Photoshop CC

The vast majority of reactions to Adobe's announcement about cloud access and monthly subscriptions are ill informed and just plain inaccurate but none the less, here is a fundamental change - from charging $200 every 18 months or so for an upgrade to the latest photoshop, to currently $240 per year and likely soon $480/year subscription - given the introductory price and the 'regular' price this would make the 'upgrade' cost over 18  months $600 - gee that's only a three fold increase in upgrade price.

Given that one only need access the net every 90 days with a yearly subscription - I can live with that - though others won't be able to - traveling or no web access for security reasons.

I like that for this $600 I get access to all the other software - though the only one I'm likely to use is In Design and that on a pretty casual basis - certainly not a good deal for me. There is an option for Photohsop only, for current $10/month, likely $20 in the future - bringing the cost down to $240/year - that's at least in the ballpark for what I now pay for Photoshop upgrades. I think I can live with the new system. I never like paying more for things - but really - it is my choice - stick with Photoshop 6 for years to come (lots of people use old versions of Photoshop) or invest in the new. Hell, there's even Elements and Lightroom as well as third party software.

People seem to think that they are going to have problems opening files if they don't keep paying - well anyone who routinely saves images in multiple layers is pretty silly - not just for the disk space but also for the time to save and load images. I doubt that flattened .psd files will be any problem for years to come.

Fewer amateurs are using Photoshop and more are relying on Lightroom for all their editing, but Photoshop is still king for those of us trained that way and able to take advantage of the tools and add ons.

I'll be signing on for CC, a) because I still need Photoshop and b) because I have several images with camera shake just begging for the new camera shake filter - and that alone will be worth the admission price, and $400 a year to do business is not really an issue for me.

For those who dabble in Photoshop, there are alternatives - it's just that many of the tutorials and magazine articles show how to do it in Photoshop - and many tools are not available in other brands of software. I sympathize, but Adobe is a business and people can choose.