The whole adobe upgrade system seems to be an entirely discriminatrory mess for those of us who have multiple single product lines because upgrades to suites do not take the whole range of acquired assets into consideration.

I started long ago with photoshop version1 and have a history of multiple upgrades. I also had the macromedia suite before Adobe took over Macromedia as well as multiple other single products from the adobe range including premier pro.

When CS4 came out we wanted some of the facilities that were only available in CS4 extended so we upgraded to that version. Then CS5 standard incorporated the tools needed in CS4 extended! Now I am beta testing CS6 I must say I like the interface but for the work I do I do as an image make I do not see much practical benefit. The only real benefit is knowing one is relatively up to date. However updating is becoming less economically attractive because Adobe seem to mistakenly believe their products are a "must have".

I feel long standing customers are getting a raw deal in the upgrade process. This produces some resentment at a time when Adobe are getting more and more expensive and open source products on Unix platforms are becoming more and more attractive and sophisticated. We are now controlling costs. Instead of buying more adobe product to run on multiple systems we are doing most of our preliminary work on open source systems and only doing what cannot be done on the open source systems using Adobe tools. I was at a conference last week and at least ten major players are doing exactly the same thing. I have been a loyal customer for around 20 years but do not feel that loyalty is reciprocated.

My two pennorth

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