who work with Creative Suite for a living might find a subscription plan preferable for tax reasons, so you might want to check with your accountant before making your next upgrade. If nothing else we now have a valuation of the cost of maintaining our tools and this can be factored into our thinking when developing our standard price lists or quoting for the next assignment.

A more subjective reason for considering a subscription is it will remove the “do I upgrade or not” decision when the next major or mid-cycle release comes along. Instead of debating whether the features of the latest version provide sufficient value or whether you should skip an update, your ongoing subscription will entitle you to the  upgrade and in fact you should immediately upgrade to get maximum value from your investment.

While subscriptions for individual products look more attractive than those for suites at the outset, their value can be diluted by those skipped mid-cycle releases that we have seen during the release of CS5.5. The pricing of the subscription plans for the suites may have an earlier cutover point but you can pretty much guarantee that a number of products in the suite will be upgraded every year so they may prove a better deal in the long run.

Subscription plans look pretty tempting for those who are preparing to buy into the Creative Suite products now. If you already have made an investment in a previous version their business case begins to dilute because you already have the sunken cost of the original version and you would probably be better off paying for upgrades rather than a subscription. 

Regardless of whether you choose to take advantage of a subscription plan I think their introduction will ultimately benefit all users. They have encouraged the adoption of a mid-cycle release, removing some of the shackles that impacted Adobe’s time to market with new features in the past. This will help spur on competition in the market and that surely must be a good thing!

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, subscription plans and the contemporary photographer

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Unless you are a full time photographer the answer is likely no.  I’m an amateur photographer and find that Photoshop’s cutdown version – Photoshop Elements – meets all of my needs and there is no compelling reason to move to the full version.  But there is one compelling reason to choose Photoshop Elements over Photoshop.  The price.

Its large enough in the US, but internationally the price difference between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop is remarkable. At the Adobe Store Photoshop CS4 costs* $699 USD or $1415 AUD ($1180 USD) and Photoshop CS4 Extended $999 USD or $2019 AUD ($1690 USD). Photoshop Elements costs $99.99 USD or $165 AUD ($140 USD).  This means Photoshop Elements costs Australian consumers a little more than 1/10th of the price of the most basic Photoshop CS4 version. Its no wondering the Photoshop Elements community is growing so quickly outside of the US!

Photoshop vs Photoshop Elements

A recent post at Lightroom Secrets compared the features of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to help users understand the incremental benefit of buying the full version.  The essence of that comparison (and my own research) is Photoshop provides:

• Customisation – Photoshop allows customisation of the UI via keyboard shortcuts, menus, workspaces, presets, actions, and (official) support for scripting
• Enhanced 16-bit – Additional Photoshop fliters supports 16-bit images
• Enhanced Colour – Photoshop supports CMYK and Lab colour modes, and custom curves
• Enhanced Layers – Photoshop includes layer masks, additional adjustment layers, and full support for smart objects
• Enhanced Selection – Photoshop includes paths, pen tools and quick masks
• Additional Tools – Photoshop includes additional features such as HDR and content aware scaling
• Enhanced Tools – Photoshop includes more advanced versions of some tools such as Camera Raw and Camera Distortion

The importance of many of these features diminishes when you are using Lightroom as your primary editor and only dipping into Photoshop every now and then.  Other features (e.g. Content Aware Scaling) would be nice to have, but as an amateur photographer I don’t think they are worth the additional $1250 AUD I’d have to spend to “upsize” from Photoshop Elements 7 to Photoshop CS4.

Bottom line?  Most photographers using Lightroom won’t miss the features they lose by choosing Photoshop Elements over Photoshop.  But the money they save could go a long way towards a new lens or flash that could make a significant difference to their photography.

Improved Photoshop Elements Integration With Lightroom

Another benefit of Photoshop is the level of integration it enjoys with Lightroom.  Photoshop Elements is added as an external editor, while Photoshop has a number of menu items dedicated to improving workflow when it is combined with Lightroom.  To close this functionality gap I’ve created an Elemental plugin for Lightroom which provides Photoshop Elements users roughly the same level of integration Photoshop users get "out of the box".

The Elemental plugin adds 5 new menu items to the File –> Plug-in Extras and Library –> Plug-In Extras menus, emulating the integration available to Photoshop users.  This includes letting the user select photos and launch them directly into the Photomerge dialog, or open them as Smart Objects (a feature Adobe doesn’t advertise as available in Photoshop Elements).  It even adds some new options for good measure, namely Remove Lens Distortion and the ability to directly Open in PSE.  And it does this all while avoiding the Camera Raw dialog which should be redundant as Lightroom’s Develop module contains a superset of the options available in PSE’s version of Camera Raw.  The only feature that can’t be reproduced is Merge to HDR in Photoshop because Photoshop Elements does not include this feature.  As many Photoshop users utilise an external HDR tool rather than the one supplied with Photoshop this hopefully won’t prove too much of an issue.

Where Do I Sign?

If you are ready to take the plunge and add Photoshop Elements to your workflow, Adobe sells the products online and may have specials running so please try the Special Offers page before using one of the direct purchase links has a number of specials running at any given time that can (North America only) specials running till August 10.  Links are included below for your convenience and by purchasing through these you will be helping support the ongoing development of my Elemental plugin.

Find all current special offers on Adobe products.
Photoshop Elements 7. Extraordinary photos. Amazing stories.
Photoshop Elements 7 + Premiere Elements 7 – Complete photo and video editing made easy.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macs

UK readers can use the following links to support my plugin development while purchasing the products but unfortunately no discounts or coupons are currently available: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 & Adobe Premiere Elements 7 – Full, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 – Full and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh – Full.

If you aren’t quite convinced why not download a trial copy of either the Windows or Mac version and find out firsthand whether it suits your workflow?  I’m sure you’ll find, like me, that Photoshop Elements covers all of your main “pixel pushing” requirements without doing too much damage to your bank account!

* Note: All prices were converted using Google’s current exchange rates on August 3, 2009.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

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