Why are Adobe not offering a standard version of Photoshop in Creative Cloud ?

The whole point of CC is to provide a unified model, both technically and in terms of distribution and licensing. Makes a lot of things simpler. Contrary to what you may believe, even if there was a Standard version, there's no guarantee it would actually be that much cheaper. There's always a certain minimum cost involved for running company operations. You know, paying taxes, office rent and salaries and all that stuff. It would make little sense to retain a Standard version when you have to run it through extra channels and even set aside software engineers that would have to make sure the reduced feature set doesn't break apart. That may have been feasible with a fixed release schedule, but with new updates every 3 months or so, it's clear that this would quickly run out of sync and only increase the technical problems, in turn requiring ever more resources and then the cheaper version would no longer recover all cost. Again, makes no sense to me.

Mylenium

Honestly, Adobe would have deflected a lot of the negative press for the cloud subscription model if they'd just have offered a "Standard" edition with some features unavailable (e.g., video and 3D) for a really good price - e.g., $5.99 / month for the first year, then $9.99 / month thereafter for a single product license.

-Noel

Noel,

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Honestly, Adobe would have deflected a lot of the negative press for the cloud subscription model if they'd just have offered a "Standard" edition with some features unavailable (e.g., video and 3D) for a really good price - e.g., $5.99 / month for the first year, then $9.99 / month thereafter for a single product license.

This wouldn't change anything to the main problem with CC : once you stop paying, you no longer have anything to work with. I think that many photographers would be satisfied with a limited PS version, more powerful than PSE but offering only the features needed by photographers. However, it would have to be available under the classical licensing model.

Samoreen wrote:

 

This wouldn't change anything to the main problem with CC : once you stop paying, you no longer have anything to work with.

Exactly.

Perhaps, but never underestimate the power of a better price. 

-Noel

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Perhaps, but never underestimate the power of a better price. 

This not only a problem about the price itself (unless it becomes very, very low). There are a lot of freelance photographers or very small companies who have difficulties generating a sufficient revenue. It may happen that they become temporarily unable to "pay the rent" for a while. Which would mean, that they no longer have any tool to work with. Which in turn will worsen their problems. No one among these kind of PS users is fool enough to pay just to get a rope around their neck.

The problem is the same (or even worse) for the expert hobby photographers.

Well, to be fair I felt the prices I mentioned were pretty low, but also keep in mind that those photographers might be able to get by in a pinch with the existing version of Photoshop they already have, perpetually licensed, along with DNG Converter.  That will be viable for a while.

Those freelancers / hobbyists are regularly dumping thousands of dollars into their camera equipment, and many of them sell their used equipment when they upgrade, so they will never have its use in the future.  They might be willing to dump a few tens of dollars into their software.  Clearly quite a number of folks have joined the Creative Cloud already.

Like you, I do think the other major thing Adobe is missing that's blocking a lot of people from signing up is a viable exit strategy.  Perhaps Adobe will create one, I have no idea - I hope so.  But for now it is what it is. 

This is the day and age where people are willing to sign up for monthly service subscriptions, as evidenced by the number of smart phone/tablet users, cable/internet subscribers, etc.  I just feel that Adobe would have dulled the blow of the "cloud only" strategy change if they'd offered a very basic plan with base software that's very affordable.

-Noel

By the way, why did you highlight my last name in red?

-Noel

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

By the way, why did you highlight my last name in red?

 

 

I didn't do that. I don't even know how to do that. Must be a bug in the forum software.